Settei, sketches, and commentary from Nakamura
Kazuo Nakamura (中村一夫) is a veteran animator who has worked in animating titles such as Mazinger Z, Mobile Suit Gundam, and King of Brave GaoGaiGar. He worked as an animation director and the character designer in Beast King GoLion which would be used as one of the source material edited into Voltron: Defender of the Universe.
Legal Issues[]
Following the settlements over the legal dispute between World Events Productions and Toei Animation, a majority of rights to both Beast King GoLion and Armored Fleet DaiRugger XV were sold to WEP assuring that all future works of the Voltron franchise can continue without Toei's involvement.
Despite that, a Japanese exclusive video game, Super Robot Wars W, features Golion and its pilots in the game while listing Toei as the owner of the franchise in its copyrights section in various media. During the events of when the game was release in Japan, WEP partnered with film company, New Regency, in a project to create a Voltron live action movie following the success of the Transformers movie.
Due to live-action movies not being among the subjects discussed over their agreements to the franchise's ownership, Toei contacted WEP about their concerns over the movie's development and wanted to further negotiate on areas that weren't discussed in their agreements. Due to these claims, New Regency conducted an investigation over the legal status of the franchise and discovered that Nakamura, as the original character designer of Beast King GoLion, might have possessed certain rights to the series.
Due to this, New Regency has dropped any plans in developing the live-action movie due to Nakamura's possible stake in ownership of the franchise.
See Also[]
External Links[]
- Nakamura Production (Japanese)