Whats say you about the Bromance between Shiro and Keith? Is their relationship familial (blood or bond), mentor/student or more?
Whooo I am so heavily biased about this for reasons but I’ll try to answer you straight. This is going to be long. (Voltron Legendary Defender Spoilers Ahead)
Keith’s very first dialogue in the entire show is Shiro’s name. It’s not said like someone who just recognizes someone and is surprised, it’s meaningful. Keith’s eyes do the shaky animation thing where the person is highly emotional. He knows him, as most of us can tell, and you are right that the question is how?
Look at his face. Anyway, moving on.
Sorry. Not done. Shiro is dead weight here and like twice Keith’s size, how does he even manage this? Keith is also, understandably, very concerned for the changes Shiro has undergone.
So how does Shiro react to Keith? (Who, by the way, states later that he’s not much of a hug person, doesn’t really touch the other Paladins except in emergencies, and yet initiates contact here.)
Again, it’s familiar. There’s no scene where Keith introduces himself, like the other Paladins do, and Shiro genuinely wishes he could answer Keith’s broken question of where he’d been. This isn’t just a case of hero worship like Lance, they are mutually familiar with each other from the start.
EDIT: A nice anon reminded me of another couple of things here in this scene.
First, Shiro’s statement here:
Sounds an awful lot like they had some kind of relationship where it would be expected for Keith to come save Shiro, if only in the way it’s said.
Secondly, the others rescued Shiro while he was still dressed in his prisoner’s outfit:
And then later, after hiding out at Keith’s shack, Shiro has clothing that fits:
It wouldn’t have been hard for the writers to leave him in the prisoner garb and then just give him new clothes when they get to the castle, but hey, if Keith’s got some clothing for him, that works too. They’re also nowhere near the same size, meaning it could have been Shiro’s to start with. Shiro probably had to wear a vest because of his dang arms.
They also continue to be super protective of each other throughout the season:
Shiro saves his butt here, and at other times acts as Keith’s anchor and encouragement. As for Keith:
Also, in the scene when they are training for the first time, as well as others, Keith does something reckless to defend him. (Mysteriously, no one else responds to Shiro’s absence here, nor do they say they want to help.)
Concerning your specific questions:
Blood?: I don’t think so. Keith is stated to be an orphan, so even if they messed up the ages enough where it was physically possible, Shiro’s not his dad. I don’t think he’d be a blood brother either, for the reasons outlined in the next point.
Bond?: Family is a running theme in this show, Pidge’s and Lance’s being key points to who they are as people. If there were a brotherly bond between these two, in the case that they were raised together, there’s plenty of opportunities for this to have been mentioned. None of the other pilots (looking at you, Lance, Mr. “Shiro is my hero” and “Keith is my rival”) mention anything about Shiro having a brother, and as famous as he is, you’d think someone would know. There’s also how they refer to each other, not a single ‘bro’ or referring to each other as ‘brother’ in sight.
Possibility: At the outset of their friendship (or perhaps a bit later, since Keith can be prickly) Keith latched onto Shiro as someone he could actually depend on, and their interactions became deeper than friendship, like a familial bond.
This one holds a lot of water, the only issue being age. Dreamworks’ ‘canon’ says they are all teenagers, putting Shiro at a max of 19. For this ‘canon’ interpretation, I really can’t see Keith as younger than 17 or 18, else when he was kicked from the Garrison, he would have gone back into foster care, not given free reign to go to the desert and live in a shack. Shiro at most could have been an upperclassman (especially if Keith got held back a year for something) that helped him along. It’s a cute idea, and does explain why Keith is so ready to follow him.
Ignoring Dreamworks’ current canon as as bull as making Allura’s strength stat significantly lower than Hunk’s, we’ve got a bit more wiggle room for this one. If Keith was 19 or 20, and Shiro is sitting pretty at 23 or 24, the Mentor/Student between an Undergrad and a Grad makes a lot more sense. Also the whole Kerberos deal. Just saying.
Quite honestly, first watching it I thought the Garrison was a trade school you went to after high school, which makes sense as they were fighting for a spot in a designation, such as fighter or cargo pilot. This would put them at early college ages, and yes, college students look like that. You remember High School Musical? Those people were played by college age people. Our perception of age is warped. (Still not over Hunk saying give it the old college try, so I’m just going with this headcanon/au/whatever.)
I’m going to be honest, I ship them. Hard. But I really don’t think, as cute as the idea is, that they were romantically involved before Kerberos. Not canonically, anyway. If they were supposed to be, neither of them (really mainly just Shiro) have acted like it. There’s the idea that that is something Shiro forgot, on top of everything else, so it’s possible, but I hesitate to think that’s the route the writers are going (also, OW WHY DO THIS TO ME?). It seems more like crushing right now, if they are putting anything in. (Doesn’t mean we can’t dream.)
A lot of the writers and voice actors ship Sheith. I’m not making this up: see here.
I respect that due to some people’s headcanons about the characters, the ship squicks them out. That’s cool, we all have our own preferences. I tag things both so I can find them later and so people don’t get too uncomfortable. Please just be respectful, though, is that so hard?
Also, this screenshot is part of what won me over:
In any case, these two are close, and I can’t wait to see more.
