About "10% of each episode is dedicated to them jumping into their voltron vehicles": it's the story as old as capitalism and it's the same reason you have thos

About "10% of each episode is dedicated to them jumping into their voltron vehicles": it's the story as old as capitalism and it's the same reason you have those long transformations in Sailor Moon, to give an actual example, but it applies to all off the mill series in anime, western and 'western' cartoons too. The TV time is sold as slots (usually ~30m for animation), you can't buy some arbitrary amount of time - you buy the slot, you need a serious amount of money for the prime time slots; a TV show requires money (big amounts of money) for the every second produced; so it's the easiest way to lower amount of money spent per episode - animate once, show multiple times.