The Buried Castle/Mystery of Ghost Castle

This is another one of my favorites, if only for its total over-the-top ridiculosity.

The Buried Castle

Summertime in the Arusian woods.  Three kids who must be on lunch break while constructing the school are suddenly fightened by an earthquake.  The day turns dark and cloudy and they see a mysterious, mist-shrouded castle (ornamented by lightning bolts) in the distance.  The girl is afraid it's haunted.  Hmph.  Girls.

The team sees the castle on their screen in castle control.  Coran has to run a search on the computer to see who it belongs to.  During the robot wars (?) a castle was buried because it contained treasures as well as hideous powers.  It was so harmful that they tried to destroy it, to no avail.  And then they buried it.

Pidge decides he's going to go find the buried treasure.  Lance mocks him, and Keith says maybe there's danger.  Allura convinces Pidge to bring the mouse.

Oh, and Coran's search screen actually says this:

"Is Smith?  She has a red rose in her ha--No. 123. .  I want
Failure is the mother of success"

Not as good as the message the SDF-1 gets from Mars in Robotech, but still.

Pidge takes off in green lion, and enters the castle's stormy zone.  He lands some distance away and walks through the storm.  A lightning strike spilts a tree in front of the three kids, and they're frightened by the wind.  Then the girl sees a monster.  But it's Pidge.  Yeah, yeah.  Long story short, they join treasure-hunting forces. 

Oh, look.  The trap is a Haggarian trap.  She summons a skeletal hand to . . . um, scare them closer to the castle?  Oh, and the girl's name is Morgan.  They enter the castle, which is black as night.  And full of bats.  Pidge draws his sidearm to, y'know, scare off the bats.  Pidge lets the kids lead the way.  They enter a room declared to be the "royal treasure room."  They open a treasure chest and become zillionaires.  Pidge starts stuffing his pockets, until he sees Haggar's cat doing a Cheshire cat thing.  He shoots at the cat, then tries to lead the kids out.  The door closes, then skeletal hands grab their ankles.  Daggers pulled out of the treasure chest turn into snakes.  Pidge's treasure becomes a toad.  Pidge sends the mouse for help while the room turns upside down, tractor beams pull them into a bell, and the room turns rightside up.  Haggar lets the mouse go to bring the others.

The others are watching the castle in castle control, but no sign of Pidge.  Then the mouse comes and tells them what's happening.  They go from their uniforms to their normal close back to their uniforms (just watch the footage to see the animation error) and launch.

Meanwhile, Pidge and the kids are dangling upside down in the bell.  Pidge tries to shoot their shackles, but no luck.

The team arrives, and Hunk tries to charge in.  Keith stops him, then sends the others ahead--but Haggar summons some pretty wicked-looking skeletons.  Keith covers them while the others run into the castle.  Every time Keith shoots a skeleton, it falls apart, then reassembles itself.

Allura tells the mouse (giving it a name I don't catch) to lead them to Pidge.  They arrive, but, well, the same thing happens, and the rest of the team ends up in the bell.  Then the bell starts ringing.

Did one of the Toei staff members visit the Disney World Haunted House before writing this episode?!

Haggar looks on as the skeletons drive Keith into a castle parapet.  Then she says she's going to take them to Zarkon, castle and all.  A giant Gamera-like robeast emerges from the ground outside the castle, attaches itself to the castle with huge steel cables, and starts hauling them all to Doom.  Keith decides to climb up the cables to the robeast to stop them.  Haggar communicates with Zarkon in the robeast's control room.

Four fighters fly out of the robeast's mouth and strafe Keith.  He loses his grip in the cable, but lands on a fighter, kills the robot pilot, and crashlands at the feet of the lions.  He launches black lion and uses the lion sword to cut the cables.  The castle--prisoners and all--crashes back to Arus, and everyone is freed.  They run toward the lions, but the Robeast breathes fire in an attempt to block them off.  They launch and rejoin Keith, taking the kids aboard a lion as well.

Aaaand, we form Voltron.

Voltron lands amidst flames and releases the electroforce cross.  Gamera just pulls his head into his shell, and then launches some crazy scale-projectile things.  Voltron forms the lion lariat, which looks more like two sets of nunchaku, and fights his way to the robeast.  The robeast starts fire breathing again, and then Voltron uses wind from red and green lions, then forms blazing sword.

Yep.

As the robeast explodes, Haggar escapes in an escape ship and is confused that her best magic failed.

Back in castle control, Pidge is pretending to be a drill instructor to teach the kids to be treasure hunters.  Lance tells Pidge that there's no such thing as buried treasure, but then the kids say they found real treasure in the form of Pidge.

Urk.

Mystery of Ghost Castle

Another sunny day on Altea.  The three children are walking through the woods and singing.  Thankfully, the earthquake puts an end to that nonsense.  The girl's name is Laran.  And she refuses to enter the castle because the monster living there will clearly go after her, as she's the cutest.

The Golion rendition of the history is that the castle is called . . . Ghost Castle, owned by an eccentric king who had it buried in dirt upon his death, becoming his tomb.  Kurogane says he used to go to amusement park haunted houses all the time, but now it's kid's stuff.  Suzuishi mocks him, and then takes Platte to investigate.  We hear the Space Mice Theme Song for the first time as green lion launches.

The kids are Poe, Laran, and Joe.  And they endearingly call Suzuishi "Green Lion Guy."  Really.  I'm not being sarcastic.  I actually laughed out loud at that.  Hey, I'd call him Green Lion Guy, too.  Then beat him up and take his lion.  I mean, for eight years at my old office I sit in my cube every day and wait for Coran or Commander Hawkins to show up and tell me that my being there was all a mistake, and that I was supposed to be a Voltron pilot.  I mean, that was only on the days when I wasn't expecing Hagrid to come tell me I was supposed to go to Hogwarts Adult Education.  Or the days when Gandalf was supposed to come tell me I was actually supposed to be at Edoras working for Eomer.

Oh, yeah.  Golion.  This is totally the kind of stuff you'd find in the haunted mansion.

Hm.  Interestingly, the stock launch sequence was lengthened for Voltron.  In Golion, they go from yelling on the communicator right to shots of the shuttles taking them to their lions.

Honerva names the place Hell Castle. 

Seidou's sleeves keep disappearing when the team is trapped in the bell.

When Honerva (who now names it GHOST Castle) summons the beastman, she also teleports.  Sneaky witch (and I think it was cut from Voltron, or I may have been looking away from the screen during that shot).  This is also the first totally mecha beastman, seeings as it has a cockpit and stuff.  Oh, and Honerva knows the names of the Golion members.  And Daibazaal is looking forward to making stew out of them.

And our Golion combination music today is the first time we hear the green lion theme.  Weapons used:  Cross Beam, Double Rod (the nunchaku weapons that have nifty lions heads on them), and fire tornado, which seems to be all tornado in this episode.  Oh, do I need to mention Jyuoken?

The kids call Suzuishi "big brother" at the end.  Which has all kinds of shades of meaning in Japanese.  Fascinating people, those Japanese.  They also do not mention the name of the beastman, but I think of him as Gamera.  Really neat.  Full of meat.  We believe in Gamera.