Escape to Another Planet/The Ruined Phantom Planet

Escape to Another Planet

The five space explorers in their stolen Skull Slave Galley are plummeting to an uncertain landing.  Apparently the black lion statue's landing beam only works for a certain range.  Then you're on you own.

To catch us up, we have an emergency call to Galaxy Garrison from Keith explaining the situation.  And then every panel in the Skull Slave Galley bridge explodes, and they use gnarly evil fire extinguishers before ejecting--and reapprising Galazy Garrison.

Then we cut to Galaxy Garrison explaining what just happened.  Hello infodump.

The Slave Galley explodes, the team ejects and lands in the desert.  And they all apparently have elephant hide for skins, seeing as they mostly (except for ninja-acrobat Pidge) hit the desert sand with enough force to bury themselves.

Aaand Hunk is hungry.

And Arusians start shooting arrows at them from cave openings.  They apparently switch from arrows to spears, 'cuz that's what Hunk catches brandishes at them as he chases 'em further into the cave.

There's some weird dialogue (and mention of Space Burger joints) that almost seems like a self-parody.  But at least they decide to walk out of the desert and into, um, fog.  And a forest.  Complete with a roaring lion.  Doom fighters do a flyover, but can't see through the fog.  Yurak apparently neglected the level 4 diagnostics on the infrascanners.

We see that Yurak Rooster Assault Frigate and an escort of fighters is in Arus orbit, and Yurak is upset that the infrascanners can't penetrate fog.

Yep.  Of course Hunk wrestled a lion (only in dialogue.  And it was only a cub).  Then the fog clears and they see the castle.  I like this castle layout.  Even if it does sort of look a little Disney.  Then the drawbridge invitingly lowers itself.  They all march up to the castle, spears in hand (good thing the Arusians threw enough spears to arm all five of them).  Chip checks out some falling rocks and meets the space mice for the first time.

Hoo boy.  The space mice.

Keith says "it's too quiet."  Then the doors very creakily open.  And close behind them.  Their struggles to open the door are interrupted by the appearance of Coran coming down the stares from deeper in the castle.  With a pretty powerful candle for all the light it throws off.

Coran describes the destruction of Arus at the hands of Zarkon, and the existence of Voltron.  And they're apparently in the Diamond Galaxy.

I like the stylized still shots of the invasion.

Allura appears, all sparkly, and everyone is instantaneously reduced to drooling puddles.  Well, mostly Pidge.  They all introduce themselves, swear to serve the Arusian cause, and kiss the princess' hand.  And then Yurak and his fleet reappears.

Hunk says outright that they're here for Voltron.

Coran now repeats the story of Voltron, again it sounds like his disassembly (due to Haggar's powers) is a recent happening.  Coran does not narrate the landing of each lion, nor does he reveal their location.  This is a little weird, because later on the writers appparently get paid by the word--they can't let a sequence that is silent in the Japanese original go by without a play-by-play narration.

And they shall be known at the Fellowship of the Ri---er, Voltron Force.

Zarkon makes an appearance as he exhorts his fleet to devote its massive resource to finding five . . . guys.

Huh.

Actually, since they know who the five guys are (the Voltron Force) and why they're there, it makes a little more sense that Zarkon will devote this much military power to an already-conquered planet.

Coran leads the five into the conrol room and gives them the uniforms.  What's always kinda interested me is that the uniform colors (leader is red, etc.) don't correspond to the color lions.  Well, now I know that this is the Official Super Sentai Team Color Code.  So it kind of bugged me that Voltron the Third Dimension (which I won't be watching here) made the uniforms match the lions.  The new, not-yet-out Voltron Force does the same lion-matching.  (I only hope it'll be better than the 3rd Dimension.  I like the Lion/Voltron redesigns, except for yellow lion's overbite.  And the characters look pretty good).

The Ruined Phantom Planet

The interviews with WEP staff seemed to imply that either they had no translations of the episodes, or that they didn't bother with them due to time constraints (it was faster just to make up stuff?)  So I'm always surprised when I see any reasonably close correspondences, such as this episode.  Obviously, there's no call to Galaxy Garrison.  But Sadak complains about fog just like Yurak does, instead of going out on some crazy tangent (the way the shoehorn in Hunk's references to food, constantly).

Another interesting thing is how they retained the Golion pre-titlecard recap of the previous episode, instead doing it in "realtime."

Same basic action here.  The Skull Galley crashes, explodes.  They eject.  Suzuishi lands on his feet.  Seido spits sand at him.  Then, instead of wonder where Seido can get a Space Burger, they wonder what planet they're on.  Because they don't know where they are.

Seido's vehemence makes sense here--they land on an unknown planet, their ship blows up, and then people start shooting arrows and throwing spears at them.  Kurogane muses that maybe they're cannibals.

The hike from the desert into the fog-laden forest seems to take more time here, just from the way it's edited.  Hmm.  Not only does the English dub have everybody talkingrealfasttosqueezethewordsin, but trimming here and there to make room for more commercials and for Dairugger footage seems to speed up the storyline.

Sadak tells his sensor operator to kiss his ass.  I like the translating job on these subtitles.  They put some time into making them feel natural (ADV's subs of Macross, Southern Cross, and Dairugger, on the other hand, are terribly stilted--not wrong, like the Zeta Gundam sub I saw recently, but very . . . textbook.  Not good-sounding as dialogue).

When I was a kid, I preferred Vehicle Voltron.  It seemed more like hard Sci-Fi.  I liked Lion Voltron OK, but with the witch, the mice, the nanny, the princess, the castle--Disney's Cinderella had seen a theatrical re-release the same fall Voltron came out, so I just thought there was too much Disney for my tastes.  Magic was silly.

My opinion of fantasy, magic, and the Grimm's Tales-esque elements of this have significantly relaxed, however.

In Raible's flashback of Daibazaal's attack, pre-war Altea looks very Grec-Roman--they even have a coliseum.  Maybe that's just a convention of anime that goes for an old-world European feel.  Southern Cross and Mazinger Z (well, outer-space Greco-Roman for Southern Cross, and an alternate history sci-fi-fantasy freakout for Mazinger) go for a Greek vibe, too.

In a sequence that totally makes me thik of Seven Samurai, Raible "tests" the five explorers by suddenly attacking them with his cane. The princess appears, and her vocal performance is much more subdued and melancholy than B.J. Ward's chirpy Allura. Incidentally, Fala/Allura's Japanese voice is provided by Rumiko Ukai, who voiced Frau Bow in Mobile Suit Gundam and Kitty Kitten in the Ideon.  At least Saburo Hatte (whoever in the Toei staff really came up with the names) was kinder with naming the characters than Kill 'em All Tomino.

Raible's narration of Golion's role in Daibazaal's attack is . . . strange.  The crash-landing of the component lions was apparently ancient (though the castle looks the same and is well-lit) but, what exactly did Golion do in the defense of Altea?  Raible says Golion didn't budge an inch.  So . . . his wreckage wasn't destroyed?

Apparently, there are still Alteans living in the ruins of the city near the castle.  And, in another surprising case of correspondence. Honerva promises Voltron Force meat to Jaga, just as Haggar promises to her cat.  They must have had some translations, right?  I mean, you can't just infer that she's offering human flesh to her cat just from the images.

Yeah, so the way this commentary seems to be shaking out is that I give most of the synopsis for the Voltron version of the episode, and do more analysis for the Golion version.

And--interesting bit: the opening credits show Shirogane in the episodes before his death, but the closing credits always have Fala, both sitting atop blue lion and in the team celebration shot.  And, in that final image of the closing credits, Fala is in her pink Golion flight suit, but the castle is still the medieval "castle of lions."  She doesn't become a part of the team until the high-tech castle is revealed. 

Interesting.