Yurak Gets His Pink Slip/Crown Prince of Hell

Here we are.  It only took 14 episodes, but now we introduce the final piece of the classic Voltron puzzle.  Zarkon is a decent villain, for a detatched conqueror sitting in his throne room.  But he's gotta have a catspaw to do his dirty work.  And Yurak just wasn't doing it--neither in-universe, destroying Voltron, nor as a villain the audience really wanted to watch as he chewed the scenery.  Now, we meet Lotor/Sincline.

Yurak Gets His Pink Slip

We open with lightning outside . . . a mountain range on Arus.  Ha HA!  Thought it was gonna be another "outside castle Doom" opening, dintcha?  Yurak leads "the largest attack force ever assembled" (um, that day?) which consists of the Rooster Frigate and a bunch of fighters.

However, the lions are lying in wait.  They roar in anticipation of the coming battle, then start launching missiles, taking out many of the fighters.  Yurak orders a "multi-laser barrage," but the team uses missiles and lion knives to take out most of the ships.  Yurak fires the main weapons mounted on his ship, and Hunk and the princess take serious hits.  Keith counters using the coat of arms device on his lion, blowing the beak off the front of the rooster frigate.  Amidst flame and explosions, Yurak orders a frantic retreat as his robots fall around him.  We can show the casualties, y'know, 'cuz they're robots.  The "largest attack force ever assembled" is now two-thirds of the rooster Frigate and seven damaged fighters.

NOW we get to open on Castle Doom. In a room we've never seen before, we see the "Governors," whom Yurak is begging forgiveness.  Zarkon and Haggar appear in what's basically a box seat balcony sort of thing.  This place was totally designed by H.R. Giger.  The throne box is surrounded by two statuesque Xenomorph heads. 

Zarkon threatens Yurak with banishment.  A Doom Governor whips him.  Then, they are interrupted by the approach of a fleet of spacecraft.  Lotor, Zarkon's son.  Returned from his conquests.

Eeexcelent.

Lotor has been hearing rumors about planet Doom and Voltron.  Zarkon points the finger at Yurak for those defeats.  Lotor stops Zarkon from throwing is scepter thingie at Yurak and offers to make him the vehicle of his own redemption and defeat of Voltron.

Pidge is teaching the space mice acrobatic tricks.  Then the parents run off with the mouslings.

In the ruins of the town, the Arusians are having a market when enemy spacecraft arrive and commence strafing runs.  One attack ship apporoaches the castle.  The team runs out to a glass-enclosed balcony sort of thing.  Lotor is struck by Allura.  Hoo-boy.  This'll end well.  Lotor claims that if they settle the dispute between Doom and Arus by single combat, he will agree to permanent peace.  Keith agrees despite the fact that everyone thinks it's a trap.

Ah.  The Doom vultures, circling over the castle.  We can't go a single episode without this shot.  If we did, I'd have some sort of violent paranoid episode.  Honest.  Anyway, Haggar and Zarkon explain to us, the viewers, that Lotor has brought Yurak with him--and Yurak is now a mightly Robeast.

Keith rides his white horse to meet Lotor.  The two draw swords and charge.  There's a lot of acrobats and sword clashing and Lotor growling.  Keith is driven to a ledge, but disarms Lotor--who just picks up a rock and knocks him off the cliff anyway.

I like Lotor.

In a moment of standard supervillain gloating, Lotor explains that the duel was simply meant to separate the Voltron force.

The rest of the team, in Castle Control, decide to take the lions out to see how the duel is going.

Standing on the back of his batship, Lotor summons the supersized Yurak, who  looks pretty much the same, but his ears are bigger.  The team rushes through the desert and meets up with the giant Yurak.  (Wait, so how many times have they actually seen Yurak face to face?)  Yuri ejects a grenade out of his chest and throws it at the lions.  Recovering from the blast, blue lion breaks off to find Keith.

Lotor had taken the batship down into the ravine to finish off Keith.  He fires a laser that turns into a flamethrower, but is driven off by blue lion.  Keith calls for his horse and rides back to the castle to get black lion.

Yurak continues his battle against the remaining lions.  He fires energy beams from his fingers, missiles from hatches in his forearms, and crazy chain-bolo things from the hatch in his abdomen.  The chain things catch all four lions, allowing Yurak to spin them over his head and throw them into a ravine.  He gloats about how he will be reinstated to command.

Keith returns to the castle and is briefly confronted by Nanny to tells him his too hurt to save the day.  Seriously, is this bitch a planet Doom mole or what?!  He gets back to black lion, knocks Yurak down, and rouses the rest of the team to form Voltron.  As Voltron lands, Yurak makes this comically "Ruah!?" doubletake, then shoots lasers from his ears.  Ol' Volts just pelts him with preliminarys--lops off his ears with spinning laser blades, hits him with heat beams, proton missiles, and then forms the blazing sword.  We know how this goes from here.

As Voltron poses for a picture no one takes, Lotor shakes his fist.  We follow him for some distance as he flies through an Arusian mountain range on his way out.  Then we see Voltron posing in the sunset again.

Crown Prince of Hell

It amuses me how much "robot" death Voltron got away with in this episode.  BECAUSE THEY'RE ROBOTS.  Therefore, there isn't a lot cut in the opening battle sequence.  Sadak sets out on a sneak-attack, and promptly complains tha the lions dishonorably ambush him.  Jesus, he's an early-21st century politician!  "I can use dirty tricks against you, but it's not fair if you do it vice versa!"

I like how a fighter scores a direct hit on black lion, and he completely ignores it to form black sword and hit a few other fighters.  And blue lion's paw weapon is the "blue claw."  The energy blast from black lion's breastplate is the "black beam."

There are varying numbers of the Galra council.  Six or eight.  In one shot there's only two seats on one side of the room.  In most shots there seems to be six, but there are five individuals I can identify.  Maybe six.  I'm not trying very hard, mind you.  Once I get around to actually doing screen captures, I'll catalogue them all.  Some of them are drastically different from either the Daibazaal/Sadak Galra type and the black army troopers, while some have features that might suggest they're an extreme variation of the usual type.

Sincline, the Prince Imperial, arrives.  He has been conquering the Great Goering Nebula.  And he brings a platter with heads of the Great Goering kings!  That's an awesome shot.

The shot just before Sincline in his batship (with an escort of three other ships we see only briefly here, but will become familiar with soon enough) strafes the Altean town seems to imply that the ruins are actually being rebuilt.

It's interesting to me that the show waited four episodes before revealing the main robot, and 14 episodes before we get the real villain of the show.  Daibazaal is just a talking head on a throne, really.  Honerva is sneaky and subversive (and, arguably, the most effective when you consider that she took out one of the original Golion members).  But if we're gonna keep on with the weird Chinese folktale vibe of this show, we need someone to personally oppose Golion.  And that's Sincline.  Sadak was just a career soldier doing his job, basically.  He was cruel and he enjoyed killin' stuff, but you don't get the feeling he has a serious stake in it.  Sincline, on the other hand, is bat-shit insane abou ending Golion.  And gettin' Fala.

Case in point--Kogane disarms him, and he says "hey, this fight is a draw."  Kogane, taken aback and somewhat offended, says "WHAT?!"  And Sincline klubs him in the head with a rock, saying "IT'S A DRAW!!"

Yep.  Crazy.  Almost makes up for Hys, having this guy around.

Beastman Sadak continues the fine tradition of talking beastmen.  At least we don't get as goofy as the talking Mighty Morphin Power Rangers monsters.

The missiles from blue lion's shoulder launcher are curiously spikey.  It's a cool design for a throwaway image like missiles that flash by on screen and then explode.

Not only do we introduce Sincline in this episode, it is also the debut of the individual lion's theme songs.  We get black lion's as Kogane goes to rejoin the team.  We get the elevator-music version of the Golion theme for the formation.

When Kogane arrives and calls out each lion by color, the dialogue is identical to Voltron.  In this case, it could be a translation was available, or it could be that, well, they use the english words for the lions.

When Golion just mercilessy pounds Sadak, he uses the double sword for the first time (the solar spear in Voltron) and impales Sadak just before forming Jyuoken.

As we track Sincline leaving in the batship, the narrator gives us a little bit of foreshadowing, assuring us that, yes indeed, the real bad guy has now arrived.  Sincline, incidentally, is voiced by Akira Tamiya, whom is also recognizable to me for being the Japanese voice of Roy Fokker from Robotech/Macross.  He also voiced Drill Sergeant Zim for the anime Starship Troopers, and has been in pretty much EVERYTHING: Fist of the North Star, Getter Robo, Cutey Honey, Space Battleship Yamato . . .  He's probably the most prolific crazy man in anime I've come across.