Raid of the Red Berets
Zarkon berates Lotor. Lotor claims he and Haggar have a cunning plan that cannot fail. He tries to convince Zarks to come to the arena withhh him. After some more of Zarkon being mean, we finally go to the arena. Four of the blue, multi-eyed beasts like the one that danced in frustration when the crowd chanted in that one episosde. This time, they cluster in fear, and then Doom commandos explode out of the ground and, um, pose. Then we cut to the new robeast, a crazy looking mecha thing that will carry the red berets. It closes itself into a self-contained capsule that flies to Arus under its own power like the old space coffins. After ejecting the red berets, the beast buries itself in the mountain. The berets hide evidence of the landing with a MASSIVE EXPLOSION, then procede to run around Arus, turning off lights, breaking windows, and scaring people.
That morning, a big tractor thing full of some scary-looking Arusians waves to the Voltron Force. Then the red berets explode out of the ground and leap at the tractor . . .
Keith decides everything is peaceful, and leads the team back to the castle. They see the tractor again, and sense something's wrong. Allura is teary-eyed that something terrible must have scared them away. Keith calls Coran, and apparently the castle hotline has been running off the hook with reports of humanoid robots, um, scaring the citizenry.
Pidge and Lance are launched to search, while Hunk, Coran, Allura, and Keith look at a map of the berets' attacks. Pidge and Lance see something in the old volcano. They see . . . flashing lights, like someone was digging in there . . .? Harvesting cold lava dust? A guard appears in the control room, reporting that townspeople have panicked and are mobbing the castle. The townspeople are blaming Allura. Foolish bourgeoise! Hunk goes to, um, squish 'em? Keith and Coran hold him back.
Lotor's face appears, gloating. He claims he'll be there to promise protection. Wha--!?
The entire kingdom is storming the castle. Allura wants to let them into the castle, but there isn't room. Coran decides they must restore the peoples' confidence. He decides they'll deploy the lions to make them feel better . . . Huh. Black, blue and yellow lions launch. Lance and Pidge are trying to figure out what they were digging for, but they're called back to the castle. The five lions land and surround the crowd. Coran makes a speech, and the crowd starts to disperse. Suddenly, the red berets explode out of the crowd, having been dressed in Arusian clothes. They commit suicide by detonating backpacks full of lava dust on black lion. (Black lion also formed a weird spinning laser blade shoulder weapon before getting coated in goo.
The remaining four lions launch to intercept the robeast. It forms some sort of sheild with its capsule sections. Debris from the battle rains down on the Arusians, forcing Coran to allow the citizens into the castle for safety. The beast knocks the lions out of commission one at a time. Coran covers them with a barrage of missiles, but it protects itself with the integral castle. Coran and Keith work out how Haggar used volcanic dust as a weapon, and Keith decides to have the other lions use their eye beams to melt him free. They dodge the robeast, and Lance fires his lion torch. Hunk tries to sandblast him. Finally, they concentrate their eyebeams and . . . lift black lion and throw it at the robeast? Well, that smashes whatever he's coated with and knocks the robeast out of the air. Then they form Voltron.
The robeast flaps its shell bits, then charges Voltron. Voltron rides 'im cowboy for a second, then decides to just go for the lion head attack. This smashes the robeast's shell. They reattach and form blazing sword. The robeast charges again, and they slice it a bunch of times. It falls into four or five sections, and then it explodes. Lotor calls them lucky.
Lotor then returns to Zarkon and gets called dumb, and is told he should take up stamp collecting. Apparently the red berets are still around.
On Arus, the team and Coran look into the sunset as Keith orrates on freedom fighting.
Golion Hunting
We don't get all that expository dialogue with Zarkon and Lotor. Instead, Sincline has Daibazaal and Honerva in the arena right from the start, to show the red berets totally slaughter the beastmen. I mean, slaughter in the sense that cattle get slaughtered. They're reduced to a pile of body parts. Sincline introduces them as the Death Commandos. Oh, and Paul Atreides called. He wants his Fedaykeen back.
The Death Commandoes are loaded into Mecha Beastman Kappa. Kappa is launched and lands on Altea. Again, they conceal the landing with a BIG EXPLOSION. Well, they blow up their capsule. And then they proceed to kill the HELL out of a lot of Alteans. I mean, really. This is without a doubt the goriest, most violent episode of Golion. They don't just turn out the goddamned lights. They cut children into little gooey bits. And the people on the yellow tractor the lions overfly? Totally killed to death. Fala's tearing up because all the peopele on this tractor (and there was like 8 of them) are sliced'n'diced.
The flashing lights that Pidge said was lights from digging in the volcano? They're metal fragments from the capsule destruction.
Raible doesn't want to allow the villagers into the castle because the Death Commandos might be hidden among them. Then Raible decides to let them in, with Golion forming a cordon, and the people assembling into neighborhoods, allowing them to identity the enemy.
This all makes far more sense than Voltron.
The death commandos emerge and, er, live up to their name by suicide bombing black lion. He kills them with the black cutter, which starts out as a weird spinning laser blade shoulder mounted thing, and then becomes the regular lion blade.
When the four remaining lions launch to deal with the beastman, the launching sound effect is pistol shot effect I remember from A Fistfull of Dollars, among others. It gets used for gunshots in many anime series.
Black lion is covered in gum. Absent a gigantic jar of peanut butter, Raible orders them to use fire, sand, and water to harden ultimately harden it. And the eye flash apparently doubles as a tractor beam. I forgot to mention this in Voltron, but the beastman does this crazy giraffe thing with its neck as they throw black lion at it (it's emphasized with a weird emu-like sound effect in Golion).
We get the elevator-lion theme again today.
We also don't end with nearly as much filler as Voltron, since all the gore filled out the episode quite well.
Saturday, July 30, 2011
Lotor's New Hitman/Space Speed Demon
Lotor's New Hitman
We are treated to a dogfight between different Doom fighters. Zarkon, Lotor and Morgil are all watching the precision flying team, who are nothing like the team they had when Lotor was at the academy. Then a new red fighter appears and shoots down the remaining red--er, green and yellow fighters (gods, the first time they have a recolor of this animation model, they screwup coloring the old versions). The new arrival takes out the other fighters, then buzzes the royalty and lands in from the king. We see a the way these fighters can land on, um, land.
Carp, the pilot, leaps out and antagonizes Morgil while impressing Lotor and Zarkon. Morgil threatens him with a scimitar, but Lotor and Zarkon agree to give him one of Haggar's robeasts to pilot to defeat Voltron.
In Haggar's lab, Carp looks at the new robeast and finds it wanting--wanting to be red, and to have more windows. Haggar doesn't do windows, but she does change it to red. And lowers Carp into the head inside a cockpit pod thing..
Lotor's flagship, accompanied by fighters, launches the big capsule with Carp's robeast. It slams into the surface of Arus, then transforms into a rolling high-speed tank mode. It trashes the Arusian town, and Carp cackles and gloats. Lotor watches from his bridge and gloats. Arusian townspeople scatter at the rampage.
The team watches the attack in castle control. They launch the lions. Carp's robeast smashes some buildings in its bipedal mode, then folds up and rolls away. Keith and Allura put out the fires and rescue a kid trapped under wreckage. Pidge, Hunk, and Lance take off after Carp. Hunk follows him into the tunnel, while Pidge and Lance take some alternate dimension shortcut and beat them to the other end of the tunnel. Carp pulls away from Hunk, the tears off over red and green lions, turning into a flying mode. Green lion pounces, but the flying mode uses wing-wind to blow Pidge back. Hunk knocks Carp back, but he recovers and takes off. Hunk recalls Keith and the princess from the town and they form Voltron.
Voltron chases Carp, reaching Mach 9. Carp suddenly plunges into a rocky canyon, forcing Voltron to chase him between the narrow walls. Keith can't steer, and grinds Voltron's leg arm against the wall. They crash, with Pidge unconscious and green lion damaged. Carp taunts them some more, and Keith prepares the lion head attack. As Carp circles overhead, they launch the lion heads. Voltron uses laser guidance, and all four heads miss. And the team members' visors change color. Lotor recalls him and they return to Doom.
At an officer's party, a red army soldier reports that Carp demands to join the party. Morgil protests, but Lotor allows him in Carp drinks blood wine offered to him by a bellydancer. He makes a mess of himself. Morgil is jealous of Carp. He doesn't like this development. Lotor alludes to a plan to destroy Voltron.
Green lion is being repared. Keith figures out that Carp had used the tunnel chase to test the lions' maximum speed. Somehow yellow lion in a tunnel told him how fast the lion head attack would be. Just then, Carp returns and strafes the castle. The team rushes out of green lion sickbay into castle control. They launch the lions. Again. Then they form Voltron. Again. This time, the formation uses the Golion intro footage. They chase Carp around in the mountains again. Hunk claims they've apparently come up with all kinds of spead they're now holding back.
Then Lotor launches electric space mines. Carp weaves his way out of the minefield that has trapped Voltron, and begins detonating the mines again. Voltron separates. They use tornado, sand, and water attacks to clear the mines, then reform Voltron. This is three times we get a combination sequence. Were they short on story, or time, when making this episode?!
This time, rather than launching the lion head attack from standing, Voltron starts flying, planning to launch the lion heads at Mach 10. The lion heads catch up to Carp, punch holes in his robeast, and return to Volts. They form blazing sword, and that's it for Carp. Morgil chuckles at Carp's demise. Lotor hopes he'll land safely on planet Gloom, but crashes in an explosion that would have decimated the planet. Voltron leaves Arus' atmosphere and dpoes a victory lap in space.
Space Speed Demon
Gibra, who's usually named Gobra, is called Gibra in this episode. Which is funny, because he's usually called Mogor in Voltron, but is called Morgil in this one. Even though Morgil is the name I remember and the one I've been using, even in episodes when he's Mogor. Anyway, Gibra is in charge of the Galra Air Force. Their maneuvers are no match for Golion.
The talented pilot with a flair for red is Reggar in this episode. He wears a unique uniform, and looks like he might be the same race as the rest of Galra, but is kinda weird looking, And he does this creepy thing with his eyes. And he wants Gibra's job. At Honerva's lab, Reggar and Gibra do some more bonding before Honerva recolors the beastman and Reggar is docked in Mecha Beastman Mu Reggar's head.
It should be no surprise that there is far more Altean death in Reggar's attack this time around, should it?
When they chase Reggar into the tunnel, Kurogane is surprised that the mecha can fly, since they've only seen it rolling until now.
Still. How do green and red lions make it to the end of the tunnel by flying over the mountain the tunnel goes through? And where does this tunnel go? What's it for?
Reggar is hitting more than 500 kph in the tunnel.
We get an instrumental elevator music version of all the lion themes for the first gattai sequence of the night.
Kogane tries to locate Mu Reggar with the laser sensor. Whatever that is.
OK, seriously, how can flying robots with no discernible engines or thrust go mach 10?
In this version, Gibra is mad because Reggar shouldn't be allowed to leave the beastman cockpit. At the party, we get more brief shots of the bellydancers and more weird Galra . . . officers. Royalty. Whatever these guys are.
Keith's and Kogane's dialogue matches pretty closely about the lack of operator error and how they've gone over data from the fight. And then Keith's veers away when Kogane explains, quite succinctly, that the four lion attack goes at mach 10 while Reggar accelerated to mach 15. Then Reggar returns and they form Golion to Fo-ma-shun VEE!!!
Reggar's laugh is ridiculous.
I do like those space mines. That was a cool idea. They escape from the mines in a reverse Y formation. W-aahhh!?! Oh, you can see it in the last shot just before they combine again. And in none of these combination sequences did they use the opening sequences, always the standard white-lightning combination (the intro sequence has yellow lightning).
It's awful convenient that the mecha beastmen just uniformly stand there, paralyzed, after getting hit with the four lion attack. And Reggar doesn't crash on planet Gloom. He just gets vaporized. And then the sun rises over Altea.
We are treated to a dogfight between different Doom fighters. Zarkon, Lotor and Morgil are all watching the precision flying team, who are nothing like the team they had when Lotor was at the academy. Then a new red fighter appears and shoots down the remaining red--er, green and yellow fighters (gods, the first time they have a recolor of this animation model, they screwup coloring the old versions). The new arrival takes out the other fighters, then buzzes the royalty and lands in from the king. We see a the way these fighters can land on, um, land.
Carp, the pilot, leaps out and antagonizes Morgil while impressing Lotor and Zarkon. Morgil threatens him with a scimitar, but Lotor and Zarkon agree to give him one of Haggar's robeasts to pilot to defeat Voltron.
In Haggar's lab, Carp looks at the new robeast and finds it wanting--wanting to be red, and to have more windows. Haggar doesn't do windows, but she does change it to red. And lowers Carp into the head inside a cockpit pod thing..
Lotor's flagship, accompanied by fighters, launches the big capsule with Carp's robeast. It slams into the surface of Arus, then transforms into a rolling high-speed tank mode. It trashes the Arusian town, and Carp cackles and gloats. Lotor watches from his bridge and gloats. Arusian townspeople scatter at the rampage.
The team watches the attack in castle control. They launch the lions. Carp's robeast smashes some buildings in its bipedal mode, then folds up and rolls away. Keith and Allura put out the fires and rescue a kid trapped under wreckage. Pidge, Hunk, and Lance take off after Carp. Hunk follows him into the tunnel, while Pidge and Lance take some alternate dimension shortcut and beat them to the other end of the tunnel. Carp pulls away from Hunk, the tears off over red and green lions, turning into a flying mode. Green lion pounces, but the flying mode uses wing-wind to blow Pidge back. Hunk knocks Carp back, but he recovers and takes off. Hunk recalls Keith and the princess from the town and they form Voltron.
Voltron chases Carp, reaching Mach 9. Carp suddenly plunges into a rocky canyon, forcing Voltron to chase him between the narrow walls. Keith can't steer, and grinds Voltron's leg arm against the wall. They crash, with Pidge unconscious and green lion damaged. Carp taunts them some more, and Keith prepares the lion head attack. As Carp circles overhead, they launch the lion heads. Voltron uses laser guidance, and all four heads miss. And the team members' visors change color. Lotor recalls him and they return to Doom.
At an officer's party, a red army soldier reports that Carp demands to join the party. Morgil protests, but Lotor allows him in Carp drinks blood wine offered to him by a bellydancer. He makes a mess of himself. Morgil is jealous of Carp. He doesn't like this development. Lotor alludes to a plan to destroy Voltron.
Green lion is being repared. Keith figures out that Carp had used the tunnel chase to test the lions' maximum speed. Somehow yellow lion in a tunnel told him how fast the lion head attack would be. Just then, Carp returns and strafes the castle. The team rushes out of green lion sickbay into castle control. They launch the lions. Again. Then they form Voltron. Again. This time, the formation uses the Golion intro footage. They chase Carp around in the mountains again. Hunk claims they've apparently come up with all kinds of spead they're now holding back.
Then Lotor launches electric space mines. Carp weaves his way out of the minefield that has trapped Voltron, and begins detonating the mines again. Voltron separates. They use tornado, sand, and water attacks to clear the mines, then reform Voltron. This is three times we get a combination sequence. Were they short on story, or time, when making this episode?!
This time, rather than launching the lion head attack from standing, Voltron starts flying, planning to launch the lion heads at Mach 10. The lion heads catch up to Carp, punch holes in his robeast, and return to Volts. They form blazing sword, and that's it for Carp. Morgil chuckles at Carp's demise. Lotor hopes he'll land safely on planet Gloom, but crashes in an explosion that would have decimated the planet. Voltron leaves Arus' atmosphere and dpoes a victory lap in space.
Space Speed Demon
Gibra, who's usually named Gobra, is called Gibra in this episode. Which is funny, because he's usually called Mogor in Voltron, but is called Morgil in this one. Even though Morgil is the name I remember and the one I've been using, even in episodes when he's Mogor. Anyway, Gibra is in charge of the Galra Air Force. Their maneuvers are no match for Golion.
The talented pilot with a flair for red is Reggar in this episode. He wears a unique uniform, and looks like he might be the same race as the rest of Galra, but is kinda weird looking, And he does this creepy thing with his eyes. And he wants Gibra's job. At Honerva's lab, Reggar and Gibra do some more bonding before Honerva recolors the beastman and Reggar is docked in Mecha Beastman Mu Reggar's head.
It should be no surprise that there is far more Altean death in Reggar's attack this time around, should it?
When they chase Reggar into the tunnel, Kurogane is surprised that the mecha can fly, since they've only seen it rolling until now.
Still. How do green and red lions make it to the end of the tunnel by flying over the mountain the tunnel goes through? And where does this tunnel go? What's it for?
Reggar is hitting more than 500 kph in the tunnel.
We get an instrumental elevator music version of all the lion themes for the first gattai sequence of the night.
Kogane tries to locate Mu Reggar with the laser sensor. Whatever that is.
OK, seriously, how can flying robots with no discernible engines or thrust go mach 10?
In this version, Gibra is mad because Reggar shouldn't be allowed to leave the beastman cockpit. At the party, we get more brief shots of the bellydancers and more weird Galra . . . officers. Royalty. Whatever these guys are.
Keith's and Kogane's dialogue matches pretty closely about the lack of operator error and how they've gone over data from the fight. And then Keith's veers away when Kogane explains, quite succinctly, that the four lion attack goes at mach 10 while Reggar accelerated to mach 15. Then Reggar returns and they form Golion to Fo-ma-shun VEE!!!
Reggar's laugh is ridiculous.
I do like those space mines. That was a cool idea. They escape from the mines in a reverse Y formation. W-aahhh!?! Oh, you can see it in the last shot just before they combine again. And in none of these combination sequences did they use the opening sequences, always the standard white-lightning combination (the intro sequence has yellow lightning).
It's awful convenient that the mecha beastmen just uniformly stand there, paralyzed, after getting hit with the four lion attack. And Reggar doesn't crash on planet Gloom. He just gets vaporized. And then the sun rises over Altea.
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Lotor's Clone/Mortal Combat of Light and Shadow
awesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesome
awesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesome
awesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesome
awesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesome
Yeah, this was one of the most memorable episodes for me.
Lotor's Clone
On Planet Doom, Zarkon is berating Lotor for his defeats. He demands that he rely not on robots, but that he should fight Voltron himself. Lotor claims Haggar is working on a new scheme that will be sure to work--but Zarkon says he wasn't listening--Lotor should lead! "Do you mean, from the front?" Of course he does.
Outside Haggar's laboratory, two robots are discussing Lotor's failures. They are surprised when Lotor appears. He asks them what they're discussing, but they play him off. They think.
Haggar presents Lotor with her new plan--a clone of himself. One that will look identical, but be faster and stronger. It will appear that he is leading from the front, but he will be completely safe. She does some stuff that causes the new clone agony. The it passes out, and awakens, startling Lotor. Haggar explains that the clone is Lotor's worst side. He wants to test the close out immediately.
The two robots Lotor walked in on as they were mocking him are summoned to the arena at night. The clone, um, deactivates them. The first one he defeats with his bare hands. The other . . . um, with editing. Lotor and Haggar are watching this. Lotor is pleased.
On Arus, the team is training. Pidge runs up a cliff, does a backflip, and fires at targets suspended from balloons. He takes out the balloons rather than the targets. Keith sternly reprimands him while the rest of the team laughs. Suddenly, the controls of all five lions go crazy. It clears up, but the team decides to return to the castle.
At the castle, Coran orders technicians to the backup generators. The team returns just as power goes out. Keith at first asks if Coran was testing something, but then all castle operations are disrupted. Coran is concerned that the lions were affected. The castle control screen opens up to show a new robeast, one with an enery-disrupting force field. The team can't use the lions because there's no telling how they'll respond to the disruption. Keith decides to go sabotage the robeast, using an underwater sled to intercept it at the lake. The rest of the team will repair additional sleds and try to meet up with him.
As the robeast marches on the castle, Lotor watches and gloats in an observation ship. His clone is riding atop the robeast.
Lance and Allura work on repairing the other sled while Keith makes his covert run. Outside, the robeast begins firing charges directly at the castle from its arms. The team rushes to repair the sleds. Keith reaches the feet of the robeast and plants spring-loaded mines on its legs. The Lotor clone sees bubbles around the feet. Keith abandons the sled and swims to shore. The clone throws his axe spear but misses.
The team decides to concentrate their energies on one sled. The clone, meanwhile, approaches the spear stuck in the river. Keith jumps out of the water with a speargun, firing his only spear. He grabs the spear as the clone draws its sword. Keith is surprised to see "Lotor" leading from the front. In the observation lounge, Lotor drops his wine as he watches the fight. The two struggle, until the mines go off and blow the robeast over. Its disruption field ceases and Coran has power in castle control. He sees Lotor's observation ship and decides to launch the lions as he watches Lance approach the fight on the other sled.
Lotor is upset that the fight is taking too long. Haggar explains to him that he can perform a "mind merge" and communicate with the clone. The clone, with all of Lotor's ambition, doesn't like taking orders from him. Keith watches the clone talk to himself and figures out what he is. Lotor orders a soldier to reactivate the robeast. The robeast tries to smush Keith, but almost his the clone. The clone swipes at it with its sword. In response, the robeast vaporizes him. Keith looks on, and then evades the robeast. An explosion knocks him off of his feet.
Coran, watching this, deploys the rest of the team. Just as the robeast approaches to finish Keith off, two spears hit in in the underarm vents. Lance has arrived. He collects Keith and takes him back to the castle. The other three lions buzz Lotor's ship, and then bombard the robeast. They knock it off its feet with a barrage of missiles, and then black and red lions reappear. Now it's time to form the big guy.
Keith immediately launches the lion head attack, punching four holes in the poor robeast. They form the blazing sword and it's a done deal.
After Lotor leaves, the team is back in the rec room, talking about clones while using footage from the Love Bridge episode. Keith suggests they clone Cheddar.
Mortal Combat of Light and Shadow
On Galra, Daibazaal is displeased with Sincline's bravado. Apparently the people are calling him all talk. Sincline tells him Radiomecha Beastman Deadzone will be ready. Daibazaal says he should go ahead of the beastman and fight Golion himself.
We now get to see the people actually talking as two soldiers discuss Sincline's failures. They think they get a reprieve . . .
Jaga is warming himself in front of Honerva's fire. Sincline begs her to clone him. Honerva is pleased that he has this much need for her services. Sincline is suprised by the clone's formation. He's also a little panicked when she seems to be torturing it. But it's all necessary. The clone's awakening is actually kinda freaky. Sincline's reaction is warranted. However, the clone is twice as strong as a normal person and has a faster nervous system.
In the test, the two gossip soldiers are wondering who summoned them. The clone basically takes them apart with his bare hands. We see exposed bone as clone-Sincline plays with his food, and then stabs the soldier with his own sword. Real Sincline is pleased.
Training on Altea. Same sequence. Suzuishi hits the ballons instead of the targets and bounces in his lion. Then the gauges go crazy. In the castle, Raible orders technicians to switch to reserve circuits. The techs wear uniforms similar to the guards', but gray and without helmets.
The team can't use the lions because the beastman's electromagnetic attack affects electronics--Golion's energy would be unaffected, but the controls are just applied electronics. To me, that's a pretty cool bit of hand-waving to explain how elementally-powered lions are susceptible to an EMP.
Kogane's going to use a scooter. It's a scoooooter. It's simple enough to be unaffected by the EMP.
Sincline's observation ship is a pretty cool design. It actually looks like something out of the Idion, like a Buff Clan ship or something.
Kogane's watch is destroyed by the EMP. That's kinda cool. And Sincline-clone is specifically watching for Kogane. When Sincline drops his blood wine, he's excited to finally see the showdown between Kogane and his, um, other self. The fight itself is pretty extensive. I'm not going to do a blow-by-blow account. Oh, Honerva is videotaping the fight. Kogane is suspicious because Sincline-clones movements are unnaturally fast. That corresponds to the moment when Keith says "Lotor's not this good a fighter."
The effect on Sinclines' voice(s) when he's telepathying the clone is a chorus or a flanger turned up all the way, so it warbles. And the clone's dialogue is a lot more apparent. That's when Logane figure's out that "this guy" is Sincline's double.
I guess WEP didn't feel they had to edit out the clone's entire death scene, but they did shorten the amount of writhing in blue flames.
Our combination music today is the black lion theme. It's been a while since we've heard Formation V, hasn't it? Oh, hey, an instrumental version of it plays as they smash the radiomecha with the 100-ton punch.
awesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesome
awesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesome
awesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesome
Yeah, this was one of the most memorable episodes for me.
Lotor's Clone
On Planet Doom, Zarkon is berating Lotor for his defeats. He demands that he rely not on robots, but that he should fight Voltron himself. Lotor claims Haggar is working on a new scheme that will be sure to work--but Zarkon says he wasn't listening--Lotor should lead! "Do you mean, from the front?" Of course he does.
Outside Haggar's laboratory, two robots are discussing Lotor's failures. They are surprised when Lotor appears. He asks them what they're discussing, but they play him off. They think.
Haggar presents Lotor with her new plan--a clone of himself. One that will look identical, but be faster and stronger. It will appear that he is leading from the front, but he will be completely safe. She does some stuff that causes the new clone agony. The it passes out, and awakens, startling Lotor. Haggar explains that the clone is Lotor's worst side. He wants to test the close out immediately.
The two robots Lotor walked in on as they were mocking him are summoned to the arena at night. The clone, um, deactivates them. The first one he defeats with his bare hands. The other . . . um, with editing. Lotor and Haggar are watching this. Lotor is pleased.
On Arus, the team is training. Pidge runs up a cliff, does a backflip, and fires at targets suspended from balloons. He takes out the balloons rather than the targets. Keith sternly reprimands him while the rest of the team laughs. Suddenly, the controls of all five lions go crazy. It clears up, but the team decides to return to the castle.
At the castle, Coran orders technicians to the backup generators. The team returns just as power goes out. Keith at first asks if Coran was testing something, but then all castle operations are disrupted. Coran is concerned that the lions were affected. The castle control screen opens up to show a new robeast, one with an enery-disrupting force field. The team can't use the lions because there's no telling how they'll respond to the disruption. Keith decides to go sabotage the robeast, using an underwater sled to intercept it at the lake. The rest of the team will repair additional sleds and try to meet up with him.
As the robeast marches on the castle, Lotor watches and gloats in an observation ship. His clone is riding atop the robeast.
Lance and Allura work on repairing the other sled while Keith makes his covert run. Outside, the robeast begins firing charges directly at the castle from its arms. The team rushes to repair the sleds. Keith reaches the feet of the robeast and plants spring-loaded mines on its legs. The Lotor clone sees bubbles around the feet. Keith abandons the sled and swims to shore. The clone throws his axe spear but misses.
The team decides to concentrate their energies on one sled. The clone, meanwhile, approaches the spear stuck in the river. Keith jumps out of the water with a speargun, firing his only spear. He grabs the spear as the clone draws its sword. Keith is surprised to see "Lotor" leading from the front. In the observation lounge, Lotor drops his wine as he watches the fight. The two struggle, until the mines go off and blow the robeast over. Its disruption field ceases and Coran has power in castle control. He sees Lotor's observation ship and decides to launch the lions as he watches Lance approach the fight on the other sled.
Lotor is upset that the fight is taking too long. Haggar explains to him that he can perform a "mind merge" and communicate with the clone. The clone, with all of Lotor's ambition, doesn't like taking orders from him. Keith watches the clone talk to himself and figures out what he is. Lotor orders a soldier to reactivate the robeast. The robeast tries to smush Keith, but almost his the clone. The clone swipes at it with its sword. In response, the robeast vaporizes him. Keith looks on, and then evades the robeast. An explosion knocks him off of his feet.
Coran, watching this, deploys the rest of the team. Just as the robeast approaches to finish Keith off, two spears hit in in the underarm vents. Lance has arrived. He collects Keith and takes him back to the castle. The other three lions buzz Lotor's ship, and then bombard the robeast. They knock it off its feet with a barrage of missiles, and then black and red lions reappear. Now it's time to form the big guy.
Keith immediately launches the lion head attack, punching four holes in the poor robeast. They form the blazing sword and it's a done deal.
After Lotor leaves, the team is back in the rec room, talking about clones while using footage from the Love Bridge episode. Keith suggests they clone Cheddar.
Mortal Combat of Light and Shadow
On Galra, Daibazaal is displeased with Sincline's bravado. Apparently the people are calling him all talk. Sincline tells him Radiomecha Beastman Deadzone will be ready. Daibazaal says he should go ahead of the beastman and fight Golion himself.
We now get to see the people actually talking as two soldiers discuss Sincline's failures. They think they get a reprieve . . .
Jaga is warming himself in front of Honerva's fire. Sincline begs her to clone him. Honerva is pleased that he has this much need for her services. Sincline is suprised by the clone's formation. He's also a little panicked when she seems to be torturing it. But it's all necessary. The clone's awakening is actually kinda freaky. Sincline's reaction is warranted. However, the clone is twice as strong as a normal person and has a faster nervous system.
In the test, the two gossip soldiers are wondering who summoned them. The clone basically takes them apart with his bare hands. We see exposed bone as clone-Sincline plays with his food, and then stabs the soldier with his own sword. Real Sincline is pleased.
Training on Altea. Same sequence. Suzuishi hits the ballons instead of the targets and bounces in his lion. Then the gauges go crazy. In the castle, Raible orders technicians to switch to reserve circuits. The techs wear uniforms similar to the guards', but gray and without helmets.
The team can't use the lions because the beastman's electromagnetic attack affects electronics--Golion's energy would be unaffected, but the controls are just applied electronics. To me, that's a pretty cool bit of hand-waving to explain how elementally-powered lions are susceptible to an EMP.
Kogane's going to use a scooter. It's a scoooooter. It's simple enough to be unaffected by the EMP.
Sincline's observation ship is a pretty cool design. It actually looks like something out of the Idion, like a Buff Clan ship or something.
Kogane's watch is destroyed by the EMP. That's kinda cool. And Sincline-clone is specifically watching for Kogane. When Sincline drops his blood wine, he's excited to finally see the showdown between Kogane and his, um, other self. The fight itself is pretty extensive. I'm not going to do a blow-by-blow account. Oh, Honerva is videotaping the fight. Kogane is suspicious because Sincline-clones movements are unnaturally fast. That corresponds to the moment when Keith says "Lotor's not this good a fighter."
The effect on Sinclines' voice(s) when he's telepathying the clone is a chorus or a flanger turned up all the way, so it warbles. And the clone's dialogue is a lot more apparent. That's when Logane figure's out that "this guy" is Sincline's double.
I guess WEP didn't feel they had to edit out the clone's entire death scene, but they did shorten the amount of writhing in blue flames.
Our combination music today is the black lion theme. It's been a while since we've heard Formation V, hasn't it? Oh, hey, an instrumental version of it plays as they smash the radiomecha with the 100-ton punch.
Monday, July 25, 2011
Doom Boycotts the Space Olympics/Protect the Soccer Field
The title of this episode always makes me laugh. 'Cuz, y'know, it's all futuristic and in outer space and the villains are pointy-eared purple guys who use giant monsters as weapons. And they have to fit the scripts to match someone else's animation and story planning. So the opportunities for lampooning current events are limited. G.I. Joe mocked the Soviet Union, Africa, and South America, Transformers mocked Qadaffi and the Soviet Union, all of the Sunbow series including Jem and Inhumanoids mocked Geraldo Rivera. I'm pretty certain that WEP was playing with the Soviet boycott of the 1984 Summer Olympics in LA when they called this one "Doom Boycotts the Space Olympics."
Doom Boycotts the Space Olympics
As Arus continues to recover under Voltron's protection, the planet has been honored by being selected to host the space Olympics. The Voltron force and a bunch of Arusian children are tasked with building the stadium. They have a massive . . . um, construction machine piloted by Hunk and the kids. The kids ask Hunk why Doom is boycotting. Because they're communists, Tommy. The kids daydream about playing soccer.
While the team is in the bunkhouse taking showers, Allura and Nanny walk in on them. Later, they all sit down to eat. A kid who looks a lot like Tommy from the earthquake episode is actually named Denny here. And Nanny spits while she talks.
On Doom, Lotor and Haggar are looking at a stolen diagram of Voltron. Lotor is thinking that they could implant a computer brain in Voltron and take him over. Haggar explains that Voltron's solar energy would melt the computer. Instead, Haggar proposes implanting a computer brain in the giant construction vehicle. He launches in his flagship and approaches Arus.
The kids and the team are sleeping in the bunkhouse. Hunk smacks Denny in the face, who gets up and sees a bright light in the sky. This is Lotor's flagship as it launches the neural guidance capsule into the construction machine. Denny runs into the bunkhouse calling for the team as the robeast spreads a neural net through the machine.
The team looks at the machine. Keith tells him that he was half asleep. There's nothing like the understanding of your peers and mentors.
Lotor orders the robeast brain (this is one of those purple and green multi-eyed robeasts the Medusan petrified) to take control.
As the engine starts up, the team runs back out, just in time to see the machine crush the bunkhouse. Pidge jump onto the bulldozer bucket and climbs up to the control cab, where he sees no one driving it. Then the bucket dumps him to the ground. The machine rolls on, smashing through the stadium and the gymnasium, then stops. Keith surmises it's the work of Lotor. Pidge again volunteers to do the dirty work. He jumps into the cab and tries to shut it down. Lotor gloats and orders the robeast to keep smashing stuff. Pidge tries to stop it, but it . . . um, gradually rolls to a stop.
Allura and Coran have been watching this in castle control. They also surmise that it's Lotor.
The next morning, the children are sitting in the cab while Pidge and Hunk are examining the engine. Denny is upset no one listened to him. Then the machine starts up again and Pidge and Hunk fall out. The kids are trapped, buckled into their seats. The team runs from the marauding machine. Coran and Allura see this happening, and the princess launches in blue lion. The machine dumps dirt on top of the team.
The arriving blue lion surveys the situation, then Lotor appears on her communications screen, taunting her with the image of the trapped children. The flagship approaches blue lion as Lotor tries to convince her to join him. She refuses, and the flagship opens fire. Allura dodges and washes the dirt away to rescue the team and free the kids from their seats. Allura picks up the team in blue lion's paw.
The cab glass was shattered by blue lion's water attack, but Lotor orders the robeast to close the glass again before the children can escape. Meanwhile, the team launches in their lions.
The robeast operated machine spins around in circles with the kids aboard. The team arrives and discusses strategy. Keith scans it, and finds the robeast brain. Hunk peels off to rescue the kids. The team fires some animation-errored shoulder missiles while Hunk jumps onto the machine on foot. The lions land on the machine and bite it as a distraction. The lions block the machine from driving, and Hunk shatters the glass. As he carries them to safety and prepares to jump it overpowers the lions. They regroup and block it again, giving Hunk and the kids the chance to jump clear.
Lotor commands the robeast to fuse fully with the machine and turn it into a freaky looking front-end loaded monster. The team forms Voltron in response.
The robeast uses the pile-drivers as missiles. Voltron dodges, then lands and wrestles hand-to-bucket with the 'beast, and then throws it. In a move that's a total Soul Calibur combo, Voltron forms the blazing sword and finishes off their own earth-mover.
Optimus Prime explains that the lions are now tasked with building in the absence of their corrupted and destructed earth mover. The day before the Olympics, the children plays soccer with the team.
Are these kids supposed to be the same three from the haunted castle episode? Also, watching the series this way, I'm really beginning to believe that Suzuishi/Pidge is a lot more of a central character than I ever noticed before.
Protect the Soccer Field
This time, the soccer field is simply being built as a charity project for the children of Altea. Seidou describes the machine a combination bulldozer, piledriver, and dumptruck. He bonds with the children.
Woah, we aaalmost get a Kurogane buffalo shot. Ah, the Japanese and their total lack of fear of nudity. Haha--in the dinner scene, Fala offers to stay the night with the children. Hys puts an end to this, and Kogane explains that they need someone to stay on watch.
The dialogue between Sincline and Honerva is pretty much the same here as in Voltron, but there are enough visual cues that WEP didn't necessarily have a translated script.
The beastbrain beastman is in a capsule similar to, but modified from the ones the previous mecha beastmen were launched in. And when he sees the beastman landing, the kids has got out to pee. God, americans are such puritan pukes. It's no more than what god gave us!! (Name that reference).
The computer bits of the machine look an awful like contemporary circuit boards.
Sincline is incensed when he sees the Golion team standing outside and watching the machine. He's upset that any Altean device to stand up to blackdeath beastman power. Then the machine starts up. Kogane guesses it's Galra even earlier than Voltron--the moment the bunkhouse is trashed. When Suzuishi jumps in the cab and pulls on the brakes, Sincline orders the beastman to be clever and lull them off their guard--that's when it stops.
That is an awesome shot when Sincline's ship approaches blue lion as she hovers in the air.
Kogane uses an x-ray and ultrasonic internal scan to find the mecha beastman. Then Seidou peels off without orders, but the team covers admirably. I'm pretty sure the blue and black lions' attacks are some kind of animation error--there aren't the usual missile launchers, they just launch directly from the lion's torso blocks (rather than the white jointed parts of the shoulders, where the launchers usually form).
Seidou manages to jump from a serious height with all three of the kinds climbing on him.
The machine becomes a full beastman once the brainbeast has full control of him. And he's got a big pi symbol on his chest. Most of the mecha beastman have the greek letters for which they are named emblazoned on them somewhere.
Since Seidou just saved the kids, he gets honored when the team gattais to the yellow lion theme.
As per their usual tactics, Kogane moves the fight away from the soccer field. This might be something of a . . . trope?!
One of the animators must love cats. The way the lions are animated as they reconstruct the stadium, especially green lion, really looks like real cat behavior.
Apparently soccer was really popular among Altean kids.
Doom Boycotts the Space Olympics
As Arus continues to recover under Voltron's protection, the planet has been honored by being selected to host the space Olympics. The Voltron force and a bunch of Arusian children are tasked with building the stadium. They have a massive . . . um, construction machine piloted by Hunk and the kids. The kids ask Hunk why Doom is boycotting. Because they're communists, Tommy. The kids daydream about playing soccer.
While the team is in the bunkhouse taking showers, Allura and Nanny walk in on them. Later, they all sit down to eat. A kid who looks a lot like Tommy from the earthquake episode is actually named Denny here. And Nanny spits while she talks.
On Doom, Lotor and Haggar are looking at a stolen diagram of Voltron. Lotor is thinking that they could implant a computer brain in Voltron and take him over. Haggar explains that Voltron's solar energy would melt the computer. Instead, Haggar proposes implanting a computer brain in the giant construction vehicle. He launches in his flagship and approaches Arus.
The kids and the team are sleeping in the bunkhouse. Hunk smacks Denny in the face, who gets up and sees a bright light in the sky. This is Lotor's flagship as it launches the neural guidance capsule into the construction machine. Denny runs into the bunkhouse calling for the team as the robeast spreads a neural net through the machine.
The team looks at the machine. Keith tells him that he was half asleep. There's nothing like the understanding of your peers and mentors.
Lotor orders the robeast brain (this is one of those purple and green multi-eyed robeasts the Medusan petrified) to take control.
As the engine starts up, the team runs back out, just in time to see the machine crush the bunkhouse. Pidge jump onto the bulldozer bucket and climbs up to the control cab, where he sees no one driving it. Then the bucket dumps him to the ground. The machine rolls on, smashing through the stadium and the gymnasium, then stops. Keith surmises it's the work of Lotor. Pidge again volunteers to do the dirty work. He jumps into the cab and tries to shut it down. Lotor gloats and orders the robeast to keep smashing stuff. Pidge tries to stop it, but it . . . um, gradually rolls to a stop.
Allura and Coran have been watching this in castle control. They also surmise that it's Lotor.
The next morning, the children are sitting in the cab while Pidge and Hunk are examining the engine. Denny is upset no one listened to him. Then the machine starts up again and Pidge and Hunk fall out. The kids are trapped, buckled into their seats. The team runs from the marauding machine. Coran and Allura see this happening, and the princess launches in blue lion. The machine dumps dirt on top of the team.
The arriving blue lion surveys the situation, then Lotor appears on her communications screen, taunting her with the image of the trapped children. The flagship approaches blue lion as Lotor tries to convince her to join him. She refuses, and the flagship opens fire. Allura dodges and washes the dirt away to rescue the team and free the kids from their seats. Allura picks up the team in blue lion's paw.
The cab glass was shattered by blue lion's water attack, but Lotor orders the robeast to close the glass again before the children can escape. Meanwhile, the team launches in their lions.
The robeast operated machine spins around in circles with the kids aboard. The team arrives and discusses strategy. Keith scans it, and finds the robeast brain. Hunk peels off to rescue the kids. The team fires some animation-errored shoulder missiles while Hunk jumps onto the machine on foot. The lions land on the machine and bite it as a distraction. The lions block the machine from driving, and Hunk shatters the glass. As he carries them to safety and prepares to jump it overpowers the lions. They regroup and block it again, giving Hunk and the kids the chance to jump clear.
Lotor commands the robeast to fuse fully with the machine and turn it into a freaky looking front-end loaded monster. The team forms Voltron in response.
The robeast uses the pile-drivers as missiles. Voltron dodges, then lands and wrestles hand-to-bucket with the 'beast, and then throws it. In a move that's a total Soul Calibur combo, Voltron forms the blazing sword and finishes off their own earth-mover.
Optimus Prime explains that the lions are now tasked with building in the absence of their corrupted and destructed earth mover. The day before the Olympics, the children plays soccer with the team.
Are these kids supposed to be the same three from the haunted castle episode? Also, watching the series this way, I'm really beginning to believe that Suzuishi/Pidge is a lot more of a central character than I ever noticed before.
Protect the Soccer Field
This time, the soccer field is simply being built as a charity project for the children of Altea. Seidou describes the machine a combination bulldozer, piledriver, and dumptruck. He bonds with the children.
Woah, we aaalmost get a Kurogane buffalo shot. Ah, the Japanese and their total lack of fear of nudity. Haha--in the dinner scene, Fala offers to stay the night with the children. Hys puts an end to this, and Kogane explains that they need someone to stay on watch.
The dialogue between Sincline and Honerva is pretty much the same here as in Voltron, but there are enough visual cues that WEP didn't necessarily have a translated script.
The beastbrain beastman is in a capsule similar to, but modified from the ones the previous mecha beastmen were launched in. And when he sees the beastman landing, the kids has got out to pee. God, americans are such puritan pukes. It's no more than what god gave us!! (Name that reference).
The computer bits of the machine look an awful like contemporary circuit boards.
Sincline is incensed when he sees the Golion team standing outside and watching the machine. He's upset that any Altean device to stand up to blackdeath beastman power. Then the machine starts up. Kogane guesses it's Galra even earlier than Voltron--the moment the bunkhouse is trashed. When Suzuishi jumps in the cab and pulls on the brakes, Sincline orders the beastman to be clever and lull them off their guard--that's when it stops.
That is an awesome shot when Sincline's ship approaches blue lion as she hovers in the air.
Kogane uses an x-ray and ultrasonic internal scan to find the mecha beastman. Then Seidou peels off without orders, but the team covers admirably. I'm pretty sure the blue and black lions' attacks are some kind of animation error--there aren't the usual missile launchers, they just launch directly from the lion's torso blocks (rather than the white jointed parts of the shoulders, where the launchers usually form).
Seidou manages to jump from a serious height with all three of the kinds climbing on him.
The machine becomes a full beastman once the brainbeast has full control of him. And he's got a big pi symbol on his chest. Most of the mecha beastman have the greek letters for which they are named emblazoned on them somewhere.
Since Seidou just saved the kids, he gets honored when the team gattais to the yellow lion theme.
As per their usual tactics, Kogane moves the fight away from the soccer field. This might be something of a . . . trope?!
One of the animators must love cats. The way the lions are animated as they reconstruct the stadium, especially green lion, really looks like real cat behavior.
Apparently soccer was really popular among Altean kids.
Friday, July 22, 2011
Lotor Traps Pidge/Underground Operation
I love this episode. It's got the crazy subterrainean robeast, the plot to destroy Arus with earthquakes, and all of this is pretty much revealed through Pidge's POV as he figures out what's going on, rather than the usual third person omniscient approach.
Lotor Traps Pidge
Lightning, wind, and storms are buffetting Arus. Coran explains to us that people's houses are being blown apart. Keith and Allura view the scenes of destruction with Coran in castle control. Allura and Keith decide to mount rescue and anti-looting operations.
Zarkon is not impressed with Lotor's plan of using storms. But Lotor says he also has a megabomb. Zarkon brightens at the mention of a megabomb.
The team leads townspeople to safety. Pidge finds a boy surrounded by dead rabbits. Pidge accuses him of looting and eating pets. This devolves into a fist fight. Pidge, despite all of his space explorer training, is distracted when he's hit in the head with a dead rabbit. He chases the boy into the woods until a trap snaps shut on his foot.
The boy returns as Pidge struggles with the trap. He releases him with a stick. His name's Tommy. Seems to be a common name on Arus. They see a wild boar caught in a trap. Then they see some Doom soldiers who pick up the boar and lug it off somewhere. Pidge goes to warn the team, but can't walk on his trapped foot.
At Tommy's house, Pidge calls castle control, but before he can explain who they saw, an earrrthquake! destroys Pidge's communicator. Tommy is apparently caring for his injured mother. Tommy leads Pidge outside to look at crevasses that have opened in their fields.
Underground, Lotor is driving a giant drill machine to a staging area where he will plant the megabomb. He explains this to Zarkon and Haggar when they call him, and claims he has no intention of capturing the princess. As soon as they hang up, he looks at his plans to capture the princess. No, really. He's got them written down on a map.
Pidge and Tommy can hear the drilling below ground. Meanwhile, Lotor fantasizes about destroying each one of the lions and the castle itself. He even blows up a room with an orange chair. And then he fantasizes riding in a carriage with Allura and, um, standing in front of a lot of Doomites with Allura while he's dressed in Zarkons king cloths. Then he returns the reality and starts drooling over the megabomb. He calls a Red Army soldier a moron.
Back in castle control, the team is concerned that they cannot find Pidge. Keith comes up with the innovative idea to search for him in the lions.
Pidge and Toomy are climbing down the crevasse on a rope. When they run out of rope, they just skid down the slope to find a tunnel full of Doom robots. Lotor puts on his helmet and declares it's time for the attack. He has a platoon of skull tanks take off through the tunnels. Pidge and Tommy watch them head for the castle. They run after them until Pidge can no longer run on his injured foot. Then Tommy helps him walk. Aw, they're bonding. They struggle through the tunnel until Pidge gets all I'm done for" 3PO style. Then Lotor finds them and calls them cave mice. Tommy calls Lotor a pointy-eared thug. Lotor gives Tommy a 10-count head start. He gets to two, and then gets bored at starts shooting at Tommy. He shoots him in the leg.
The team has assembled their lions outside Tommy's house. Tommy' s mom explains to them that they went underground. Hunk says some stuff. The lady cries. Then they see a light from the bottom of the crevasse, and footprints leading to the rope. Lance takes red lion makes his own tunnel.
Lotor has Pidge and Tommy tied to the megabomb. He gloats, then starts the timer. He leaves the two of them struggling, and then his lieutenant drives him to the invasion staging area where tanks and the drill machine are ready to drill to the surface. Lance detects the megabomb. He enters the bomb chamber and cuts Pidge and Tommy free. Lance stops the bomb timer. Kieth radios that Lotor's started his attack on the castle.
The skull tanks are doing a pretty good job against the castle defenses. Allura and Coran are in castle control as the castle starts to come down around them. On the main screen, they see Lotor order his infantry towards the castle. The three lions end the charge, then red lion drops of Pidge and Tommy. Pidge and Allura launch in their own lions.
Oh. The skull tanks don't do so well against the lions. Lotor calls his drill-thing the Spirocharger. Then he turns it into a robeast. The team forms Voltron.
The Spirocharger has a missile launcher in its torso. Voltron doges the missiles, then destroys the launcher with proton missile of his own. The spirocharger turns on its drills and flies at Voltron. Volts knocks him down with the spinning laser blade. It gets back up, so they form blazing sword and destroy it.
Lotor gloats that the megabomb is still ready to blow up. The castle looks a little worse for wear, but Coran shows Tommy that Voltron is throwing the megabomb out into deep space, where it may one day become a new sun.
Underground Operation
As they watch the storm in castle control, Fala, Kogane and Raible discuss the likelihood that Galra will stage an attack during the confusion. There's no sequence on Galra explaining that it's all an evel plan, as there is in Voltron.
Suzuishi is upset that the other boy is trapping and selling dead rabbits. This starts their fistfight and the chase. Then he steps in a trap. The other boy returns with a stick and releases him. He says he's not the one who set the trap. The boy's name is Mario. Then they see more than one dead trapped boar. It's what the Galra troops are eating while they're working on this operation.
I never noticed this before, but there are an awful lot of Suzuishi/Pidge-centric episodes. I think he features in more episodes than everyone else.
Mario and his mother explain that Mario traps the rabbits that damage their fields, and then sells them for medication for his mother's illness. The fissures caused by the earthquakes have destroyed their fields.
Sincline's first appearence in this episode is when he gets out of the drill machine and Daibazaal calls him to make fun of him for digging holes in the ground. Sincline shows him the bomb, and tells him he will set us up the bomb under Gradam. We also get the same basic dialogue that he doesn't care about the princess, and then instantly looks at his plan to capture the princess.
Sincline's fantasy about the destruction of Golion and Castle Gradam is over the top indulgent and graphic, with each member of the team writhing in flames as they die. And then the crazy marriage carriage with Fala and the wedding march playing in the background. Dude is nuts.
The Galra preparations are pretty extensive, suggesting they've been tunneling for a while. The chamber for the bomb is actually not just bare cave, but has the standard Galra "gray with blinky lights" architecture.
Also. The Black Army troops seem to for the infantry in this episode, while the blue-skinned Red Army soldiers are in tanks and the other vehicles. This is a continuation of the shift in Galra policy--now they're trying to undermine (literally, here) the integrity of Altean infrastructure. Going toe-to-toe with Golion doesn't work, trying to separate the lions and take them out one by one doesn't work, and finding weaknesses in Golion to exploit doesn't work. Now we'll just take out Castle Gradam and their entire support structure.
It's funny that both here and in Voltron the team is so hard pressed to reassure Tommy/Mario's mom. And that Hunk/Seidou has the biggest mouth.
I also like how red and yellow lions seem to be alternating diggin' duties. On earth it was red, when they needed to dig a well it was yellow, here it's red again.
See? That's a huge chamber they've built underground, on enemy territory. And that's a nifty vehicle Sincline's lieutenant drives him around in.
Kurogane uses metallic sensors to detect the giant bomb.
The Spirocharger is Mecha Beastman Delta here. They form Golrion to the black lion theme. Less fitting. I guess we don't here this one all that often.
This beastman really is no match for Golion. Its missile launcher gets taken out right away, and the space cutter puts an end to its flying days, like, right away. Then it just stands up and gets cleaved. So I guess it's probably good that this wasn't the primary part of the plan. Sincline escapes in the batplane. Where did he have that stashed?
Golion's eye flash weapon is good for bomb disposal, too.
Lotor Traps Pidge
Lightning, wind, and storms are buffetting Arus. Coran explains to us that people's houses are being blown apart. Keith and Allura view the scenes of destruction with Coran in castle control. Allura and Keith decide to mount rescue and anti-looting operations.
Zarkon is not impressed with Lotor's plan of using storms. But Lotor says he also has a megabomb. Zarkon brightens at the mention of a megabomb.
The team leads townspeople to safety. Pidge finds a boy surrounded by dead rabbits. Pidge accuses him of looting and eating pets. This devolves into a fist fight. Pidge, despite all of his space explorer training, is distracted when he's hit in the head with a dead rabbit. He chases the boy into the woods until a trap snaps shut on his foot.
The boy returns as Pidge struggles with the trap. He releases him with a stick. His name's Tommy. Seems to be a common name on Arus. They see a wild boar caught in a trap. Then they see some Doom soldiers who pick up the boar and lug it off somewhere. Pidge goes to warn the team, but can't walk on his trapped foot.
At Tommy's house, Pidge calls castle control, but before he can explain who they saw, an earrrthquake! destroys Pidge's communicator. Tommy is apparently caring for his injured mother. Tommy leads Pidge outside to look at crevasses that have opened in their fields.
Underground, Lotor is driving a giant drill machine to a staging area where he will plant the megabomb. He explains this to Zarkon and Haggar when they call him, and claims he has no intention of capturing the princess. As soon as they hang up, he looks at his plans to capture the princess. No, really. He's got them written down on a map.
Pidge and Tommy can hear the drilling below ground. Meanwhile, Lotor fantasizes about destroying each one of the lions and the castle itself. He even blows up a room with an orange chair. And then he fantasizes riding in a carriage with Allura and, um, standing in front of a lot of Doomites with Allura while he's dressed in Zarkons king cloths. Then he returns the reality and starts drooling over the megabomb. He calls a Red Army soldier a moron.
Back in castle control, the team is concerned that they cannot find Pidge. Keith comes up with the innovative idea to search for him in the lions.
Pidge and Toomy are climbing down the crevasse on a rope. When they run out of rope, they just skid down the slope to find a tunnel full of Doom robots. Lotor puts on his helmet and declares it's time for the attack. He has a platoon of skull tanks take off through the tunnels. Pidge and Tommy watch them head for the castle. They run after them until Pidge can no longer run on his injured foot. Then Tommy helps him walk. Aw, they're bonding. They struggle through the tunnel until Pidge gets all I'm done for" 3PO style. Then Lotor finds them and calls them cave mice. Tommy calls Lotor a pointy-eared thug. Lotor gives Tommy a 10-count head start. He gets to two, and then gets bored at starts shooting at Tommy. He shoots him in the leg.
The team has assembled their lions outside Tommy's house. Tommy' s mom explains to them that they went underground. Hunk says some stuff. The lady cries. Then they see a light from the bottom of the crevasse, and footprints leading to the rope. Lance takes red lion makes his own tunnel.
Lotor has Pidge and Tommy tied to the megabomb. He gloats, then starts the timer. He leaves the two of them struggling, and then his lieutenant drives him to the invasion staging area where tanks and the drill machine are ready to drill to the surface. Lance detects the megabomb. He enters the bomb chamber and cuts Pidge and Tommy free. Lance stops the bomb timer. Kieth radios that Lotor's started his attack on the castle.
The skull tanks are doing a pretty good job against the castle defenses. Allura and Coran are in castle control as the castle starts to come down around them. On the main screen, they see Lotor order his infantry towards the castle. The three lions end the charge, then red lion drops of Pidge and Tommy. Pidge and Allura launch in their own lions.
Oh. The skull tanks don't do so well against the lions. Lotor calls his drill-thing the Spirocharger. Then he turns it into a robeast. The team forms Voltron.
The Spirocharger has a missile launcher in its torso. Voltron doges the missiles, then destroys the launcher with proton missile of his own. The spirocharger turns on its drills and flies at Voltron. Volts knocks him down with the spinning laser blade. It gets back up, so they form blazing sword and destroy it.
Lotor gloats that the megabomb is still ready to blow up. The castle looks a little worse for wear, but Coran shows Tommy that Voltron is throwing the megabomb out into deep space, where it may one day become a new sun.
Underground Operation
As they watch the storm in castle control, Fala, Kogane and Raible discuss the likelihood that Galra will stage an attack during the confusion. There's no sequence on Galra explaining that it's all an evel plan, as there is in Voltron.
Suzuishi is upset that the other boy is trapping and selling dead rabbits. This starts their fistfight and the chase. Then he steps in a trap. The other boy returns with a stick and releases him. He says he's not the one who set the trap. The boy's name is Mario. Then they see more than one dead trapped boar. It's what the Galra troops are eating while they're working on this operation.
I never noticed this before, but there are an awful lot of Suzuishi/Pidge-centric episodes. I think he features in more episodes than everyone else.
Mario and his mother explain that Mario traps the rabbits that damage their fields, and then sells them for medication for his mother's illness. The fissures caused by the earthquakes have destroyed their fields.
Sincline's first appearence in this episode is when he gets out of the drill machine and Daibazaal calls him to make fun of him for digging holes in the ground. Sincline shows him the bomb, and tells him he will set us up the bomb under Gradam. We also get the same basic dialogue that he doesn't care about the princess, and then instantly looks at his plan to capture the princess.
Sincline's fantasy about the destruction of Golion and Castle Gradam is over the top indulgent and graphic, with each member of the team writhing in flames as they die. And then the crazy marriage carriage with Fala and the wedding march playing in the background. Dude is nuts.
The Galra preparations are pretty extensive, suggesting they've been tunneling for a while. The chamber for the bomb is actually not just bare cave, but has the standard Galra "gray with blinky lights" architecture.
Also. The Black Army troops seem to for the infantry in this episode, while the blue-skinned Red Army soldiers are in tanks and the other vehicles. This is a continuation of the shift in Galra policy--now they're trying to undermine (literally, here) the integrity of Altean infrastructure. Going toe-to-toe with Golion doesn't work, trying to separate the lions and take them out one by one doesn't work, and finding weaknesses in Golion to exploit doesn't work. Now we'll just take out Castle Gradam and their entire support structure.
It's funny that both here and in Voltron the team is so hard pressed to reassure Tommy/Mario's mom. And that Hunk/Seidou has the biggest mouth.
I also like how red and yellow lions seem to be alternating diggin' duties. On earth it was red, when they needed to dig a well it was yellow, here it's red again.
See? That's a huge chamber they've built underground, on enemy territory. And that's a nifty vehicle Sincline's lieutenant drives him around in.
Kurogane uses metallic sensors to detect the giant bomb.
The Spirocharger is Mecha Beastman Delta here. They form Golrion to the black lion theme. Less fitting. I guess we don't here this one all that often.
This beastman really is no match for Golion. Its missile launcher gets taken out right away, and the space cutter puts an end to its flying days, like, right away. Then it just stands up and gets cleaved. So I guess it's probably good that this wasn't the primary part of the plan. Sincline escapes in the batplane. Where did he have that stashed?
Golion's eye flash weapon is good for bomb disposal, too.
Attack of the Fierce Frogs/Terror of the Space Frogs
You might guess because the premise of this episode--evil frogs attack!--I feel the same as I do about the demon mice episode. Nope. I like this one. I think it's because, well, creepy three-eyed frogs that can melt through walls are a lot creepier than big purple mice with laser-beam eyes.
Attack of the Fierce Frogs.
Zarkon's sitting on his throne, sipping . . . juice. Then he throws the goblet at Lotor, and tells him that if he wants to succeed against Voltron, he must find a weakness in his armor rather than matching strength for strength.
At the Occult Science Plant, Haggar shows Lotor a new mecha robeast--a deep sea robeast. In addition, she shows him some evil tadpole robeasts. Lotor takes both in his flagship and lands in the Arusian sea, releasing the tadpoles.
Pidge is on patrol in green lion. He flies out over the coast, makes his report, and sees to kids flagging him down. He lands and meets the kids, who show him tadpoles in a pool. Pidge suggest they take some home and watch them turn into frogs. He even scoops up tadpoles in his helmets and gives them a ride in green lion.
Maybe this is why I like this episode. The idea of just hanging out and hitching a ride home with a Voltron lion appealed to me, y'know, when I was 8.
The kids get home just as their father, captain of the Coast Guard ship Altea (see what they did there?) is leaving. Pidge takes a sample of the tadpoles back to the castle. Lotor does some ominous voiceover gloating.
Overnight, the tadpoles glow red, then turn into three-eyed demon frogs. At least they look better than the demon mice. The good ship Altea encounters a swarm of the frogs who melt their way into the ship and attack the crew. They manage to get an SOS off to castle control. " Altea" appears on the castle screen, I bet WEP chose "Altea" as the ships name for that reason. Pidge listens to the report on an attack by frogs, and rushes to the rec room. The bucket of tadpoles is empty. The monster frogs lunge at Pidge from holes they've melted in the wall. The team shoots the frogs with their sidearms. Pidge surmises that the kids might be in trouble. The team launches--Pidge to rescue the kids, the rest to save the Altea.
The frogs have the children and their mother cornered. They back out of the bedroom as the frogs make scary noises at them and set the beds on fire. More frogs burn a whole in from the roof, but they see green lion through the hole. Pidge rushes in and shoots most of the frogs. A couple of them jump on the mother (well, she is kinda hot, in an 80s anime way). OUtside of the house, they're surrounded by the frogs.
One of the kids knocks over a barrel of gasoline. Pidge kicks over the barrel, dowsing the frogs. Then he sets them alight. With the kids (and their hot mom) now safe, Pidge takes off to rendezvous with the rest of the team).
The Altea is headed for sharp rocks ahead. The captain is struggling to reach the helm, but the wheel breaks off and more frogs jump on him. The lions approach just as the ship is about to run aground. Black and yellow lions destroy the rocks, then blue lion washes the deck clear of the frogs. Red lion destroys them when they're in the water. The ship is saved, and Lance is contemptuous of this plan.
Lotor watches these events, and then deploys the deep-sea beast from a hatch in his flagship. The robeast launches out of the ocean, flies through the air, and rams green lion. Green and yellow lion launch missiles at it. It reels back, but then grabs green lion and submerges. The rest of the team follows. Pidge frees himself by firing "ion darts" from the red launcher on green lion's back. Free, he joins the rest of the team in forming Voltron.
The robeast chases Voltron into deep water. Coran warns the team that Voltron is not at his best underwater. They exchange fire with the robeast, and then Pidge reports that there's a hole in the armor somewhere. Green lion's inner compartments are ruptured. Lotor orders the robeast to concentrate on green lion. It grabs Voltron's left arm, but Lance (with Hunk's voice) rips the arm off. The robeast continues firing at Voltron, forcing him deeper.
A leak has sprung in green lion's cockpit. Pidge equalizes the pressure (putting, um, a face mask on). With the pressure equalized, red lion (again with Hunk's voice) punctures the robeast and fills it with air. Voltron flies out of the ocean and forms the blazing sword. The robeast emerges from the water to meet him . . . and gets sworded for its troubles.
As the sun rises, Voltron flies over the Altea while the crew cheers. Deep below them, Lotor's flagship flees, and Lotor curses Haggar's schemes. Voltron lands in a scene from another episode to the crowd's adulation.
Terror of the Space Frogs
This episode is a continuation of Galra's new strategy to defeat Golion. Before, they tried to divide them up and prevent them from defeating Golion. Now, they're trying to exploit weaknesses; in this episode, they try to make him fight in a high-pressure, deep-sea environment.
Daibazaal throws the blood wine at Sincline because his failures make the blood wine taste bad. The beastman is Omega Subgar, able to withstand pressures of 20,000 tons. Honerva calls the Galra tadpoles another "goody." No, really, that's how it's translated. She urges Sincline to use the frogs to paralyze Altea's waters and draw out Golion. This operation is designated: Galra Frog!!
The kids call Suzuishi "green lion guy." Kawaii. The boy's name is Tommy, and the girl's Riehle. Well, it's a better name than "Frau Bow." And the dogs name is translated as "Poochy." Their father is a freighter captain.
Everyone marvels and the weird three-eyed tadpoles.
I think one reason why this episode is less annoying to me than the demon mouse one is, well, I can relate to discovering tadpoles and trying to raise them to be frogs. I'm pretty sure my sister managed to put a dent in the midwestern frog population in the mid-80s just by collecting so many in the summers.
Man, this is a total Disney episode. The damn frogs kill Poochy! I hate you, Disney! Always killing the dogs.
There's a lot more blood when the frogs attack the freighter crew. The SOS includes the information that they're being attack by three-eyed frogs.
As the frogs melt through the stairs, Seidou actually says "Check it out, they can dissolve stuff."
Kurogane recognizes the frogs as the same kind he saw while imprisoned on Galra.
Scale goes a little bit out of wack when green lion lands outside Tommy's house--the lion is too small relative to the house.
Rather than the fast-moving blue bolts that it usually fires, the Golion sidearms fire a weird, sustained green lightning bolt effect.
As the flames destroy the frogs, and they shrivel, we hear the space mice/Suzuishi theme in the backgroud. Total Disney: TAKE THAT, WILDLIFE!!!
So, what's this ship shipping? And to where? I know Altea is supposed to be revitalizing, so I kind of like these hints that, yes, this is not Star Trek and, no, the castle and the surrounding villages and towns are not the only inhabitated areas. Y'know, Star Trek, where the Vulcans are of the species Vulcan, who live on the planet Vulcan, speak the language Vulcan, and all live in the city of Vulcan?
When Omega subgar launches out of the sea, Kogane very clearly says "mechaburakku ju-jin," and it *sounds* like he says "mechaburak-kaiju-jin," further evidence for my idea that the deathblack beastman/mechblack beastman word in Japanese is a pun on Kaiju. Y'know, Kaiju? Like Gamera?
You probably wouldn't be surprised to know that they form Golion to the green lion theme, since it's sort of Green Lion Guy's episode.
Raible tells Kogane that Golion should be able to withstand 4000 meters and 400 atmospheres.
Golion fires underwater rockets from red lion's mouth, and a needle shower from his horns.
We get some more cool shots of the interior workings of Golion as green lion floods.
Kurogane suggests they use the four lion attack, but they can't because the flooding in green lion is interrupting the energy delivery system. Kurogane is then inspired to fill the beastman with air when Suzuishi stops the cockpit leak with high pressure air.
Attack of the Fierce Frogs.
Zarkon's sitting on his throne, sipping . . . juice. Then he throws the goblet at Lotor, and tells him that if he wants to succeed against Voltron, he must find a weakness in his armor rather than matching strength for strength.
At the Occult Science Plant, Haggar shows Lotor a new mecha robeast--a deep sea robeast. In addition, she shows him some evil tadpole robeasts. Lotor takes both in his flagship and lands in the Arusian sea, releasing the tadpoles.
Pidge is on patrol in green lion. He flies out over the coast, makes his report, and sees to kids flagging him down. He lands and meets the kids, who show him tadpoles in a pool. Pidge suggest they take some home and watch them turn into frogs. He even scoops up tadpoles in his helmets and gives them a ride in green lion.
Maybe this is why I like this episode. The idea of just hanging out and hitching a ride home with a Voltron lion appealed to me, y'know, when I was 8.
The kids get home just as their father, captain of the Coast Guard ship Altea (see what they did there?) is leaving. Pidge takes a sample of the tadpoles back to the castle. Lotor does some ominous voiceover gloating.
Overnight, the tadpoles glow red, then turn into three-eyed demon frogs. At least they look better than the demon mice. The good ship Altea encounters a swarm of the frogs who melt their way into the ship and attack the crew. They manage to get an SOS off to castle control. " Altea" appears on the castle screen, I bet WEP chose "Altea" as the ships name for that reason. Pidge listens to the report on an attack by frogs, and rushes to the rec room. The bucket of tadpoles is empty. The monster frogs lunge at Pidge from holes they've melted in the wall. The team shoots the frogs with their sidearms. Pidge surmises that the kids might be in trouble. The team launches--Pidge to rescue the kids, the rest to save the Altea.
The frogs have the children and their mother cornered. They back out of the bedroom as the frogs make scary noises at them and set the beds on fire. More frogs burn a whole in from the roof, but they see green lion through the hole. Pidge rushes in and shoots most of the frogs. A couple of them jump on the mother (well, she is kinda hot, in an 80s anime way). OUtside of the house, they're surrounded by the frogs.
One of the kids knocks over a barrel of gasoline. Pidge kicks over the barrel, dowsing the frogs. Then he sets them alight. With the kids (and their hot mom) now safe, Pidge takes off to rendezvous with the rest of the team).
The Altea is headed for sharp rocks ahead. The captain is struggling to reach the helm, but the wheel breaks off and more frogs jump on him. The lions approach just as the ship is about to run aground. Black and yellow lions destroy the rocks, then blue lion washes the deck clear of the frogs. Red lion destroys them when they're in the water. The ship is saved, and Lance is contemptuous of this plan.
Lotor watches these events, and then deploys the deep-sea beast from a hatch in his flagship. The robeast launches out of the ocean, flies through the air, and rams green lion. Green and yellow lion launch missiles at it. It reels back, but then grabs green lion and submerges. The rest of the team follows. Pidge frees himself by firing "ion darts" from the red launcher on green lion's back. Free, he joins the rest of the team in forming Voltron.
The robeast chases Voltron into deep water. Coran warns the team that Voltron is not at his best underwater. They exchange fire with the robeast, and then Pidge reports that there's a hole in the armor somewhere. Green lion's inner compartments are ruptured. Lotor orders the robeast to concentrate on green lion. It grabs Voltron's left arm, but Lance (with Hunk's voice) rips the arm off. The robeast continues firing at Voltron, forcing him deeper.
A leak has sprung in green lion's cockpit. Pidge equalizes the pressure (putting, um, a face mask on). With the pressure equalized, red lion (again with Hunk's voice) punctures the robeast and fills it with air. Voltron flies out of the ocean and forms the blazing sword. The robeast emerges from the water to meet him . . . and gets sworded for its troubles.
As the sun rises, Voltron flies over the Altea while the crew cheers. Deep below them, Lotor's flagship flees, and Lotor curses Haggar's schemes. Voltron lands in a scene from another episode to the crowd's adulation.
Terror of the Space Frogs
This episode is a continuation of Galra's new strategy to defeat Golion. Before, they tried to divide them up and prevent them from defeating Golion. Now, they're trying to exploit weaknesses; in this episode, they try to make him fight in a high-pressure, deep-sea environment.
Daibazaal throws the blood wine at Sincline because his failures make the blood wine taste bad. The beastman is Omega Subgar, able to withstand pressures of 20,000 tons. Honerva calls the Galra tadpoles another "goody." No, really, that's how it's translated. She urges Sincline to use the frogs to paralyze Altea's waters and draw out Golion. This operation is designated: Galra Frog!!
The kids call Suzuishi "green lion guy." Kawaii. The boy's name is Tommy, and the girl's Riehle. Well, it's a better name than "Frau Bow." And the dogs name is translated as "Poochy." Their father is a freighter captain.
Everyone marvels and the weird three-eyed tadpoles.
I think one reason why this episode is less annoying to me than the demon mouse one is, well, I can relate to discovering tadpoles and trying to raise them to be frogs. I'm pretty sure my sister managed to put a dent in the midwestern frog population in the mid-80s just by collecting so many in the summers.
Man, this is a total Disney episode. The damn frogs kill Poochy! I hate you, Disney! Always killing the dogs.
There's a lot more blood when the frogs attack the freighter crew. The SOS includes the information that they're being attack by three-eyed frogs.
As the frogs melt through the stairs, Seidou actually says "Check it out, they can dissolve stuff."
Kurogane recognizes the frogs as the same kind he saw while imprisoned on Galra.
Scale goes a little bit out of wack when green lion lands outside Tommy's house--the lion is too small relative to the house.
Rather than the fast-moving blue bolts that it usually fires, the Golion sidearms fire a weird, sustained green lightning bolt effect.
As the flames destroy the frogs, and they shrivel, we hear the space mice/Suzuishi theme in the backgroud. Total Disney: TAKE THAT, WILDLIFE!!!
So, what's this ship shipping? And to where? I know Altea is supposed to be revitalizing, so I kind of like these hints that, yes, this is not Star Trek and, no, the castle and the surrounding villages and towns are not the only inhabitated areas. Y'know, Star Trek, where the Vulcans are of the species Vulcan, who live on the planet Vulcan, speak the language Vulcan, and all live in the city of Vulcan?
When Omega subgar launches out of the sea, Kogane very clearly says "mechaburakku ju-jin," and it *sounds* like he says "mechaburak-kaiju-jin," further evidence for my idea that the deathblack beastman/mechblack beastman word in Japanese is a pun on Kaiju. Y'know, Kaiju? Like Gamera?
You probably wouldn't be surprised to know that they form Golion to the green lion theme, since it's sort of Green Lion Guy's episode.
Raible tells Kogane that Golion should be able to withstand 4000 meters and 400 atmospheres.
Golion fires underwater rockets from red lion's mouth, and a needle shower from his horns.
We get some more cool shots of the interior workings of Golion as green lion floods.
Kurogane suggests they use the four lion attack, but they can't because the flooding in green lion is interrupting the energy delivery system. Kurogane is then inspired to fill the beastman with air when Suzuishi stops the cockpit leak with high pressure air.
Thursday, July 21, 2011
A Transplant for the Blue Lion/Behold! The 100 Ton Punch
A Transplant for the Blue Lion
This is weird. Zarkon is praising Lotor for last episode. Lotor even recaps the previous episode in a way that isn't made up. Lotor claims to have secret agents on Arus who report that blue lion might not fly again.
Allura is walking into castle control with her arm in a sling. And with Nanny clucking behind her. Coran shows views of all five lions in their repair bays. Then King Alfor appears on the screen and gives a downright zen hint to success--five streams joining together who can crush rock.
Lance complains, but Keith gets all hyped up, going on about teamwork. He decides they need training immediately. Lance doesn't want to, until Keith grabs him by the shirt and shakes him. Allura calls them little boys and says she's ready for training. Nanny . . . is Nanny. Bitch.
Just as they're ready to leave, Coran orders them to have the townspeople come to the castle, in anticipation of a new attack. They take some hovercars we've never seen before into the town, but they see armed Arusians all over the town who are ready to support Voltron with, um, small arms. Allura tears up at her people's valor. Oh, and one of the guys has a pregnant wife (townsfolk, not Voltron team guys). The Arusian animation models are different, somewhat, from the ones we've seen thus far. Coran urges the team to come back to the castle.
Haggar is standing before a duplicate of yesterday's robeast. She then magnifies him into a pretty awesome redesign of Lambda. Instead of the yellow cyclops robeast, she inserts one of the red guys from yesterday. And Lotor is having a bad face day.
Keith leads the team through maneuvers. A mach 5 dive towards the lake (which tests their G force resistance, I guess). Under the lake, they attack submarine gun emplacements. The team evades the missile fire, until Allura takes a few hits, apparently aggravating her shoulder. Keith urges her to succeed without help, keeping Hunk back.
Allura imagines the fate of her people at Lotor's hands. She pilots blue lion out of the emplacements range.
And then Nanny argues with Coran. Bitch.
The team forms Voltron, and Keith orders Coran to have the castle artillery fire on them.
And, Nanny.
We actually get to see some of the castle gunners as Coran orders them to fire on Voltron.
Lance does some bragging, and then they commence firing. Voltron dodges the beam weapons and counters the missiles with his own weapons, fire from green and red lions, ion darts (?) from blue lion, and proton missiles from yellow. They try another challenge, but Hunk takes a missile hit and disconnects. After he rejoins the team, Keith orders Coran to concentrate fire on Hunk. He tries valiantly, but gets disconnected again and crashes. Then he cries. No, really, he cries.
The rest of the team has landed, and stand over Hunk crying on his knees. Keith encourages him with some more teamwork stuff. Allura chides Lance for being mean. And Coran calls to warn them that Lotor's on his way.
Lotor's flagship, escorted by fighters, begins an attack on the town. The armed townspeople take out some of the fighters, but then the flagships weapons begin destroying buildings and starting a fire. Lotor sees the lions approaching and launches the new robeast in another one of those capsule thingies. The capsule lands and the robeast emerges, trudging towards the town.
Hunk requests to lead the attack. He has some weird internal dialogue about being expendable. Then he fires the rotor missiles, with the same weird animation as yesterday. The robeast singles out yellow lion and tries stomping him. The other lions swoop in, but get knocoed out by some kind of grip way.
The townspeople open fire on the approaching robeast. The pregnant lady is distressed.
The lions relaunch and fly through the burning town. They try the same powerdive attack to draw the robeast from the town. They smash the head, and then they form Voltron.
As they're flying away from the robeast, eith looks over his shoulder. I'm sure they've all done it before, and it's always made me wonder--what the hell are they looking at?! There are no windows back there. We can't see any rear-view monitors in the back.
The robeast opens a chest panel to reveal cannons, and a new head emerges. The cannons envelope Voltron in energy, driving him to his knees as the robeast comes forward and the townskids look on. Keith orders an x-ray scan, and then missile attacks at the robeast's energy source. The missiles are destroyed by the energy beam.
King Alfor appears and goes on with his Buddhist koan. Apparently, Keith understands this to mean use the four limb lion heads as battering rams that punch through the robeast. When the heads reattach, they form blazing sword. The robeast explodes, Lotor flees, and townspeople mob Voltron. Except for one dude, and his wife, who just gave birth. Apparently, it's a girl, and they're naming her Voltricia.
Behold! The 100 Ton Punch
We have an episode recap of Lamba beating up on blue lion. We then go right to Castle Gradam and blue lion's repair shop. And Hys. She says "Hime-sama" a lot. Fucking kill me now. Raible says they can only make emergency repairs.
Fala's father actually appears in response to her own urgings. The ol' Deus ex king Raimon says they are unskilled and drawing out only 60% of Golion's full power. Kogane and Kurogane discuss the interpretation of the water principle. Then Kogane tells them he doesn't want any complaining, he wants them to practice more. Kurogane says he's perfect, which leads to Super Sentai leader rage. Fala defuses it by urging Kogane to train her.
One of the armed townspeople has his trigger finger on his rifle's magazine instead of the grip. Hoo-boy. Can these guys be trusted?
Honerva introduces remodelled mechablack beastman Lambda. Do we get to call him Lambda Kai?!?! Please, please, pretty please? (These two are pretty high up there as my favorite beastmen). Honerva christens it Gamma. Sincline declares it will be the alpha of Golion's omega. Well, he doesn't, but it woulda been awesome if he had.
So Fala counts up the machs as they train in their power dive, and she gets to five. Again, I think WEP had script translations. At least some of the time.
When Fala visualizes the consequences of losing to Galra, there's a lot more images of children engulfed in flames than in Voltron.
And, more Hys. AAAUUUGGGHHH!!!
At least the awesomeness of the mecha and the fighting sequences is enough to cement this episode as another favorite. Despite fuckin' Hys.
The "ion darts" weapon on blue lion is called the machinegun pod. Suzuishi calls out "Laser magnum," but it's animated as flames just like red lion. In the second barrage, which leads to Seidou falling off of Golion the first time, Kogane orders them to pilot with only one hand. And Kogane is miscolored in a blue uniform rather than red.
I don't really need to tell you that there's a lot more townsperson death in Golion, do I?
Gamma also doesn't roar here, as he does in Voltron. And thank the gods, Seidou doesn't call himself expendable here.
The townspeople's rifles are given machinegun-like sound effects.
They combine to the black lion theme.
When Golion fires into Gamma's energy attack, Kurogane and Suzuishi call out "laser magnum," but this time it's animated as missiles.
King Raimon explicitly explains to them how to perform the four-lion attack. And names it the 100-ton punch. And we get the instrumental elevator version of Formation V.
This episode and the previous one are kind of turning points for both Altea and Galra. Daibazaal and Sincline are clearly, um, not working together. The Golion team, however, is pulling together more strongly despite some disagreements. The birth of a new child on Altea is an indication that the tide is turning, and Altea is revitalized after 15 years under Galra.
This is weird. Zarkon is praising Lotor for last episode. Lotor even recaps the previous episode in a way that isn't made up. Lotor claims to have secret agents on Arus who report that blue lion might not fly again.
Allura is walking into castle control with her arm in a sling. And with Nanny clucking behind her. Coran shows views of all five lions in their repair bays. Then King Alfor appears on the screen and gives a downright zen hint to success--five streams joining together who can crush rock.
Lance complains, but Keith gets all hyped up, going on about teamwork. He decides they need training immediately. Lance doesn't want to, until Keith grabs him by the shirt and shakes him. Allura calls them little boys and says she's ready for training. Nanny . . . is Nanny. Bitch.
Just as they're ready to leave, Coran orders them to have the townspeople come to the castle, in anticipation of a new attack. They take some hovercars we've never seen before into the town, but they see armed Arusians all over the town who are ready to support Voltron with, um, small arms. Allura tears up at her people's valor. Oh, and one of the guys has a pregnant wife (townsfolk, not Voltron team guys). The Arusian animation models are different, somewhat, from the ones we've seen thus far. Coran urges the team to come back to the castle.
Haggar is standing before a duplicate of yesterday's robeast. She then magnifies him into a pretty awesome redesign of Lambda. Instead of the yellow cyclops robeast, she inserts one of the red guys from yesterday. And Lotor is having a bad face day.
Keith leads the team through maneuvers. A mach 5 dive towards the lake (which tests their G force resistance, I guess). Under the lake, they attack submarine gun emplacements. The team evades the missile fire, until Allura takes a few hits, apparently aggravating her shoulder. Keith urges her to succeed without help, keeping Hunk back.
Allura imagines the fate of her people at Lotor's hands. She pilots blue lion out of the emplacements range.
And then Nanny argues with Coran. Bitch.
The team forms Voltron, and Keith orders Coran to have the castle artillery fire on them.
And, Nanny.
We actually get to see some of the castle gunners as Coran orders them to fire on Voltron.
Lance does some bragging, and then they commence firing. Voltron dodges the beam weapons and counters the missiles with his own weapons, fire from green and red lions, ion darts (?) from blue lion, and proton missiles from yellow. They try another challenge, but Hunk takes a missile hit and disconnects. After he rejoins the team, Keith orders Coran to concentrate fire on Hunk. He tries valiantly, but gets disconnected again and crashes. Then he cries. No, really, he cries.
The rest of the team has landed, and stand over Hunk crying on his knees. Keith encourages him with some more teamwork stuff. Allura chides Lance for being mean. And Coran calls to warn them that Lotor's on his way.
Lotor's flagship, escorted by fighters, begins an attack on the town. The armed townspeople take out some of the fighters, but then the flagships weapons begin destroying buildings and starting a fire. Lotor sees the lions approaching and launches the new robeast in another one of those capsule thingies. The capsule lands and the robeast emerges, trudging towards the town.
Hunk requests to lead the attack. He has some weird internal dialogue about being expendable. Then he fires the rotor missiles, with the same weird animation as yesterday. The robeast singles out yellow lion and tries stomping him. The other lions swoop in, but get knocoed out by some kind of grip way.
The townspeople open fire on the approaching robeast. The pregnant lady is distressed.
The lions relaunch and fly through the burning town. They try the same powerdive attack to draw the robeast from the town. They smash the head, and then they form Voltron.
As they're flying away from the robeast, eith looks over his shoulder. I'm sure they've all done it before, and it's always made me wonder--what the hell are they looking at?! There are no windows back there. We can't see any rear-view monitors in the back.
The robeast opens a chest panel to reveal cannons, and a new head emerges. The cannons envelope Voltron in energy, driving him to his knees as the robeast comes forward and the townskids look on. Keith orders an x-ray scan, and then missile attacks at the robeast's energy source. The missiles are destroyed by the energy beam.
King Alfor appears and goes on with his Buddhist koan. Apparently, Keith understands this to mean use the four limb lion heads as battering rams that punch through the robeast. When the heads reattach, they form blazing sword. The robeast explodes, Lotor flees, and townspeople mob Voltron. Except for one dude, and his wife, who just gave birth. Apparently, it's a girl, and they're naming her Voltricia.
Behold! The 100 Ton Punch
We have an episode recap of Lamba beating up on blue lion. We then go right to Castle Gradam and blue lion's repair shop. And Hys. She says "Hime-sama" a lot. Fucking kill me now. Raible says they can only make emergency repairs.
Fala's father actually appears in response to her own urgings. The ol' Deus ex king Raimon says they are unskilled and drawing out only 60% of Golion's full power. Kogane and Kurogane discuss the interpretation of the water principle. Then Kogane tells them he doesn't want any complaining, he wants them to practice more. Kurogane says he's perfect, which leads to Super Sentai leader rage. Fala defuses it by urging Kogane to train her.
One of the armed townspeople has his trigger finger on his rifle's magazine instead of the grip. Hoo-boy. Can these guys be trusted?
Honerva introduces remodelled mechablack beastman Lambda. Do we get to call him Lambda Kai?!?! Please, please, pretty please? (These two are pretty high up there as my favorite beastmen). Honerva christens it Gamma. Sincline declares it will be the alpha of Golion's omega. Well, he doesn't, but it woulda been awesome if he had.
So Fala counts up the machs as they train in their power dive, and she gets to five. Again, I think WEP had script translations. At least some of the time.
When Fala visualizes the consequences of losing to Galra, there's a lot more images of children engulfed in flames than in Voltron.
And, more Hys. AAAUUUGGGHHH!!!
At least the awesomeness of the mecha and the fighting sequences is enough to cement this episode as another favorite. Despite fuckin' Hys.
The "ion darts" weapon on blue lion is called the machinegun pod. Suzuishi calls out "Laser magnum," but it's animated as flames just like red lion. In the second barrage, which leads to Seidou falling off of Golion the first time, Kogane orders them to pilot with only one hand. And Kogane is miscolored in a blue uniform rather than red.
I don't really need to tell you that there's a lot more townsperson death in Golion, do I?
Gamma also doesn't roar here, as he does in Voltron. And thank the gods, Seidou doesn't call himself expendable here.
The townspeople's rifles are given machinegun-like sound effects.
They combine to the black lion theme.
When Golion fires into Gamma's energy attack, Kurogane and Suzuishi call out "laser magnum," but this time it's animated as missiles.
King Raimon explicitly explains to them how to perform the four-lion attack. And names it the 100-ton punch. And we get the instrumental elevator version of Formation V.
This episode and the previous one are kind of turning points for both Altea and Galra. Daibazaal and Sincline are clearly, um, not working together. The Golion team, however, is pulling together more strongly despite some disagreements. The birth of a new child on Altea is an indication that the tide is turning, and Altea is revitalized after 15 years under Galra.
The Sincerest Form of Flattery/The Dreaded Mecha Beastman
There are a lot of episodes I count among my "favorites." These next two are my most favoritest. I mean, these were the ones that I actually sought out when I finally got ahold of the DVDs.
The Sincerest Form of Flattery
Optimus Prime narrates us into Haggar's wicked workshop. And only the second robeast that is clearly a robot. Just then, a Red Army officer arrives and warns Haggar that Zarkon and Lotor are quarrelling again.
Zarkon is seated in his arena box, and Lotor is in the arena itself. After some preliminary words, Zarkon summons robeasts to fight Lotor. Lotor does some fancy maneuvering, kills a weird magenta beast, and takes its sword as well. Then he kills a yellow cyclops thing. Zarkon enters the arena with two guards, and Lotor challenges him.
The crowd in the stands looks less good compared to the crowds from early arena episodes. We get some dissolves back and forth while Zarks and son talk to themselves. Then Lotor charges, jumps, and Zarkon sticks his blade out (was he going for a point in line?!) Lotor lands behind Zarkon, laughing, then his helmet splits in half and he begins bleeding from the scalps. Zarkon's cloak falls off, and he puts his blade to Lotor's throat. He's about to lop Lotor's head off with Haggar intervenes. She tells Lotor to beg. Lotor's eyebrows wiggle while he plots to himself, then he grovels. He offers to be turned into a robeast.
Haggar demures--she wants to show them a new robeast--a giant robot. (Which sort of looks like Shockwave). Rather than putting Lotor at its controls, she lowers a yellow cyclops robeast into the head in a capsule. Then Haggar says something dumb about magic. The robeast at the controls of the. um, more robeast flexes.
Voltron is rebuilding Arusian cities. In the castle council room, Allura announces a new early warning system, after Hunk wants to go fight Zarkon--but Voltron's a defense force. Pidge teases the mice by giving them a rock that looks like cheese. Hunk pounds on the table and gets his fists stuck.
They are going to launch "At Ease," the Advanced Early Alarm System that monitors for enemies 200 tykets away from the planet (farther out than the earlier system. That was never mentioned before). Five seconds after the satellites are deployed, Lotor arrives in his flagship. He's insulted, and launches fighters. The satellite destroys all four, leaving five explosions. Lotor's flagship opens fire and destroys it. Huh. Hope it wasn't a pricey satellite.
The team launches in the lions, Hunk saying they should have attacked. The lions fly in formation over the rebuilt city, and then enter orbit. This is the first time they've actually intercept Lotor before he made it to the surface.
Lotor launches the robeast in a new torpedo/capsule thing. It rotates upright in front of the lions, then glows before shattering to reveal the robeast. Keith recognizes it as a Voltron imitation, and orders Pidge to analyze it. He can't. Hunk attacks with the gatling missiles and yellow claws. When these are ineffective, the rest of the team fire their missiles. Like most robeasts, it shrugs them off, which is somehow surprising.
The robeast fires beams from its chest, then knocks yellow and green lions out with a blast from its flashlight face. Keith and Lance catch the falling lions while the robeast launches missiles from its wrists. Allura evades the missiles until Keith detaches the red wings from black lion as the "anti-missile" wing. I thought that was awesome when I was a kid.
They form Voltron. Lotor orders the robeast to disrupt the formation, but it gets zapped, turns red-hot, and tumbles through space until Voltron's done. Lotor tells it to attack, and then angsts about Zarkon. The robeast retracts its claws and extends big blades. Voltron forms the electrosabre. They clash, and the robeast's flashlight face is countered with the fire tornado.
The robeast launches missiles out of its toes, and they cut into blue lion's cockpit. More missiles launch from tubes in its torso, and Allura falls out of her chair. She gets back in, but more torso missiles send Volts crashing to the planet. Voltron crashes into a buidling. The robeast lands on one, and then begins crashing its way through more.
Voltron forms blazing sword. They actually fight with swords for a moments. Lotor angsts some more (guess he used up his gloat quota a few episodes ago) until Haggar tells him to focus all the robeast's firepower on one target. The robeast stabs blue lion right in the piston . . . generator thing. It starts sliding off of the rest of Voltron. In desparation, Voltron plunges at the robeast. They stab each other in the chest. Green lion breaks the robeast's blade. and Volts finishes him off.
Suddenly, blue lion falls the rest of the way off and hits the ground, knocking Allura uncomscious. Lotor launches fighers. In footage that's just reversed from the Golion opening, Voltron disconnects. The fighters reach blue lion and actually start shooting through the cockpit. The lions fight off the fighters, but then Lotor's flagship starts firing, subduing the lions.
Ah, here we go. Lotor starts gloating--and suddenly the castle begins pouring cannonfire into Lotor's ship, forcing him to retreat. Allura is rushed into the hospital--though Nanny says all she needs is rest. In the lion sickbay, a tattered blue lion is under repair.
The Dreaded Mecha Beastman
The narrator introduce's Honerva's workshop as the Occult Science Plant. And her new project as the mechablack beastman. Daibazaal taunts Sincline from his box, and then sends beastman to fight him. There are three. The red one is an unfamiliar design, but there's a deep purple and lighter lavender beastman that looks like a recolor of the first beastman in the series (in his unsupersized version. Sincline is much more brutal that Voltron's Lotor--the first robeast wasn't even shown fighting him.
The Galra audience are making side bets. The emperor and prince imperial repeat a mantra that alternates between the two of them nicely. And, I swear, Daibazaal was totally setting up a sabre-style point in line when Sincline just jumped over him.
Daibazaal's response to his vanquished son is much more vehement in this version. And Honerva talks him into apologizing--and Sincline offers to be turned into a blackdeath beastman. Daibazaal orders Honerva to do it, but she says that won't give them victory--she has a mechablack beastman. Made from a special alloy (we'll see how special it is in a moment). The beastman's designation is Lambda. Daibazaal wants Sincline to pilot it, but she inserts a traditional beastman into its head. She also claims that it will seek out Golion's weak point, blocking his combiner energy.
On Altea, Fala discusses the fact that while Golion is resurrected and they can reconstruct Altea, they have to find a way to defend against Galra's continued attacks, or they will always be rebuilding. Seidou wants to attack. Kurogane and Kogane agree that rushing to the attack will just get them attacked. Platt tells Suzuishi that "You'll get yours, you big jerk!" See, the space mice CAN be awesome.
Fala explains that they will launch four satellites (right that afternoon!) at points 200 km from the Altean surface to act as the Altean guard system. They all have very high hopes for these satellites. And then Sincline just knocks one out of the sky without breaking a sweat.
Yellow lion's gatling missiles, while the missiles appear on the shoulder joints normally, are now just white, um, tracer round looking things. Also, the yellow claw attack detaches the entire paw rather than just launching individual claws.
Lambda has two missile types: the red-tipped high explosive (?) wrist- and torso-tube launched missiles, and the foot-launched spikey armor piercing (?) missiles.
Sincline urges Lambda to attack the blue lion, and then Honerva tells him to hack off the knee joint because Golion is weakest at the joints. Sincline protests, which is weird, because he was just ordering the mechabeast to attack her specifically. Well, we already know he's nuts, so I guess expecting him to be consistent is too much.
Lambda's attacks on blue lion drained or disrupted the combiner energy. When the other lions are covering blue lion, black lion's black bazooka projectiles are animated like generic missiles, instead of the diamond-headed harpoons I love.
Things I like about this episode so much: It emphasizes what I think is the main message for Golion. Galra fails, not because evil is bumbling and destined to fail, as in Voltron, but because Galra is so goddamn ruthless. They don't tolerate anything! Altea and her allies (whom they are going to begin collecting in the coming episodes) work together, using each other's strengths to account for weaknesses. This kind of comes out more in the next episode, when we have a little more inter-team dispute that is resolved and reveals a new weapon.
I also like that the battle is pretty extensive. In this episode, the beastman is again Galra's primary method of attack. For a long time now, the beastmen have been simply the finishing touch while Galra tries some other tactics to separate the lions, so the beastman can take out the individuals. Divide and conquer. This time, they try new technology that directly counters Golion's.
Finally, we see the castle defenses actually turn the tide (and destroying the beastman doesn't end the attack, for once).
The Sincerest Form of Flattery
Optimus Prime narrates us into Haggar's wicked workshop. And only the second robeast that is clearly a robot. Just then, a Red Army officer arrives and warns Haggar that Zarkon and Lotor are quarrelling again.
Zarkon is seated in his arena box, and Lotor is in the arena itself. After some preliminary words, Zarkon summons robeasts to fight Lotor. Lotor does some fancy maneuvering, kills a weird magenta beast, and takes its sword as well. Then he kills a yellow cyclops thing. Zarkon enters the arena with two guards, and Lotor challenges him.
The crowd in the stands looks less good compared to the crowds from early arena episodes. We get some dissolves back and forth while Zarks and son talk to themselves. Then Lotor charges, jumps, and Zarkon sticks his blade out (was he going for a point in line?!) Lotor lands behind Zarkon, laughing, then his helmet splits in half and he begins bleeding from the scalps. Zarkon's cloak falls off, and he puts his blade to Lotor's throat. He's about to lop Lotor's head off with Haggar intervenes. She tells Lotor to beg. Lotor's eyebrows wiggle while he plots to himself, then he grovels. He offers to be turned into a robeast.
Haggar demures--she wants to show them a new robeast--a giant robot. (Which sort of looks like Shockwave). Rather than putting Lotor at its controls, she lowers a yellow cyclops robeast into the head in a capsule. Then Haggar says something dumb about magic. The robeast at the controls of the. um, more robeast flexes.
Voltron is rebuilding Arusian cities. In the castle council room, Allura announces a new early warning system, after Hunk wants to go fight Zarkon--but Voltron's a defense force. Pidge teases the mice by giving them a rock that looks like cheese. Hunk pounds on the table and gets his fists stuck.
They are going to launch "At Ease," the Advanced Early Alarm System that monitors for enemies 200 tykets away from the planet (farther out than the earlier system. That was never mentioned before). Five seconds after the satellites are deployed, Lotor arrives in his flagship. He's insulted, and launches fighters. The satellite destroys all four, leaving five explosions. Lotor's flagship opens fire and destroys it. Huh. Hope it wasn't a pricey satellite.
The team launches in the lions, Hunk saying they should have attacked. The lions fly in formation over the rebuilt city, and then enter orbit. This is the first time they've actually intercept Lotor before he made it to the surface.
Lotor launches the robeast in a new torpedo/capsule thing. It rotates upright in front of the lions, then glows before shattering to reveal the robeast. Keith recognizes it as a Voltron imitation, and orders Pidge to analyze it. He can't. Hunk attacks with the gatling missiles and yellow claws. When these are ineffective, the rest of the team fire their missiles. Like most robeasts, it shrugs them off, which is somehow surprising.
The robeast fires beams from its chest, then knocks yellow and green lions out with a blast from its flashlight face. Keith and Lance catch the falling lions while the robeast launches missiles from its wrists. Allura evades the missiles until Keith detaches the red wings from black lion as the "anti-missile" wing. I thought that was awesome when I was a kid.
They form Voltron. Lotor orders the robeast to disrupt the formation, but it gets zapped, turns red-hot, and tumbles through space until Voltron's done. Lotor tells it to attack, and then angsts about Zarkon. The robeast retracts its claws and extends big blades. Voltron forms the electrosabre. They clash, and the robeast's flashlight face is countered with the fire tornado.
The robeast launches missiles out of its toes, and they cut into blue lion's cockpit. More missiles launch from tubes in its torso, and Allura falls out of her chair. She gets back in, but more torso missiles send Volts crashing to the planet. Voltron crashes into a buidling. The robeast lands on one, and then begins crashing its way through more.
Voltron forms blazing sword. They actually fight with swords for a moments. Lotor angsts some more (guess he used up his gloat quota a few episodes ago) until Haggar tells him to focus all the robeast's firepower on one target. The robeast stabs blue lion right in the piston . . . generator thing. It starts sliding off of the rest of Voltron. In desparation, Voltron plunges at the robeast. They stab each other in the chest. Green lion breaks the robeast's blade. and Volts finishes him off.
Suddenly, blue lion falls the rest of the way off and hits the ground, knocking Allura uncomscious. Lotor launches fighers. In footage that's just reversed from the Golion opening, Voltron disconnects. The fighters reach blue lion and actually start shooting through the cockpit. The lions fight off the fighters, but then Lotor's flagship starts firing, subduing the lions.
Ah, here we go. Lotor starts gloating--and suddenly the castle begins pouring cannonfire into Lotor's ship, forcing him to retreat. Allura is rushed into the hospital--though Nanny says all she needs is rest. In the lion sickbay, a tattered blue lion is under repair.
The Dreaded Mecha Beastman
The narrator introduce's Honerva's workshop as the Occult Science Plant. And her new project as the mechablack beastman. Daibazaal taunts Sincline from his box, and then sends beastman to fight him. There are three. The red one is an unfamiliar design, but there's a deep purple and lighter lavender beastman that looks like a recolor of the first beastman in the series (in his unsupersized version. Sincline is much more brutal that Voltron's Lotor--the first robeast wasn't even shown fighting him.
The Galra audience are making side bets. The emperor and prince imperial repeat a mantra that alternates between the two of them nicely. And, I swear, Daibazaal was totally setting up a sabre-style point in line when Sincline just jumped over him.
Daibazaal's response to his vanquished son is much more vehement in this version. And Honerva talks him into apologizing--and Sincline offers to be turned into a blackdeath beastman. Daibazaal orders Honerva to do it, but she says that won't give them victory--she has a mechablack beastman. Made from a special alloy (we'll see how special it is in a moment). The beastman's designation is Lambda. Daibazaal wants Sincline to pilot it, but she inserts a traditional beastman into its head. She also claims that it will seek out Golion's weak point, blocking his combiner energy.
On Altea, Fala discusses the fact that while Golion is resurrected and they can reconstruct Altea, they have to find a way to defend against Galra's continued attacks, or they will always be rebuilding. Seidou wants to attack. Kurogane and Kogane agree that rushing to the attack will just get them attacked. Platt tells Suzuishi that "You'll get yours, you big jerk!" See, the space mice CAN be awesome.
Fala explains that they will launch four satellites (right that afternoon!) at points 200 km from the Altean surface to act as the Altean guard system. They all have very high hopes for these satellites. And then Sincline just knocks one out of the sky without breaking a sweat.
Yellow lion's gatling missiles, while the missiles appear on the shoulder joints normally, are now just white, um, tracer round looking things. Also, the yellow claw attack detaches the entire paw rather than just launching individual claws.
Lambda has two missile types: the red-tipped high explosive (?) wrist- and torso-tube launched missiles, and the foot-launched spikey armor piercing (?) missiles.
Sincline urges Lambda to attack the blue lion, and then Honerva tells him to hack off the knee joint because Golion is weakest at the joints. Sincline protests, which is weird, because he was just ordering the mechabeast to attack her specifically. Well, we already know he's nuts, so I guess expecting him to be consistent is too much.
Lambda's attacks on blue lion drained or disrupted the combiner energy. When the other lions are covering blue lion, black lion's black bazooka projectiles are animated like generic missiles, instead of the diamond-headed harpoons I love.
Things I like about this episode so much: It emphasizes what I think is the main message for Golion. Galra fails, not because evil is bumbling and destined to fail, as in Voltron, but because Galra is so goddamn ruthless. They don't tolerate anything! Altea and her allies (whom they are going to begin collecting in the coming episodes) work together, using each other's strengths to account for weaknesses. This kind of comes out more in the next episode, when we have a little more inter-team dispute that is resolved and reveals a new weapon.
I also like that the battle is pretty extensive. In this episode, the beastman is again Galra's primary method of attack. For a long time now, the beastmen have been simply the finishing touch while Galra tries some other tactics to separate the lions, so the beastman can take out the individuals. Divide and conquer. This time, they try new technology that directly counters Golion's.
Finally, we see the castle defenses actually turn the tide (and destroying the beastman doesn't end the attack, for once).
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
The Sleeping Princess/The Prince Imperial's Dark Love
The Voltron version of this episode is better than filler, but not among my favorites. The Golion version, however, has some pretty interesting psychological developments for Sincline.
The Sleeping Princess
Lotor is having a nightmare. And, apparently, he sleeps in his uniform. In the dream, in the Voltron version of the dream, anyway, he's dreaming specifically about Allura. That's a little different from Golion, as we'll see. He rushes through a forest to Allura, dodging spears, until, um, ogre guards who are totally not Zarkon appear and take her awy.
Princess Corell of Deimos arrives on Doom in a Rooster frigate. She is to be married to Lotor to unite the two planets. And her language sounds suspiciously like . . . Michael Bell doing baby talk into a pitch-shifter. Lotor begs for one more chance to capture Allura. Whoah, wha?! At the end of last episode, Zarkon was all set to send Lotor to the glue factory. Well, I guess marrying him off to Corell is the same thing. Apparently, Corell wants Lotor to wed the one he loves. Then he kisses her.
In Haggar's workship, Lotor claims that the only reason Allura won't just marry him is because she's afraid of Zarkon. We then see . . . a dream of Allura's? In which Zarkon squishes her head. After trying to get him to leave Arus alone. Huh. Then Haggar bewitches a dagger. WEP was very careful to explain that the dagger wouldn't kill anyone. Just make them go to sleep.
Everyone's picking flowers on Arus. Allura is riding in a royal boat rowed by the Voltron force and coran. One of the mice is hanging out on Allura's shoulder. The rest of the team (and mouse) jump into the lake to gather flowers to present ot the princess. Then the mouse sees the blue cat with a dagger, in time to, um, get Pidge to turn around in time to see it stab Allura. A few seconds after the cat basically scratches her, she passes out. Nanny proves she's already in the denial stage of grieving by claiming it was too much sun.
At night on Arus (and that's a pretty cool shot of the castle lit up at night) Allura stops breathing in her hospital bed. And Keith demonstrates how secure he is in his masculinity by doing a Luke Skywalker-style howl. And. The team sits outside the castle and immediately figures out that this is all a scheme by Lotor and Haggar. And they're all going to pretend to be sad.
Yeah, this isn't to keep little american kids from being upset by potential death.
The fake funeral is held in the same cathedral that figured in the episode with Allura's Aunt. Her aunt appears, too. Then the team has flashbacks about Allura, how she invited them to become the Voltron force, and then joined the team herself. And some weird stuff that doesn't quite correspond to what's actually going on onscreen. And the Keith's voice breaks while Pidge hyperventilates.
And the priest/minister/vicar is downright scary looking. So . . . Arus is a weird mix of Catholic and Russian Orthodox?
Lotor and Haggar plot to snatch the princess. She's loaded into her casket, and the team carries her to the carriage. Coran admits that he suspects a plot as well. So don't cry kids. She's not dead!
Haggar uses her wand to blast a tree down in front of the carriage. The driver is thrown, but Pidge tears off after the carriage and Indiana Joneses his way onto it. The rest of the team is coming along behind, and then Lotor does a 6 Million Dollar Man jump into the driver's seat. Haggar diverts the rest of the team, who run back to the castle and launch in their lions.
Pidge is going all WWE on Lotor until Lotor knocks him off with the riding crop. Pidge hangs on to the carriage, but Lotor is weirdly concerned for his safety and warns him to let go before he's crushed by the wheels. Lotor finally pulls over and draws his sword, but Haggar warns him that the lions are coming. Pidge gets back up and stalls for the lions. Haggar hits him with some sort of beam from her staff, but it just stuns him. She picks him up and he freaks out. The others have gotten out of their lions and hold their sidearms on Lotor--until Haggar uses Pidge as a hostage. But Pidge pulls the pin on a grenade and threatens Lotor and Haggar. Lance picks up his gun, and Haggar tells Lotor to put her down--in hopes for a darker tomorrow. Then Pidge makes a suicide rush with the grenade. Lotor jumps, knocking the grenade into the carriage, and awakening the princess. Lotor is all set to fight, but the team holds him off. Keith shoots the blade right out of his sword. Haggar conjurs a lot of wind, hoding them all back while the two villains retreat to space coffins and escape.
On the castle balcony, Allura actually kisses Pidge, and then Nanny intervenes. On Doom, Lotor refuses Corell, Corall, whatever her name is. He throws down a glass of wine and sees Allura's shifting reflection in the puddle.
The Prince Imperial's Dark Love
So here the dream sequence makes more sense. Maybe villains with a clear psychological disturbance were too much for WEP?
Sincline is dreaming of his mother. Who looks a lot like Fala. But clearly is NOT Fala. Same thing with spears trying to hold him off, and then Daibazaal appears and grabs her by the throat. Then Sincline's mother becomes Fala. And Sincline doesn't KNOW why she became Fala.
See? Far more interesting than the random dream in Voltron.
The princess of Galleria (a mall?!) appears. Her name is Sahlia. She's an imperial blood relative. And she can talk. Sincline comes right out and says that Fala reminds him of his mother. Daibazaal is clearly distressed, and says his mother died in childbirth. He urge Honerva to do something. She arranges to tell Sincline about his mother in exchange for marrying Sahlia. Then he kisses her.
Honerva admits that Fala looked just like his mother. Sincline says he has nightmars of a demon taking his mother away.
In a flashback, Sincline's mother is begging for leniency for some Altean slaves. In response, he apparently kills her with his bare hands.
Of course, Honerva doesn't tell him any of this. Sincline declares he is going to get Fala before he marries Sahlia. Honerva agrees to help him. She conjures an enchanted blade. Walt Disney whirls in his grave.
Honerva gives Jaga the blade. Apparently, anyone who gives the princess a bouquet of flowers gets a kiss, according to an old custom. That's why the guys -- and Platt -- fall all over themselves collecting flowers. Then Jaga slashes Fala. Kogane tries valiantly to fend him off. With a bunch of flowers. And Fala passes out.
Cue Hys-trionics.
Sunset actually turns to night, and we get that cool shot of the illuminated castle. Helena appears in the scene where Fala stops breathing. Then Kogane gets all grief-stricken. And that whole night sequence where the team figures out it's a Lotorian plot? Edited in from scenes taken from "A Pretty Spy." We go right to the cathedral and the mourners. And there's some generic organ music throughout the funeral service.
Y'know, for it's time, Golion actually has very few clip shows. This episode has a sequence that lasts a couple of minutes. That's pretty tame, considering how crunched most animation schedules were. I mean, they basically had to create one episode a week for a year. Sometimes they'd fall behind and "catch-up" episodes were used to give them a little breathing room. There is no beastman in this episode, and really only one new character model (Sahlia), so maybe this episode was faster to produce.
Apparently, there is an unseen 21 gun salute going on somewhere as they load the casket into the hearse carriage. You can hear it in the soundtrack. There's just no indication of it in the animation.
The team gradually begins to think Fala might not be dead only after Sincline and Honerva appear.
When Sincline knocks Suzuishi off the carriage, he taunts him. Far more fitting than telling him to be careful of the wheels! Suzuishi must figure out that Fala's not dead when Honerva says the time of her revival is soon -- right in front of him. And -- it's funny that Honerva decides to use Suzuishi as a hostage when Sincline's already got Fala. Hm. Maybe she's a less satisfactory hostage because they have no intention of giving her up.
Hm. I guess Suzuishi doesn't know Fala is alive. He's all set to die and see the princess again in heaven. Then the explosion awakens her.
Honerva and Sincline arrived in space coffins. Are those the Galra covert insertion platform? Every time they go to Altea in space coffins, no one knows they're there. It's only when Sincline brings his flagship or the batplane that they pick him up on radar. Or dradis. Or whatever.
When Fala salutes her people from the balcony, the organ is playing its funeral music again.
When watching this episode with me, my girlfriend said "Sahlia's outfit would make a nice bellydance costume. I like the snake tiara thing, too!" It's nice when you're significant other is just as nerdy as you are.
The Sleeping Princess
Lotor is having a nightmare. And, apparently, he sleeps in his uniform. In the dream, in the Voltron version of the dream, anyway, he's dreaming specifically about Allura. That's a little different from Golion, as we'll see. He rushes through a forest to Allura, dodging spears, until, um, ogre guards who are totally not Zarkon appear and take her awy.
Princess Corell of Deimos arrives on Doom in a Rooster frigate. She is to be married to Lotor to unite the two planets. And her language sounds suspiciously like . . . Michael Bell doing baby talk into a pitch-shifter. Lotor begs for one more chance to capture Allura. Whoah, wha?! At the end of last episode, Zarkon was all set to send Lotor to the glue factory. Well, I guess marrying him off to Corell is the same thing. Apparently, Corell wants Lotor to wed the one he loves. Then he kisses her.
In Haggar's workship, Lotor claims that the only reason Allura won't just marry him is because she's afraid of Zarkon. We then see . . . a dream of Allura's? In which Zarkon squishes her head. After trying to get him to leave Arus alone. Huh. Then Haggar bewitches a dagger. WEP was very careful to explain that the dagger wouldn't kill anyone. Just make them go to sleep.
Everyone's picking flowers on Arus. Allura is riding in a royal boat rowed by the Voltron force and coran. One of the mice is hanging out on Allura's shoulder. The rest of the team (and mouse) jump into the lake to gather flowers to present ot the princess. Then the mouse sees the blue cat with a dagger, in time to, um, get Pidge to turn around in time to see it stab Allura. A few seconds after the cat basically scratches her, she passes out. Nanny proves she's already in the denial stage of grieving by claiming it was too much sun.
At night on Arus (and that's a pretty cool shot of the castle lit up at night) Allura stops breathing in her hospital bed. And Keith demonstrates how secure he is in his masculinity by doing a Luke Skywalker-style howl. And. The team sits outside the castle and immediately figures out that this is all a scheme by Lotor and Haggar. And they're all going to pretend to be sad.
Yeah, this isn't to keep little american kids from being upset by potential death.
The fake funeral is held in the same cathedral that figured in the episode with Allura's Aunt. Her aunt appears, too. Then the team has flashbacks about Allura, how she invited them to become the Voltron force, and then joined the team herself. And some weird stuff that doesn't quite correspond to what's actually going on onscreen. And the Keith's voice breaks while Pidge hyperventilates.
And the priest/minister/vicar is downright scary looking. So . . . Arus is a weird mix of Catholic and Russian Orthodox?
Lotor and Haggar plot to snatch the princess. She's loaded into her casket, and the team carries her to the carriage. Coran admits that he suspects a plot as well. So don't cry kids. She's not dead!
Haggar uses her wand to blast a tree down in front of the carriage. The driver is thrown, but Pidge tears off after the carriage and Indiana Joneses his way onto it. The rest of the team is coming along behind, and then Lotor does a 6 Million Dollar Man jump into the driver's seat. Haggar diverts the rest of the team, who run back to the castle and launch in their lions.
Pidge is going all WWE on Lotor until Lotor knocks him off with the riding crop. Pidge hangs on to the carriage, but Lotor is weirdly concerned for his safety and warns him to let go before he's crushed by the wheels. Lotor finally pulls over and draws his sword, but Haggar warns him that the lions are coming. Pidge gets back up and stalls for the lions. Haggar hits him with some sort of beam from her staff, but it just stuns him. She picks him up and he freaks out. The others have gotten out of their lions and hold their sidearms on Lotor--until Haggar uses Pidge as a hostage. But Pidge pulls the pin on a grenade and threatens Lotor and Haggar. Lance picks up his gun, and Haggar tells Lotor to put her down--in hopes for a darker tomorrow. Then Pidge makes a suicide rush with the grenade. Lotor jumps, knocking the grenade into the carriage, and awakening the princess. Lotor is all set to fight, but the team holds him off. Keith shoots the blade right out of his sword. Haggar conjurs a lot of wind, hoding them all back while the two villains retreat to space coffins and escape.
On the castle balcony, Allura actually kisses Pidge, and then Nanny intervenes. On Doom, Lotor refuses Corell, Corall, whatever her name is. He throws down a glass of wine and sees Allura's shifting reflection in the puddle.
The Prince Imperial's Dark Love
So here the dream sequence makes more sense. Maybe villains with a clear psychological disturbance were too much for WEP?
Sincline is dreaming of his mother. Who looks a lot like Fala. But clearly is NOT Fala. Same thing with spears trying to hold him off, and then Daibazaal appears and grabs her by the throat. Then Sincline's mother becomes Fala. And Sincline doesn't KNOW why she became Fala.
See? Far more interesting than the random dream in Voltron.
The princess of Galleria (a mall?!) appears. Her name is Sahlia. She's an imperial blood relative. And she can talk. Sincline comes right out and says that Fala reminds him of his mother. Daibazaal is clearly distressed, and says his mother died in childbirth. He urge Honerva to do something. She arranges to tell Sincline about his mother in exchange for marrying Sahlia. Then he kisses her.
Honerva admits that Fala looked just like his mother. Sincline says he has nightmars of a demon taking his mother away.
In a flashback, Sincline's mother is begging for leniency for some Altean slaves. In response, he apparently kills her with his bare hands.
Of course, Honerva doesn't tell him any of this. Sincline declares he is going to get Fala before he marries Sahlia. Honerva agrees to help him. She conjures an enchanted blade. Walt Disney whirls in his grave.
Honerva gives Jaga the blade. Apparently, anyone who gives the princess a bouquet of flowers gets a kiss, according to an old custom. That's why the guys -- and Platt -- fall all over themselves collecting flowers. Then Jaga slashes Fala. Kogane tries valiantly to fend him off. With a bunch of flowers. And Fala passes out.
Cue Hys-trionics.
Sunset actually turns to night, and we get that cool shot of the illuminated castle. Helena appears in the scene where Fala stops breathing. Then Kogane gets all grief-stricken. And that whole night sequence where the team figures out it's a Lotorian plot? Edited in from scenes taken from "A Pretty Spy." We go right to the cathedral and the mourners. And there's some generic organ music throughout the funeral service.
Y'know, for it's time, Golion actually has very few clip shows. This episode has a sequence that lasts a couple of minutes. That's pretty tame, considering how crunched most animation schedules were. I mean, they basically had to create one episode a week for a year. Sometimes they'd fall behind and "catch-up" episodes were used to give them a little breathing room. There is no beastman in this episode, and really only one new character model (Sahlia), so maybe this episode was faster to produce.
Apparently, there is an unseen 21 gun salute going on somewhere as they load the casket into the hearse carriage. You can hear it in the soundtrack. There's just no indication of it in the animation.
The team gradually begins to think Fala might not be dead only after Sincline and Honerva appear.
When Sincline knocks Suzuishi off the carriage, he taunts him. Far more fitting than telling him to be careful of the wheels! Suzuishi must figure out that Fala's not dead when Honerva says the time of her revival is soon -- right in front of him. And -- it's funny that Honerva decides to use Suzuishi as a hostage when Sincline's already got Fala. Hm. Maybe she's a less satisfactory hostage because they have no intention of giving her up.
Hm. I guess Suzuishi doesn't know Fala is alive. He's all set to die and see the princess again in heaven. Then the explosion awakens her.
Honerva and Sincline arrived in space coffins. Are those the Galra covert insertion platform? Every time they go to Altea in space coffins, no one knows they're there. It's only when Sincline brings his flagship or the batplane that they pick him up on radar. Or dradis. Or whatever.
When Fala salutes her people from the balcony, the organ is playing its funeral music again.
When watching this episode with me, my girlfriend said "Sahlia's outfit would make a nice bellydance costume. I like the snake tiara thing, too!" It's nice when you're significant other is just as nerdy as you are.
Magnetic Attraction/Comes a Fiery Sky
Another solid episode. Mainly because its revelations of the inner workings of the lions appealed to my 8-year-old geek self.
Magnetic Attraction
A new robeast--the Magnabeast. An early mecha beastman--with flamethrowers! Haggar is enthusiastically demonstrating her new robeast to Zarkon and Lotor, extolling its greenhouse-effect powers. Lotor vows to not only conquer Arus, but to barbecue it.
On Arus, the team is practicing Judo. Seriously. And then, Nanny. Nanny makes pajama jokes. Come on, whatever happened to warrior princesses? I guess 1984 was too early. Coran and Nanny haul Allura back to the castle. Then the team hangs out by the lake, complaining about the heat. Pidge notices a funny sky--orange and red clouds at noontime. Hunk decides they shood check the monitor at castle control in case it's a forest fire.
At the castle, guards are out on the balconies, glad for once that no one will actually shoot at them. Coran has order the civilians into the caves as the cloud covers the sky, burning forests and evaporating all the water. Villages panic, and then splash around in the boiling water at the bottom of the lake.
Lotor hoves above the flaming cloud, watching the magnabeast add to the clouds. They catch sight of the 'beast in castel control. Coran orders a volley of missiles fired at the Mangabeast, but the missiles are vaporized before the reach the target. The team launches in the lions. Blue lion, however, is left powerless at the bottom of the lake, and we see some awesome cutaway drawings and views of the inner workings of the lines for the first time. The power crystal design is similar to red lion's in the last episode, but different.
Alfor, captain deus ex machina himself, explains that the lions are all powered by specific elements: black = lighting, red = fire, yellow = magma (? earth?), green = wind, and blue = water. And then we see the Voltron cutaway I spent hours trying to duplicate with crayons. Alfor admonishes Allura that without water blue lion will be like a beached whale.
Great thing to tell your teenaged daughter, deus.
Lotor gloats. The team charges the magnabeast head on. The lions get caught in some kind of magnetic field. Lotor gloats some more. The robeast tightens its beam to focus on yellow lion. Hunk passes out. Lotor gloats even more. Then he heads over to the dried out lakebed to menace the princess.
The team struggles in the magnetic field, and then the magnabeast reaches out with a pincer and drags yellow lion toward it.
Lotor approaches the princess in the batplane. Coran launches some anti-aircraft missiles. Lotor starts bombarding blue lion in response.
Lance suggests . . . um, a Star Trek solution. Involves negative charges and laser pathways. And green lion and red lion flying in tandem while Pidge frantically pushes buttons. A green tunnel opens up, and Lance rams the robeast repeatedly until he lets go of yellow lion. Lance says "follow me!" and then Hunk leads the way back to Pidge just as the laser tunnel collapses. Pidge urges them to save the princess. The lions turn away from the flame cloud.
Lotor gloats. Even more. And keeps launching missiles at blue lion, taunting Allura the whole time. And then the other four lions return. Lotor takes off. The team lands in the lakebed to see what they can do for the princess. Lotor gloats even as he's running away. An Arusian woman tries to get a drinking fountain to work for her son. And the team gets all introspective. And then Allura realizes Alfor ex machina was telling her to dig a well. Hunk pilots the yellow lion on a crazy looping dirt-eating tunnel path to water. He hits a subterrainean lake, then tunnels his way back to the lake bottom.
I don't want to think too hard about the physics of this.
As the lake refills, Allura opens a hatch to allow water into the lion's inner workings. And then blue lion launches. The team takes off into formation and combines into Voltron. Voltron plunges head-on at the robeast and gets grabbed by the pincers. Then he forms blazing sword and lops the pincers off before destroying the "control center" by cutting the 'beast in half at the waist. THEN Voltron impales it with his sword and launches him into orbit where he explodes. After THAT display, Lotor flees. Voltron uses tornadoes from four lion heads to disperse the flame cloud.
Back on planet Doom, Lotor bows his head in failure before Zarkon, who gives him the choice between exile and decapitation. And then offers him one more chance.
The Arusians are celebrating by splashing around in fountains and mobbing Voltron's landing site.
Comes a Fiery Sky
The beastman is named Devilburn here, and Honerva is very pleased with this masterpiece and pride of her occult science. The scene in which the team trains in Judo is a little more realistic here, with Kogane naming the technique and watching the others perform. And, ugh, Hys. Fala has to go study history and stuff. And Raible and Hys carry her off. Yep. Way to promote the royal dignity there.
I like how Suzuishi totally throws Seidou.
Um. Mind if I get pedantic for a minute? Are east and west relative? Like, if a planet has an orbit and a rotation like Earth's (which, maybe, would be necessary for it to have earth-like conditions), are the cardinal directions determined that arbitrarily? Like East just happens to be where the local primary star rises, and west is where it sets? Regardless of where magnetic north and south may be (which could be completely unrelated to rotation, right?)
I bring this up because the team sees red clouds that look like a sunset -- in the east. Huh.
The Alteans are terrified that this sudden spontaneous combustion means Altea will revert to a dead, desert planet. Y'know, after 15 years of desolation, the planet sure did recover fast with the resurrection of Golion. I mean, is Golion being the guardian deity of Altea also tied to the planet's eco-system somehow? Yeah, I'm full of it, today.
Aaand blue lion's energy source are aqua protons. Absorbed from water. King Raimon told me. THe energy sources are pretty close to Voltron for the other lions, but we get horsepower values for each lion. Black lion = 2,000,000 HP from thunder protons, red lion = 800,000 HP from fire protons, yellow lion = 1,200,000 HP from ground protons, green lion = 800,000 HP from cyclone protons. Golion himself uses planet protons for 6,000,000 HP. I'm assuming blue lion has a 1,200,000 HP engine, like yellow.
The interesting thing is that the Japanese uses the English "thunder protons," "fire protons," etc. So their technobabble is just nonsensical English words.
Sincine apparently sees that yellow lion has the least resistance against extreme heat--or at least Seidou, because he singles him out for a blast of 6,000 degrees. This episode is good for a lot of concrete-sounding data. So, is it the lion who's vulnerable to heat, or is Seidou just a cold-weather type like me?
Sincline's batplane launches missiles out of what look like beam emitters. I mean, the missiles are the same size or bigger than the nozzles they're coming out of.
Oh, hey, red lion can withstand temperatures up to 20,000 degrees. And, for having just learned the elemental power sources of their lions, they're sure name-dropping it a lot. It's like the animators just got the power crystal stock footage drawn and they're just dying to use it as much as they can.
Devilburn does, rather amusingly, look like an old home furnace with arms. And head.
This episode also uses a lot of shots with the Golion pilots in their seats with speed lines coming off of them. Fala is shown that way the most, when she finally lifts off, but everyone is drawn that way (I think Kurogane is the first).
Sincline's parting shot: "You can all suffer in an incandescent hell!" Well put, Sincline.
Seidou uses the Yellow Claws to dig his well to water.
Apparently refilling the lake revives all of the stricken Alteans. Or maybe it just improves the moral of the ones who are still conscious?
Our gattai music for today is, fittingly, the blue lion theme.
Once they finally form Golion, Devilburn is pretty helpless. I mean, Golion just plows through the flame cloud that had incapacitated the lions, and responds to getting grabbed by dismembering him. Kogane even says "Feh!" when the beastman grabs Golion. And then Devilburn is left just standing there, with no arms. "Crap. My only weapons is useless against you!" Maybe they took Devilburn out into orbit for him to explode because of all the high pressure flamethrower fuel he was carrying?
Golion actually uses each on of the lion-head weapons to disperse the flames: big fire, green tornado, water rod, and sandstorm.
Magnetic Attraction
A new robeast--the Magnabeast. An early mecha beastman--with flamethrowers! Haggar is enthusiastically demonstrating her new robeast to Zarkon and Lotor, extolling its greenhouse-effect powers. Lotor vows to not only conquer Arus, but to barbecue it.
On Arus, the team is practicing Judo. Seriously. And then, Nanny. Nanny makes pajama jokes. Come on, whatever happened to warrior princesses? I guess 1984 was too early. Coran and Nanny haul Allura back to the castle. Then the team hangs out by the lake, complaining about the heat. Pidge notices a funny sky--orange and red clouds at noontime. Hunk decides they shood check the monitor at castle control in case it's a forest fire.
At the castle, guards are out on the balconies, glad for once that no one will actually shoot at them. Coran has order the civilians into the caves as the cloud covers the sky, burning forests and evaporating all the water. Villages panic, and then splash around in the boiling water at the bottom of the lake.
Lotor hoves above the flaming cloud, watching the magnabeast add to the clouds. They catch sight of the 'beast in castel control. Coran orders a volley of missiles fired at the Mangabeast, but the missiles are vaporized before the reach the target. The team launches in the lions. Blue lion, however, is left powerless at the bottom of the lake, and we see some awesome cutaway drawings and views of the inner workings of the lines for the first time. The power crystal design is similar to red lion's in the last episode, but different.
Alfor, captain deus ex machina himself, explains that the lions are all powered by specific elements: black = lighting, red = fire, yellow = magma (? earth?), green = wind, and blue = water. And then we see the Voltron cutaway I spent hours trying to duplicate with crayons. Alfor admonishes Allura that without water blue lion will be like a beached whale.
Great thing to tell your teenaged daughter, deus.
Lotor gloats. The team charges the magnabeast head on. The lions get caught in some kind of magnetic field. Lotor gloats some more. The robeast tightens its beam to focus on yellow lion. Hunk passes out. Lotor gloats even more. Then he heads over to the dried out lakebed to menace the princess.
The team struggles in the magnetic field, and then the magnabeast reaches out with a pincer and drags yellow lion toward it.
Lotor approaches the princess in the batplane. Coran launches some anti-aircraft missiles. Lotor starts bombarding blue lion in response.
Lance suggests . . . um, a Star Trek solution. Involves negative charges and laser pathways. And green lion and red lion flying in tandem while Pidge frantically pushes buttons. A green tunnel opens up, and Lance rams the robeast repeatedly until he lets go of yellow lion. Lance says "follow me!" and then Hunk leads the way back to Pidge just as the laser tunnel collapses. Pidge urges them to save the princess. The lions turn away from the flame cloud.
Lotor gloats. Even more. And keeps launching missiles at blue lion, taunting Allura the whole time. And then the other four lions return. Lotor takes off. The team lands in the lakebed to see what they can do for the princess. Lotor gloats even as he's running away. An Arusian woman tries to get a drinking fountain to work for her son. And the team gets all introspective. And then Allura realizes Alfor ex machina was telling her to dig a well. Hunk pilots the yellow lion on a crazy looping dirt-eating tunnel path to water. He hits a subterrainean lake, then tunnels his way back to the lake bottom.
I don't want to think too hard about the physics of this.
As the lake refills, Allura opens a hatch to allow water into the lion's inner workings. And then blue lion launches. The team takes off into formation and combines into Voltron. Voltron plunges head-on at the robeast and gets grabbed by the pincers. Then he forms blazing sword and lops the pincers off before destroying the "control center" by cutting the 'beast in half at the waist. THEN Voltron impales it with his sword and launches him into orbit where he explodes. After THAT display, Lotor flees. Voltron uses tornadoes from four lion heads to disperse the flame cloud.
Back on planet Doom, Lotor bows his head in failure before Zarkon, who gives him the choice between exile and decapitation. And then offers him one more chance.
The Arusians are celebrating by splashing around in fountains and mobbing Voltron's landing site.
Comes a Fiery Sky
The beastman is named Devilburn here, and Honerva is very pleased with this masterpiece and pride of her occult science. The scene in which the team trains in Judo is a little more realistic here, with Kogane naming the technique and watching the others perform. And, ugh, Hys. Fala has to go study history and stuff. And Raible and Hys carry her off. Yep. Way to promote the royal dignity there.
I like how Suzuishi totally throws Seidou.
Um. Mind if I get pedantic for a minute? Are east and west relative? Like, if a planet has an orbit and a rotation like Earth's (which, maybe, would be necessary for it to have earth-like conditions), are the cardinal directions determined that arbitrarily? Like East just happens to be where the local primary star rises, and west is where it sets? Regardless of where magnetic north and south may be (which could be completely unrelated to rotation, right?)
I bring this up because the team sees red clouds that look like a sunset -- in the east. Huh.
The Alteans are terrified that this sudden spontaneous combustion means Altea will revert to a dead, desert planet. Y'know, after 15 years of desolation, the planet sure did recover fast with the resurrection of Golion. I mean, is Golion being the guardian deity of Altea also tied to the planet's eco-system somehow? Yeah, I'm full of it, today.
Aaand blue lion's energy source are aqua protons. Absorbed from water. King Raimon told me. THe energy sources are pretty close to Voltron for the other lions, but we get horsepower values for each lion. Black lion = 2,000,000 HP from thunder protons, red lion = 800,000 HP from fire protons, yellow lion = 1,200,000 HP from ground protons, green lion = 800,000 HP from cyclone protons. Golion himself uses planet protons for 6,000,000 HP. I'm assuming blue lion has a 1,200,000 HP engine, like yellow.
The interesting thing is that the Japanese uses the English "thunder protons," "fire protons," etc. So their technobabble is just nonsensical English words.
Sincine apparently sees that yellow lion has the least resistance against extreme heat--or at least Seidou, because he singles him out for a blast of 6,000 degrees. This episode is good for a lot of concrete-sounding data. So, is it the lion who's vulnerable to heat, or is Seidou just a cold-weather type like me?
Sincline's batplane launches missiles out of what look like beam emitters. I mean, the missiles are the same size or bigger than the nozzles they're coming out of.
Oh, hey, red lion can withstand temperatures up to 20,000 degrees. And, for having just learned the elemental power sources of their lions, they're sure name-dropping it a lot. It's like the animators just got the power crystal stock footage drawn and they're just dying to use it as much as they can.
Devilburn does, rather amusingly, look like an old home furnace with arms. And head.
This episode also uses a lot of shots with the Golion pilots in their seats with speed lines coming off of them. Fala is shown that way the most, when she finally lifts off, but everyone is drawn that way (I think Kurogane is the first).
Sincline's parting shot: "You can all suffer in an incandescent hell!" Well put, Sincline.
Seidou uses the Yellow Claws to dig his well to water.
Apparently refilling the lake revives all of the stricken Alteans. Or maybe it just improves the moral of the ones who are still conscious?
Our gattai music for today is, fittingly, the blue lion theme.
Once they finally form Golion, Devilburn is pretty helpless. I mean, Golion just plows through the flame cloud that had incapacitated the lions, and responds to getting grabbed by dismembering him. Kogane even says "Feh!" when the beastman grabs Golion. And then Devilburn is left just standing there, with no arms. "Crap. My only weapons is useless against you!" Maybe they took Devilburn out into orbit for him to explode because of all the high pressure flamethrower fuel he was carrying?
Golion actually uses each on of the lion-head weapons to disperse the flames: big fire, green tornado, water rod, and sandstorm.
Monday, July 18, 2011
Treasure of Planet Tyrus/The Demon's Birthday
Here's another of my favorite episodes. This one makes up for the evil space mice. It's got a unique plot, we see more of the Doom/Galra Empire, and our heroes actually plot against the baddies for once.
Treasure of Planet Tyrus
A meteor shower and Planet Tyrus--explained to us that it's a refreshing vacation destination for evil types. And some more H.R. Gigir architecture. The blue cat gets a "lava bath" and Lotor gets a massage. Then Zarkon calls in and scolds Lotor, who's supposed to be guarding the treasure ship on the way to planet Doom. He also tells Lotor that there's a gold statue of Lotor on board. Lotor swears to protect the ship.
How ironic, 'cuz we immediately cut to the ship crashing into asteroids and belching flames.
At castle control, Coran looks like he's playing DJ, but he's actually listening to a distress signal from a ship near planet Tyrus. Apparently Zarkon stole stuff from Arus last week. They launch to try to recover it. Since only a treasure ship would be heading to planet Tyrus. The lions streak past meteors until Pidge picks up a signal in the North Quadrant.
They find the ship derelict. They enter through a hole in the hull and begin exploring. Keith and Lance do a bit of a SWAT team entry. (This one reminds me of "My Brother the Robeast" in some ways, which we all know is another favorite). The team SWAT's their way right into the room with the gold Lotor statue. They restrain Hunk from shooting at the statue.
Cheddar appears, and actually serves a purpose in this episode--I don't categorically hate the space mice (the way I hate Nanny no matter what she does)--in some episodes they're actually pretty cool. Like this one. Cheddar leads the way to a massive treasure chest and some "unconscious" guards. Pidge finds a massive key to the gold chest. Hunk opens the chest, revealing a treasure haul that looks a lot like the treasure from Ghost Castle. Allura realizes that they needed all of the treasure for special medicine for Arus from planet Syban.
Cheddar runs to a portal and gets their attention as a Rooster Frigate appears. Wow. Space mice are better than radar.
The Frigate harpoons the treasure ship (which is massive). As the Doomites are boarding, red lion "atomizes" and melts its way into the statue. A contigent of Lotor's Doom troops enters the chamber with the giant statue. Keith, in the uniform of a palace guard, stumbles out and convinces the captain that they will continue to guard the treasure. (The guard captain is one of the Prussian-looking red uniformed ones).
The Rooster Frigate has magically morphed into Lotor's flagship. Oh well. They hall the treasure ship back to Tyrus. The ruler of Tyrus (I missed his name) pours Koolaid for Lotor, Haggar, and himself. The guard captain appears and tells him the treasure is ready. The Voltron force appears all in guard uniforms and stumble when opening the chest, arousing Lotor's suspicions. Lotor yells at the guard captain and draws his sword, then threatens to unmask the guards. Keith does a backflip onto the chest and rips off the uniform. The rest of the team follow suit, weilding the guards' swords. Lotor sends a swarm of other royal guardsmen acter them, and we get a bunch of animation errors and the guards change from royal guardsmen, the blue-skinned soldiers, and the gray troops.
Lance falls down a trap door into a chamber full of troglodyte zombies, Pidge, Hunk, and Allura are held at gunpoint, and Lotor corners Keith with his sword. A new huard captain arrives and tells Lotor the celebration is ready. In the dungeon, Cheddar chews an escape route for Lance, who evades the zombies.
The team is tied to stakes while Lotor watches fireworks and tries to ply Allura with the red lava juice of Tyrus. She manages to get a knife to start cutting her bonds. The ruler of Tyrus (Ah, his name is Count Zaida) tows a gigantice cake. Cheddar burrows out of the cake (Lance had told him to plant one of Pidge's grenade somewhere.). Gray soldiers wearing helmets appear with torches to set the team on fire, but Count Zaida says they should torture them by eating cake in front of them. Lotor walks over to the cake but it explodes. Lance burns ouf of the statue in red lion. The rest of the team has been freed by Cheddar. Haggar lays down some covering fire for Lotor with the guns of the flagship. The ship lifts off.
The team get back to the rest of their lions and form Voltron. They smash into the ship and cripple it before forming the blazing sword. Voltron hacks his way into the ship. As it goes up in flames, Lotor and Haggar flee in an escape ship, leaving Count Zaida. The ship crashes into the Giger palace and explodes. Voltron watches the palace burn.
We return to Allura kissing Lance. Again. And Coran says they got enough valuables back to pay for the medicine.
The Demon's Birthday
The planet is called Walbrane. That's right--Walbrane. Interestingly, it looks a lot like Galra from orbit. Maybe Daibazaal initiates a program of Galra-forming as they conquer planets. I haven't been mentioning what happens before the title card very often, but in this episode, I like the fact that they set up Sincline and Honerva on Walbrane before the title card. Oh, and Honerva is bathing Jaga in blood. My parent's cat would probably enjoy that, too.
The ruler of Walbrane is King Walbrane. It's probably some royal convention that saves time-pressed and lazy staff writers. It's revealed that this is Sincline's 106th birthday. Which leads to a weird chronological problem later on.
The Golion team are wary that the SOS from the treasure ship may be a trap, but they decide the best way of dealing with it is to go spring the trap, just in case. I like this ship design. And its sheer size. Platte is pretty awesome in this episode. And, when red lion melts into the statue, we get the first view of the lions' inner workings--some sort of energy lines going into a central crystal thing. The design is a little different in this episode, but we'll see a lot more of it in the next show.
In some shots, the sky of planet Walbrane looks like it has some fancy aurora borealis stuff going on. The Walbranians actually come out to celebrate Sincline's birthday. Since they're all dressed like King Walbrane, they're probably the royalty who've benefited from a relationship with Galra. There's probably some oppressed civilians hidden away somewhere . . .
Sincline totally kills the Red Army commander for not suspecting the royal guardsmen are actually the Golion pilots. In fact, the ensuing battle is pretty gruesome, with the team hacking up guardsmen pretty enthusiastically.
Oh, hey, Kurogane meets up with some guys who certainly look like oppressed masses to me. Red Army soldiers apparently find four of the lions hidden in the treasure ship. And they are totally using pickup trucks to unload the treasure ship.
And, this time around, when Platte blows up the cake, we don't have to sit through dumb dialogue about angel food and devil's food cake. And, we probably shouldn't worry too much about how Kurogane got back in red lion with it buried inside the statue. Fittingly, they form Golion to the red lion theme.
Sincline leaves King Walbrane to get crushed by debris as the flaship crashes into the Giger palace. Take that, king stupidname!!
Treasure of Planet Tyrus
A meteor shower and Planet Tyrus--explained to us that it's a refreshing vacation destination for evil types. And some more H.R. Gigir architecture. The blue cat gets a "lava bath" and Lotor gets a massage. Then Zarkon calls in and scolds Lotor, who's supposed to be guarding the treasure ship on the way to planet Doom. He also tells Lotor that there's a gold statue of Lotor on board. Lotor swears to protect the ship.
How ironic, 'cuz we immediately cut to the ship crashing into asteroids and belching flames.
At castle control, Coran looks like he's playing DJ, but he's actually listening to a distress signal from a ship near planet Tyrus. Apparently Zarkon stole stuff from Arus last week. They launch to try to recover it. Since only a treasure ship would be heading to planet Tyrus. The lions streak past meteors until Pidge picks up a signal in the North Quadrant.
They find the ship derelict. They enter through a hole in the hull and begin exploring. Keith and Lance do a bit of a SWAT team entry. (This one reminds me of "My Brother the Robeast" in some ways, which we all know is another favorite). The team SWAT's their way right into the room with the gold Lotor statue. They restrain Hunk from shooting at the statue.
Cheddar appears, and actually serves a purpose in this episode--I don't categorically hate the space mice (the way I hate Nanny no matter what she does)--in some episodes they're actually pretty cool. Like this one. Cheddar leads the way to a massive treasure chest and some "unconscious" guards. Pidge finds a massive key to the gold chest. Hunk opens the chest, revealing a treasure haul that looks a lot like the treasure from Ghost Castle. Allura realizes that they needed all of the treasure for special medicine for Arus from planet Syban.
Cheddar runs to a portal and gets their attention as a Rooster Frigate appears. Wow. Space mice are better than radar.
The Frigate harpoons the treasure ship (which is massive). As the Doomites are boarding, red lion "atomizes" and melts its way into the statue. A contigent of Lotor's Doom troops enters the chamber with the giant statue. Keith, in the uniform of a palace guard, stumbles out and convinces the captain that they will continue to guard the treasure. (The guard captain is one of the Prussian-looking red uniformed ones).
The Rooster Frigate has magically morphed into Lotor's flagship. Oh well. They hall the treasure ship back to Tyrus. The ruler of Tyrus (I missed his name) pours Koolaid for Lotor, Haggar, and himself. The guard captain appears and tells him the treasure is ready. The Voltron force appears all in guard uniforms and stumble when opening the chest, arousing Lotor's suspicions. Lotor yells at the guard captain and draws his sword, then threatens to unmask the guards. Keith does a backflip onto the chest and rips off the uniform. The rest of the team follow suit, weilding the guards' swords. Lotor sends a swarm of other royal guardsmen acter them, and we get a bunch of animation errors and the guards change from royal guardsmen, the blue-skinned soldiers, and the gray troops.
Lance falls down a trap door into a chamber full of troglodyte zombies, Pidge, Hunk, and Allura are held at gunpoint, and Lotor corners Keith with his sword. A new huard captain arrives and tells Lotor the celebration is ready. In the dungeon, Cheddar chews an escape route for Lance, who evades the zombies.
The team is tied to stakes while Lotor watches fireworks and tries to ply Allura with the red lava juice of Tyrus. She manages to get a knife to start cutting her bonds. The ruler of Tyrus (Ah, his name is Count Zaida) tows a gigantice cake. Cheddar burrows out of the cake (Lance had told him to plant one of Pidge's grenade somewhere.). Gray soldiers wearing helmets appear with torches to set the team on fire, but Count Zaida says they should torture them by eating cake in front of them. Lotor walks over to the cake but it explodes. Lance burns ouf of the statue in red lion. The rest of the team has been freed by Cheddar. Haggar lays down some covering fire for Lotor with the guns of the flagship. The ship lifts off.
The team get back to the rest of their lions and form Voltron. They smash into the ship and cripple it before forming the blazing sword. Voltron hacks his way into the ship. As it goes up in flames, Lotor and Haggar flee in an escape ship, leaving Count Zaida. The ship crashes into the Giger palace and explodes. Voltron watches the palace burn.
We return to Allura kissing Lance. Again. And Coran says they got enough valuables back to pay for the medicine.
The Demon's Birthday
The planet is called Walbrane. That's right--Walbrane. Interestingly, it looks a lot like Galra from orbit. Maybe Daibazaal initiates a program of Galra-forming as they conquer planets. I haven't been mentioning what happens before the title card very often, but in this episode, I like the fact that they set up Sincline and Honerva on Walbrane before the title card. Oh, and Honerva is bathing Jaga in blood. My parent's cat would probably enjoy that, too.
The ruler of Walbrane is King Walbrane. It's probably some royal convention that saves time-pressed and lazy staff writers. It's revealed that this is Sincline's 106th birthday. Which leads to a weird chronological problem later on.
The Golion team are wary that the SOS from the treasure ship may be a trap, but they decide the best way of dealing with it is to go spring the trap, just in case. I like this ship design. And its sheer size. Platte is pretty awesome in this episode. And, when red lion melts into the statue, we get the first view of the lions' inner workings--some sort of energy lines going into a central crystal thing. The design is a little different in this episode, but we'll see a lot more of it in the next show.
In some shots, the sky of planet Walbrane looks like it has some fancy aurora borealis stuff going on. The Walbranians actually come out to celebrate Sincline's birthday. Since they're all dressed like King Walbrane, they're probably the royalty who've benefited from a relationship with Galra. There's probably some oppressed civilians hidden away somewhere . . .
Sincline totally kills the Red Army commander for not suspecting the royal guardsmen are actually the Golion pilots. In fact, the ensuing battle is pretty gruesome, with the team hacking up guardsmen pretty enthusiastically.
Oh, hey, Kurogane meets up with some guys who certainly look like oppressed masses to me. Red Army soldiers apparently find four of the lions hidden in the treasure ship. And they are totally using pickup trucks to unload the treasure ship.
And, this time around, when Platte blows up the cake, we don't have to sit through dumb dialogue about angel food and devil's food cake. And, we probably shouldn't worry too much about how Kurogane got back in red lion with it buried inside the statue. Fittingly, they form Golion to the red lion theme.
Sincline leaves King Walbrane to get crushed by debris as the flaship crashes into the Giger palace. Take that, king stupidname!!
Sunday, July 17, 2011
The Green Medusa/Giant Beastman's Lullaby
We've now passed the halfway point of the series.
The Green Medusa
What's this? We open on a planet that isn't doom or Arus. The planet Medusa, where Lotor (in his crag-face animation model) explains that a solar flair has put everyone to sleep. He hits a Medusan with a "blue beam" to revive it. It awakens and begins to scratch at the ground. Like it's burying something . . . Lotor observe's that it's a vicious redheaded female. Ahem.
Back on Doom, Lotor is exhibiting his new find in the arena. Zarkon scoffs at it, until it suddenly turns red, gets taller, and attacks the other robeasts with its hair snakes. It also turns one robeast into stone.
On Arus, Pidge, Hunk and Lance are looking for orphans. That's not sketchy at all. Children start to emerge from the ruins.
In the Castle of Lions, apparently the orphans are looking for foster parents. Allura vows to help take care of them. Pidge starts to have flashbacks. Hey, that's mount Fuji! He remembers when he met his foster parents. The fond memories are interrupted by the approach of Lotor and his fleet.
They launch the lions and confront the new robeast, the Medusan in her giant red form. They attack it with their missiles. It fires its stone beam at Keith, but it hits a flag first, so they see its supoerpower. Coran orders them to form Voltron. As they fly into formation, the Medusa strikes green lion and sends it into a flat spin. Pidge ejects (?) and the robeast grabs him before . . . um. . . tunneling through the ground somehow. (It's a weird effect that you just have to see). The team withdraws to the castle to use the sensors to search for them.
Lotor is pacing. and then decides to attack.
In castle control, they are unable to find the robeast.
Pidge awakens in a cave with the robeast. The first think he seas are the hair snakes. He tries to sneak out while the robeast is sleeping, but she awakens and the snakes drag him back. The lions launch are start searching. One of Lotor's officers finds the robeast on their sensors and they lift off to find them.
The medusa tries to feed him lizards, but he throws them back at her, making her cry. A subben cave-in prompts her to protect Pidge, and then we see that Doom fighters have caused the cave-in. The robeast drives them off. Pidge warms up to her.
Lotor appraises Haggar of the situation. She tells some bizarre story about scorpions and mosquitoes while we see images of totally different bugs that turn into the Medusan and a younger Medusan that turns into Pidge.
The team comes back, dejected. Zarkons forces return, and then they get a call back from Pidge. The robeast's name is Anga. Meanwhile, Lotor's fleet attacks with a second robeast. This one tries to set the lake on fire. The four remaining lions launch (black lion attacks with some shoulder-mountain ninja star things that rebound at Allura). The robeast counters with missiles launched from its abdomen.
Haggar arrives in a space coffin and tries to persuade Anga to squish Pidge. Pidge attacks Haggar with his pistol, but she shoots at him with her staff. Anga approaches, then Haggar zaps her and turns her back to being small and green. Pidge fires on Haggar, who flees.
I think out of the whole team, Pidge uses his gun the most.
Anga is hurt. Keith calls on the communicator, while the blue robeast mangles the castle's artillery (and there's a shot of a soldier-er, robot-dying). Anga carries Pidge to the castle on her back, and he has flashbacks until she passes out. He leaves her to get to his lion and rejoin the team. Pidge rejoins them as they swarm around the robeast. They form Voltron.
The robeast breathes fire, but Volts flies around in circles creates a tornado. It launches missiles again, but Voltron punches it. It tries fire again, but then Voltron just body slams it and forms the blazing sword.
We cut to the team basking it Arus's adulation, where Coran and Allura tell us that Anga has recovered and returned home. We get Allura kissing Lance and the mice kissing Pidge. Again.
Giant Beastman's Lullaby
I don't really have to tell you that the Medusans are dead in Golion, do I? They transliterate the planet as "Meduse." And Sincline's remote probe is actually kind of cool looking. The probe actually dissects one of the Gorgons. Gobra and Sincline discuss the death of the Gorgons by fever, and the fact that they have a mental-powered weapon called the Beam Eye. They capture a female Gorgon as she digs a grave for her dead offspring.
All of the beastmen the Gorgon fights are types we seen before. The gray and yellow one are from the second episode fight, and the spotty one that turns to stone is the same type as one that fought Deathhell.
We don't have the weird scene with the guys looking for orphans. This time, we open right on the women bringing babies to Fala. Apparently, it's some sort of baptism type thing. Suzuishi, the youngest member, flashes back to when he left his own parents to go to school. The alarm interrupts this.
Honerva's weird bug talk actually explains that antlion adults and larva look different, and that's why the Gorgon is giving in to its maternal insticts towards Suzuishi. Or something. Also, it's pretty obvious that Honerva severely wounds the Gorgon and that she dies of her wounds after carrying Suzuishi, right?
Rather than triumphant exultation, we get a scene of the Gorgon's funeral. Man, this show is kind of a bummer sometimes. Fala observes that even beastmen are people, too.
The Green Medusa
What's this? We open on a planet that isn't doom or Arus. The planet Medusa, where Lotor (in his crag-face animation model) explains that a solar flair has put everyone to sleep. He hits a Medusan with a "blue beam" to revive it. It awakens and begins to scratch at the ground. Like it's burying something . . . Lotor observe's that it's a vicious redheaded female. Ahem.
Back on Doom, Lotor is exhibiting his new find in the arena. Zarkon scoffs at it, until it suddenly turns red, gets taller, and attacks the other robeasts with its hair snakes. It also turns one robeast into stone.
On Arus, Pidge, Hunk and Lance are looking for orphans. That's not sketchy at all. Children start to emerge from the ruins.
In the Castle of Lions, apparently the orphans are looking for foster parents. Allura vows to help take care of them. Pidge starts to have flashbacks. Hey, that's mount Fuji! He remembers when he met his foster parents. The fond memories are interrupted by the approach of Lotor and his fleet.
They launch the lions and confront the new robeast, the Medusan in her giant red form. They attack it with their missiles. It fires its stone beam at Keith, but it hits a flag first, so they see its supoerpower. Coran orders them to form Voltron. As they fly into formation, the Medusa strikes green lion and sends it into a flat spin. Pidge ejects (?) and the robeast grabs him before . . . um. . . tunneling through the ground somehow. (It's a weird effect that you just have to see). The team withdraws to the castle to use the sensors to search for them.
Lotor is pacing. and then decides to attack.
In castle control, they are unable to find the robeast.
Pidge awakens in a cave with the robeast. The first think he seas are the hair snakes. He tries to sneak out while the robeast is sleeping, but she awakens and the snakes drag him back. The lions launch are start searching. One of Lotor's officers finds the robeast on their sensors and they lift off to find them.
The medusa tries to feed him lizards, but he throws them back at her, making her cry. A subben cave-in prompts her to protect Pidge, and then we see that Doom fighters have caused the cave-in. The robeast drives them off. Pidge warms up to her.
Lotor appraises Haggar of the situation. She tells some bizarre story about scorpions and mosquitoes while we see images of totally different bugs that turn into the Medusan and a younger Medusan that turns into Pidge.
The team comes back, dejected. Zarkons forces return, and then they get a call back from Pidge. The robeast's name is Anga. Meanwhile, Lotor's fleet attacks with a second robeast. This one tries to set the lake on fire. The four remaining lions launch (black lion attacks with some shoulder-mountain ninja star things that rebound at Allura). The robeast counters with missiles launched from its abdomen.
Haggar arrives in a space coffin and tries to persuade Anga to squish Pidge. Pidge attacks Haggar with his pistol, but she shoots at him with her staff. Anga approaches, then Haggar zaps her and turns her back to being small and green. Pidge fires on Haggar, who flees.
I think out of the whole team, Pidge uses his gun the most.
Anga is hurt. Keith calls on the communicator, while the blue robeast mangles the castle's artillery (and there's a shot of a soldier-er, robot-dying). Anga carries Pidge to the castle on her back, and he has flashbacks until she passes out. He leaves her to get to his lion and rejoin the team. Pidge rejoins them as they swarm around the robeast. They form Voltron.
The robeast breathes fire, but Volts flies around in circles creates a tornado. It launches missiles again, but Voltron punches it. It tries fire again, but then Voltron just body slams it and forms the blazing sword.
We cut to the team basking it Arus's adulation, where Coran and Allura tell us that Anga has recovered and returned home. We get Allura kissing Lance and the mice kissing Pidge. Again.
Giant Beastman's Lullaby
I don't really have to tell you that the Medusans are dead in Golion, do I? They transliterate the planet as "Meduse." And Sincline's remote probe is actually kind of cool looking. The probe actually dissects one of the Gorgons. Gobra and Sincline discuss the death of the Gorgons by fever, and the fact that they have a mental-powered weapon called the Beam Eye. They capture a female Gorgon as she digs a grave for her dead offspring.
All of the beastmen the Gorgon fights are types we seen before. The gray and yellow one are from the second episode fight, and the spotty one that turns to stone is the same type as one that fought Deathhell.
We don't have the weird scene with the guys looking for orphans. This time, we open right on the women bringing babies to Fala. Apparently, it's some sort of baptism type thing. Suzuishi, the youngest member, flashes back to when he left his own parents to go to school. The alarm interrupts this.
Honerva's weird bug talk actually explains that antlion adults and larva look different, and that's why the Gorgon is giving in to its maternal insticts towards Suzuishi. Or something. Also, it's pretty obvious that Honerva severely wounds the Gorgon and that she dies of her wounds after carrying Suzuishi, right?
Rather than triumphant exultation, we get a scene of the Gorgon's funeral. Man, this show is kind of a bummer sometimes. Fala observes that even beastmen are people, too.
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