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.
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