Raid of the Red Berets/Golion Hunting

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.