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).
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