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.