Written by TAKE the CHALLENGE!
A group of fantastic He-Man fans have taken the challenge to watch all 130 Episodes of the 1983 Filmation Cartoon Series “He-Man and the Masters of the Universe“ one episode per day, for 130 days straight. They are the RE-WATCH-A-THONERS!
Be sure to check out the RE-WATCH-A-THON celebratory memento shirts and mugs (long sleeve shirts options are available too).
Today’s Episode is:
The Taking of Grayskull
| PRODUCTION NUMBER | EPISODE TITLE | DIRECTOR | WRITERS | PREMIERE DATE | RE-WATCH-A-THON DATE |
|---|
| MU31 | “A Tale of Two Cities” | Marsh Lamore | Richard Pardee | October 11, 1983 | Dec 27 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Synopsis: After He-Man rescues Princess Rhea from Queen Balina’s guards, the queen believes that he is a spy from her rival city, Operon, and captures him. Now, He-Man must fight the queen’s champion gladiator to survive. | |||||
CLICK HERE to Watch on YOUTUBE (or watch it embedded below:
OUR REVIEW:
In a land not far off from Prince Adam's jungle relaxation spot where oddly He-Man is just a legend, He-Man suffers an unnecessary amnesia plot contrivance and ends arena bound in a familiar but awkwardly applied gladiator trope filled story that is full of issues. (4/10)
Comment, Review and Discuss below:
Tomorrow’s Episode is: “Search for the VHO”
This was one of my brother and I’s favorite episode growing up, we used to rent it all the time. Even though they did it just a couple of times, I love the episodes where it’s just He-Man and Battlecat, particularly in this one where they’re the only two characters we know.
So imagine my surprise/disappointment to learn as an adult that a good chunk of this episode was a direct shot by shot/line by line at times rip-off of a Filmation Tarzan episode that aired a few years earlier. I still think it works well/better with He-Man. The villains have the upper hand for the most part, and having never encountered them before makes them come across much more threatening.
It may not be everyone’s favorite, but I’ll always have a deep (childhood nostalgia filled) love for this episode.
Issues is sayin it lightly. The first black people shown were either bad guys or slaves.
@skeledog I found this episode to be decent but that’s true. It would never be acceptable now but back then it was a different time. It was years before Clamp Champ finally added color to MOTU. Melaktha was a good choice but he was a late add.
This would have been a great opportunity for He-Man to team up with Sun-Man.
Yeah not one of my favorites and yeah I can definitely see a certain aspect of it being seen as maybe a tiny bit problematic today? But I still kinda like it. The fact that it just has He-Man and Battle Cat and He-Man is only Adam briefly at the beginning really gives it a “Just another He-Man adventure" type of feel, and I mean that in a good way. I mean if Eternia sees him as a legend then yeah I’m guessing he’s been on plenty of solo adventures (No Duncan, Teela, Orko, etc.) where he just happens to run into trouble and save the day. Thinking from that perspective, yeah this is a good one.
2 stars. Not a bad episode but loses points for so many off model shots.
I thought Garn was a pretty cool character; in fact he made enough of an impression that my wife wondered if he had an action figure. Too bad.
Also, for all that this episode is… maybe unforunate… about race, there is something funny to me about the fact that Queen Balina and Draca both talk in like… Dracula voices? Like, mock-Hungarian accents? Just really funny to me.
I read recently that some fans considered Prince Adam to be an impediment to the action, watching this show. I wonder how many of them had this as a favorite episode, just because he turns into He-Man really early and never turns back, haha