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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 NUMBEREPISODE TITLEDIRECTORWRITERSPREMIERE DATERE-WATCH-A-THON DATE MU31“A Tale of Two Cities”Marsh LamoreRichard PardeeOctober 11, 1983Dec 27Synopsis: After He-Man rescues Princess Rhea from Queen Balina’s guards, the queen believes that he is a spy from her rival city, Operon,…
We have the Power!
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.
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.
This would have been a great opportunity for He-Man to team up with Sun-Man.
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