Episode Title:
The Princess and the Dragon.
Episode Description:
A lion appears as Pinocchio is traveling through the jungle and asks him to remove a thorn from his paw, though the lion warns him not to travel through the swamp the puppet goes ahead with his original plan in order to search for his father, when he falls in lion sacrifices himself to save him and assures him that he wouldn't have lived long anyway as the thorn was poisonous. After leaving the swamp Pinocchio rescues a rabbit from a carnivorous plant and learns that the rabbit is a human who was cursed with the rest of his people when a magician named Dragonaro appeared and transformed all the men in his city into forest animals and all the women into aquatic creatures, save for the Princess who he imprisoned when she refused to marry him. When he refuses to help Pinocchio is scolded by Cricket and then runs into Gero, Dragonaro's henchman who takes him to the castle suspecting that he is another magician, Dragonaro insists that Pinocchio must have magical powers and imprisons him until the evening, intending to kill the puppet if he does not demonstrate his powers then. With both Pinocchio and Cricket being at a loss at how to escape Pinocchio suddenly has an idea and asks what date it is, that night he declares that he will demonstrate his powers by making the moon disappear which he seemingly does, frightening Dragonaro and Gero into running away. He explains the trick to Cricket; that he remembered his teacher mentioning that a lunar eclipse would be happening there this night and took advantage of it to make it appear as if he used magic, he then goes to rescue Princess Rayel but Dragonaro hears him mention he isn't a magician, prompting him to lie that he is, and orders him to melt polar peak. In the dungeon again Pinocchio gets the idea to solve his problem by defeating Dragonaro rather than complying with him, the Oak Fairy appears and tells him that Dragonaro is really a Dragon and Gero a Toad, thus are weakened by the cold. When they accompany him to watch Polar Peak being melted Pinocchio takes the opportunity to grab Dragonaro's orb and use it to turn the Dragon and Toad into ice, defeating them and restoring the transformed humans to normal, though he accidentally drops the orb before he can use it further. The Princess presents Pinocchio with a box of jewels as a token of her gratitude and has a giant falcon carry him back to the desert.
