The first shot of
Dragonball Z is of a large mountain. Pretty apt, I’d say. I wonder how many
episodes before somebody gets thrown through it, or a stray energy beam strikes
it?
The narrator
explains that it has been five years since King Piccolo’s very brief reign as,
well, King. The world has recovered since that time, the healing process has
begun, but now, the narrator intones, a new evil is about to arrive, bringing
the short time of peace crashing to a halt. I can’t remember everything about
the King Piccolo arc in the original Dragonball, but I would imagine having the
world’s ruler replaced briefly by some horrible green monster man who, one day
out of the year, would destroy a random city seems like a pretty damn
history-changing event. And now, here comes (more) aliens. The human race
never, ever catches a break in Dragonball Z.
As the first villain
of the series, Raditz—joke he may become not too long afterwards—has the job of
setting a tone for the entire Saiyan arc, and by extension everything that
follows. The farmer (carrying a “pea shooter”) is his first confrontation, and
he treats it as an amusing, cute little distraction, barely even regarding him
as he voices his frustration that the Earth is still populated. He uses the
device we will soon become familiar with as the scouter to gauge the human’s
power level: 5. Smirking, he makes a step toward the farmer, who—already
terrified at having seen this large, armor-clad man float out of a spaceship—fires
a shot. Raditz catches the bullet with his bare hand and flicks it right back
at the farmer, probably at a faster speed than the gun ejected it. And that
gives us our first on-screen death in this series.
The casual,
dismissive arrogance with which Raditz disposes of the poor farmer brings to
mind most of the villains later in the series. If there’s anything that ties
the antagonists of Z together, it’s cockiness. They all have a really bad habit
of believing they’re invincible, and when they can dispatch terrified humans
with the flick of a wrist it’s no wonder. Overwhelming power, and the use of it
to get what one wants, is the common thread here. The characters of this show
are not simply humans trying to outwit other humans with cunning or with some
other indirect means; everything in DBZ is ultimately settled with sheer force,
the clashing of titanic powers in increasingly desperate struggles for
dominance. Or, to put it in less pretentious terms, a bunch of motherfuckers
hitting each other with fists and lasers.
This episode has two
parallel plots happening. There’s the stuff with Raditz—we will get to his
scene with Piccolo later—and there’s the introduction of Gohan, and to an
extent, Goku and Chi-Chi. Goku’s first ever action of the series is to pick up
an entire tree and bring it home for firewood, as his wife asks him
sarcastically if he thinks it’s enough. Chi-Chi has a pretty well-deserved
reputation for being a one-note character in this show; she’s fretful over
Gohan’s studies, and that’s mostly it. So it’s neat to see she has some sense
of humor. Goku, meanwhile, is extremely easygoing. I suppose if one can rip
trees out of the ground, they don’t have much else to worry about, but Goku
actually does have a worry this episode: Gohan’s near-death experiences.
Gohan, the child of
Goku and Chi-Chi and an entirely new character to Z, wanders around the
wilderness tearfully, whining for “Daddy.” It’s a pretty ironic thing to see,
considering the ordeal he’s put through starting a few episodes from now. He
winds up crossing paths with a saber-toothed cat, and loses his hat to it. In
our first hint that Gohan is abnormal, he chases the cat (who seems pretty
frightened of this kid chasing him through the forest, since he should be able
to fuck him up proper) and falls off a cliff, grabbing a branch with his tail
while crying in terror. So, veterans of this show or the one preceding it will
recognize the tail right away, it’s the same sort that Goku had as a kid, the
one which allowed him to transform into a giant ape at the full moon.
Honestly, I had
forgotten how slow this first episode was. Dragonball Z is notorious for its
filler, but I always remembered the first few episodes of the show as being
faster than this. Raditz’s confrontation with Goku doesn’t even happen this
episode, and all of the Goku and Gohan stuff is just the former trying to save
his son as he careens toward a waterfall, floating on a log. We get to see Goku
flying around on Nimbus for the first time this series, which makes me wonder
when we’re going to get to see Goku flying around on his own for the first
time. I’ll point it out on the first episode it happens in, of course.
Anyway, there’s
nothing really noteworthy about Goku and Gohan’s brief adventure in the woods.
It’s just a way to establish their pretty simple characters. Near the end of
the episode we meet Piccolo for the first time, and this is where it probably
got pretty confusing for people who started this show without seeing DB first.
Piccolo is clearly not of this world, and he’s able to sense Raditz coming
before he actually arrives. I don’t remember if Piccolo was already capable of
sensing energy and I’m too lazy to look it up. This is our first instance of a
character freaking out about someone’s huge power level, an occurrence so
common in this series one could make a drinking game of it.
Raditz and Piccolo
share some “pleasantries” in the form of veiled threats and questions, then
Piccolo fires a huge energy wave at Raditz. In the first of many, many times
through DBZ, a character who has just been directly hit with an energy wave
emerges from the smoke totally unscathed and smirking. “You actually managed to
singe some of my leg hairs,” Raditz says to Piccolo before he starts to prepare
his own attack. In the Ocean dub, which I’ll refer to occasionally as we make
our way through these first 60~ episodes, he calls the attack “keep your eye on
the birdie,” whereas in the Funimation dub, it’s a “Double Sunday.” As stupid
as the former is, I prefer it to the nonsensical latter. There’s a sinister
sort of innocence to “keep your eye on the birdie” which contrasts to its
purpose. The attack probably would have killed Piccolo, or at least severely
wounded him, had Raditz not sensed another, even greater power somewhere else
on the planet.
I suppose it’s that
foolish pride that caused Raditz to make the fatal mistake of not killing
Piccolo when he had the chance. He could easily have finished him off in a
minute and still gone off to look for “Kakarot” immediately after, but he
must’ve figured he’d get around to it after recruiting Kakarot. Speaking of “Kakarot,”
it becomes obvious to us as viewers by the end of the episode—if it wasn’t
already—that the “Kakarot” Raditz is looking for is actually Goku, as a couple
of flashback pictures show us a baby Goku, tail and all, being loaded up into a
similar capsule that Raditz himself arrived in.
Anyone who watched
(or perhaps read) all of DB wondering just where the hell a guy like Goku came
from gets their answer here, and I can’t help but wonder what the contemporary
reaction to that revelation was. How many people were disappointed that Goku
turned out to be a space alien the entire time, and how many of them already
had a suspicion? For a goofy show like DB was to lend itself so suddenly to the
realm of science-fiction must’ve been jarring, but I think this episode handles
it pretty well, in that it introduces a new, frighteningly strong (for the
time) villain, gives him a strong motivation involving the lead character, and
showcases the contempt for innocent life that all other main DBZ villains after
him would also have. “This guy could be a problem,” Piccolo says after Raditz
spares his life by leaving, and I feel like that could easily work as a
subtitle for this whole series.
(2/5)
(2/5)
Other
Observations:
--Gohan chases a butterfly around in this episode, calling
it “Mr. Butterfly.” First off, how rude of him to assume the butterfly’s
gender, and second, is that like a foreshadowing for “Mr. Piccolo?”
--Speaking of Gohan, is anyone else struck by how smart he
seems in this episode? He’s pretty good at expressing himself for a kid who’s
just shy of five. I guess he really is Momma’s little scholar.
--Drinking game: every time Gohan says “daddy,” take a
drink. If he’s crying as he says it, take two.
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