Dragonball Z Episode 5 Review: "Gohan's Rage"

Dragonball Z Episode 5 Review: “Gohan’s Rage”

  How many other episodes of this show could have been titled “Gohan’s Rage?” First one that comes to mind is, of course, the episode where Gohan finally goes SS2 against Cell (and yeah, I know, most people do SSJ2, but fuck that, this is the dub, there’s no “Saiyajin”). There’s also “Gohan Returns,” the 100^th episode of the series, where Gohan goes back to check in his father during his final battle with Frieza. Maybe the episode not long after where Gohan fights with Vegeta on Earth during the last moments of Goku/Frieza, but that’s just a filler sparring match.

But don’t get me wrong; this episode deserves the title.

  I didn’t rate this episode 5 out of 5 for nothing, because though most people don’t really care about it, this is among the most consequential episodes in the entire show. Think about all of the major events in this thing: Gohan’s hidden powers are shown in battle for the first time, Raditz is killed, Goku—our unstoppable, infallible hero—gives his life to help kill his own homicidal brother, Piccolo is their killer, Vegeta and Nappa are introduced to us for the first time, and—of course—Goku is first taken to train in the Other World, something he will do time and time again as circumstances require, or at least allow him to.

  It’s almost, dare I say, Shakespearian how these events in the episode play out. Save for Piccolo, this is an intra-family battle. Goku, Raditz, Gohan, these are all blood-related characters! And Piccolo is Goku’s greatest enemy. The levels of layered irony in play here are staggering—Gohan is about to be killed by Raditz (“You are the first Saiyan to ever damage me like this, my nephew. I will give you a death that is worthy of a Saiyan.”) after the former severely damages the latter with a single headbutt to the solar plexus to save his father, but said father manages to grab Raditz from behind in a full Nelson, giving Piccolo—the arch-nemesis of Goku who has sworn to kill him since his own birth—the opportunity to kill them both in one attack, the one meant for Goku since its inception. And all of this to save the Earth, to save Gohan, the two things that Piccolo would just as soon kill as ever save. But how else could he defeat Raditz, the brother of his worst enemy?

  And think about this: when King Piccolo was dealt his death blow by Goku—who, might I add, burst through his stomach to kill him, similarly to Gohan’s rage headbutt and Piccolo’s Special Beam Cannon against Raditz—he spit out the egg that would become Piccolo Jr., the one sworn to avenge his father and take over the Earth once again. So Piccolo saves the Earth by killing his enemy (“how noble for you, and how convenient for me”), who he recognizes will, and must, come back to help battle the other Saiyans when they arrive one year later. He kills Goku, which had always been his life’s mission, to make him stronger when he returns, which is the last thing in the world he should want, because Goku killed his father. Furthermore, Piccolo himself becomes something of a surrogate father for Gohan during the year between the Raditz arc and the rest of the Saiyan arc, and Gohan’s the son of his enemy!

  THAT is how much the Saiyan arc upended everything that had been set into place at the end of Dragonball. Everything is now topsy-turvy, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria. I never thought about how genius these circumstances were until I started writing these essays, but holy shit, this first arc is brilliant in terms of how it completely redefines the circumstances of Goku’s and Piccolo’s relation to each other. From the King Piccolo arc to the end of the Raditz arc—or maybe the end of the Saiyan arc as a whole—you could legitimately write out a strong five-act play.

  But this ain’t Shakespeare, this is DBZ. And we know the main difference is that no one stays dead in this damn show, so even before Goku’s body is taken to the Other World, Piccolo, with a knowing smirk, acknowledges he’ll be revived with the dragon balls, and he wants this to happen. I wonder, is this the moment where he switched sides? Yeah, he’s still talking about taking over the world after he takes Gohan to train for a year, but that could just be his own denial of his changed feelings. There’s a filler flashback towards the end of the Frieza saga where Piccolo says something like, “How could I hate someone who would make such an honorable sacrifice?” It’s likely that Piccolo was still leaning evil after Goku and Raditz were killed. But I also think, at the very least, Piccolo came to deeply respect Goku as more than just a warrior, but as a person, when he staked him and his brother through the gut that day on the battlefield. Goku didn’t even hesitate, he knew what needed to be done, he would have done it dragon balls or not, and in that moment of deep self-sacrifice he helped recalibrate Piccolo’s entire moral compass. It’s a beautiful moment.

  But of course, we haven’t even covered the next major looming conflict. Piccolo blabs that Goku will be revived with the dragon balls, trying to mock Raditz in his last seconds of life, and Raditz gets in one last blow—the transmitter in his scouter relayed that message one year across space to Vegeta and Nappa, who are now on the warpath, but not for Raditz, the disgrace who couldn’t even hold his own against his little brother. No, they’re after the dragon balls. Interestingly, we see that Nappa is willing to use them to wish Raditz back, in fact, he assumes that’s what they’re going to do with them. But Vegeta ain’t having it, he’s got no use for Raditz. No, what he needs is immortality, so he and Nappa can become Super Saiyans (first mention of this in the entire show!) and, though this isn’t directly stated yet, shake off Frieza’s chains of tyranny that had been holding them captive since the destruction of Planet Vegeta and almost the entire Saiyan race.

  So, this is the last time we ever see Raditz, except for at least one flashback I can remember much later in the series. What little we know about him was that he was the weakest of the trio of evil Saiyans, he didn’t really have the respect of the other two (they don’t seem surprised at ALL that he died), he had a piss-poor sense of honor (begged for his life, wanted to murder his own brother and nephew, was totally shocked that Goku would be willing to sacrifice his own life to end his), and ultimately existed more as a catalyst for the rest of the Saiyan/Namek/Frieza sagas than as a character of any considerable emotional import. Hell, Nappa’s more sympathetic than Raditz, and that’s the guy who single-handedly chews through most of the Z-team by himself. So it’s no surprise that Raditz is such a forgettable villain, despite being hugely important.

  Still, these first five episodes were a damn fine start, and in a way, I wish the rest of the series had the sense of pacing these episodes have. Sure, they could be pared down to about three, if you remove most of the first episode and a good chunk of the second, as well as some unnecessary Chi-Chi scenes through all of them, but they watch very well. I didn’t expect this to be one of the finest episodes of the series when I sat down to watch it, but damned if it wasn’t.

5/5

Stray Observations:

--And so begins the brief, storied life of redhead Vegeta. Only thing that’s missing is an Irish accent, and I wouldn’t have been remotely surprised if the Ocean dub or initial Funi dub had given him one.

--Gotta love the spirals they draw for Gohan’s eyes when Raditz backhands him. In the middle of this gravely serious confrontation, they still add that Looney Tunes-style flourish.

--Raditz doesn’t do the dying speech as good as Vegeta does much later on Namek, but hey, Vegeta’s got much better material to work with.

--I didn’t even mention Roshi, Krillin, and Bulma in the review. They showed up after the fighting was over, and didn’t do much outside of mourning Goku’s death.

--Oh, and Ox-King shows up too, in a scene with Chi-Chi. Meh.

--Gohan’s power level as he prepares to attack Raditz: 1,370. Raditz, having a max power of 12-1500, had every right to be shitting his underoos a little.

--And finally, the Raditz line that can be used during any DBZ saga at some points: “I should have killed you!”

Dragonball Z Episode 4 Review: "Piccolo's Plan"

  We talked in the review of last episode about Piccolo’s intelligence, and we get to see a little more of it here. Piccolo knows, by around the mid-point of the episode when Raditz has blown off one of his arms (Raditz: “Oh, has anyone seen my arm?! You can’t miss it; it’s green!”), that he and Goku aren’t getting anywhere in their fight with Raditz. The guy is just too damn squirrely and instinctively a warrior, not to mention he’s way out of their league power-wise. So Piccolo concocts a strategy that involves an attack he was saving up for Goku. The problem with said attack is that it takes five minutes (thankfully, not in Frieza time) to charge up, so while he does so, Goku’s gonna have to last on his own.

  It may sound like Piccolo’s kind of throwing Goku to the proverbial wolf with that plan, but keep in mind what a tough motherfucker he really is: Raditz took out one of his arms with an energy beam, and he doesn’t take even a second to holler out in pain like just about anyone else in the show might do. Instead, he puts his mind to work, knowing that he’s not much use in the fight with only one arm. Hell, even with two arms, he wasn’t putting in a dent. All Goku, the nigh-invincible warrior, has to do is last for five minutes, and considering he’s taken some pretty severe lickings in his long history of fighting, it’s not too much of a stretch for him to make that work.

  And for a little while, he does. Sure, he doesn’t deal out any damage, but he keeps his brother on the defensive, demonstrating that he can concentrate his power into a single location, namely his hands, to shoot an energy beam. The problem of course, is that Raditz can do that too, and after nearly effortlessly blocking Goku’s beam, he retaliates with one of his own, just like Mercenary Tao did all those years ago. ‘Cept, at least Goku managed to shred some of Tao’s clothing. It’s not often that someone in DBZ scores a direct hit with a beam that sends their opponent plummeting out of the air, so it’s satisfying how successful Raditz’s move turns out to be.

  They do a good job in general here of making Raditz seem like a legitimate threat, as opposed to the punchline people generally see him as in the broader context of the show. I mean, sure, his power level of ~1,200 is easy to scoff at by the time Frieza gets introduced, but nobody on Earth had ever seen a power like Raditz’s up to that point in the show. Even the terrifying King Piccolo, who struck fear into the heart of Master Roshi, is a pitiful excuse for a threat when measured against Raditz. The fact that Goku’s bro becomes so negligible so quickly is not so much a testament to Raditz’s failure as a villain, it’s more to the show’s failure to keep its power-scaling from going absolutely bonkers.

  Speaking of power levels, Piccolo’s rises to around 1,330 as he’s finishing charging up the Special Beam Cannon. Raditz does something DBZ villains rarely do by chiding himself for underestimating his opponents. But he’s also a Saiyan, so he can’t stop himself from goading Piccolo into firing his beam… which he then dodges at the expense of only one of his shoulder armor-blade things (I used to really love those back when I was a kid. I was sort of disappointed when Vegeta switched to the more minimalistic armor starting just before the fight with Frieza).

  Piccolo is stunned. This makes Raditz apparently faster than the speed of light. I don’t know if Piccolo is measuring the speed of light correctly, because lord knows our heroes don’t have much time or care for book smarts, but fuck it, Piccolo’s a smart fellow, I’ll just take his word for it. Raditz has a scorched shoulder, but otherwise he’s no worse for wear… and then dear, dear brother grabs him by the tail, exploiting the weakness used against him several times in the original DB.

  Now we get to see the recurring issue of Goku’s character through the first third or so of this show, and that is his unwavering empathy in the face of sociopathic villainy. Raditz has given him no respite up to this point, yet with just a little bit of pleading and lying, is able to get Goku to loosen his grip on his tail. What Raditz does here is disgraceful, and something that separates him from his boss Vegeta, who for all his faults would never beg his opponent for mercy. Not even when he was taking the worst beating of his life against Frieza, even when his pain and shame reduced him to tears, did he ever try to bargain. Vegeta would have probably killed Raditz on the spot for the way he begged Goku to spare him.

  But, this also reflects poorly on Goku’s judgment, when he allows it to work. Goku sparing people who have aligned themselves against him has resulted in new allies such as Tien, Piccolo, and eventually Vegeta, but has also caused him a lot of grief against less scrupulous opponents like General White, Mercenary Tao, and eventually Frieza. He has his own sort of honor, but it is much less bloodthirsty. He loves to fight, but not to torment or kill, and the next villains of this show do that on a scale even King Piccolo or the Red Ribbon Army couldn’t hope to match. He’s too damn soft, and that’s a sticking part of his character arc throughout these first 100 episodes.

  So who better to save Goku from his own brother, than his own son? Goku, predictably, is once again being beaten by Raditz immediately after letting him go, leaving a frustrated Piccolo to continue charging his second attack though he knows Raditz can just dodge it again. But his screams of agony as his ribs are crushed alert Gohan, whose own latent Saiyan instincts seem to overcome him. This is the first of many, many times we get to see Gohan take on a brief burst of power that stuns his opponent long enough for something else to intervene. Even as Chi-Chi beams proudly at Gohan’s 100 on his math test, he’s about to cripple his own uncle on the battlefield in the next episode. But the shot that caps off the episode is his explosion from Raditz’s space pod, a look of blank rage on his face.

(4/5)

Stray Observations:

--Speaking of Raditz’s space pod, how the hell was he supposed to take Goku with him if there’s only one pod to use? Maybe he has some kind of space Capsule Corp technology that allows him to carry a spare in his pocket—but then, does his armor have pockets? I think Vegeta’s does, but that’s Vegeta.

--I guess I didn’t remember Goku could fly from the very beginning of the series. He must’ve learned it somewhere at the end of Dragon Ball, so what the fuck is he doing flying around on Nimbus still? Conserving energy, one would assume.

--There’s a shot where Piccolo bleeds red. Mistake or was the green blood just censorship?

--“Why so blue, green man?!”

Dragonball Z Episode 3 Review: "Unlikely Alliance"

  And so starts Piccolo’s journey into becoming one of the good guys. It’s kind of like Arnold Schwarzenegger in the first two Terminator movies. He was a pretty good villain, but he made one hell of an entertaining hero when the second one came around. Likewise, Piccolo was a good final villain for Dragonball, but Z was where he was truly able to shine as a member of the Z Fighters. Even though Krillin doesn’t trust him, Roshi’s psyched as hell—the two most powerful fighters on Earth teaming up to take on this new threat makes it possible that the planet won’t be destroyed after all. It’s weird that Roshi’s the excited one, though, because he was scared as hell back in DB when the King Piccolo arc started.

  The alliance is, of course, borne purely of pragmatism. Goku and Piccolo both tried to go it alone against Raditz, and both didn’t even scratch him. All Raditz got out of both encounters was a few singed leg hairs and a nephew trapped in his space pod. So if they combined their powers, Piccolo reasons, they might have a slim chance. Goku doesn’t really trust Piccolo, but understands that this is the best chance he’s got to get back his son. It’s a classic trope of a villain teaming up with the heroes to face a greater evil that has come from seemingly nowhere, and this is one of the cases where the villain actually switches sides permanently. Piccolo’s insistence that he’s still going to try and take over the world is hollow and feels almost out of place when future events are taken into consideration.

  It’s damn lucky for the two of them that Gohan was wearing a hat with a dragon ball stitched on top when Raditz kidnapped him, and that the hat didn’t fly off during the flight back to the space pod. Goku takes the dragon radar and tracks them down with it, the idea having come from Bulma—ever the brains of the outfit. People don’t give Bulma enough credit sometimes; there are so many instances in this show where the characters would be totally fucked without her technology, in particular the dragon radar, which is the only reason any of them were ever able to pursue and acquire the seven magic balls. But, I digress.

  Piccolo is an intelligent bastard, something we’ll see time and time again throughout the series. When Goku brings up the idea of doing a sneak attack on Raditz—an understandable strategy, considering where direct attacks got them—Piccolo tells him it’s a no-go because of the device on Raditz’s face that allows him to sense power levels. The scouter is and has always been a barely-effective crutch for the villains of DBZ. Sure, they can tell you something strong is coming, but they have a piss-poor effectiveness rate when it comes to truly gauging the strength of an opponent. By the time Frieza confronts the Z Warriors face-to-face, the scouters have been proven ineffective and are discarded, with one brief exception, for the rest of the show. After all, most everyone—including many of the villains—can sense power levels without the help of a machine by then.

  Raditz is almost kinda cute with Gohan in this episode. I say “almost” and “kinda” because the larger subtext of “I will kill you if your father fucks up” never leaves their scenes together. Raditz chunks Gohan unceremoniously into his space pod, where he then finds out the crying, defenseless boy has a power level of… 710? The thought is so absurd to Raditz, he immediately faults the scouter itself, declaring it broken. After all, Raditz’s power level is generally measured as somewhere between 1,200 and 1,500, and he’s a powerful adult Saiyan. There’s just no way that…

  Uh-oh. Raditz picks up another large power level, this time far in the distant sky, and just as he’s about to write it off as another scouter malfunction, Goku and Piccolo land. The power level was both of theirs combined. Raditz looks back at his space pod in horror, unable to imagine that Gohan’s earlier power reading was accurate after all. It brings to mind the exchange between Goku and Captain Ginyu much later in the series, where Ginyu watches in absolute slack-jawed disbelief as Goku’s power level increases farther and farther, surpassing his own and entering the stratosphere.

  Goku and Piccolo gain small increases in power when they take off their weighted clothing, but Raditz is undaunted, claiming he’s still “ten times stronger” than the both of them, a claim that is hyperbolic (not like the time chamber) but steeped in some truth. By the end of their brief skirmish, as the narrator starts speaking, it’s clear to the audience that Raditz is still going to be a major, major struggle for Goku and Piccolo to overcome, out-speeding them both at the same time, smirk not leaving his face. Goku and Piccolo may have been big shit at the end of the last series, the two greatest powers on the planet Earth, but as is common in this show, something has come completely out of nowhere to prove that there are plateaus they haven’t even begun to imagine, let alone reach. It will take a combination of trickery and sheer luck for the two of them to overcome Raditz, and he’s just the first of a long fucking set of stairs.

  This is another one of those points where I have to wonder what people were thinking when this first aired. With Raditz being the brother of Goku and being introduced as such an important and powerful character, it would seem like he might turn out to have way more importance than he actually does. Arguably, Raditz’s main role in the show is just to be the catalyst for every future event leading up to the Frieza saga, as well as the guy who pretty much dumps all the information on Goku that he needs to truly understand who he is, where he comes from, and what he will eventually have to do on Namek.

(Rank: 3/5)

Stray Observations

--“Please, brother, show some… pride.” There’s something sad about the way Raditz delivers that line, as if he truly is disappointed, not just amused, that his brother turned out to be such a softie. It makes sense, considering there aren’t exactly a wealth of Saiyans left, and with no female Saiyans around, there will never be other pure-bloods again.

--So, the truck that Raditz is hanging out near is a Chevy, left behind by the farmer (God rest his soul). Did someone pay for that product placement? Shit if I know.

--Man, I cringe at the thought of what a disaster the Raditz fight might have been if Goku had brought along Krillin and Roshi instead of Piccolo. I guess Roshi could have pumped up and done his best Kamehameha if Raditz let him live long enough.

--Turns out the last meal of Raditz’s life is going to be a bear and some weird-looking piece of fruit, it looks like an apple straight out of Yellow Submarine or something.

--Is it mandatory or something that every episode cut to Chi-Chi cleaning around the house and commenting on how smart Gohan is? Did they pay the Japanese voice actress for episodes she wasn’t originally in and then just go, “fuck it, make her say some lines, let’s get some of our money’s worth”?