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”?
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