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?!”
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