Dragonball Z Episode 11 Review -- Terror on Arlia

 

Dragonball Z Episode 11 Review – “Terror on Arlia”

Okay, this is the episode I remember.

I have this weird habit of imagining overpowered characters showing up in universes with less powerful fighters. I’ve had it ever since I was a little kid, but it’s become a lot more reasonable since then. Take recently, for example—my roommate basically was the reason I sat through Avatar: The Last Airbender twice, which, don’t get me wrong, that’s not a bad show in the slightest, but it’s also not necessarily on my wavelength. I don’t really care about Eastern mysticism, Shakras and all that bullshit, and the show became full of that sort of thing at times. Thankfully, there was enough stuff in there that I could latch onto so I wasn’t bored. I was merely… I don’t know, it just wasn’t the kind of show I would have pursued on my own. As I was watching it, I was just imagining like, Younger Toguro or Mercenary Tao showing up and bulldozing all these scrubs to the fucking ground. It’s stupid, I know, those characters wouldn’t fit at all. I guess it’s sort of a “Death Battle” thing, where people deliberately mismatch fighters from different franchises to prove an immature point about how OP their favorite hero/villain is. I swear, I mean no disrespect towards ATLA. I’m just a hopeless nerd with a bias toward big, powerful killdozer-types from my childhood.

Anyway, the point of this is that Nappa and Vegeta showing up on Arlia and just fucking wrecking everything is the sort of thing I imagine when I come up with those mismatch scenarios. Internally, DBZ does this all the time, with the most noteworthy example being Frieza, but we’ll get to that when we get to it. Nappa and Vegeta treat the Arlians as nothing but sport the entire time they’re there, and as awful as it is to see them blow up the planet they just got through liberating, it’s pretty hilarious too. This episode perfectly illustrates just what is so threatening about Nappa and Vegeta. You couldn’t imagine Raditz one-shotting an entire planet the way Vegeta did, and he doesn’t even seem winded.

Plus, we don’t see Nappa and Vegeta murdering innocent beings, for the most part. The new King of Arlia is just as ruthless a bastard as any Saiyan. The first thing that happens to Nappa and Vegeta upon their arrival to Arlia is them being arrested and held in an Arlian prison for the crime of, I guess, trespassing. Hell, a King doesn’t need a reason to arrest someone, so “just cuz” is as good a reason as any. Some other prisoners, who are actually Arlian, inform the Saiyans that the king is a murderous dictator who is marrying one of their ex-fiancees against her will, not to mention making her watch as he forces Arlian warriors to battle each other for sport and throwing them into death pits when they lose. Not a good guy, which just makes Nappa and Vegeta demonstrating their horrific power against them feel less like a genocide, even though it still technically is.

On Earth, things are progressing smoothly. Gohan has pretty much become the master of his domain (not in the Seinfeld sense, don’t be gross). He’s gone from being afraid of that giant T-Rex from the beginning of his stay here, to trying to fight it unsuccessfully, to being able to not only defeat it, but lop off pieces of his tail to eat as dinosaur steaks. You start to feel a little sorry for the dinosaur, until you remember that this is nature, and the asshole was trying to eat Gohan and still is. Besides, Gohan’s not killing him or even mortally damaging him. Just a little tail meat, is all. Piccolo looks on at this with pride. He's mastering his training. His training of being left outside to almost die a bunch of times. Man, could you imagine how fucking mad Goku would be at Piccolo if his kid got eaten by a T-Rex on the first day?

We don’t get Tien this episode, but we do get Launch, who attentive viewers may recall as the woman with two personalities that she switches back and forth on every time she sneezes. If you do recall her, congratulations, you officially care more about this character than Akira Toriyama, who pretty much lost all recollection of her existence by the time the Saiyan saga ended. She was always a useless, vestigial comedic character, and I honestly can’t remember her doing anything of value during the original show. She was always just kind of there, existing as a joke character, getting in the way but ultimately just wasting screen time that could have been devoted to the important characters. It wasn’t so bad in early Dragonball where there wasn’t a whole lot of plot in the first place, but by the time Z rolls around and our protagonists are faced with their biggest existential threat thus far, Launch’s existence can’t really be justified anymore.

In any case, we have us here a really solid episode. Maybe the last truly interesting one until we get to the Saiyans’ arrival on Earth. We can infer from the behavior on Arlia that these Saiyans don’t fuck around, and we’ve seen the first outright destruction of a single planet by a character. Vegeta establishes the baseline power level necessary to destroy a planet as being 18,000, and even as other characters—including Vegeta himself—surpass that number by leaps and bounds, no one makes blowing up a planet look easier than Vegeta does right there. I’m not sure if the showrunners knew that Saiyans weren’t supposed to be able to breathe in space, but that minor plot snaggle is easily overlooked. This is an important milestone in this series, where the danger is no longer from a King Piccolo-type wanting to simply conquer the world, to a race of intergalactic pirates more than willing to destroy a planet with a single terrible beam. And this is only the very beginning of Z. The power creep is just getting started.

(4/5)

A Few Final Thoughts:

--Apparently Vegeta can communicate with Nappa via telepathy. I don’t think this ever comes up again.

--Of course the King of Arlia believes Nappa is stronger just because he’s taller.

--Vegeta: “Of course, it’s the old ‘giant-bug-in-the-ground’ trick.”

Dragonball Z Episode 10 Review -- "A New Friend"

 Okay, finally, we get to sink our teeth into some new characters in this episode. Well, I mean, besides weird Other World characters who don’t matter in the least. Then again, the only thing separating Yamcha and Puar from that description is the fact that they aren’t dead… yet.

 So, Yamcha has become a joke in the DBZ canon, but I’m going to play devil’s advocate for the guy a little bit over the course of these reviews, because it isn’t all his fault that he sinks so far into irrelevance. Plus, let’s be honest, it’s not like the guy was any more successful in the original Dragonball, where he was more often than not a victim of the good old Worf Effect. But the guy exhibits a real desire and willingness to go into this fight. He even jumps in when a fight breaks out on the baseball field where he happens to be batting home run after home run, and he’s so stoked he just jumps in and kicks the shit out of people with a big cheesy grin. And as for fighting the Saiyans, well, he just can’t wait to avenge Goku. That’s definitely way more zeal than Krillin shows. Then again, that could as easily be seen as intelligence on Krillin’s part. Now there’s a man who knows his limitations.

  We get to hear a little bit about the status of Bulma and Yamcha’s relationship in this episode. Apparently Yamcha stood her up on a date and then was spotted days later with another girl at some game or other social function that involves tickets, at which point Yamcha protests that he had tickets and what was he supposed to do with them?! It’s all very drab and reminiscent of your shitty first relationship. Later on, Yamcha and Bulma warm up to each other again, as they and the rest of the group are flying… somewhere… which is explained in a later episode.

  So what’s Gohan doing in today’s story? Well, he started catching his own fish to cook and eat, that’s definitely an improvement. You know what they say—give a man a fish, you’ll feed him for a day, but if you leave a five-year-old human/alien hybrid in the desert so he can get stronger in time to face a pair of intergalactic planet pirates, he will eventually teach himself to fish so that he can survive in a show that is just itching to kill off its main characters as often as possible. I know it’s probably not as snappy as you remember, but trust me, that’s the saying. I’m just… Saiyan.

  Gohan meets a big-ass dinosaur this episode, and after being momentarily freaked out by it, he helps it by slowly and agonizingly pulling a small thorn (comparative to the dino’s size, at least—the fucking thing’s as big as Gohan’s sword) out of it and then letting it get killed by a different dinosaur. If it’s any consolation to Gohan, I’m sure it was the smell of blood from the oozing thorn wound that attracted the other dinosaur in the first place.

No, but seriously—Gohan does put in a valiant effort to try and save the dinosaur he decided would be his pet halfway through the episode. He doesn’t get scared away from the big T-Rex, and this was the same one that was chasing him around a couple of episodes ago, so now you know he means business. Unfortunately, the T-Rex is easily able to swap him away with a few flicks of its tail, knocking Gohan out and far enough away from the battle scene that he doesn’t get up until it’s already too late, and what he happens upon when he wakes up is the sight of his new dino friend’s big skeleton laying upside-down on the ground, every bit of meat having been stripped off the bone by the larger predator.

  As Perfect Cell says to Gohan much, much later in the series: “Yet another one you couldn’t save.”

  Gohan’s journey through self-reliance requires him to confront the harsh truths of death and loneliness. Sometimes, nobody’s going to make you a meal and put you to bed. Sometimes the people you love, or the things you care about, are going to be taken away by outside forces you can’t always control. In finding this out, Gohan is not only becoming a fighter, he’s learning how to accept and understand the plight of others. He’s learning how to save those he cares about, and learning that sometimes something cannot be saved. And he’s also learning that dinosaurs probably don’t make very good pets. You know, the bloodlust and all that.

(3/5)

A Few Final Thoughts:

-Hey, we cut to Goku on Snake Way, and guess what he’s doing? He’s sleeping. Fucking sleeping. They might as well show HIM taking a piss every episode instead of Gohan. At least Gohan’s usually doing something interesting between pisses.

-There’s a black baseball player in this episode named Pepper Johnson, and he sounds exactly like a cross between Semi-Perfect and Perfect Cell. Wonderful. Dameon Clarke’s best work.

-You know, I can’t get over it—why do they insist on showing us Goku sleeping on Snake Way? He’s a fucking spirit, right? Does he even need sleep? Or food? Or any of the other things he’s bitching about not having as he runs down this god-forsaken path?

Dragonball Z Episode 9 Review -- “The Strangest Robot”

 

Here’s the first of several episodes during the training arc where the focus is going to be Gohan going on an adventure and growing up a little bit more in the process. It can be said that Dragonball Z is the story of Gohan if the original was the story of Goku. I’m not 100% convinced, considering the sheer weight Goku and a couple of other characters shoulder throughout the Z series. Episodes like this, however filler-y they may be, could advance the Gohan argument easily. When we started Dragonball, Goku was already a fully-licensed jungle boy, not even knowing what a car was when he first saw one. Dragonball Z shows us Gohan starting out as a pampered little shit and then becoming an even greater warrior than Goku was at that age due to sheer necessity.

Gohan wakes up at the beginning of the episode in his new combat clothes and a sword, both of which are courtesy of Piccolo. I have to say it: Gohan looks cute as hell in his little mini-Goku outfit. But any kind of goodwill generated by that gets tossed out the window as soon as he starts whining again. Note of interest: Gohan has trouble balancing for a bit after having lost his tail, but he gets over it very quickly. By comparison, I think it took Goku a pretty good while to get used to not having a tail. It was something he had to train past, if I remember correctly.

Anyway, the point of this episode: after being chased around by various wildlife, Gohan winds up in a cave and meets a robot that is trapped underneath some stones. Gohan wakes it up and it immediately starts screeching to be put back in “standby-mode.” Gohan complies at first, but then wakes it up again when he doesn’t know how to get out of the cave. The robot shows him a path right over its shoulder, bitches some more about “standby mode,” and is put back to sleep, only for Gohan to find that the path out of there leads to a huge drop and a cliff-side that’s a very huge jump across, more than any kid—hell, normal adult—could be expected to hop across.

So it just kind of goes on like this—Gohan keeps waking the robot up to whine at it, the robot gets upset when Gohan does this because somehow his voice is causing the roof to collapse when it’s too loud, then it restates its demands to be put back in standby mode because it’s trying to conserve energy. Honestly, the whole friendship or connection they spontaneously have by the end of the episode falls flat for me, because their whole relationship is based on bitching at each other. Gohan wants food/a way out, the robot wants standby mode/the roof not to collapse. Eventually, Gohan realizes that the robot is Capsule Corp brand, and has apparently been reading the manuals (proving that he is still not, in fact, a real man) because he instantly gets the robot to cook some wild mushrooms for him. Gohan had to have the robot tell him where to get the mushrooms in the first place, of course.

The central thesis of this episode is a good one, and it serves as a gateway for Gohan to get to the next level of his training—or, as we experience it, his character development. Gohan learns that he has to get stronger and more self-reliant so that his friends won’t have to sacrifice themselves for him. The robot winds up having to save Gohan from the cave-in, tossing him far enough out of the cave that he can make it to the other cliff-face, only for Gohan to hop right back over to check on his new robot friend. We get a little “Terminator 2” moment between Gohan and the robot before it shuts down forever and Gohan emerges from the ordeal with a new sense of purpose.

I wouldn’t call this episode “good,” or especially necessary for that matter, but it does help to illustrate Gohan’s journey from his old childish ways to being the fighter we know him as much later on. I think it’s safe to say that these reviews are going to get shorter as we muddle through this bridge arc between Raditz and the other two Saiyans, but I still want to give these each a chance. A good filler episode in this series can at least entertain, or elucidate things about the main characters (hell, even side characters) that we wouldn’t learn just from watching them in a fight sequence. Besides, episodes like this, which are self-contained and have a silly little premise, remind me of the easy-going days of early Dragonball, where lightning-fast martial artists shooting beams of pure energy and striking each other with boulder-crushing fists were a thing of the future, when the focus was much more on a strange little boy and the strange little friends he makes as he journeys with increasing confidence through a world he barely understands.

(2/5)

A Few Final Thoughts:

-We continue to get blessed by this show’s unflappable desire to show us shots of Gohan taking a piss. I know more about Gohan’s urinary habits than I do anyone else’s in the history of fiction, with the possible exception of House, whose catheter scene haunts me to this very day.

-I bet if Piccolo knew there was a robot in a cave nearby who could cook wild mushrooms for Gohan, he wouldn’t have picked this wilderness to drop him off at.

-What the hell is with that giant pile of salt in the underground lair Gohan winds up in?

Dragonball Z Episode 8 Review -- "Gohan Goes Bananas"

  It’s in this episode that Bulma figures out how to make the scouter read human numbers, which means we’re already at the point in the show where power levels are a thing. We have Krillin in the lead at 206, Roshi with a cool 139—not bad for a geezer—and the Turtle at… .001. Hey, maybe Raditz was right, the scouter is broken. I could have sworn there was a filler scene in the Android arc where the turtle beats up a couple of asshole surfer dudes on Roshi’s island. Power level talk has always been bullshit, though. It was proven as early as the fight with Raditz, he didn’t anticipate that Goku and Piccolo could swell their respective power levels by concentrating their energy in one specific place. Funny, you’d think whoever invented the scouter would have accounted for that.

As the title indicates, this is the episode where Gohan goes bananas. And by “goes bananas,” he turns into an enormous gorilla because of the full moon’s light and proceeds to rampage until Piccolo blows up the moon, then rips his tail off. Yeah. If you’re just now deciding to check out DBZ, you might feel like you were thrown into the deep end of the pool, but being honest, this is nothing. Just wait until you get to the Buu saga.

Thing is, the Oozaru scene doesn’t even last long, couldn’t have been much more than three or four minutes. This is the first time anybody starting with Z instead of the original DB would see the famous Oozaru that Raditz had alluded to in his conversation with Goku, so you’d think the filler-hungry animators would make more of a thing out of it. I guess there’s not much that’s interesting about a huge gorilla monster destroying some rock formations. Or, for that matter, Piccolo literally blowing up the moon, which should have been an enormously catastrophic event for planet Earth. Then again, Piccolo would know a thing or two about catastrophic events for planet Earth. His dad was one of them.

We get Yajirobe in this episode, he tells Krillin to round up the other Z Warriors and report to the Lookout for special training. From what I remember, Yamcha’s a baseball player, and Tien and Chiaotzu are hanging out in the middle of a mountain range, training in futility to still be relevant on the increasingly absurd power level scaling of this series. Or, maybe that was in the Buu saga. I don’t know—honestly, I don’t know why Tien insists on training alone, he gets his biggest power boosts in the Saiyan saga and the Namek saga, both of which involved other people besides Chiaotzu being around. I guess he just has to do things his own damn way.

Speaking of “doing things,” guess who didn’t do them? Krillin. He comes back from Chi-Chi’s house near the beginning of this episode and tells Bulma and Roshi that he didn’t even tell Chi-Chi what happened, prompting Bulma to immediately scold him, which is what he damn well deserves, to be blunt. Roshi then says “Well, I can’t blame you,” and in the best comedy moment of the episode, Bulma replies “Why not, I just did.” It’s going to be fun to see her, Krillin and Gohan take to space together. Sure, a lot of that is filler bullshit too, but unlike Goku on Snake Way and Gohan out by himself, there’s a lot more character interaction. That’s what I’m starving for in some of these filler episodes—if you’re going to take away the fighting that makes DBZ so great, could we at least get some snappy dialogue? I’m not asking for West Wing-level conversing here, but shit, I’ll take what I can get over Goku and Gohan taking turns whining about the lack of food in their lives. Or, not-lives, in the case of Goku.

Chi-Chi does eventually find out, and her response—to go blue and faint—is about par for the course. Chi-Chi shows up at Roshi’s house, taking matters into her own hands… and wearing lipstick for some reason, when she almost never does. Master Roshi sees her coming, and when Krillin suggests they run (to where? You’re on a fucking island, dumbass) Roshi says, “It’s better to meet life head-on, Krillin.” In the pantheon of quotable quotes, that ranks somewhere up there with the “using your head” line from Toy Story. By the way, I mentioned earlier that Chi-Chi showed up at Roshi’s house. Yeah, she drove. I’m really confused about that, because the greatest episode of DBZ ever made, Goku’s Ordeal, suggested that she couldn’t drive. I guess an air-car and a car with tires might be different, but… eh? Filler?

So, overall, I feel like this is a transition from the consequential last couple of episodes—which were still slow, mind you—to the rest of the training arc, which will have a whole bunch of weird shit in it. There’s an episode where Gohan hangs out with a robot (I think that one’s coming up next, actually), an episode where Gohan discovers an orphan hideout, an episode where Krillin and some of the other Z fighters fight some fake Saiyans or some shit—there’s just a lot of stuff. In fact, I distinctly remember Gohan basically torturing a dinosaur by lopping off slices of its tail to eat like big, delicious steaks over the course of a few days. I wonder how much of the Saiyan side of Gohan we’re going to see during this arc? He must show some backbone eventually, that’s how he survives for six months. Let’s just hope it comes soon. If I have to hear the kid keep screaming for his mother another ten episodes, I think I’m going to swear off reviewing long-ass anime shows episode by episode forever. Yeah, I’ll never get around to my 1,000-plus One Piece series, what a tragedy (note; I’ve never watched one piece).

(2/5)

A Few Final Thoughts:

-I’m glad Roshi didn’t get to do his brilliant idea of writing Chi-Chi a letter explaining what happened to Goku and Gohan. God knows he wouldn’t be able to resist hitting on her during it.

-I forgot Ox King was one of Roshi’s pupils.

-Why do we have to watch Gohan taking a piss so much? For that matter, why did we have to see his genitals when he was de-transitioning?

-You’d think Chi-Chi would have already snipped off Gohan’s tail because it’s so abnormal. Kid probably would have screamed bloody murder, though.

Dragonball Z Episode 7 Review - "Day One"

Here begins the trial of Gohan’s training under Piccolo, and the ongoing story of Piccolo’s redemption. In this episode, and I was surprised when this happened because I didn’t remember it from when I was a kid, Kami states that he has foreseen his own coming death, and by extension Piccolo’s. Noting the change in Piccolo’s heart, Kami wonders if perhaps Piccolo got the same vision, and is choosing to use his last year on Earth to take the son of his sworn enemy under his wing. Again, this is very irony-laden stuff, and I’ve come to really admire how much depth of story and characterization exists in these early episodes. Toriyama did a great job of picking up the threads of plot left behind by Dragonball and weaving them into something richer and, at least initially, more focused.

As interesting as the journey Goku’s taking down Snake Way might be… sometimes… occasionally, the most actual characterization and depth in these next several filler-tastic episodes comes out of Gohan’s tribulation that takes him from being a human boy with a knack for math to a warrior whose power ranks up with Krillin’s and Piccolo’s, before eventually soaring into its own stratosphere. You can trace a lot of what happens to him in the Cell arc back to these initial moments out in the wasteland, defenseless, being chased by dinosaurs and frightened by snakes. In just six or seven short years, this is the boy who will save the world from Perfect Cell.

What do we learn about his character from this episode? Well, any other five-year-old, at least in the real world, might just freeze up entirely, or wander around screaming for help until they exhaust themselves. Gohan does do some of that stuff at first, right after Piccolo leaves. Almost immediately, he starts scoping out somewhere to stay, and manages to once again channel his mysterious powers to outwit a dinosaur by flying himself up to the top of a large rock pillar. Sure, Gohan doesn’t learn how to build a home out of rocks and sticks, he doesn’t kill his first meal, but he takes on the trait of a survivor, which is the ability to recognize and acclimate to one’s surroundings.

Someone who DOESN’T overcome the circumstances he finds himself in is Krillin. Krillin has his moments in the show later on, but between his total failure in the brief Raditz arc and this little incident, one wouldn’t be unjustified in writing him off as a loser comic relief character. There’s a reason why a “Krillin Owned” count existed in DBZ Abridged, and it wasn’t because Krillin owned—he GOT owned, a lot. Now, granted, on an emotional level his task isn’t easy, but goddamn, Krillin, you know she’s going to find out! At least tell her now rather than make her feel like shit for ranting and raving about Goku when she finds out later! Krillin winds up eating dinner and staying over at Chi-Chi’s, who I am surprised is as hospitable as she is, considering how much she resents the Z Fighters for being the bunch of karate bums they are. But then, there aren’t many about whom you can say, “yeah, we were both there when Goku and Piccolo blew up the arena at the last Tenkaichi Budokai.

Other World is full of some strange-ass shit in this episode. I’d forgotten about almost all of it. I feel like Akira Toriyama either didn’t have any of it in his original manga, or it was there because he was trying to figure out just exactly what he wanted out of this setting. There’s a shot of a café where a bunch of monstrous characters based off of things like Frankenstein and Dracula are just sitting around, enjoying some steaming… coffee? And whatever outlandish shit this place probably serves. There, we find Fortuneteller Baba—first appearance!—and the blue imp from one episode ago. The only purpose of this scene is for the imp to tell Baba what Goku told him about not wishing him back for a year. It’s wild that they built this whole strange Monster Café setting around such an insignificant plot point. Like, did we even need to see him relay the message to Baba, or couldn’t they have just cut to her telling the Z Fighters?

I guess I shouldn’t complain. It was an entertaining enough scene, complete with a mixed-up face man being completely incompetent at counting out change. What isn’t as entertaining is Goku fucking around on Snake Way, whining about being hungry (because apparently he, as a spirit, is still hungry. That’s gotta suck). Goku gets the bright idea to try jumping across the gaps in the winding Snake Way path, and as anyone could predict, he winds up slipping and almost falling into the hellish dimension below, complete with ghostly arms grasping at him, ready to drag him into the swirling pool of darkness. Other than that, nothing much interesting happens with him.

But again, the stuff with Gohan is really the most interesting. Having escaped a dinosaur using his latent powers, he winds up at the top of a huge pillar, with nothing to eat and nothing to warm himself with. A strong gust blows by. Suddenly, in front of Gohan, there are two apples. Even before he eats them, Gohan ponders how they could have came to be, as no trees are visible where he is. Gohan shrugs it off, as any hungry kid probably would, and starts chomping down on one. Piccolo looks on from afar. This is probably the first actual kind action he’s ever performed, purely selfless. Gohan pauses and lifts his head from the apple, tears in the corners of his eyes:

“They’re sour! I miss my momma’s cooking!”

Even I had to get pissed a little bit at that. Like, Gohan’s not wrong to feel how he does, for God’s sake he’s four, but Piccolo looked fucking livid. That, he swears, is the last time he’s going to help Gohan. He has no idea how many times he’s going to disprove that by the end of the series.

(2/5)

A Few Final Thoughts:

-Badass Piccolo line: “You’ll laugh at your fears when you find out who you really are.”

-In the middle of the dead-ass wilderness, Gohan still finds time to try and make new friends with every animal he comes across. That is, unless they’re trying to eat him.

-“He’s dea—uh, delayed, yeah!” Nice save, baldy.

-At least Gohan goes ahead and eats the apples.