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.
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