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?
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