Shit, I didn’t remember these episodes coming on one right after the other. The two famous filler pieces involving Goku on Snake Way are the Princess Snake incident—shown here—and the Goz and Mez episode right before.
The episode opens with the floor-cleaner falling into Hell.
Whoops. To be fair, he was a shoddy driver. That’s something you can’t be when
you’re driving on Snake Way, man. That’s like being a tight-rope walker with
vertigo. Anyway, Goku ends up at what he thinks is the end of Snake Way but is
actually a head that eats him and then he’s at a two-story home with some blue,
I don’t know, imp-women working there, hanging laundry. This show’s fucking
weird sometimes. He hopes to God, no pun intended, that this is King Kai, only
to be shut down when he finds out it’s only a different blue character who
shows up a few times but is otherwise barely relevant.
It's pretty obvious from the outset that Snake has some bad
intentions, but she lets on as a damn sweet, hospitable lady in the meantime, giving
Goku a buffet of his own, a bath in some hot springs, a bed—but that’s where he
refuses. Now that he knows Snake isn’t King Kai, he’s raring to get the hell
out of dodge and get to King Kai’s so he can train for the Saiyans. Snake does
her best to keep hold on him, even putting drugs in his fucking soup, but
eventually Goku cottons more or less to what is happening here. Next thing you
know, our intrepid hero is being chased around Snake Way by—get this—a huge
fucking SNAKE.
Remember when I said this show was weird sometimes? Yeah.
So while the main plot of this episode wanders off into
goddamned La-La Land, we have some sparring going on at Kami’s Lookout, where
Kami all but says that the humans might have a lot of spirit, but they are
nowhere near ready for the shit that’s about to go down when the Saiyans
arrive. And isn’t that just the sad, sad story of the humans in the DBZ
franchise? I can probably count on one hand their accomplishments after the Saiyan
saga. Most of the great warriors after that are Saiyan or Namekian, and the
latter even falls short eventually. I guess if you count (some of) the Androids
as partly human, you have a counter-argument, but guess who else eventually
falls out of the power scaling? Hint: they rhyme with “mandroids.”
Remember when I said this show was weird sometimes? Yeah.
What else…? I mean, Gohan finds Piccolo doing some more
psychic rock-floating out in the middle of nowhere. Honestly, a few pebbles
being kicked up into the sky and shit aren’t nearly as impressive as entire
pyramids being lifted from the Earth with nothing but the sheer will of one
green man. I guess the point is more about Gohan happening upon him for once
instead of the other way around. Gohan really knows so little about Piccolo at
this point. I have to assume Goku told him nothing about his former arch rival,
he’s not ready for that kind of information yet. So all Gohan’s left with is
the fact that this green asshole is capable of performing seemingly impossible
feats, and he didn’t stand a CHANCE against Raditz. For anyone adult-aged or,
hell, even a teenager, that would be incredibly daunting. Gohan, meanwhile,
probably just wants more of that delicious dinosaur tail-steak.
I have decidedly mixed feelings about this episode. Part of
me almost wishes that Princess Snake wasn’t some monster in disguise, it would
be a lot more interesting if she really was some weird, lonely princess out in
the vast expanse Snake Way covers, managing to find love in this very rare man
who seems to have the compassion and courage of his convictions not to fall for
her, which only makes her even more interested in him. Up until the point where
she literally does try to eat him, the episode would still be the same event-wise,
but there would be more emotional weight to them. Of course, this being DBZ, a
villain is not afforded such nuance—but wait, the show preceding this one had
plenty of antagonistic characters who turned out to be trying to do what they
thought was right! I mean, they’re usually minor one-episode characters, but
they still count!
Eh, whatever. This is still a decent episode, the Princess
Snake plot is fun if a little repetitive, and it’s nice to see the humans get
into a little bit of their training, fruitless as it may be. These episodes
evoke their own sort of nostalgia. Everyone knows DBZ as that show where the
big, glowing muscle guys pound the living hell out of each other and shoot
beams that inflict no damage, causing all the spectators to gape in
open-mouthed shock. But the fans who were around when this show was airing in
limited quantities on Toonami, in late-night anime blocks or in after-school
slots, also remember it as the show where they might tune in and see a strange
snake woman try to eat Goku up in Heaven, or they might see a showdown between
the two most powerful warriors in the universe, or they just might see two
otherwise powerful beings trying to master the seemingly mundane task of
driving a car. Whatever it may be, it’s damn sure entertaining and engaging for
a kid, and the nostalgia value it has for that same kid 20 years later is
beyond what words can express.
(3/5)
A Few Final Thoughts:
--Even a literal snake woman is revolted by Goku’s eating
habits.
--We get a nice little shot of Goku’s ass this episode. And
by “nice,” I mean I never want to fucking see that again.
--I completely forgot that Goku turned out to be IN the
snake the entire time. That just makes what he could have possibly eaten as
Princess Snake’s big meal far more disgusting and questionable.
--They actually time-skipped like three months since the
last episode. It simultaneously feels like a really long time and not even
nearly enough.
--I can’t see Princess Snake without hearing the Snake voice
from TFS in my head. Especially when it gets to the “bear hands” scene.
--Goku calls a woman “cute.” Somewhere on Earth, Chi-Chi
feels a deep, unexplained rage in her gut, which she takes out on her dad.
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