Get hype, motherfuckers. It’s time for the Saiyans to arrive on Earth and kill all of us. Or, rather, “us” in this universe.
Heading into the second, bloodier half of the Saiyan arc,
and we know Piccolo has been training Gohan for the past six months, but it
doesn’t seem to have made Gohan any better at fighting Piccolo at least. We
know that Goku has been getting stronger on King Kai’s planet, but we don’t
know if he even compares to Raditz, never mind the two Saiyans that are
arriving on Earth. We know the earthling fighters have been training
consistently, mostly on Kami’s Lookout, but we don’t know where that puts them
at all. We have, however, seen Vegeta blow up a planet with a single attack.
We’ve seen Nappa simply power up his arm and raise it, causing everything close
to him to be decimated. We have no idea how the Z Fighters stack up against
power like that. Now, after weeks (assuming one episode per day on cable),
we’re about to find out.
But first, we have to wish back Goku. Roshi communicates
with Goku through King Kai while he’s on the toilet, telling him to gather up
them dragon balls because it’s time to get Goku off of God’s toilet and back
home in time to shit on the Saiyans instead. Okay, he didn’t word it like that,
but this show reduced itself to poop jokes by having other characters hear
Roshi through the bathroom door, so I’m doing it too.
Goku is wished back, but unfortunately has to travel down
Snake Way back to Earth’s check-in station, and yes, this is going to take
multiple episodes, and yes, that’s absolutely fucking infuriating. I guess even
with Goku’s newfound speed, it’d be pretty crazy to have him traverse in like
three minutes what took him about nine months earlier in the saga, but PRETTY
CRAZY? THIS IS DBZ. We already have motherfuckers destroying entire planets
with a single energy blast, is it too much to ask for the sake of narrative
development that Goku simply be fast enough to get to Earth in an hour or two?
Oh, but I shouldn’t say that. This is going to be the other,
B-tier Z Warriors a chance to shine on the battlefield, and some of them do… a
little… not much. Listen, I’m going to level with you—don’t watch this show if
you expect anyone other than Goku to make any difference, with maybe a handful
of notable exceptions which are quickly overturned. This is still very much the
Goku show, and just because he had a kid doesn’t mean the little upstart
bastard (not in the literal sense) is going to kick him out of the spotlight
too much.
Oolong has a little inspired moment of cowardice when he yells
at the dragon to kill the oncoming Saiyans instead of resurrect Goku as was the
plan. I’m not sure whether he knows or not that the dragon can’t wish someone
back who’s been dead longer than a year, but that doesn’t make much of a shit
to him, I’d imagine. I don’t know why the rest of the crew even keeps Oolong
around. The dude never seems to exist for any purpose beyond being magnetically
attracted to Bulma’s fist through the stupid ass shit he says. And yet, the
show STILL has him in it more than Launch, and Launch at least has the
interesting gimmick of being two people in one body. You can do something with
that! You can’t do anything with a pig that can shapeshift for five minutes!
Other than the time he “saved” the rest of the gang during the Pilaf arc by
making a wish for Bulma’s panties, he… god damn, look at the first half of that
sentence. I need to watch Dragonball again.
The Saiyans’ landing starts off being very unfortunate for
Earth, because instead of occurring in a very isolated farm area like Raditz,
our two new boys land in the middle of East City, a crowded area with plenty of
innocent pedestrians who proceed to gawk and mutter among themselves. “Someone
call the cops!” one says. “Yeah, right, what are they gonna do?! They’re just
gonna say it’s a weather balloon!” another replies. There would seem to be a
healthy mistrust of the police among the denizens of East City. I suppose a
bunch of commies WOULD live in a place called East City, with its pagan Eastern
culture of questioning authority.
In all seriousness, though, it makes you wonder what our
actual reaction would be if two alien spacecraft just smacked into our planet.
Two balls-full of evil alien monster might finally unite us as a species. At
the very least, I’d like to think it’d unite us as a country. But probably not.
The left would try to reason with the creatures, the right would shoot at them,
both sides would argue amongst themselves, and eventually everyone would die
equally wrong. Then again, I suppose it’s highly unlikely that two aliens would
actually be super-powered beings like the Saiyans who can fly, shoot energy
beams, return to monke, and have just the sharpest damn haircuts you ever did
see, but otherwise look exactly like human beings, save the tails of course.
(3/5)
A Few Final Thoughts:
--I think the animators fucked up or the editors make a
mistake or something, because one minute we see Gohan in his mini-Goku outfit,
and then it cuts to another scene with him and he’s wearing the Piccolo
training clothes he wears to Namek and during the early Android arc. Maybe the
show just didn’t think it was important to note Gohan’s change of clothes. We
all know Piccolo just used his damn clothes beam anyway.
--Nappa has a sore neck after all the travel! Quick, this is
our chance, attack his neck!
--Goku starts to fucking RUN DOWN SNAKE WAY when he leaves
King Kai’s planet, until he remembers OH YEAH, MY FRIENDS MAY DIE and starts
flying, the daft bastard.
--Piccolo: “Never believe anything the enemy tells you!”
“Yeah, but… you’re not the enemy…” D’aww, Gohan. Who could ask for a better
morality pet?
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