The Saibamen attack… and they draw first blood.
I think I mentioned
this in one of the earlier entries in this blog, but I am going to give Yamcha
a little credit in this series, and my credit begins here. Yamcha showed up to
the battlefield ready to fight, and he won. He defeated a Saibaman, going toe-to-toe
with it before upping his efforts and giving it a pretty sound ass-kicking. Do
Saibamen have asses? I don’t know and I don’t want to. But nevertheless,
Yamcha’s death doesn’t happen because he was too weak. He was just too damn
cocky, which was a major flaw of his in the original Dragon Ball. He’s not a
bad fighter, he’s just a dumb one, and his lack of battle sense is what gets
him killed here. Until your opponent is dead, you can’t turn your back on them.
But let’s back up a
tad, shall we? What is going on over at Master Roshi’s place? Chi-Chi and Ox
King have made it to the house, and Chi-Chi, upon finding out that Gohan is on
the battlefield, faints. She just dead-ass faints. Like some kind of opossum. Is
this really the same woman who competed in the most recent World Martial Arts
Tournament? For shame. Anyway, yeah, she faints dead away and the rest of the
Roshi group watch helplessly on the television, because of course some of these
idiot reporters haven’t taken the hint yet. I guess it’s hard to get advice to
stay the fuck away when the people most equipped to give that advice had
already been killed.
There is one pretty
heartbreaking moment with the Kame House crew that happens not long after Chi-Chi
wakes up after the first time. Chi-Chi sees her son on TV, in his little
outfit, and she mournfully states that “He’s growing up without me…” I think
this is a pretty good window into Chi-Chi’s psyche, and I think I’ve come to
understand her a lot better since I started this rewatch. Chi-Chi obviously
cares about her son’s studies, but just as important—perhaps even more so—is
that she does not want to be separated from him. Obvious, right, since she’s
the boy’s mother? But more than that, I think she has this NEED for Gohan not
to ever leave her because of what happened to both him and Goku in a single
day. It’s going to be very rare in Chi-Chi’s life for both her husband and her
son to be with her at the same time after Raditz landed on Earth. She knows
full well that the superhero work her Goku does—and what he’s always trying to
get Gohan to participate in—is incredibly dangerous and often results in him
being gone for long stretches of time, her son too. Goku’s and Gohan’s entire
existences are basically the worst nightmares for any well-meaning wife and
mother out there. Imagine being married or the parent to someone who could
always fail to come home every time they walk out the door.
As for our young
Gohan’s plight, he is still too scared to fight properly, and it is only
because there are so many other more experienced fighters on the battlefield
that he is able to avoid the Saibamen for the most part. Granted, the more
experienced fighters may not be STRONGER than him in all instances, but they
have faced terrible odds before—some of them dying as a result—and aren’t shy
about facing them again. There’s a key difference between having a lot of power
and being able to utilize it in a real fight, and learned experience is
something you can never truly learn, even against someone as ruthless as
Piccolo. No matter what, they will always pull their punches, and only when a
fighter in DBZ is confronted with the real possibility of death can their true
ability and talent be unleashed.
People complain sometimes
about Shounen anime having a habit of giving its characters bullshit power-ups
or abilities at the last second to get out of a sticky situation where they
should logically die. Sometimes those complaints are justified, but sometimes
they’re missing the whole point about a narrative arc for a character in a
fighting anime, or show, or video game, or whatever the fuck. Nobody knows how
strong they really are until they have to either die or dig deep into the most
hidden reserves of their power. We’ll see it time and time again with human,
Saiyan and Namekian characters alike, with a wide range of results.
With the Saibamen
considered the least threatening thing on the battlefield, Krillin suggests
they go along with Nappa and Vegeta’s idea to allow each individual fighter
take on one of the Saibamen, with the fights occurring one at a time. This, he
argues, will give Goku more time to make it to the fight and the implication is
that he’ll save everyone’s asses. This lasts, oh, a single episode, until
Krillin remembers that people can die. In the meantime, after Tien, Chiaotzu
and Yamcha have united with the other three fighters, Yamcha takes it upon
himself to go after Tien.
As I stated above,
Yamcha’s not a very intelligent fighter, and you can count the amount of
successes he’s had in the entire series on one hand—hell, maybe on one finger.
But you cannot deny the man’s enthusiasm, folks. He came here to get the fuck
away from playing baseball and arguing with girls, and he is going to volunteer
himself right away. He’s like the young, stupid cadet in the first act of a war
movie who gets himself shot and acts as a wake-up call to everyone that, hey,
this isn’t fun and games, this is that REAL SHIT.
And REAL SHIT is
exactly what Yamcha gets. The Saibaman he defeated grabs him in a bear hug
(Saiba-hug?) and explodes, killing him instantly and producing that iconic
image of him crumpled dead in a little crater. Again, it’s not that he wasn’t
strong enough or fast enough. He just didn’t understand that this was the big
leagues and not batting practice. Krillin kneels beside his dead body. He had
originally been the one who would fight the first Saibaman, until Yamcha made
his insistence upon being in line after Tien. So not only is Krillin
experiencing crushing grief, he also has to bear the guilt of having let Yamcha
take his place. “It should’ve been me!” says Krillin through tears, surely
knowing that if it HAD been him, they wouldn’t be able to bring him back with
the dragon balls.
Another person being
hit by incredible grief is Bulma, who collapses onto Roshi, sobbing. People
criticize Roshi for being the pervert that he is, and by no means has that shit
aged well, but to Roshi’s credit he doesn’t take advantage of Bulma’s
vulnerability. He does, in fact, legitimately try to comfort her, and one
wonders how he’s feeling about what he just saw happen to Yamcha. That was one
of his students he just saw get blown up on live TV.
As Krillin continues
grieving Yamcha, a voice: “Give them a moment to clear this trash off the
battlefield!” And just when we see Krillin’s rage begin to boil over, the
episode leaves us on something of a cliffhanger. Is Krillin going to step up
where his friend fell? Just how much progress can he make against the Saibamen on
his own? Up until this point, the only real combat viewers have seen Krillin in
is against Raditz on Roshi’s island, and I don’t need to remind anybody how
that went. Is this going to be a repeat performance, or can Krillin finally
demonstrate why he’s one of the Earth’s strongest?
(4/5)
A Few Final
Thoughts:
--Piccolo’s thoughts as Vegeta murders the Saibaman who lost
to Tien: “No mercy. Even for his allies. He won’t be taking prisoners. We’re
fighting for our lives.”
--Puar’s grieving sounds make me wish a Saibaman would blow
her up too.
--“They vanished!” “Nonsense, they’re just moving very
fast!”
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