Dragonball Z Episode 28 Review – “Goku’s Arrival”

  Well, in case the title was too subtle for you, this is the episode where Goku arrives. And, you know, this episode really deserves that title, because this has been what the Saiyan saga has been building up to since Goku took his last breath all those episodes ago. I don’t remember exactly how many it’s been, but I know it’s more than 20. This is where the saga officially starts being about the weird, exotic Saiyan threat and instead becomes about one Saiyan raised on Earth fighting a crew of Saiyans who never had the chance to be anything else but monsters.

  But, first, there’s the little issue of dealing with Piccolo’s actual death. See, you may or may not recall, but at the end of the last episode, the man who has to stay alive so the dragon balls still work was brutally energy-beamed by Nappa. He now stands in front of Gohan, his arms out as if ready for a hug, and he smugly says “It’s okay, kid, no sweat…” before he falls to the ground, his death now all but a formality. He had his redemption, now it’s time for him to pass on to the next dimension. It’s a crazy and sad speech Piccolo gives Gohan as he’s dying. I’m not sure how much of it was actually in the Japanese version, but here, Piccolo basically tells Gohan he’s like the son he never had. Which means Piccolo back-handed a child he viewed as a son. I’d hate to see what he does to a kid he doesn’t feel any particular attachment to.

  But, jokes aside, this is an iconic moment in the series, at least as I see it, and one of the most important character beats for Piccolo. I mentioned this before, but this is Piccolo’s first truly selfless action in the entire show, a sacrifice with no strings attached. Sure, the dragon balls are gone, but that doesn’t mean Piccolo’s just going to stand by and let Gohan be incinerated by Nappa’s attack, even though he very well could have, and justified it by saying they could wish him back. Piccolo isn’t thought of as Gohan’s big green uncle for nothing, is what I’m getting at here.

  Gohan is none too happy about Piccolo’s death, but the Masenko blast he fires at Nappa is punched away with only slight numbing in the Saiyan’s arm as a result. After that, Gohan’s power goes right back down. This is one of the rare occasions I can think of in the entire series where Gohan’s rage-fueled attack is actually repelled by the opponent. Normally, Gohan, who at times is hundreds of times weaker than his opponent, is somehow able to break through their defenses anyway. I guess that’s why he’s called GO-han, because he goes hard. I mean, his name isn’t Stayhan.

  That was the worst joke I’ve ever told. Moving on.

  When Goku finally shows up to the battlefield, he doesn’t even interact with the other Saiyans at first, in spite of Vegeta’s mocking attempts to provoke him. Goku gives Krillin a senzu bean and tells him and Gohan to stay back—he’s going to handle the rest of this. Oooh shit. A little primer for you newbies out there: most of the time, if a character says they can handle it by themselves, they can. This isn’t ALWAYS necessarily the case, but most of the time, yeah, they’re that good. And if it’s Goku, you can pretty much put your money on him having attained some obscene power-up.

  This is the episode that contains the infamous “over 9000” scene. A few things about it. First of all, being that this is the Funimation dub, Vegeta—rather, Chris Sabat—doesn’t put the same stank in it as Brian Drummond does. Brian Drummond’s Vegeta voice was honestly one of the better parts of the Ocean Dub. Yeah, the dialogue and censorship were shit-awful, but Brian Drummond’s Vegeta had a sinisterness to him that Sabat’s best efforts can’t match. He just sounds like a weaselly little bastard in the Ocean dub, which is spot-on for his character in the Saiyan saga and especially in the Namek saga, where he sneaks around for most of the season, sniping Frieza’s men wherever he can find them. But that’s a story for, what, 20 episodes from now? Back to the matter at hand.

  Another thing about the 9000 scene is that, of course, it’s a mistranslation. It’s supposed to be 8000. I’m not sure if 8000 would have rang better as a meme than what we got, but it probably would have. Nappa’s power level of only 4,000, which is considered enormous for this point in the saga, is dwarfed easily by Goku’s. Yet, of course, Nappa refuses to believe it. The sole purpose of a scouter, ostensibly, is to give you an idea of what you’re up against. And yet every time one of these idiot villains from early DBZ gets a reading on their scouter that’s higher than their own power level, they just refuse to believe it, assuming their scouter is broken. The only exception that comes to mind is Ginyu, but that’s probably because he had an ability to address exactly that problem.

  So, the battle between Goku and Nappa starts near the end of the episode, and we can already tell that Goku is in a class of his own. It’s very cathartic, after so many episodes where Nappa is untouchable, to see somebody totally making a fool of him. Does it feel cheap? Yeah, a little, especially since we saw all the other fighters working so hard during the training filler episodes, only for their contributions to mean jack-fuck in the grand scheme of things. Then again, I suppose if they hadn’t trained the Saiyans would have just blown through them instead of toying with them, then everyone but Goku would be dead when he makes it to Vegeta. That’s an argument to be made, but it still leaves a sour taste in the mouth, a sense that the only person who can ever matter in this show is a Saiyan-blooded person.

  What else do we got going on in this episode? Well, the people at the Kame House are starting to go a bit stir-crazy. Fortuneteller Baba shows up with her magical crystal ball, which everyone needs since the TV has long since become useless. Getting entire battalions of reporters and cameraman blown up will do that to you, folks. Chi-Chi is still trying to use Launch’s militia-esque arsenal of heavy weapons to go out and rescue her son, even though it should be plainly obvious to her that bullets are going to be about as useful against Nappa as a poopy-flavored lollipop. Actually, the lollipop would be more effective. He’d lick it and be all like “gross, this is shit flavored,” and while he’s either vomiting or trying to get the taste out of his mouth, you can do a pretty good sneak attack, or at least get some distance between you and him.

…That might be the new worst joke I’ve ever told. Oh, well. They can’t all be zingers, can they?

  (4/5)

A Few Final Thoughts:

--Goku: “You want me? You got me!”

--Nappa: “I’m the second strongest Saiyan in the universe!” Goku: “Well, if your friend over there is stronger than you, that makes you the third strongest!”

--Stealth Earthbound reference?

--Also, I love how proud Nappa is of the fact that he’s essentially the middle child in strength.

--“I’ve never heard of anyone increasing their power level that much in one year!” Oh Vegeta…

-- Krillin: “Yeah, I was doing great until the fighting started!” Holy shit.

--Nappa: “And the whole time I was pounding them, they were waiting on YOU to show up!” Again, holy shit.

--Nappa: “Well, except for that little guy—he decided to blow HIMSELF up!” Say it with me, folks: holy shit.

Dragonball Z Episode 27 Review – “Nimbus Speed”

  So much for Goku showing up to save everybody. His decision to use the Nimbus as transport instead of just flying to the battlefield may have just caused the death of the only being on Earth who could keep the dragon balls live just by existing. Goku surely must realize this, and the (literally lesser lmao) fact that his son is also on this very battlefield. I suppose Goku has the same amount of faith that we would normally have in a real protagonist as TV watchers. That division is pretty scary.

  Anyway, we approach the end of Piccolo’s redemption arc here. Ever since the very first episode, the Saiyans have proven themselves much greater adversaries than him, for Goku and for the rest of the planet alike. Piccolo’s team-up with Goku was borne out of sheer necessity. Both of them had tried to take a Saiyan on by themselves, both of them got nowhere, so Piccolo chose the pragmatic path, and it set him down the long, winding road to redemption, whether he knew it at the time or much later as he was training Gohan. Piccolo’s evil has been weathered and withered, and by the end of this episode he will lay down his life for a friend, the first truly selfless act he has ever done.

  How do we get there? Well, it’s simple. In the time-honored tradition of filler, the main bad guy has the upper hand the entire episode, but is consistently stopped from killing the fighters because one of the other fighters will get the drop on him and save their friend. At the beginning, when the three-hour timer runs out for Goku, Nappa gets ready to take down the remaining B-team, but Piccolo has an idea to grab Nappa’s tail. What he didn’t count on was the fact that he and Vegeta have evolved beyond that ridiculous little weakness, and Piccolo’s folly is rewarded with a painful-looking elbow right to the noggin. Gohan, who was actually charging after Nappa with the intention of finishing him off like he was supposed to do episodes ago, is shocked.

  It feels a little arbitrary to me that there’s a cut-off point for the tail weakness, but I suppose it would be too predictable and too easy if they could still weaken these Saiyans by grabbing their tails. Besides, Goku has gotten used to life without a tail by this point, so it stands to reason that these Saiyans wouldn’t have a problem with their tails being grabbed or removed. Still, it sure as hell isn’t convenient for Gohan, because he’s the one Nappa goes after next, until Krillin jumps into action and almost kills Nappa with the Destructo Disk. Vegeta actually has to tell dumbass Nappa to dodge the disk, because he's under the impression that he can just tank it like he’s Younger Toguro or something. He’s way stronger than Younger Toguro, but still.

  This is another example of the gap between Nappa and Vegeta. It isn’t just about the power, it’s about the warrior instincts. Nappa has repeatedly allowed these weaker fighters to get the drop on him and only because he dodged or defended at the last minute—or, in one case, one of the people trying to kill him flaked out—did he manage to survive. Vegeta, we get the impression at least, won’t be so easily taken off-guard. Nor, unlike Nappa, will he have his BEAUTIFUL FACE scarred.

  Of course, just as Nappa’s about to do something about the scarification of his glorious visage, he is shot in the back by the coward Robert Ford—I mean, Piccolo, who offers the perfectly decent excuse that he thought it was his face. At least, Vegeta thought it was a decent excuse, he laughed his ass off at that. You sometimes get to feeling a little bad for Nappa, it feels like he tries his best to maintain Vegeta’s respect, but the other Saiyan is so dismissive of him. It would make you feel bad, at least, if Nappa wasn’t deserving of every bit of the scorn he gets from Vegeta.

  In any case, this is around the point where we get the news that Goku is close enough to the battlefield that he can now be sensed. Vegeta can sense it with his scouter—over 5,000!—and the other fighters, save for Nappa, can sense it with their natural ability to sense power levels. Vegeta is not having this shit. He reasons that they need to kill the other fighters as quick as possible so that they can’t combine their powers with this new fighter, who he isn’t fully convinced is Goku since that same fighter was killed by Raditz just one year ago.

  And that brings us to the situation with Piccolo. With him still very wounded by Nappa’s initial elbow attack, Gohan defends him, knocking Nappa right into a small rock formation. Nappa has been getting punked over and over, and this is his breaking point. He charges up a massive attack and aims it right for Gohan, who is out of anger mode and thus no longer poses a threat. Gohan is most certainly doomed, because who would expect the brutish Piccolo, with his plans for world domination and his penchant for treating Gohan like a ragdoll or a side of beef to punch, to jump in front of the bullet and die for the son of his worst enemy?

  I don’t mean to spoil anything for you, but obviously, he does. Also, I told you at the beginning of the review, so yeah.

  We don’t know at the end of the episode whether Piccolo survived or not, but the ending of the episode makes it plenty enough obvious that he didn’t. Kami’s morbid intonation that it’s his time to go, the fact we’ve established that Piccolo doesn’t need to be alive for us to use a set of dragon balls, the fact that Piccolo isn’t the main character, and the character arc that he’s been on in general, it would feel incredibly cheap with all of those things in consideration if he DIDN’T die here.

  Nevertheless, this is a hard death to take. It’s always sad to see a character who has pretty much completed a Heel-Face Turn go out right after it, but it happens all the time and that’s why we’re conditioned to not just accept it, but see it coming. Thankfully, the DBZ universe is so chock-full of mulligans that nobody who is watching this with any knowledge of the series believes that Piccolo will stay dead. This is a huge relief to me, as Piccolo is one of my top five favorite characters on this show, and if you want to know who the other four are, well, I guess you will just have to read this blog more in the future to find out!

  (lol no one will)

  But in all seriousness, this is the most important episode of the Saiyan arc yet. Seeds that were planted at the end of Dragonball and the beginning of DBZ come to bear fruit here. Gohan tells Piccolo at one point that he will take on the Saiyans himself if Piccolo needs to go, just to protect the dragon balls. Piccolo rightfully laughs him off, but it’s a demonstration of Gohan’s huge character growth just in this one fight. Gohan went from not even being able to stomach attacking the Saiyan careening toward him to being able to knock that same Saiyan through a mountain with a single kick. Gohan earns his stripes in these episodes, and it is a goddamn sight to behold. We are seeing shades of the boy who will save the world in just a few… hundred more episodes—look, this series is very long, okay?

  And what of our bald Earthling friend, Krillin? You have to admire the diversity of the Z Fighters, by the way, an Earthling, a half-Earthling plus half-Saiyan, and a Namekian. It’s like the intergalactic UN up in this bitch. But anyway, Krillin gets to debut his signature attack in this episode, the Destructo Disk. To tell you the truth, I’m having a hard time conjuring up a moment in the series where that attack is actually used to kill an opponent. I think the most it’s ever done is cut off the tip of Frieza’s tail. It makes me wonder if the attack just sucks (it doesn’t), or if Krillin is just terrible at using the move (it does). Krillin is another bald bastard you get to feeling bad for in this episode. The poor little dude is easily the least important character on the battlefield, and that never changes. He’s pretty much there to react to how strong all the other characters are. He might as well be there with some wet towels and a big keg of Gatorade for how much he actually contributes. Fuck, I think he’s pretty much the senzu bean bitch for the rest of the series after this. Shame, shame.

(5/5)

A Few Final Thoughts:

--“You can’t sense power levels without some sort of device!” Oh, Nappa.

--“I don’t know how much more of this guy I can take!” That’s what she said

--“The suspense might kill me! Oops, don’t want to get your hopes up!”

Dragonball Z Episode 26 Review -- "Nappa's Rampage"

   Oh, hey, I was just talking last week about Nappa being on a rampage, and now here’s a title for an episode that reflects that!

  This is definitely a filler episode within a non-filler arc. I haven’t watched DBKai yet, but I can imagine that most of this shit was cut from the Saiyan saga in that series, because it’s mostly just Nappa playing around with the Earth’s military like they were a bunch of Lego toys. Yes, this is the episode where Goku makes it back to Earth and starts his way towards the battlefield, but that’s why I figured MOST of it would be cut from Kai. Don’t get me wrong, there is still some action in this episode, but it’s a lot of inconsequential nonsense that just helps us with the realization that, hey, this Nappa fella is kind of a jerk.

  The titular rampage that Nappa goes on is one where Vegeta allows him to go out and fight a bunch of Earthling military and police shit. The Earthlings are, of course, more than aware of the Saiyans by now, and all of the journalists and innocent civilians they have killed in their wake. As usual in the DBZ universe, and for that matter the late DB universe, the military is no match for the might of Nappa, who punches through their steel planes like they were tinfoil and expresses disappointment that the Earthlings’ idea of a military is just a bunch of dudes using a bunch of fancy toys. Nevertheless, Nappa does break a sweat during his final attack. He hopes Vegeta doesn’t notice.

  So, while Nappa fulfills every remotely educated person’s prediction of how a fight between a Saiyan and an Earth military would go, the people over at Kame House are sitting in a suspense that I would assume does not equal the suspense of people at home, because, y’know, they actually know the people that are dying out here. At one point, Bulma makes the ludicrous proclamation that Goku has never lost a fight. I guess that’s why he’s dead, then. But even if we discount his self-sacrifice during the Raditz battle, we still have the first Tao fight, the first Tambourine fight, the first King Piccolo fight—hell, the first fights against both Jackie Chun and Tien at the first two World Martial Tournaments, respectively. Goku is by no means unstoppable, which is what makes DBZ a little bit interesting. Goku is just BARELY below unstoppable, but there are fights he has no capacity to win, and we see our share of those during the course of this series.

  Piccolo remains frustrated with Gohan, and he says a line that reverberates through the rest of the series, especially when it’s Gohan’s neck on the line: “Facing your fears would have been much less painful.” I can’t say I’ve ever had a super-powerful Saiyan hurdling toward me and been the only person who could kill them before they recover, but I nonetheless thing there’s some good life advice to that line. It’s more painful to leave the fear where it is, so it can continue to haunt and overpower you whenever it wants, than it is to just face it and at least possibly neutralize it. Yeah, that fear may turn out to be much stronger than you, but you’ve conquered it in your own special way just by confronting it and not letting it rule you anymore. That line later gets repeated to Gohan after Majin Buu absorbs Piccolo and starts to psychologically dominate him, but that’s for another time.

  In lighter news, Nappa can’t outdo a five-year-old in the time-honored tradition of shit-talking your opponent. Gohan tells Nappa he smells and Nappa is deeply offended, but Vegeta laughs in agreement with the young half-ling. It’s possible that Vegeta is so sick of Nappa at this point, he’ll take any opportunity he can get to laugh at the bastard. Much like in the TFS version of this show, Vegeta spends his entire time during Nappa’s tenure on DBZ babysitting him. It’s only when Nappa is gone that we see Vegeta’s personality truly shine through.

  At the end of the episode, once the 3-hour arbitrary timer has run out, Piccolo has formulated a plan that involves Krillin distracting Nappa, Piccolo grabbing Nappa’s tail, and Gohan attacking Nappa for the final blow. I feel like Krillin and Gohan should be switched around for this exercise, given Gohan’s track record with dealing final blows to Saiyans, but hey, this is the reason why Piccolo is the great warrior and I’m just some idiot writing a review about what he’s doing. We know this is going to fail, right? I mean, we know because Goku’s on his way, and he’s the hero, he’s not going to show up to a battlefield where the other heroes are like, “hey, yeah, it turns out we didn’t even need you that bad. Could you go and pacify your wife? She’s vacillating her time between fainting and complaining. I can’t decide which one is worse.”

  I will say, though, my favorite moment in the episode is Piccolo finally giving Gohan some encouragement. I feel like this is the center of the teetering fulcrum where Gohan goes completely from being the frozen, scared boy he was at the start of the saga to being the child-Saiyanish warrior that is able to survive almost the entire series. I have a good feeling about this Gohan kid. I think he’s gonna go far.

(3/5)

A Few Final Thoughts:

--Oolong is the worst. The total worst. Or, as Bulma puts it, “Your selfishness produces a chemical in your brain that causes extreme fear!”

--Chi-Chi continues her fainting practice in this episode. I’m not a mother, and I never will be, but I still feel like this show is under-selling Chi-Chi. She used to be a pretty damned strong fighter. Now she’s just another of the many, many observers, just like what happens to the other lady fighters introduced in this series.

--Goku eats one of the senzu beans that Korin gives him, and I have to wonder: does he think his friends have had an easy time up to this point?

-- Why the fuck is Goku using Nimbus? That thing can’t possibly be faster than him, right? Maybe it’s to conserve his energy.

Dragonball Z Episode 25 Review -- "Sacrifice"

   I love how much of a diss the name of this episode is. Like, why does Tien’s sacrifice matter so much more than Chiaotzu’s? Hell, if anything, Chiaotzu has the more meaningful sacrifice, because as far as he knows, he’s never going to be wished back. The dragon balls can only bring one individual back once, and Chiaotzu already died in the original show. Tien, on the other hand, has managed to avoid the cold embrace of death up until this point, which means he is still fair game to be resurrected. Again, this is as far as anybody knows. But if you’re watching this thing blind, having only watched the original series and the Z episodes preceding this, you’d have every right to assume that Chiaotzu is gone for good. Then again, with all of those dropped hints about Piccolo’s ancestry, perhaps you’ve already determined that there are dragon balls elsewhere in this great big universe…

  Anyway. Tien dies, and much like Chiaotzu, he is not directly killed by Nappa. Instead, as the episode’s title indicates, he gives up the last little bit of his life force to throw a deadly attack at the Saiyan monster who didn’t exactly kill his friend but was more or less responsible anyway. Guess what? Nappa survives it, in yet another instance of the show presenting a big dramatic attack and then promptly making it look like amateur bullshit because it didn’t even slow Nappa down. Yeah, Vegeta says something to the effect of “damn, if that had actually hit you, instead of you dodging it and/or shielding from it with your amazing plot-armor powers, it would surely have killed you!” That’s all fine and good, but the fact is, a protagonist did an emotionally significant thing and wound up being proven thoroughly irrelevant by that very action. This is the moment where Tien loses any loose relevance he may have still had as the detritus of the old series.

  Gohan fucks up this episode in a big way. It’s hard to reasonably blame him for it, since he’s like five years old at this point in the show, but Piccolo doesn’t give a shit about “reasonably.” Piccolo and Krillin manage to successfully pull off a sneak attack against Nappa that sends him careening toward Gohan, who is expected to deal a killing blow. Instead he freezes for a while and then runs and hides behind a large rock nearby. It is an understatement to say that Piccolo is pissed off about this. The first time Gohan approaches him right after this event, Piccolo backhands the shit out of him (from what I remember—it may have been an outright punch) and tells him to go the fuck home if he can’t handle being on the battlefield. In spite of Krillin’s efforts to defend Gohan, Piccolo is hearing none of it.

  I have to wonder how much of Piccolo’s anger is self-directed in this event. After all, Piccolo spent six months straight training Gohan to be a warrior to fight the Saiyans, only to see him cower like this. I think Piccolo just doesn’t realize the fear and the hesitation Gohan has, because Piccolo’s whole life up to this point has been about fighting and training to kill that very boy’s father.

  We get to see the multi-form technique used in this episode. More specifically, we get to see how fucking useless it is. I mean, come on. You split yourself into several different clones, but all of them are that many times weaker than your original self was? Nappa’s already at 4,000, and Piccolo’s max power is only 1,400. That means, if he splits himself into three people, they’re each less than 500 in terms of attack power. Nappa might as well be swatting at flies. But that’s just how desperate our heroes are. A single year of training could not possibly prepare them for the kind of power the Saiyans were bringing to the table. Especially when all of them had apparently forgotten about the Hyperbolic Time Chamber—or rather, Goku kept that one a secret until they needed it during the Android arc.

  I love Gohan’s concern for Tien right before the latter is about to kill himself for the good of the world and his friend. There’s no indication that Tien even notices it. He’s too busy suffering the various blows and humiliations that Nappa has inflicted. But more so than that, he’s still smarting over the pointless suicide of Chiaotzu. Come to think of it, every one of Nappa’s Z Fighter kills is a suicide. Chiaotzu blows himself up, Tien uses up his life energy to attack him, Piccolo jumps in front of a beam meant for Gohan. There was room for Nappa to be redeemed a little bit, if you fail to count all the innocent humans he killed on Earth.

  The Z Fighters end up being such a low challenge for the Saiyans, Vegeta stops Nappa from killing Piccolo and Krillin, and asks them about this “Goku” they keep mentioning. Vegeta asks and gets confirmation that they’re talking about the Saiyan he knows as Kakarot. Vegeta is amused by the idea that Kakarot is going to pose them any significant challenge, but he’s also intrigued, as any good Saiyan, about the prospect of a good fight, and from the sounds of things Kakarot might be strong enough to make the fight more interesting. So Vegeta gives the Z Fighters a 3-hour reprieve to wait for Goku to show up. Nappa protests, insisting on killing his easy prey, and Vegeta threatens him to stop. Nappa quickly apologizes and leaves the weaker fighters alone.

  This leads Piccolo to the scary realization that the bigger Saiyan they’ve been unable to even slow down is not the strongest one they have to deal with. Vegeta is not only stronger than Nappa, he stronger enough than him that it makes Nappa afraid. Of course, part of Nappa’s issue might also be the fact that Vegeta’s royalty to the Saiyans, and even though their planet and people are gone save for about 3 full-blooded Saiyans (as far as they know), that still matters to Nappa. But nah, I figure it’s the power discrepancy.

  So we end the episode wondering if Goku’s going to make it to the battlefield within the 3-hour arbitrary time-limit Vegeta has set. The answer for most folks who are watching is “probably not,” I would imagine. There hasn’t been quite enough drama yet for our hero to show up, and after all, we want to see Nappa do a little more rampaging, right? It’s fun to watch the guy rampage, as harsh as it may also be sometimes. Gohan is still in Piccolo’s doghouse, and Krillin tries his best to defend the boy from Piccolo’s disdain and disappointment. With only three of Earth’s heroes left to stop the Saiyans from annihilating the entire planet in search for the dragon balls, and Goku continuing to traverse the always-interminable length of Snake Way, the ultimate tool of filler, is there any reason to believe that no one else is going to die? Well, all I know is, I’m sure Goku’s complete and total defeat of Vegeta will ensure that this scum never sees the light of day on this show again.

(4/5)

A Few Final Thoughts:

--GOD THE MOUTH ON KRILLIN. Even my roommate was taken aback by it when he came into the living room to eat din-dins.

--The battlefield has a lot of dark clouds and crackling energy. Keep in mind, these things aren’t present during the Cell Games, where the characters are literally millions of times stronger.

--“Guess your little friend couldn’t save you, three eyes!”

Dragonball Z Episode 24 Review – “The Power of Nappa”

  Well, if you aren’t tired of character death yet, we have more for you.

  This time, it’s little Chiaotzu, a fighter who only ever really did anything in the first Tournament arc he and Tien were introduced during. In the Tournament right after, Tao kicked his ass, and before that he got murdered by King Piccolo. The only reason he’s not more of a joke than Krillin or Yamcha is because he never really had the opportunity to be anything other than a joke. Just look at his character design—does that scream anything other than “obscure side character” to you?

  Nevertheless, Chiaotzu does make a very honorable sacrifice here. Out of all the fighters on the battlefield at the time of his death, he and Krillin were the only two who could not be wished back with the dragon balls, as they had already died once. Tien knows this all too well as he watches his friend blow himself up—lots of suicide bombings going on in this arc so far—and it’s all the more gutting when Nappa emerges from the smoke with only some damage to his armor.

  Another reason people often mock DBZ is when characters launch major attacks against each other, lots of flash and smoke and environmental damage, only for their opponent to emerge unscathed from the wreckage. But keep in mind two things: one, this is, I believe, the first time an outright SUICIDE attack failed in the series. I don’t think a suicide attack ever even happened in the original dragon ball, and this is the first time in this show where it fails completely and utterly. Second of all, characters emerging unscathed from massive explosions and energy blasts wasn’t common yet. There was Tao surviving Goku’s Kamehameha in their first fight, sure, but that was a very quick, isolated moment in an otherwise very one-sided fight in Tao’s favor. There was no huge build-up to him being alive in the smoke, it was just, “oh, hey, even Goku’s Kamehameha is totally ineffectual against this new, powerful villain.”

  So I think Chiaotzu’s sacrifice is totally earned from a narrative standpoint. It’s there to demonstrate the hopelessness of the other warriors’ situation without Goku there—and perhaps even IF Goku is there. After all, we saw none of Goku’s training that involved him actually fighting. For all we know, Goku isn’t any better off than his friends are. We know he most likely is, because the show is making us wait for him to arrive and it would be absurdly anti-climactic for him to show up and get merked immediately, but we don’t KNOW. The Saiyans are a whole new breed of enemy, the first one that showed up to Earth caused Goku’s death, something unheard of to any fan of the original show!

  Also featured in this episode is Tien’s rather sad attempt at fighting with Nappa. Nappa manages to literally punch Tien’s hand off of his arm. Tien was just trying to block a punch, and winds up being “disarmed,” as Vegeta, ever the classy one, puts it. Any attempts made by other characters to intervene while this is going on meet with Nappa’s seemingly endless power. Keep in mind—this guy only has a power level of 4,000.

 I feel like the writers and animators find themselves having to outdo earlier villains by having the new villains, who are thousands of times stronger, perform similar amazing feats to (for example) Nappa’s bottomless hole in the wake of his blast toward Krillin or his punching a man’s hand clean off of his arm. It’s weird when you watch early DBZ and guys like Nappa are shown demonstrating incredible power and way later in the series you have guys like Semi-Perfect Cell looking like shit by comparison, even though Nappa is a flea compared to Cell at that point in the series. There’s only so much you can do after your villain with a power level of 18,000 can make the Earth shake and you have to follow it up by making your new villain of 800 million power level do… what? Blow up some islands?

  Anyway. We do open this episode with a hope spot where Krillin blasts the ever-loving shit out of a bunch of Saibamen, decimating all but one of them in a single attack. This is one of those rare instances in the series where Krillin gets to demonstrate any type of simple competence, and he does good work here. The folks over at the Kame House are sure impressed—Bulma even hugs Oolong! Wow! DBZ did get my fan letters after all! Unfortunately, Krillin missed one that somebody had beat up earlier, and this mistake nearly costs Gohan his life, as it launches a surprise, leaping at him with clay outstretched until Piccolo grab it, gives it a hard stomach punch, and then mouth-blasts it. Ladies and gentlemen, I believe we have the first instance of Piccolo coming to Gohan’s rescue against a villain, unless you count him and Goku fighting Raditz.

  Piccolo, however harsh he may be about doing it, really gives Gohan his final lessons on the battlefield during these Nappa-fight episodes. They say sometimes the best way to learn something is to just be thrown into it and forced to adapt and learn as you go, and that’s true here. Gohan basically grows five or ten years over the course of a few episodes, going from a cowering child to a Saiyan warrior in his own right, and Piccolo is there for a good chunk of it. Gohan is slowly but surely turning into the savior we’re going to see him be just a few scant sagas from now—and you know what? If it wasn’t for him being here in this saga, things would have turned out very differently too.

  One thing that’s pretty funny, in a morbid kind of way, is the way Piccolo insists upon Gohan watching Chiaotzu sacrifice himself. It’s funny because it turns out to be for absolutely nothing. It’s like watching a suicide bomber detonate their vest and hit nothing. Doesn’t even slightly scald anything nearby. Now that’s depressing. The idea of an ineffectual suicide bomber. Just breaks your heart. But Piccolo is at least teaching Gohan how to respect the sacrifices of others. One wonders if that little seed wasn’t still stuck in there when Goku teleported in front of Cell to give himself up so that the planet could be saved. You like to hope that the people you love and care about will never have to dive in front of a bullet for you, or even the entire planet, but at the same time you want to instill in them the kind of values that would compel them to do something like that.

  I’d say this episode succeeds at what it sets out to do, which is to showcase the power and the fearsome sociopathy of a new villain. I’ve said before that between the two Saiyan warriors it seems like Nappa is the one with more of a conscience—and he is, given the way he reacts to Vegeta killing the wounded Saibaman—but make no mistake, the dude is a total beast, and we spent a lot of time wondering, just like the other characters: when the fuck is Goku going to get there? I’d like to say we don’t have long to wait, but remember what show we’re watching.

  (4/5)

A Few Final Thoughts:

--I love how they just left Yamcha there.

--“Yamcha wouldn’t want us to carry on like this!” It’s been two fucking minutes, man.

--Oh, Roshi. As soon as he gets Bulma calmed down by reminding her they can wish Yamcha back with the dragonballs, he goes from comforting her to groping her. Never change. Actually, do.