Alright, here’s where things start to slow down a bit too much for me. This episode is all about how one severely wounded Saiyan warrior from Earth cannot stand a chance against a pretty much fully-powered Saiyan from the Planet Vegeta who knows how to use and control their powers and is able to wreck the day of anything that has a power level of less than six figures. And that’s something to keep in mind here, folks: Oozaru forms have 10 times the power of their respective Saiyans’ regular forms. So with Vegeta, he can go from a measly 18,000—already ridiculous in the canon of this universe—to an unbelievable 180,000, enough to traumatize Captain Ginyu several sagas from now.
This is the point
where Krillin and Gohan sense that their friend is in trouble and decide to go
in after him. It’s rather depressing that the most powerful resources of
training and war possible for both Earthlings and dead Saiyans alike are not
able to win by themselves. Not to mention, the drama of Goku telling Krillin
and Gohan that he has to fight Vegeta alone is extinguished by how quickly it
became apparent that, no, he is going to need some help. But, it does make
things more exciting after Goku is crippled, since there are at least multiple people
on the battlefield to make things more chaotic and unpredictable. I always
remember Krillin, Gohan and Yajirobe showing up to be the most entertaining
part of the whole first Vegeta fight on Earth, but today we’re not getting any
of that action.
Because today is all
about one of the most unreliable finishing moves in the entire series, the
Spirit Bomb. Of the three times it’s been used, it only works a single time,
and only after a lot of effort and wishes on two sets of dragon balls to make the
attack even remotely viable. Goku begins to gather energy for the attack from
the environment around him—because that’s how the Spirit Bomb works, you need
OTHER peoples’ energy to use it—to put together something strong enough to kill
an Oozaru.
Let’s back up a bit,
though, because the most fascinating character beat of this episode is Goku’s
realization of what the Oozaru is. At first, he’s completely thrown by the fact
that Vegeta just turned into an enormous great ape. And why wouldn’t he be? Throughout
all of Dragonball and early DBZ, no matter how many times either Goku or Gohan
turned into the giant ape, Goku was not at all informed of what the fuck just
happened. In Gohan’s case, he was in Other World, so that’s excusable. But when
you think about it, it’s really fucked up that Goku turned into the Oozaru several
times over the course of the original show and nobody bothered to tell him what
happened. I don’t remember what they DO tell him, but it’s definitely a line of
bullshit, because it takes Goku remembering something Grandpa Gohan told him
before he died to jog his noodle and make him realize, oh shit, I’m the giant
monster that killed my grandfather!
Goku has no time to feel
any of the feelings that rise up from his revelation, because he has to use the
Kaioken—wait, what, what the fuck? He still has enough juice in him to perform
a Kaioken? I mean, it doesn’t do him any good, Vegeta just tail-smacks him away
like the flea he’s become. Still, it’s either amazing or bullshit (or both)
what these characters are able to pull out of their asses after thoroughly
establishing that it hurts for them to even move. Goku spends the entire
episode struggling to conjure any kind of defense against Vegeta when he isn’t
charging the Spirit Bomb. He does a lot of eye trauma to him, which is pretty
funny. Laser shots right in the eye, the Solar Flare—Vegeta’s eyes take a
beating this episode between just those two things.
Goku loses the Spirit
Bomb in this episode, due to Vegeta firing a surprise mouth beam just as Goku
is about to throw the goddamn thing. This is why the next two Spirit Bombs are charged
way up in the sky before they’re thrown. You don’t want to have your opponent
just knock the thing out of your hand like it’s a basketball. The episode ends
with Goku completely at Vegeta’s mercy, all of his energy used up after running
and barely defending himself. And this really makes me have a hard time understanding
why Vegeta seems to have such an inferiority complex to Goku. He had Goku thoroughly
beat after just a handful of episodes, if it weren’t for like three of his
friends intervening he had that one in the bag. I guess you just don’t make a
prince bleed.
What’s going on over
at Kame House? Well, mostly just people—specifically Bulma—knocking Baba’s
crystal ball around like a toy every time they see something in it they don’t
like. In Bulma’s case, she sees Yajirobe hiding behind some rocks while Goku is
getting owned by Vegeta. And yeah, sure, it’s annoying to see him just hiding
on the battlefield, but come on, Bulma. Crystal balls don’t grow on fucking
trees. Do you want to see the action or not? Some people, I swear to God. One
would think, with all of Bulma’s knowledge on the subject of technology, she’d
also realize that beating the shit out of the magical crystal ball is going to
damage it.
(3/5)
A Few Final
Thoughts:
--Gohan is the one who drags Krillin back to the battlefield
near the beginning of the episode. The boy’s come a long way in just one year. Krillin
notes that the boy is becoming more like his father every day. Even though
Krillin has only ever seen him on two separate days. I guess it’s technically
true, he’s much more like his dad on that second day than he is on the first.
--We actually see Yajirobe’s cowardice start to break in
this episode. Which makes it even more annoying when Bulma bitches at him on
the crystal ball. Like, really Bulma? What the fuck do you expect him to do, go
up to the Oozaru and slap him in the nuts? You weren’t doing any kind of hero
shit when YOU were dealing with the Oozaru all those years ago.
--“How am I supposed to fight a giant ape?!”
--“This guy’s really fast!” Well, becoming hundreds of times
your normal size will do that to you.
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