Really, Krillin’s offensive? Nothing much wrong with him, unless being annoying has become a cancel-worthy offense now. Okay, seriously, I swear this is the last time I’m going to start one of these reviews out with a Dad joke.
One thing you’ll
notice right away is the art style, which is way more detailed in this episode
than in your average episode. It’s something you’ll encounter frequently if you
sit and watch DBZ front to back, this sort of ever-shifting approach to how the
show is drawn, which is due to the fact that different teams are assigned
different episodes. There’s going to be a point in roughly the middle of the
Cell Saga where it becomes extremely noticeable, as the art varies from great
to absolute shit from episode to episode.
But enough about
that, I’m not really qualified for art or animation criticism. This is the
first of two episodes throughout the series where the Spirit Bomb is shown to
be a complete, utter failure. Vegeta is hit dead-on by the thing and, sure, it
slows him down a bit, but the whole idea of the Spirit Bomb is that it’s a
desperation finishing attack that requires a lot of time investment and entails
a huge amount of risk. After all, you have to charge the thing, exhausting the
energy around you in the process, all the while figuring out how the hell to
stall a very powerful enemy you can’t beat with your own strength, leaving
yourself even more vulnerable to their attacks when the stalling stops working.
It’s a miracle Goku even had any fucking energy left after Vegeta cucked his
initial attempt to throw it, and of course, the energy wasn’t enough to do more
than hurt Vegeta a bit more.
But damn, I’ll
admit, it does look effective at first. When Gohan bounces that thing back at
Vegeta and it hits him, his face goes all stretchy and deformed as the thing
blasts him up into the sky, seemingly into the depths of space. You really get
the sense that Vegeta’s met his end, right up until his body comes crashing
down to Earth. Because, c’mon, they aren’t going to bring his body back around
just so it can lay there and stay dead. That’s just common sense.
The way Krillin
utterly fails to hit Vegeta initially is pretty amusing. First off, he has to
concentrate to turn the energy into a ball. Don’t ask me how that works, I
don’t know. Goku gives Krillin some kind of bullshit about how he’ll know
exactly the right time to throw the ball, it’ll just kind of come to him. Well,
apparently the time good ol’ fate picked out for Krillin wasn’t the right one,
because Vegeta just leaps over the fucking thing when Krillin throws it. Gohan
is now in for a direct hit from the Spirit Bomb, until his father communicates
with him telepathically to bounce it back.
Which—this is
something I need to address really quickly. Goku sometimes just has telepathy.
Fuck knows where he got it, my best guess is from King Kai but it could have
been in late Dragonball. Whatever the case, I think it’s weak telepathy,
because Goku still has to use the “touch King Kai’s back” method of
communication to the mortals when he’s dead. Yeah. This show gets weird
sometimes.
So, all of that
shit, and Vegeta still survives. However, let it not be said that the Spirit
Bomb had no impact whatsoever. That would be more like the SECOND time it gets
used in the series. No, this time, Vegeta is left still stronger than everyone
else on the battlefield, but still at a fraction of his normal power. He uses a
good-sized chunk of said fraction to create a huge aura burst, not dissimilar
to the one he tries to use to kill Majin Buu early in that character’s saga, in
a vain attempt to kill his seriously wounded opponents. When that fails, and of
course it does, Vegeta resolves to kill the fighters individually.
The big shock ending
of this episode, of course, is Gohan’s tail growing back, which I honestly find
to be a bit of a ridiculous plot contrivance, and I wish it didn’t happen. In
fact, it’s a good part of the reason why I’m not giving this one a five, even
though a lot definitely happens here. I think it would have made just as much
sense to have Vegeta careen back down to Earth, alive but severely weakened,
and then just skip right to the part where he attempts to escape. I feel like
that would be a lot less bullshit, since there’s nothing much narratively that
justifies Gohan turning into the Oozaru. Hell, he doesn’t even put up a great
fight against Vegeta in THAT form—but I’m getting a little ahead of myself.
What’s going on over
at Kame House? Well, for one thing, Baba’s crystal ball fucking shatters into
pieces from the strain of displaying the power of the Spirit Bomb. Eventually,
Bulma decides, fuck waiting for Baba to fix her magic ball that allows us to
watch the fight from a safe distance, lets go get murdered right there on-site
like so many other warriors before us. Hell, half the people at Kame House aren’t
even warriors. Some of them aren’t even fucking people, there’s a cat, a pig,
and a turtle in that house! How are you going to ethically justify putting
these innocent talking animals in danger? Because, what, you’ve got Roshi with
you, a man who is like 1% as strong as Vegeta on a good day?
Oh, whatever.
Chi-Chi’s continuing to have fits because she knows Gohan isn’t strong enough
to beat Vegeta, she tries to murder Baba, I think Bulma also tries to murder Baba
but I don’t remember. That’s what Kame House has devolved into. I’m getting to
the point where I’m ready for Launch to show back up and just shoot them all.
Then Korin shows up, and now we have two speaking cats in the mix, and I can
definitely no longer endorse the notion of these characters traveling together
to their certain doom, because I actually kind of like Korin.
So, overall, good
episode, but just shy of perfect for me mostly because of the Kame House stuff
dragging it down and the contrivance with Gohan’s tail. For me, this is the episode
where Vegeta proves just what a goddamn brick wall he is, and he proves that
further in the following episode, where even in his severely wounded state he
is capable of defending himself against the peak of Saiyan power, at least as
far as anyone else in the show is aware. Goku may be a stronger, smarter
warrior than Vegeta is, but Vegeta is powered by so much sheer spite and pride
that the only thing countering it would be Goku’s own righteousness. Impressive
shit, really. It almost makes you wonder if there is something more to the
Saiyan prince than being a spoiled brat with a dead race he doesn’t seem remotely
interested in maintaining, if his callous disregard of Raditz and Nappa are any
evidence…
Nah.
(4/5)
A Few Final Thoughts:
--Wait, so Yajirobe really wanted to eat Vegeta in the show?
I thought that was just a TFS thing. Damn. Yajirobe defines what it is to be an
omnivore.
--“How does it feel knowing you had one chance to save your
precious Earth and everyone on it, only to fail miserably?!” Vegeta knows how to
rub it in, doesn’t he, the sadistic fuck?
-- Really Bulma? Korin fucking looks like an ordinary
housecat? Is that what cats all look like in the DBZ-verse? I mean, a cat is
king of the world, so maybe that answers my question.
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