In which Bulma and Mr. Popo take their first—and last—trip into Outer Space together. How romantic…?
Bulma kind of steals
the show this episode, in both good and bad ways. First off, she totally
fucking boffs the commandeering of the Saiyan spaceship. Her attempts at using
the remote fall completely flat as the spaceship straight up fucking EXPLODES
on national television, probably killing the dudes that were working on it for
the interest of a wide television audience interested in figuring out the secrets
of, holy shit, motherfucking aliens. I’m being a little too vulgar so far,
aren’t I? I’ll try to tone it down. I make no promises.
The two main draws
of this episode are the humor and the lore, as far as I’m concerned. There’s no
action whatsoever, and there isn’t going to be any of note for a good while, so
the show has to fall back on some of its lesser-acknowledged strengths. The
funniest moments of the episode are just Bulma dealing with the bullshit hand
she’s been dealt. She tries to get the spaceship to work, and it goddamn blows
up. She tries to go with Mr. Popo to find Piccolo’s horrible old demon ship,
and that time she succeeds, but not without irritating the shit out of the
beleaguered Popo in the process.
People who watch a
lot of TFS probably forget that, in the original show, Popo was more of a
babysitter and a care-taker than some Eldritch horror from beyond the realms of
human conception. Despite his appearance, darkness holds very little value to
this guy. This is about the closest I’ve ever seen to him getting legit pissed
in the anime, as he has to play the aforementioned babysitting role to Bulma,
who has no idea what the fuck is going on, why they’re in this cold mountainous
location called Yunzabit Heights, who Mr. Popo even is in a general sense, and
whether or not she’s going to die of something mysterious and genie-related.
Just the reaction
characters had to him during his first appearance at the hospital was bizarre.
Hell, Krillin was happy to see him, and Roshi didn’t have a clue who he was.
Mr. Popo offers whoever wants to volunteer a magic carpet ride with him to see
the spaceship The Nameless Namek left behind after he made it to Earth. Bulma
doesn’t volunteer so much as get volunteered. She has to climb on Mr. Popo’s
magic carpet, Roshi tries to help her on by pushing her ass, she sees it coming
a mile away, then… they teleport to the mountains. They don’t even fly.
Honestly, that’s a subtle bit of comedy there. I didn’t even notice at first. I
would assume that they did fly and it was just unbelievably fast, but I feel
like that would have caused Bulma’s skin to peel off or something.
It’s a pretty kick-ass
moment when they find the ship, because Bulma actually gets to not fuck up
something for once. She’s spent the entire episode being a frustrated and
frustrating load, then at the end she musters up a memory of Piccolo speaking
Namekian at the World Martial Arts Tournament. No, I don’t remember that
happening, no, I didn’t go back and check, yes, I am not a very good source for
all things DBZ-trivia related, no, that does not mean you should click away
from this blog, because I like to think I at least write well enough to explain
why filler sucks or whatever.
You know what else
is filler? Phrases like “or whatever.”
Not much else to
report on here. Chi-Chi’s awful, still. Gohan shows a lot of concern for his Dad
as the hospital is working on him and he’s all freaking out and shit, I don’t
know why, he acts like what they’re doing to him is worse than Ape-Vegeta
stomping on his legs and squeezing him. Maybe it is, I haven’t experienced
these things. Krillin, Gohan and Goku really don’t want to be in this hospital,
and it is due to the insistence of Chi-Chi and Roshi that the lot of them are
staying. They seriously have Goku in this weird iron lung-like contraption, I’m
reminded of old cartoons where there’s just a guy laying in a bed looking like a
mummy, hanging from a ceiling just above his bed. You have to cut them open with
a saw to get them out, or something.
I guess the end of
the episode where Bulma’s so happy about getting the ship to work she starts
dancing around with Mr. Popo is pretty charming, especially because Mr. Popo
looks happy, too, in a bewildered kind of way. I wonder if ol’ Popo was
legitimately bothered by the fact that Bulma was so standoffish to him, at
first. I can’t imagine he’d give a shit, but you never know about people. Does Mr.
Popo count as a “people”? For that matter, does any being in this show who isn’t
fully human qualify as a ”person,” or is that human-specific terminology? These
are the kinds of thoughts that literally keep me awake at night, when there’s
work in about 5 hours and the crickets are a little too loud to sleep through.
Okay, I think it’s time I brought this review to a close. I still think the
spaceship explosion scene is pretty funny, though.
(3/5)
A Few Final
Thoughts:
--“If the door opens, it is working!” Very scientific,
Bulma.
--“It’s alien technology, so I don’t even know where to
start!” Very scientific, Bulma.
--“It’s no use, it won’t work!” That one’s a little less
scientific, Bulma.
--“Safety belt” apparently means “toilet” in Namekian. I had
no idea Namekians even used the toilet.
-- Piccolo is the password to the ship. That means, if
Piccolo ever had to ride the ship with other people, they’d need to refer to
him by a nickname or the ship would fucking explode.
--I forgot something else in the review—Krillin totally owns
the shit out of Yajirobe. Apparently, Krillin overheard Yajirobe’s face-to-face
encounter with Vegeta and does a spot-on impression of Yajirobe begging for his
life and trying to convince Vegeta he’s totally on his side.
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