Dragonball Z Episode 48 Review -- "The Hunted"

 

If “Namek’s Defense” was the action, “The Hunted” is the reaction, detailing the first ever—if indirect—confrontation Krillin and Gohan both have with Frieza, through the thwarting of Dodoria’s attempt to, for no good reason at all, murder a Namekian child. After he already murdered one a moment ago. Real stand-up guy, that Dodoria.

Dodoria really pulls the most weight this episode, which is a funny metaphor to use given the shape of his strange body. He starts to kill the Namekian village elder, but Frieza stops him, telling him he needs to focus on the three Namekian warriors first. He knows the more immediate threat has to be taken care of first, and he also knows that the village elder is more scared of watching more of his people die than he is of dying himself. So it makes the most sense to coerce the dragon ball out of him by killing more of his friends and guaranteeing safety for the ones that remain… if he just hands over that ball.

The Namekian warriors, of course, don’t stand a chance against Dodoria, who is over twice as strong as all of them put together, assuming they all peak at around 3,000. Even if they don’t, they’re just so out of their league, it’s tragic. Dodoria literally stabs his hand through the back of one of them, then unceremoniously mouth-beams another one into oblivion. The third one puts up a bit more of a resistance, dodging a few attacks and striking Dodoria with an energy beam, but it’s no use. Dodoria is a Namek saga-level warrior and the Namekian defense was made up of Saiyan saga-level fighters. It was never going to go in their favor.

Frieza proceeds to get truly slimy after the Namekian warriors are disposed of. He presents the idea of a trade, the elder’s dragon ball in exchange for the scouters he destroyed. The village elder, who at this point has exhausted all of his resources and has two children left he needs to protect, finally just gives in and agrees to give Frieza the ball. That alone must be incredibly painful for him, because he knows Frieza is going to get one step closer to immortality, and by extension becoming unstoppable. But as soon as the elder gives over the ball, Frieza demands the location of the last two balls. Any protestations made by the elder are, of course, useless, because Frieza is too strong and too evil to be held to any sort of deal. He has no moral qualms whatsoever about what he’s doing, he’s strong enough to make the laws rather than be held by them, and he green-lights Dodoria, in one of the most horrific scenes in this show yet, to murder the two Namekian children that the elder’s trying to save.

We talked a bit in the last review about Gohan’s moral compass, and it’s fair to say that after Dodoria mouth-beams one of the two Namekian children—named Cargo—into smithereens, that moral compass starts pointing hard in Dodoria’s direction, demanding some sort of retribution. But it’s not quite retribution that pushes Gohan into finally acting after so much time. Dodoria breaks the neck of the village elder, deciding to just go full blood-lust on the hapless remainers, and you just know in your bones it was always going to end this way. Dende, the other Namekian child, finds himself completely trapped by Dodoria, who raises his fist and…

Gets kicked the fuck away by Gohan. At long last, the heroes intervene.

Now, I feel I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that Krillin goes along with it entirely once Gohan commits. Krillin may have been content to let Frieza and his gang slaughter a village of Namekians before his very eyes, but only because he knew that they might just become another statistic if they were to intervene. Again, Krillin is acutely aware of his limits as a fighter. Gohan, if he is aware at all, doesn’t give a shit, and this is what separates him from Krillin and makes him display his father’s dual traits of heroism and recklessness.

The rest of the episode is basically a chase between our heroes, with Dende in tow, and Dodoria, who has been ordered by Frieza to get off his “fat butt” and go get those motherfuckers. Frieza, as annoyed as he is, continues to be fully self-assured in his powers, and proves as such to Zarbon by blowing up a mountain range miles away with nothing but his fucking mind. These are just the kind of frightening little glimpses into Frieza’s off-the-scale powers that make it perfectly reasonable that Vegeta and the heroes wouldn’t go for a direct attack approach. At this point, every other character in the show is a flea in the face of Frieza’s awe-inspiring power, and nothing I’m saying is a spoiler, because we know this from the very beginning. If even Vegeta, the blood-knight to end all blood-knights, won’t take on Frieza head-to-head, we know we’re dealing with something special.

 Anyway, Dodoria gives chase, and for a big boy, he’s pretty fast. He fires some energy beams, one of which manages to skirt Krillin, and he drops Dende. As he’s flying down to get the Namekian child, Dodoria grabs his foot, but Krillin, ever the wise man, uses his head. To headbutt the shit out of Dodoria’s face. Dodoria whines in pain as Gohan and Krillin rescue Dende and continue to put distance between themselves and the roly-poly bastard chasing after them.

I think what happens next is the second instance of Solar Flare being used in the entire series, as Krillin demonstrates it for Dodoria to see, and then promptly not see. This attack might as well be called “Get The Fuck Away From Me” because in all of my years of watching this show, I don’t think I can name an instance of Solar Flare being used to incapacitate an opponent so that the user can actually attack them. It’s always just, “okay, blind them, then fly as fast as you can away until it wears off.” It feels like a missed opportunity, especially against a villain like Dodoria who can’t sense power levels. Krillin and Gohan could probably devastate Dodoria with a few well-placed attacks, no matter how much stronger he is than them.

If I were a DBZ character who used Solar Flare, I’d be using it all the fucking time, even in situations where me and my opponent are the same in strength. There’s just no disadvantage to you for taking away your opponent’s sight for a brief period, especially since it also seems to cause pain in the person it’s used against. In particular, the trope I always hear is, “Krillin should use the Solar Flare and then strike his enemy with the Destructo Disk,” and I completely agree with that scenario. A lot of lives could have been saved over the course of many sagas had Krillin simply decided to use Solar Flare for a practical purpose instead of just pussing out of a fight.

Well, anyway, it works for the purposes of Gohan and Krillin, as they are able to suppress their power levels and hide away in a nook amongst some mountains. Now Dodoria, who doesn’t even have his scouter anymore, has to search for them with just his eyes, and the scenery of Namek doesn’t exactly work well for his purposes. And there the episode ends, with Dodoria circling the air above Krillin, Gohan and Dende, looking out for a sign of their existence.  

(4/5)

A Few Final Thoughts:

--“They’re quick! Just makes killing them all the more fun!”

--Gohan asks Krillin what he used against Dodoria, Krillin tells him “it’s just a little trick [he] learned from Tien.” At least Tien gets to have some smidge of relevance for the rest of the series.

--Let it not be said that Gohan cares about architecture. When he kicks Dodoria, he does so straight into a Namekian house. I’d love it if there was a Namekian sleeping in there who thought Gohan was one of Frieza’s guys bullying Dodoria.

Dragonball Z Episode 47 Review – “Namek’s Defense”

 If there’s anything you get to learn in this episode, it’s that Namek’s titular defense is nowhere near good enough to deal with the threats they face.

 I absolutely love this episode, I think it’s one of the greatest episodes to this point, and the reason it’s so great comes down to the tension created in all the scenes between the Namekian villagers and Frieza’s organization. You get a feel for Frieza this episode that none of the previous ones where he appeared have been able to create. Frieza is essentially the negotiator who holds all the cards and is merely humoring you by negotiating at all. Because let’s be clear, by the end of this episode, you know damn well that Frieza’s strongest goons can just slaughter all of these people on sight and destroy shit until they find the ball, assuming there is one to find. But why do that, when they can just coerce it out of the elder and then murder him anyway?

 But let it not be said that the Namekians, or at least some of them, don’t have the brains to ameliorate their situation. The elder Namekian of the village Frieza’s goons are attacking just happens to notice that the villains are wearing these devices—the scouters—that allow them to read power levels, and deduces that these same devices are what the villains are using to quickly find and kill whole villages full of Namekians. So he, of course, takes it upon himself to zap the scouters—every last one of them, dealing a significant blow to the Frieza gang because it basically blinds them until they’re able to get some more scouters delivered.

 It should be noted that, while this entire attack is going on, Krillin and Gohan are observing from behind some rocks, and Gohan is finding it increasingly difficult to mask his rage at what the Frieza gang is up to. We get enough insight into Gohan’s character this episode to determine, yep, he’s basically his father except a lot more mild-mannered and serious-minded, preferring not to fight unless pushed and being studious in a way that his father never was, both traits I presume come from his mother’s side of the family.

  Don’t get me wrong, Goku has his own kind of smarts, but said smarts mostly manifest themselves when he’s fighting or in otherwise some kind of ridiculous danger. You wouldn’t put Goku on a fucking Nobel Prize panel, is what I’m saying, although if he were real and all of the things he battled against were also real, he would 100 percent be the winner of every Nobel Prize imaginable. The point is, Gohan is equally as angered by injustices being perpetrated against innocent people, and has a very difficult time suppressing his anger at the sight of said injustices.

  Krillin, of course, is the moderating influence to Gohan’s more action-oriented instincts. Krillin, perhaps more than any other character on the entire show, is deftly aware of his own shortcomings and is not afraid to admit when he’s way out of his league. That’s not even just because he’s a human while Goku and Gohan have Saiyan blood—Krillin straight-up knows this shit. Sometimes the best fighter you have is the one who knows the fights he can’t win, and in Krillin’s case, he has this in spades. Everyone makes fun of the poor bald bastard because he’s not a hero like Goku or (much later in the series) Vegeta (spoiler alert lol), but what makes him heroic is his ability to recognize, unlike even some of the human fighters in the series, that he’s out of his depth and he needs to only do what he absolutely needs to do and flee when the gettin’s good.

 We don’t have much time left to spend with Dodoria, so I guess we better talk about the fat, pink bastard while we can. After all, there are going to be so few other opportunities to talk about a fat, pink bastard in this series, you guys seriously have no idea. Anyway, Dodoria and his spiky head are going to be facing a lot of resistance in the next few episodes, and he does not take it well. I mean, to be fair, none of the other villains in the series take being overwhelmed well, but Dodoria’s right in front of our face right now, so y’know, we ain’t got much choice. He’s basically a dumb grunt, just smarter than Cui because he at least does a better job of talking down Vegeta during their inevitable confrontation.

 Meanwhile, in space, Goku’s exercising in some of that good 20g shit. He apparently decided against jiggering it down to 11, and is instead taking it as the challenge it is. By the end of the episode, he’s done over 10,000 sit-ups. What I find interesting about Goku’s training in space is that it’s nothing at all like King Kai’s training. He’s not actually being taught or teaching himself anything, he’s not trying to master techniques he already knows how to use. This is all about beefing up in the harshest conditions he can muster, so that by the time he hits Namek, he can just completely out-speed and out-power his enemies without the need for special moves like the Kaioken and the Spirit Bomb.

 Because, when you think about it, Goku did get stronger with King Kai’s training, but at his base Goku was only just shy of 10,000. And yes, I am going out of my way not to describe Goku’s power level at that time as “over 9,000,” and I do it so that poor meme can finally just die a peaceful death. Anyway, Goku had to rely on Kaioken and the Spirit Bomb to overwhelm Vegeta back on Earth during their first fight, and even with those at his disposal, it became a team effort in the end. So Goku settling for just pure “get stronger” style training is the best move for him, and we’re going to see several episodes from now that it pays off in spades.

 As for the titular Namek’s Defense, in this episode it manifests itself as a trio of Namekians who are able to mask their power levels. The three of them register as 1,000 apiece on the scouters, so they are left to the nameless grunts to take care of. These grunts pretty much exist as fodder for stronger, more important characters, and of course the Namekian warriors completely outclass and defeat them with ease. Not like Frieza and his lieutenants give a shit, one of the grunts is even sent careening toward Zarbon, and instead of Zarbon catching him he just kicks him the fuck away, like, “bitch, you already know you failed.”

 These poor Namekians are 100% outclassed, and we already know this, but just how badly they’re going to get their asses kicked is left to our imagination as the episode ends on Dodoria heading for the village elder after said elder just destroyed all of their scouters. This and the next several episodes after it are going to be bloodbaths for the fledgling Namekian race, but for now we can at least take solace in the fact that Frieza and his cohorts have been crippled by their ineptness at sensing energy.

(4/5)

A Few Final Thoughts:

--“Who am I? I suppose you can say I’m an aspiring dragon ball collector!”

--“You underestimate our powers of persuasion.”

--“Aww, hell! You guys are way out of your league!”

--Even after they’ve gotten good and warmed up, the Namekian warriors clock in at only about 3,000 each. So, y’know, not a good sign for them.

--One more great one from Frieza: “All the horrible stories you’ve heard are true.”

Dragonball Z Episode 46 Review – “Defying Orders”

  In which Goku breaks out of the hospital, and then the surly bonds of Earth, to touch the face of Frieza. With his knuckles.

  Roshi is still randomly groping the nurse’s ass at the hospital, the same blonde one, and at this point even the doctor’s getting pissed off about it. If it wasn’t for the fact that Roshi has a triple-digit power level, he’d be in fucking jail, no question about it. A while back, there was some twitter user who was trying to “cancel” Master Roshi, and while I think that’s really dumb, I can also understand how people can be uncomfortable with him constantly groping women and getting away with it. I think what mitigates it, for the most part, is that when he gropes Bulma or Chi-Chi (or Android 18, later in the series), they kick his ass and then everyone just moves on. Bulma and Chi-Chi just kind of put up with it because it’s just what Roshi does, and while that doesn’t justify it, it’s hard to get mad on their behalf when they extract their blood toll from Roshi’s face and then promptly forget it happened. This, though, with the innocent hospital nurse who’s just trying to do her job, it legitimately does make me a little mad on her behalf.

  Anyway, Yajirobe shows up at the hospital, and lo and behold, he bringeth a plentiful bounty of senzu beans. Goku takes one and is promptly back to full strength. Literally, the only reason Korin ran out of senzu beans was so that Goku couldn’t travel to Namek with Bulma, which would have been not beneficial to Goku, since he wouldn’t have been able to get any practical training done. Also, it’s just awkward, the idea of Bulma and Goku being on that spaceship by themselves for a month. That may have been even more upsetting to Chi-Chi than her son going to Namek with Bulma and Krillin.

  We get to hang out with Bulma’s parents a bit in this episode, and I have to say, the two of them don’t feel like the parenting types. Especially Bulma’s mom, I’m not sure if I’d trust her with a goldfish, never mind a child. When we first see her this episode, she’s twirling around while watering plants, and it’s like, I didn’t know that clowns could also get in on the whole Stepford Wives thing. Bulma’s dad, Dr. Briefs, is a little less eccentric, but still seems like exactly the kind of father who would be absentee because of their dedication to science and building shit. They’re both delightful characters, don’t get me wrong, but they’re also both oddballs who collect dinosaurs as pets and water plants while dancing and speaking in a Brooklyn accent.

  Goku commandeers the ship upon finding out that the only thing Dr. Briefs was working on when Goku got there was the cappuccino machine, which just makes me wonder how Goku would deal with caffeine. I don’t think this show or the one before it ever addressed that. I feel like it would either have the complete opposite effect on Goku and make him very sleepy, or it would make him so hyperactive that he’s basically in Kaioken mode all the time. Then again, being that he’s an alien species, it might just kill him or have no effect whatsoever. Saiyans are incredibly similar to humans, except for their power and their ability to turn into giant apes, so I don’t know how much water that theory holds.

  I know I’ve gone off track several times this review, and the reason is nothing much happens in the episode. Nothing exciting, at least. Goku goes into space and is on his way to Namek, he’s fully healed, that’s all good but it doesn’t advance the situation on Namek itself, not right away at least. The episode sounds significant when I type it out like that, but there just isn’t much excitement after the tense previous episode.

  Bulma, Krillin and Gohan have a somewhat-encounter with Frieza at the beginning of this episode, and the power level Krillin and Gohan sense from Frieza is enough to absolutely scare them shitless. According to the dragon radar, Frieza and his group already have four dragon balls, and that is not good news for our heroes, because like Krillin says, not only is Frieza stronger than Vegeta, it isn’t even close between them both. Frieza, even just lounging around in his little hover-chair, is massively stronger than anything the crew has dealt with before. You have to feel bad for Krillin here—the dude always winds up having to deal directly with foes who are completely out of his league.

  But you can’t feel that bad, because he at least stands up against them, or in this case, goes with Gohan to hide behind a rock to watch Frieza and his gang bully around a whole other village full of Namekians. This scene—coming up in the next episode—is one of the cornerstone scenes of the Namek arc and really introduces you to Frieza and his group. Yeah, we’ve been following them for the first couple of episodes, but this is where we get very familiar with them and their style of operating. Let’s just say we find out pretty quickly why Vegeta turned out to be such a shit. Well, that, and his Saiyan genes.

(3/5)

A Few Final Thoughts:

-- Krillin notes the size of the Namekian dragon balls. They’re like basketballs, basically, in comparison to the baseball-sized Earth dragon balls.

--I didn’t mention the gravity machine in the main review, but yeah, there’s a gravity machine on Goku’s ship that goes up to 100x Earth’s gravity. Goku opts to try out 20, only to immediately struggle to move and state outright he should have tried 11.

--Goku literally tells Dr. Briefs, who is delaying Goku’s takeoff because of a goddamn coffee maker, that his daughter is on an alien planet, in danger, and he’s still like, “are you sure, man? Breakfast beverages.”

--I didn’t mention this, either: Goku’s ship is built using parts from his original space pod, which you may recall Piccolo blowing the fuck up in a filler episode way back when. How did he manage to get any of that tech salvaged? Presumably using the same scientific witchcraft allowing him to defy physics by containing vehicles and entire houses into a small capsule.

--According to Chi-Chi, Goku did not pack clean underwear. Eugh. The smell of his grundle alone should paralyze his opponents on Namek.

Dragonball Z Episode 45 Review – “Frieza Strikes!”

  In which Frieza does not organize a bunch of working people in an attempt to negotiate for better wages and working conditions, but instead continues his genocide of an entire planet’s rightful population.

  What do we learn about Frieza in this episode? Well, first of all, he is just a terrible boss, straight up. One of his men gets murdered on the other side of the planet, Frieza just laughs it off, that guy was a suck-ass anyway. Two of his other guys get merced earlier that episode, much weaker guys? Frieza points out that his stronger henchmen shouldn’t give a shit anyway, those guys were wussies. It’s obvious from the outset that Frieza is perfectly willing to let you just die if you prove to be weaker than any obstacle that comes along. There’s no point at which Frieza is like, “oh, fuck, my organization is in a heap of trouble if such-and-such dies.”

  Vegeta is well aware of Frieza’s apathy towards his own men, and is more than willing to exploit that. One of the many things that Vegeta uses to his advantage early in his time on Namek is his knowledge of how Frieza’s mind works. He’s not going to send anyone to check on Cui if he seems to have been killed, and even if he does, he’s not going to care much if that person gets killed. Why should he? He’s a god-like monster on the verge of immortality, these soldiers of his, even at their strongest, are just fleas to him.

  As for how Frieza perceives Vegeta? Well, that’s the best trick of all, out of all those that Vegeta pulls. He knows Frieza sees him as no danger at all, due to out-powering him so vastly. Frieza is aware that Vegeta is rebelling against him, is waiting patiently for the day where he gets to show the Saiyan prince a “lesson,” and is focused too much on collecting the dragon balls to have any desire for hunting down his former employee. This, along with the fact that Frieza and his goons are all unable to sense power levels and are thus all but blind without their scouters, whereas Vegeta can sense them wherever they are because they don’t bother to hide their own power levels, makes Vegeta a very capable and dangerous opponent, much more so than Frieza realizes at this juncture.

  And lost in the mix are Krillin, Gohan, Bulma and their ship, which meets a sad death during this episode at the hands of two of Frieza’s weaker goons, mentioned in a previous paragraph. Krillin and Gohan are quick to dispatch the goons after they’ve already done irreparable damage to the ship, and they celebrate briefly before Bulma rightly tells them off for forgetting that, barring intervention of some sort from God or Goku, they are stuck on this planet for at least the foreseeable future. And this is pretty much how these characters are left by the end of the episode, lost on a planet in the depths of space so far away from Earth our own technology can’t get to it in ten lifetimes, their only hope now the dragon balls.

  We have the Vegeta vs. Cui “fight” this episode, obviously, and it’s as gloriously one-sided as I remembered it being. Seriously, starting with Cui, all of Frieza’s minions underestimate Vegeta as a threat, even the ones who are still way stronger than him. Cui’s clearly been spoiling for a chance to fight against Vegeta for a long time, and now he gets to settle their rivalry (?) once and for all. Turns out, he does settle it, just not in the way he wants. Vegeta starts off by powering up so hard that both Cui’s and Zarbon’s scouters blow up, right on their respective faces. That had to smart. To give Cui credit, he at least realizes what he’s dealing with after Vegeta powers up, being the first of many, many of Frieza’s minions who will beg the merciless Saiyan warrior for mercy, which I LITERALLY JUST GOT THROUGH TELLING YOU HE DID NOT HAVE. He even goes for the old “we’ll team up and beat Frieza together,” which is just adorable, both because it’s a fat-ass lie and because even if it weren’t, it would be like two rotten tomatoes striking the haunches of an elephant. You probably wouldn’t even wake it up from its sleep.

  And then—no shit—Cui does the literal “HEY LOOK OVER THERE” and you know something? It fucking works. At least, Vegeta allows it to work, I’m not sure if he actually believed Cui or was just humoring him, but either way, Cui takes the opportunity and fires a sizable energy beam at the prince, seemingly landing a direct hit and wiping Vegeta away for good. Well, I’m sure that’s that, there’s no way he—WHAAAAT? HE SURVIVED?! Yeah, folks, DBZ characters are basically the equivalent of the slasher villain who refuses to stay dead. You have a better chance killing Jason with a machete to the face than you have of killing a DBZ villain with a simple large energy blast, unless it’s at the end of the movie/saga.

  Vegeta brushes off Cui’s attack, Cui runs, gets blasted to death by Vegeta, and there we go, I’ve now mostly run out of reasons to type the word “Cui,” thank fuck for that. With Cui out of the way and Frieza’s men utterly apathetic to that fact, Vegeta can now focus on thwarting Frieza. Knowing that the bastard can’t be everywhere, no matter how powerful he is, Vegeta decides if he can just get one ball before Frieza gets to it, he can stifle Frieza’s plans to gain immortality, and then at that point it’s just a matter of time before he can sneak the others out from under Frieza’s nose. A daring gambit, because in spite of Frieza’s inability to read power levels and the overdependence he has on his men, Frieza is still insanely powerful and more than capable of coercing the ball away from Vegeta by himself.

  This is a solid set-up episode, with enough action in it to justify its existence in the larger tapestry of a DBZ saga. Vegeta blowing Cui off the face of the planet Namek is a quick, satisfying display of Vegeta’s ruthless nature, and is perhaps the first time in the entire series he’s successfully killed a warrior who was fighting back, unless you count the filler from before he and Nappa made it to Earth. In the diametrically opposed sides comprising Bulma’s posse and Frieza’s army, Vegeta is the violent wild-card between the two of them, bouncing back and forth, inconveniencing one and destroying a member of another.

  And all of this set on a strange new land, a literally alien world unlike nothing anyone has dealt with in this series up to this point. Kid Goku and pals never went to outer space. I think the closest they may have come is sending Monster Rabbit and his goons all the way to the moon, where I assume they resided until Roshi blew the motherfucker up later during the World Tournament. Yeah. Dragonball Z may get weird sometimes, but Dragonball was weird all the damn time.

(4/5)

A Few Final Thoughts:

--“Once again, you’ve underestimated your enemy, Cui!”

--I love Frieza’s constant reminders that the power levels Dodoria and Zarbon are sensing don’t even hold a candle to Frieza’s own power. Like, hello, you guys? Frieza takes 24,000 power level SHITS.

--“Looks like the little one is having stomach cramps or something!” Interesting how alien species’ biology continues to be so very similar to ours.

--Apparently if Krillin or Gohan flies around while carrying Bulma, it’ll put out too much energy and the scouter will sense it. Veiled attack on her weight? I’d imagine she hasn’t had much opportunity to exercise, being on that ship for a month straight.

--Oh, and Krillin and Gohan can’t help but notice that Frieza and his dudes are wearing Saiyan armor.

Dragonball Z Episode 44 Review – “Brood of Evil”

 Dragonball Z Episode 44 Review – “Brood of Evil”

  When I rewatched this episode, I was pleasantly surprised to find that we start the episode with the continuation of one of the most boring filler arcs in the show’s history and manage to end it with the introduction of Frieza on Actual, No-Bullshit Namek. I couldn’t remember if there was any filler after this, but I was sure there would be just based on the precedent the Saiyan saga’s seemingly endless filler set. Yet, I sat there happy when the episode ended, ready to get back into the R E A L S H I T.

  I’ll give a brief summation of the end of the bug-man arc. The guys are able to successfully subdue Krillin, Gohan and Bulma long enough to attempt to use the ship, only, hurr-durr, they can’t actually open the ship because they don’t know the password. They steal Bulma’s radar and Bulma gives chase, only to find herself captured by the monsters, at which point Krillin and Gohan—having escaped the octo-monsters, show up and just one-shot both bug-men. The bug-men lament their fate of being stuck on this abandoned hell-planet forever while Bulma and the boys have a fun trip through a vortex, resulting in them ultimately getting to… Planet Namek.

  The planet is somewhat like ours, only greener. Fitting, considering the inhabitants’ collective skin color. The skies are green, the water is green, the people are green—this is basically Space Ireland, and I am stunned that TFS didn’t make that connection when the Namek saga came around. Or, maybe they did, and decided not to go with it. Besides, that would probably get very tiresome, very fast. Ironically, the grass and other vegetation seems to be blue, or more of a greenish blue at least. You know what? It reminds me of the Futurama episode where they go to the weird dimension where everything is almost the same except for the colors of stuff. I think they even had a green sky there, too.

  Even though the planet is so Earth-like, Bulma still wants to make sure the oxygen on the planet—or lack thereof—won’t kill them or be otherwise debilitating. I, personally, think this is a very reasonable thing to do, but what I also have to acknowledge is the same thing Krillin and Gohan quickly discover: every fucking planet in the universe has perfectly good oxygen and we can live there no problem. Naturally. The only other defining characteristic I can say about the planet itself, without getting into the inhabitants or their idea of architecture, is the Takoyaki trees. Or, for the layperson, trees that are basically a tall, thin trunk with a blue-green ball on the top, like a meatball having been speared on a toothpick, dyed green and stuck in the dirt.

  Our heroes get about two minutes to celebrate having landed on Namek before I get to celebrate the best thing about the Namek saga: Vegeta showing up in his space pod and proceeding to, slowly and methodically, unravel everything about Frieza’s machinations. Right now, all he’s doing is showing up, but it’s fucking hype like hearing Stone Cold Steve Austin’s entrance music, with the sound of glass shattering immediately triggering a “FUCK YEAH” Pavlovian response inside one’s mind. God damn, Vegeta is really at his most devious and fun in this saga, and I can’t wait to get into the parts where he just owns bones all up and down the Namekian wilderness.

  With Vegeta showing up—they can sense his specific power level coming off the space pod—and another one following right after it with another strong power inside, the crew is understandably shit-pants terrified. Krillin and Gohan, in particular, must be petrified of the idea that they may face Vegeta again, only he hasn’t been thoroughly tenderized by Goku beforehand. Bulma, of course, is scared because she’s in way over her head, a sensation she should be plenty familiar with. Let’s be honest, if it wasn’t for the fact that Gohan and Krillin know fuck-all about piloting a spaceship, Bulma would be the worst escort mission in the history of anime. Actually, I shouldn’t say that, having not watched that much anime.

  We might as well talk a little about what’s happening on Earth. Well, Goku’s back in the hospital, having been found collapsed in the middle of nowhere, trying to train when his body still hasn’t recovered, thanks to a lack of access to senzu beans, Mystic Water, a healing tank, Dende, or one of fifty thousand other cheat-healers that exist in the Dragonball canon. It’s amazing that a show like this can justify having this much filler, when all the characters can have as many mulligans as they want. Chi-Chi is keeping a watchful eye on her zealous husband, making sure he doesn’t advance the plot too much until he’s out of his assless gown. I kid about the gown, of course; no clothes Goku occupies is assless, because he is an ass, and within the clothes at the same time.

  Roshi, meanwhile, gets a call from a recently frightened Bulma, who reveals to Roshi that Vegeta has already made it to Planet Namek and they are in a world of shit and fuck as a result. She doesn’t word it that way, but if I were here, that’s the way I would have put the point across. Roshi is told NOT to reveal any of this information to Chi-Chi, on account of her being a barely-stable lunatic. The plan now is for Bulma to go back to Earth, pick up Goku, and come back to Namek with him in tow. Because, of course, they have two months to wait around for her to do that, and yes, the show explicitly says that’s how long it’s going to take. Any long-suffering DBZ fan knows how long five minutes is in this universe, now imagine how long two fucking months is going to take.

  I kid, of course. Krillin and Gohan will be dead at Frieza’s hand long before Goku and Bulma make it back to the empty space where Namek used to be.

  Speaking of Frieza, it is here that we get to see him on-screen for the first time, and I’d imagine if there’s anyone left in existence who hasn’t seen DBZ, is interested in seeing DBZ, and sees this character for the first time here, they’re disappointed. Well, let me just say two things: first, if you don’t like villains with pink skin, you are going to be a frustrated motherfucker when we get to the last main arc of Z. Second: the old adage, “never judge a book by its cover,” comes up again and again in this series, with Frieza being a very noteworthy example. I won’t say he’s the BIGGEST example, again thinking ahead to the final arc of Z, but he most certainly defies the expectations we have of what a badass monster man is supposed to be. One thing I can guarantee, by the time you get to see Frieza in action, it’ll no longer be a wonder to you that this guy is the most feared, most infamous villain in the history of this show.

(4/5)

A Few Final Thoughts:

--“Welcome to the armpit of the universe!”

-- For two guys on a completely abandoned shithole planet, they sure are resourceful, able to create a makeshift laboratory and a mind-reading machine. I guess them being shapeshifters is also a stroke of good luck.

--Krillin gets so mad about Vegeta showing up, why by God he just throws his hat on the ground, which amazingly does not burst into flames like when an Aqua Teen Hunger Force character spikes something to the ground.

 

Dragonball Z Episode 43 Review – “A Friendly Surprise”

In which our intrepid heroes discover that they are not, in fact, on the planet Namek.

Of course, by the time we get to that point, we’re so soon after the discovery that the narrator is still like “omgzors, is this not planet Namek after all?????” At that point, you just want to shoot the bastard. The animated medium does not have the capacity for subtle deception, because the characters cannot possibly express with their face and body language as well as actual actors can, so when the show tries to act like they pulled the wool over your eyes the entire time, it just feels embarrassing. And I know what you’re thinking, “why are you even bothering to complain about this?” Well, normally I wouldn’t, because I’m aware of the limitations of this medium. What SUCKS is that this isn’t just a single episode of some animated TV sitcom, this is DBZ FILLER. Not only is it paced the way a sloth climbs a tree, it’s pitched at the level of a fourth-grader, and to boot, you KNOW more interesting shit is coming up and you just want to FUCKING. GET TO IT. ALREADY.

Ahem. But anyway, about the episode…

We have Vegeta having his motivations diverted in this episode to Namek as opposed to any sort of revenge on Earth. This is terrible news for our heroes, when it should normally be great news. Hey, Vegeta’s not going to come blow up the Earth! But he is going to Namek, to confront our heroes, who he doesn’t know are there, and steal the dragon balls, and then probably blow that planet up before going to Earth and blowing it up too. Vegeta finds out about Frieza getting to Namek first and decides, well, fuck that noise, he’s not going to let Frieza get the balls first. As far as he is aware, the dragon balls are the only chance Vegeta has to get out from under his malevolent boss, unless he wants to just keep grinding out experience by blowing up planets.

The fun stuff is Vegeta’s interactions with Cui, because it’s totally an encapsulation of a rebellious, half-interested employee dealing with somebody who is exactly at their level and who is a giant ass-kiss and trying to fill the boss’s shoes. Cui is every asshole cashier or grocery stocker who thinks if they just act like the boss and try to enforce the rules on their behalf, why, the boss will see them as a model employee and maybe give them some actual authority! Which is why it’s all the more satisfying to see Vegeta completely brush him off like the insect he is, a complete toady and a fly buzzing around the heads of people around him. Shitheads like that need putting in their place once in a while, and soon Cui is going to be permanently sent to a very special place. That’s right: the next dimension. But not before he is killed.

Goku’s still training. Goku still shouldn’t be training. Roshi and Chi-Chi are out looking for him. I think Roshi’s able to sense Goku, because he knows exactly where to go to find him. Nothing more to report on this front.

Finally, the fake Namekians spring their trap at the end of the episode, turning into evil bug-like humanoids and the planet from a lush green into a rocky, cold gray/blue. The entire thing was an illusion created by the bug-men, which just makes me wonder why they didn’t use their powers to make their planet look nice and habitable instead of making a group of goobers waste their time gathering fake dragon balls until they were ready to steal their spaceship. Maybe I missed something, but the bug-men never explain why they didn’t just kill the crew and take their ship when they were unconscious. Like, you wouldn’t even have to kill them, if your point was to escape, just fucking leave them there.

I don’t know, whatever. This episode blows.

(2/5)

A Few Final Thoughts:

--“SEE MY FRIEND OVER THERE? HE KNOWS KARATE!” – Bulma, about Krillin.

--Why in fuck do Krillin and Gohan keep forgetting they can fly? This happens all the time in DBZ filler, they have to make these situations extra contrived in order to get any kind of action out of them, otherwise all the super-warriors would just blast through them and carry on. But seriously, you expect me to believe that Krillin and Gohan at this point in the series would be threatened by or unable to run a giant Indiana Jones snowball? Fuck right off.

-- Bulma asks if her frostbitten face will scare Yamcha when she sees him. Little does she realize, by the time she sees Yamcha again, she will be in love with none other than Vegeta.

--Speaking of Vegeta, he’s already figured out that he can sense power levels now. What changed? I don’t know, but he almost doesn’t take a scouter with him to Namek.

Dragonball Z Episode 42 Review – “The Search Continues”

Dragonball Z Episode 42 Review – “The Search Continues”

  This is where the whole Fake Namek mini-arc really starts to take it up the ass, slowly, un-lubricated. The crew, along with the so-called Namekians who are helping them, get into all kinds of nonsense trying to get the remaining fake dragon balls, and it’s so goddamned frustrating to watch, because there are no stakes. We know these aren’t the real Namekians, we know these aren’t real dragon balls, we know the crew is just wasting their time and putting themselves in danger for nothing.

  Like, it reminds me of the Twilight Zone episode, “I Shot an Arrow Into the Air,” where these astronauts think they’ve landed on an alien planet and are hopelessly lost without food or water, and at the end the last remaining survivor climbs up some hill only to find a billboard stating they’ve been in Reno, Nevada the whole fucking time, the ship didn’t even get off the planet. That’s what this feels like, except while that was tragic in its ultimate meaningless, this is just a tiresome slog, because we already know the crew is actually in Reno, Nevada the whole fucking time.

  And yet, what saves this episode from being a waste of time is all the stuff that doesn’t involve Krillin, Gohan and Bulma. The most interesting stuff is happening with Goku and Vegeta. And you guys might as well get used to Goku and Vegeta running the whole show, because spoiler alert, it isn’t going to get old any time soon. Goku is trying to get back into training, even though his body is still broken from his last battle with Vegeta. He can’t really fly, he has some power but when he uses it he’s immediately exhausted, and now he’s actually got Chi-Chi worried as shit. As “tsundere” as Chi-Chi has been with Goku thus far, she really does want him to stay in the hospital until he’s well, and I think what makes her sympathetic in that regard in spite of her piss-poor attitude is that her attitude doesn’t matter to Goku one bit. Like, even if she were the most supportive, loving, caring woman in the world, nothing is going to stop Goku from trying to get stronger and get trained because he knows more battles are coming his way.

  He remembers Vegeta’s words from right before he left the planet, he knows Vegeta is ruthless and capable enough to come right back after he heals and murder everyone he cares about. Chi-Chi doesn’t know this, at least not to the same extent, and her only concern is making sure Goku gets better, especially now that Gohan’s in space. Goku’s all she has now (save for Ox-King), and she has to protect and preserve that. These two characters who love each other are also on extremely divergent paths with polar opposite goals, so we can already see that they’re going to see little of each other in the near future, and that’s pretty sad.

  Speaking of Vegeta, we find him finally waking up from his slumber in the healing tank. When he emerges from that tank at the end of the episode, you can practically hear the Imperial Death March playing in your head. You know that bad news is back and worse than ever, because the Vegeta that has emerged from the tank is far from the same one who emerged from the space pod back on Earth. This is a Vegeta with a renewed sense of purpose, who has seen what it is like to be confronted and defeated by a force that isn’t Frieza, and is willing to channel that humiliation through his rage to make sure he is never beaten so soundly again. Or, in layman’s terms, he’s pissy, and needs to take it out on a few of Frieza’s mooks. He will get his wish soon.

  As much as the Fake Namek arc sucks, it just makes it even more satisfying when they get another dragon ball, and they get about two this episode, which is as grindingly slow as it sounds. They fight a giant ogre and a bunch of strange grass birds this episode, which kidnap them and take them to the castle of said giant ogre. All the while, you’re just having nostalgic thoughts of when there were things happening in the show that weren’t as stupid. I know I made a big thing in the last review of making the Fake Namek arc sound like a harkening back to the days of old Dragonball, and I did, and to be honest, that’s also kind of why I don’t like it. For one thing, without someone like Kid Goku, it just feels empty. Gohan isn’t a good enough replacement, as he doesn’t have his father’s charisma at that age. For another thing, in DB, this wasn’t filler—this WAS the adventure. So it was okay, because we knew it was building to something. This is just a distraction while we wait with bated breath for Vegeta and Frieza to come into play. We’ve been teased with this Frieza guy for a few episodes now, we know Vegeta’s about to make some moves again, and yet here we are, watching this pointless-ass filler. This episode is saved entirely from being a 2 or even a 1 by the sheer fact that Goku and Vegeta are having way more fascinating arcs at the same time, otherwise, fuck this slog.

(3/5)

A Few Final Thoughts:

--“This thing wouldn’t wake up if we screamed in its ear!” You want to wager your life on that, Bulma?

--“We should be able to go home much sooner than I anticipated!” Don’t fucking count on it, Bulma. I can see into your future, and it is full of more filler.

--“ARE YOU READY TO GO HEAD-TO-HEAD WITH A TORNADO?!”

Dragonball Z Episode 41 Review -- “Look Out Below”

  I think I’ve figured out what the creators of this show we’re going for with this mini-arc, assuming this wasn’t originally an Akira Toriyama idea. This is the show going back to the roots its prequel planted, to go back toward an action-adventure direction rather than the Shonen fighting series Z started out as. In many ways, this adventure on Fake Namek feels like one of the absurd misadventures you’d see in early Dragonball, where it was just Goku, Bulma and Oolong traveling together, looking for the seven magic balls and running into all kinds of insane characters along the way. It has that classic feel to it, where there’s not a direct threat coming from a much more powerful fighter, but instead the unpredictability of the characters’ environment, meeting strangers and not quite being sure if they can be trusted.

  Through this lens, I’m able to view this episode a little more favorably. I still think it’s a pointless exercise in delaying the crew’s trip to the real Namek, but sometimes with filler you just have to sit back and let yourself be entertained. After all, the funniest episode of DBZ ever made—“Goku’s Ordeal”—was a filler episode all the way. Once you accept the fact that Vegeta and the mysterious Frieza aren’t going to be a problem for a little while, you can view this content more objectively, I’d like to think.

  The heroes make a crash landing on what Bulma, at least, believes to be Planet Namek. Unfortunately, even though a tree partly breaks their descent, they still fall from a cliff and wind up knocked out, only to be awoken by a pair of apparent Namekians! The crew is taken slightly aback by their generosity, which I appreciated, it shows these characters have been through plenty of bullshit and aren’t going to suspend their disbelief for just any old group of aliens. The supposed Namekians have the crew’s ship in storage, claiming it was banged up pretty bad and they were going to do some repairs on it. I guess they went to fucking Space Auto Zone or something to get the parts they needed.

  Doubts subside temporarily when the dragon radar gets a signal! There are three dragon balls in the immediate area! The (fake) Namekians volunteer to take the crew in their airship, the Wu-Kong (almost certainly a reference to Son Wukong), to find the dragon balls, so obviously, the crew goes along with it, having enough evidence to support the theory that these guys are really Namekians. Honestly, it’s kind of cheating to call our protagonists stupid for falling for the ruse these aliens have put up, because when you have the ability to alter someone’s immediate reality, that person is pretty much at your mercy. Shit, if I had psychic powers, at the very VERY least I would never have to work again.

  The remainder of the episode details the crew’s struggle, with the “Namekians” in tow, to find the three dragon balls in the immediate vicinity. The first one is easy enough, the second one is in the skull of some creature, causing Bulma to freak the fuck out. Then, we have the third one, which is… a little bit more of a struggle, to say the least. Enough of a struggle that the episode ends on a cliffhanger. See, it turns out this version of Namek features great big monsters that eat dragon balls. Man, that sentence would be disgusting if it were applied to literally any other series. No, really, imagine saying that about Game of Thrones. Anyway, yeah, giant dinosaur picks up the ball and eats it, then promptly sinks and dies in a swamp full of acid, which begs the question: how the fuck can any living creature on this planet be alive if even the biggest predator is too stupid to avoid the fucking acid pool? Truly a disgrace to the evolutionary history of (fake-)Namek, if you ask me.

  Anything else? I guess we get a quick look at what Goku is up to, and it—as usual—involves being yelled at by Chi-Chi in the hospital. Because Goku’s entire domestic life after death number one wouldn’t be complete without nagging. Seriously, doesn’t Goku ever get at least a little pissed off at Chi-Chi? He doesn’t, I really think he doesn’t. Even at Gohan, Goku gets pissed off every once in a while, but I’ve never seen him get even remotely angry with Chi-Chi, even though she can be such a jerk. I guess he really is in love. Whatever the hell he thinks that is. He probably thinks it’s spaghetti, or some kind of avian meat dish.

  Again, since no progress was made this episode as far as the main plot of the story goes, I cannot conscionably give this episode a very good rating. And yes, I know “Goku’s Ordeal” also has nothing to do with the main story of the arc it’s featured in, shut up, it’s special. This, on the other hand, doesn’t offer enough as a stand-alone episode or as a piece of the larger puzzle to make it particularly noteworthy. But, at the same time, I like the spirit and the intent of it. Every once in a while, the viewers of this show need a reminder that it’s not always about fighting the one main-threat Big Boss individual whose power level is just staggering compared to our heroes. Sometimes you’re just exploring a strange new world, finding unexpected hazards and planning as you go.

  (3/5)

A Few Final Thoughts:

-- Bulma, to two recognizable Namekians: “This is Namek, right?” Apparently even she was having doubts.

-- I really wish the two most prominent women in this show—Chi-Chi and Bulma—weren’t portrayed as such assholes all the time.

--Krillin happens to notice some hieroglyphics that do not look anything like Namekians during their travels to find the dragon balls this episode. Hmmm…