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.
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