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.
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