Finally, just when we were starting to go through some withdrawals, we get some prime Vegeta action.
Vegeta humiliates
Dodoria this episode. To call it a fight would be an insult to fights, in or out
of this story. It’s a humiliation. It’s bullying. Vegeta might as well be
fighting an armless man, with how little Dodoria can challenge him this
episode. Dodoria should have never left Frieza’s side, because the only place
Vegeta would not utterly murder Dodoria is within Frieza’s eyesight—that is, if
Frieza even cared enough to intervene on Dodoria’s behalf (he doesn’t).
Dodoria tries to
bargain with Vegeta after a brief scuffle where it becomes clear that Dodoria can’t
touch Vegeta, and to his credit Dodoria does tell him the truth about what
happened to the Saiyan and to Planet Vegeta, when he could have easily spun a
web of bullshit to protect his boss. Then again, his boss doesn’t really need
protection, at all, in any way, unless you’re Majin Buu or Beerus or some other
ridiculously overpowered villain. Dabura, maybe? Whatever, anyway, I’m getting
off track: Dodoria tells Vegeta that Frieza killed all the Saiyans, including
his father, and it wasn’t some meteorite like he and Raditz and Nappa had been
told.
Dodoria also shares
Frieza’s reasoning with Vegeta, which may be more important because Vegeta probably
already suspected that Frieza murdered the entire Saiyan race. Frieza was
afraid of how strong the Saiyans could get in a short amount of time—a fear
that will be well-justified later in the series—and while they were useful for
a little while, Frieza ultimately concluded that destroying them was the
practical option. You have to hand it to Frieza, he’s displaying a lot of
smarts compared to other DBZ villains who think they’re untouchable. Granted,
he does think he’s untouchable for the most part, but he recognizes a potential
problem when he sees it, and a race of battle-obsessed aliens enslaved by a
tyrant isn’t a very good proposition when YOU’RE the tyrant.
Now, Dodoria’s
reasoning is maybe not the best here. He thinks that by telling Vegeta that
Frieza—the man Dodoria is literally working for and who Vegeta has been working
for up to this point—murdered his family and friends, Vegeta is going to spare
his life. If someone told me they’d known for years about the person who murdered
my family, and had worked for them this whole time, I wouldn’t exactly be
inclined to let them skate by. Unfortunately for Dodoria, his gamble doesn’t pay
off, and it probably never would have, because Vegeta always was going to kill
Dodoria. Dodoria’s little hail mary just bought him a few extra minutes of
life, and he spent them pissing off his would-be murderer even more.
Now, the reason Dodoria
wound up encountering Vegeta in the first place is because he did the thing a
lot of DBZ characters—hero and villain alike—do: he attacked his enemy with one
or more energy beams and then smugly left, confident that they had secured a
victory. Of course, he hadn’t, and if he weren’t over-reliant on the scouter,
he’d have known that. Actually, even characters who can sense energy levels
make the mistake of thinking they killed their opponent, but we’ll get into
that as it happens. For now, Krillin, Gohan and Dende are alive and are now safe
from Dodoria, even though he did catch sight of them and fire their way.
At Bulma’s capsule
cabin on Namek, she learns from her father that Goku is headed to Namek, which
causes her to drop her transmitting device she was talking to him on in the
bathtub. And yeah, this show and the preceding one both are pretty fond of
showing Bulma lounging in underwear or submerged in a warm bath. What kills me
is how absolutely casual Dr. Briefs is about the fact that his daughter is
trapped on an alien world with no further means of escaping. I swear, that dude
must be a sociopath, because I don’t think I’ve seen him ever express concern
for his daughter’s safety, in spite of the insanely dangerous shit she’s always
mixed-up in. He was more concerned about the fucking cappuccino machine in the
gravity chamber than he was when Bulma told him she was stranded in space with
Vegeta and Frieza.
We learn that Dende
can sort of fly this episode, so that’s a thing. He must not be very good at it,
because when they were tearing ass trying to get away from Dodoria, they had to
carry Dende by the hand the whole time. I guess you can argue they were in the heat
of the moment and didn’t bother to ask Dende if he could fly, but something
tells me the Namekians who were raising him didn’t train him to fly very fast.
It’s not like they were anticipating a horrible alien planet-broker to show up
and start demanding eternal life. Or, actually, I think they did, I think they
have some kind of prescience. Oh, well. Didn’t seem to help them at all.
Goku’s not up to
much in space, he’s just continuing to do push-ups and sit-ups and drink plenty
of juice in the gravity chamber while the gravity is still up to 20g. He
mentions at the end of the episode that he’s going to turn it up a notch after
another session of 10,000 fucking push-ups, Jesus Christ, but for now, he’s
keeping it down to a sensible 20. Good for him.
Speaking of Goku, I
was really captured by Vegeta’s line at the end of the episode, a line which I
think perfectly encapsulates the stakes as far as Vegeta is concerned. Yes,
Vegeta wants eternal life for many similar, selfish reasons Frieza wants it,
but the key difference is Vegeta is fighting to avenge many, many people who
died unjustly beneath Frieza’s terrible reign. Vegeta says “I promise you this,
Frieza: your downfall will be at the hands of a Saiyan.” Now that is some
powerful, prophetic shit right there, and it’s going to pay off in spades when
we get to the end of Frieza’s story in Z itself. I haven’t watched any of the
Super stuff, so I don’t know how prophetic it’s going to continue being, but
probably still strong. I don’t think any of the human characters in the show
make it to Frieza level in terms of power. Spoiler, I guess.
So with one of
Frieza’s two most reliable henchmen dead, and with all of his organization’s scouters
destroyed, it would seem like Vegeta is succeeding so far. Frieza and his
cohorts are flying blind while Vegeta can scan power levels with his mind and
make sound judgments based on what he knows about his own power compared to
Frieza’s men. Guys like Zarbon and the rest of Frieza’s motley crew, on the
other hand, wouldn’t know if Vegeta was as strong as, well, Vegeta, or as
strong as the Supreme Kai or something equally crazy. And with Krillin’s group
in the mix, it would seem as if things are going to get a little buck-wild on
this little planet we call Namek. I sure hope Goku lands soon, said everyone
ever.
(4/5)
A Few Final Thoughts:
--“These Earthlings did me a favor when they almost killed
me!”
--“It’s amazing what a coward you can become when you aren’t
hiding behind your master!”
--“How will you and Zarbon ever find Frieza’s backside to
stick your noses in it?!”
--Dodoria: “Shooting people in the back always was your
style!” Oh, Dodoria, trust me; he got the jump on you for fun, not because he
needed to.
--Yeah, I could pretty much have written this entire review
with nothing but Vegeta and Vegeta-related quotes, what of it?
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