We knew it wouldn’t be easy.
I mean, let’s be
honest, whether you’re coming into this blind or whether you know every facet
of this show, you knew this wasn’t going to be easy when Vegeta started picking
off Frieza’s men and going around his back to gather dragon balls. Vegeta knew
it wasn’t going to be easy, either, and that was why he snuck in the first
place. He was well aware of how dangerous Frieza was when he started to openly
defy him and murder his most important men, all in a quest to basically kill
Frieza AND deny him what he wants before doing so.
What I don’t think
Vegeta anticipated was that Frieza didn’t pick all of his men out of a garbage
chute. Dodoria had no chance because he was just a second-string bruiser. Vegeta
is dealing with the first of Frieza’s men who are capable of masking their true
strength. Before this, it seemed like Vegeta was under the assumption that all
of Frieza’s men—maybe even Frieza himself—had no access to the ability to mask
their power levels, not just from scouters, but from “normal” methods of
detection. But he’s now been rudely introduced to a power that, spoiler alert,
is not getting old any time soon: transformation.
(By the way, yeah,
Oozaru is a transformation too, but it’s a very conditional one that relies on
you having a tail and then having a full moon available. Right now, Vegeta has
neither, and he can’t just will himself to turn into a giant monkey.)
Zarbon does a “Beauty
and the Beast” metaphor here, which implies that someone either wrote the same
story somewhere else in space, or somebody came to Earth, took the story and
brought it to the rest of the universe. Or, maybe I’m not being fair—maybe some
English-speaking space alien just happened to write a different story that just
happens to share that title with the one we know on Earth. Statistically, it’s
pretty damn likely, because every other alien species has already invented
English.
Anyway, I got
side-tracked. Zarbon’s not fucking around with that beast part. When he
transforms, he basically balloons into this Shrek-like monster man without a
nose whose fighting style immediately turns into that of a brute, and the rest
of the fight is just him fucking pummeling Vegeta. If you wanted to see Vegeta
meet some kind of karmic retribution for what he did to the Namekians a few episodes
ago, here it is. Zarbon uses his joints a lot, you’ll notice. He elbows, he
knees, he at one point grabs Vegeta’s head and starts just headbutting the fuck
out of Vegeta’s face over and over again. There’s no real grace or style, it’s
just pure aggro carnage, and it’s definitely not the kind of thing you usually
see DBZ characters doing. It’s more like a World Star fight, where one guy gets
the jump on the other right away and just starts kicking the shit out of them
when they’re already down.
Not that Vegeta
doesn’t put up a valiant effort, but he obviously just can’t keep up. There are
a few times where he and Zarbon are basically trading blows at super-fast
speed, you can probably picture what I’m talking about because of how often it
happens in the show, and you can visibly see Vegeta just struggling to maintain
a pace with Zarbon. Again, this is definitely the place you want to be if you
want to see Vegeta get some comeuppance for slaughtering a village full of
innocent Namekians, because by the time the fight is over, Vegeta has been seemingly
laid to rest in a watery grave, while Zarbon regresses back into the state Vegeta
was kicking his ass in—that almost feels like an insult itself—and flies off to
joyfully tell Frieza how he totally merc’d that fucking Saiyan.
In other news,
Krillin and Dende meet up with Guru this episode. Guru, as it turns out, is an
enormous and morbidly obese lump in a chair who is on the verge of death for
reasons that the show seems to be stating are from age, but actually, I think
it’s because Guru is hiding Namek’s only burger joint under his big-ass chair.
Seriously, I just go back to that bit from TFS where Frieza shows up to Guru’s house
and is like, “Namekians just drink water, how the hell are you so fat?!” TFS
doesn’t give a satisfactory answer to that question, and I don’t have one
either, so I’m just going to settle on my burger-joint theory.
We also get to meet
NAAAAAAIL this episode, and I actually quite like the original Nail AND the TFS
version of Nail, so I’m pretty hyped about his introduction to this series.
Nail is the strongest of the Namekians, pretty much full-stop. Without spoiling
too much, at this point he’s definitely stronger than Vegeta or Zarbon right
now, and as for Frieza, well, we’re going to get to that one in several
episodes. Nail is here to guard Guru from any threats, and obviously he’s
keeping a close watch on Guru now that the Frieza clan is out here causing
chaos, so he intimidates Krillin initially with his stoic and no-bullshit
nature. Krillin can’t help but note how Nail looks like Piccolo, and it’s like,
no shit, Sherlock, all of these people look like Piccolo, that’s the whole
idea. They’re a RACE.
The training up at
King Kai’s place is still going along at a brisk pace, except I find it a
little funny because they’re chasing Bubbles with the mallet they’re supposed to
use on Gregory. I have no idea if that was King Kai’s idea or theirs, but even
if it was theirs, somebody had to have given them the mallet, so I’m going to
say this is all King Kai’s fault. Bastard. Anyway, to be specific, Yamcha, Tien
and Chiaotzu are still chasing around the damn monkey, and at one point Bubbles
hops on King Kai’s table as he’s eating a steak, and Tien—not to be deterred—slams
the mallet right down on King Kai’s steak, knocking everything up in the air
for a second and just narrowly missing a hit on Bubbles. King Kai ponders this
for a moment, and then says “Guess that steak’s been… TIEN-derized!”
…Okay, I’ll give
King Kai that one, it was pretty clever. Guess the guy does have a
somewhat-calibrated sense of humor after all.
So, the Vegeta/Zarbon fight alone makes this a
good episode, but getting to meet the Eldest Namek and Nail adds a nice little
sweetener to the deal. I’m still shy on giving this one a perfect five because not
much actually happens to advance the plot beyond Vegeta being momentarily out
of the equation. Sure, Krillin gets to meet Guru, but that’s right at the end
of the episode, and it’s not exactly the most exciting cliffhanger in the
entire world. Still, the pieces are being put in place for some exciting
confrontations in the future. We all know it’s a matter of time before another
direct confrontation happens between the Bulma gang and the Frieza gang. It’s
just a matter of when.
(4/5)
A Few Final Thoughts:
--It’s great how conspicuous Guru’s house is. The house
sitting on the giant narrow pillar, no, nobody’s gonna notice that if they
happen to pass by it. Come on.
--Vegeta pulls some baby dragon thingie down into the drink at
the end of the episode as he’s getting himself back on land, swearing revenge
on Zarbon. Somewhere out there, a father dragon swears revenge on Vegeta in
turn.
--Dende tells Krillin about the fact that Namek has three
suns, which explains why it’s never night-time. Krillin says, “no wonder you’re
green!” I still don’t have a fucking clue what that’s supposed to mean. Maybe because
plants are green, and plants would thrive in that kind of environment? Except
they wouldn’t, because I feel like constant daytime would make for a poor ecosystem.
No comments:
Post a Comment