“They just keep underestimating the true powers of a Saiyan!” --Vegeta
This is perhaps
Vegeta’s most spectacular moment in the show up to this point, and one of his
greatest efforts as a villain. We don’t get to see the entire thing this
episode, but we do get to watch where it begins. It is a triumph not dissimilar
to Andy Dufresne literally digging himself out of prison with a spoon, only
Vegeta has a fucking bulldozer, and he steals everybody’s fucking money before
he leaves. If Frieza was underestimating Vegeta before, he sure as shit isn’t now.
The show puts a bit of
a scare into us at first, with Appule saying Vegeta may never regain
consciousness. Another conspicuous example of a cohort of Frieza’s grossly underestimating
Vegeta. I guess it’s hard to blame them—up until this point, they’ve never gone
up against Vegeta, beyond just fucking with him as an ally of theirs. It’s not
like Frieza went with Vegeta to Earth—if he had, the Saiyan saga would have
been the last saga of the show, unless they named the show to “Frieza Gets the
DragonballZ.”
The fact that Vegeta
was able to so easily find the dragon balls underscores Frieza’s ultimate folly
of arrogance. Not pride—there’s a key difference, though they manifest
themselves so similarly. It was something Trunks picked up on with Vegeta after
spending a year with him in the Hyperbolic Time Chamber. Vegeta believes
himself to be stronger than everybody else. Frieza believes everybody else to
be weaker than him. Those things sound exactly the same, sure, but there’s a
big gap in how those two sentences make a person act.
Zarbon is getting
increasingly in Frieza’s doghouse because of the events of the last two
episodes, and that’s going to color his behavior for the remainder of his time
in the series. If there’s one thing you don’t want to do, it’s piss off your
manager with repeated failures, and when it comes to your manager being Frieza,
let’s just say he can revoke your life insurance and health benefits in the
blink of an eyelash. When it comes to fucking around, Frieza is not a man with
whom you do it. So Zarbon is eager to finish off Vegeta, to actually do what he
believed he did when he left Vegeta at the bottom of that river.
“What’s the only
kind of dog in the world that doesn’t bark? A hot dog!” –King Kai
Obviously, due to the title of this episode,
we need to talk about what kind of training shenanigans and general tomfoolery
are taking place on the King Kai planet. The boys get past the Bubbles training
stage, move very quickly past the Gregory stuff (except Piccolo, it isn’t worth
his time), and by the end of the episode, Tien, Yamcha and Chiaotzu are having
a sparring match against Piccolo. At first, the fighters are told to split into
two groups of, well, two, but Piccolo thinks he can take the other three on by
himself. So he does, and to his surprise, the training that he thought was a
load of bullshit turns out to have actually made his three opponents a lot
stronger, so he actually gets some blows dealt to him. Piccolo falls probably more
toward the arrogance end of the pride/arrogance scale. He may be a good guy at
this point in the show, but he is by no means a nice guy.
And really, that’s the
hallmark of a great action show, or hell, any kind of good show. You want a
slightly more complicated moral universe than just “good” and “evil.” There’s a
lot of in-between going on. You have Piccolo, who is only just recently a heroic
character who still has some lingering stubbornness and discomfort with being
around the goody-goody, still considering himself superior as most villains are
wont to do. You have someone like Vegeta, who is no doubt evil, but in his
opposition to Frieza and his minions may also be key in throwing those very
people off of the scent of our real heroes. You have Gohan with his
inexperience in the battlefield, Krillin with his pragmatic cowardice, Goku
with his pure and gentle nature but also a willingness to let a good fight go
even if they’re dangerous in the future. This isn’t the Care Bears, sometimes
our heroes can be selfish and our villains can be noble, and while it’s not so
morally grey that you’d ever find yourself rooting for Frieza and believing he’s
the real good guy (it’s okay to root for villains, btw, as long as it doesn’t
extend itself into real life), it’s grey enough on the side of the good guys
that you can sometimes cast a leery eye on somebody’s intentions.
That somebody is almost
always Vegeta, but we’ll get to that when he’s no longer outwardly a villain.
We spend pretty much
no time with Goku in this episode, which is a little dire because he’s the one
who is supposed to be coming to Namek as its savior. On the other hand, we
never would have known that Yamcha, Tien and Chiaotzu are stronger than a
cricket if we had to spend too much time with Goku, so maybe it’s for the best.
Honestly, I don’t understand why we spend so much time in Other World this
particular season, because it’s not like Yamcha, Tien and Chiaotzu are going to
be able to influence the outcome of this particular saga, being that they’re waiting
for their revival. Notice how I left someone out of that? Hopefully not, oh god
lets move on
I’m not sure if it’s
because I took bad notes for this particular episode, but I don’t have any read
on what Krillin, Dende, Bulma and Gohan are doing for these 22 minutes. We know
Bulma and Gohan are just straight chillin’ at Bulma’s house, we know Krillin
and Dende are on their way back from Guru’s house, but we don’t know if they
have any thoughts on the current situation. We can surmise, sure, but I’m just
saying, it would have been nice if we could have gotten commentary from them.
Maybe it was so dull I didn’t notate it. Who knows?
Anyway, pretty good
episode, if it were nothing but the Vegeta/Zarbon/Frieza subplot, I’d probably
give it a five. But, understandably, we as viewers need to see what’s going on
with (almost) everybody else, and since anyone who isn’t in those first three
people is doing some pretty boring shit, it’s hard to stay interested the
entire time. Nevertheless, it is always a pleasure to watch Vegeta pretty much
outwit his opponents like Bugs Bunny twirling Elmer Fudd in a circle and
sending him off a cliff. And, no, you aren’t the only one who just pictured
Elmer Fudd’s voice coming out of Frieza’s mouth, or vice versa. Trust me, you
can’t out-weird me. But what you can do is out-analyze me. What do you think
about the fact that Vegeta owns and is good? Don’t be shy about putting your opinions
in the comments section of this YouTu-I mean, this blog post.
(4/5)
A Few Final Thoughts:
--“Damn… monkey…”
-- Piccolo starts to grab King Kai by the shirt and threaten
him, but feels… I guess that he’s really strong?
-- King Kai asks what Piccolo is in such a hurry for,
wondering out loud if he’s going back on his promise not to fight Frieza.
-- Yamcha: “Now that I’m full, you’re in big trouble,
ape-face!” King Kai: “Hey! Don’t call me ape-face!”
No comments:
Post a Comment