Tournament Arcs

 I would like to take a moment to talk about Tournament arcs in the Dragonball series, except for Super, cuz I ain’t watch that shit yet. Maybe I will by the time I actually do anything with this essay. But for now, let’s start with the first tournament arc: the 21^st Tenkaichi Budokai.

21^st Tenkaichi Budokai

Apparently, not only are there no such things as weight classes in this series, there are no species-specific rules, because one of the eight finalists is a goddamn dinosaur. This seems unfair, to put it mildly, and only in a show chock-full of bullshit hackery can anything balance out the fact that a literal pterodactyl is allowed to sign up for this thing. This is the same tournament that allowed two underaged children to sign up and fight, essentially putting a child against a full-grown dinosaur in the quarter-finals. Furthermore, I’m stunned that they didn’t make some kind of rule against turning into a giant gorilla in the middle of a match after the end of this tournament. Seems like something like that would be an automatic disqualification.

Speaking of dumbassery, you know there’s an issue with human eyesight in this universe when people see Jackie Chun and go “nah, that isn’t Master Roshi.” Hell, forget about the fact that this is clearly just Roshi with a wig and no glasses, listen to him talk! There’s no way Yamcha’s the only goddamn person who has even the slightest suspicion that Jackie Chun, notably never in the same room with Roshi at the same time, might in fact be Master Roshi!

Dragonball, particularly pre-Piccolo early Dragonball, has a reputation for being more oriented toward adventure and comedy as opposed to the martial arts space-epic of Dragonball Z. I find this characterization rather odd when I see shit like Jackie Chun exploding the moon with a Kamehameha to detransition his own student from their giant ape form, a form we don’t even have an explanation for yet, beyond “Goku weird.” Don’t get me wrong—I understand the difference between the grounded martial arts of early Dragonball and the beam-shooting teleportation festival that Z started out as, but this show always had over-the-top sequences you’d never find anywhere near a scientifically-grounded fighting show or film.

What I do appreciate about the 21^st Tenkaichi Budokai is that, unlike the next two, there’s no arc baddie that overshadows the other fights, there’s just the talents of Goku, Krillin, Yamcha, and Jackie Chun coming up against the largely comedic other four fighters. Krillin vs. Bacterian, the very first fight, is basically the grossest thing in all of the franchise. Cell puking up 18 and Super Buu’s bodily worms are less disgusting than this fight. It’s just one guy using every disgusting but PG-rated bodily function at their disposal to defeat opponents. Bacterium is what would happen if the kid on the playground who eats bugs for pocket change never grew out of it.

Ranfan is another interesting fighter, and by interesting, I mean they had to edit the living shit out of her fight with Nam to make the episode airable on daytime Toonami, because she all but just straight up flashes her goddamn labia at Nam. This poor, hapless Apu-from-Simpsons-sounding son-of-a-bitch just wanted to get some water, that’s all, water for his struggling village, and now he’s leaving his first match having been rendered thirstier than he’s ever been in his life. It’s just dirty tactics the whole way down, from seduction to pretending to be injured. She gets some good blows in when Nam is thirst-paralyzed, but no other woman fighter in the entire series ever did this shit—Android 18, Zangya, Chi-Chi, Kale, Caulifla—none of them! In fact, shit, the only woman, fighter or otherwise, who pulled shit like this besides Ranfan is Bulma, and she at least has the excuse of being desperate to obtain the dragon balls.

I mentioned Giran previously, and he’s probably closest to a villain this arc has, but he’s more of an asshole than a serious threat. Yeah, he says some shit about killing people, but we never see him pull anything deadly, and eventually Goku wears him down so badly he just surrenders. No, the point of this arc isn’t to take down a boss fight, it’s to demonstrate how skilled Goku and his friends are at this point, and to see what the rest of the world has to offer with its most powerful fighters. Oh, and for Jackie Chun to win so that Goku won’t get too cocky.

22^nd Tenkaichi Budokai

By this point in the show, the tone has gotten a shade darker, but it’s still a comedic martial-arts adventure at its core. The Red Ribbon Army has been defeated, the dragon balls collected to revive Bora, Goku gained a large power-up to take down Mercenary Tao and Jackie Chun is back to defend his title. But two new competitors, a couple of big jerks named Tien and Chiaotzu, are there on behalf of the Crane School to lay the smackdown, and they introduce themselves to the rest of the tournament fighters by laying out Nam during the preliminaries.

I’m not sure what people expected out of Chiaotzu when this character debuted, but man, he just sucks. Even for a character with his design you probably expect more out of him than to be beaten by Krillin because he’s bad at arithmetic. I need to see someone do that in real life—in the middle of a fistfight, just start shouting math problems at your opponent, find out how well you can distract them. Unless you’re fighting somebody with ADHD, chances are they’re going to be confused for like a second and then get right back to rocking your shit.

So Chiaotzu, one entire half of the Big Bad squad, turns out to be a wet fart, leaving us with Tien. Speaking as somebody who started off with DBZ, Tien is really a dick here. Not even in a fun, Vegeta or Frieza kind of way, he’s just a smug, insufferable karate asshole, and the way the show plays him is very good, because he comes across as somebody who wants to be the badass, but can only take it so far. He can make smug comments and do some pretty nasty damage to his opponents, but there’s something very put-on about it all, like it isn’t natural for him. He’s doing what he thinks he should be doing, not what he would be doing under normal circumstances.

Who else are we dealing with this arc? Well, we’ve got Man-Wolf, who spends most of his fight being humiliated before he is cured of his wolfism. He’s just sort of, uh, there. We also have Pamput, who feels a lot like a dry run at the character who would eventually become Mr. Satan. The character turns out to be uncut, crispy ass, to the surprise of no one, and he is quickly dispatched by Goku right after we just got through witnessing Krillin completely chump Chiaotzu.

There’s a fight between Yamcha and Tien in the first round, and Yamcha gets his leg broken. That’s pretty fun. I’m surprised Yamcha was allowed to put up as good a fight as he did, usually when he gets bitched, it is immediately. He’s actually allowed to put a few good hits on Tien before Tien outclasses and crushes him. The leg breaking comes after Tien has already won, so it wasn’t even necessary. You know what else wasn’t necessary? Android 20 stabbing Yamcha through the stomach with his bare hand. He was already absorbing Yamcha’s strength through his mouth, 20 didn’t even have to do that, he just chose to. Android 20 and Tien have an unlikely common experience, they’ve both added insult to Yamcha’s injury!

23^rd Tenkaichi Budokai

This is the one where the ring gets blown up, and not just the ring, pretty much everything surrounding the ring is flattened as if a nuclear bomb had struck. Goku and Piccolo may have been a little too extra during this one. Piccolo especially, since he didn’t care at the time whether he murdered civilians or not. This is probably the point in the show where comparisons to Z are the most obvious, but the OG Dragonball sensibilities are still very much there, with the much stronger focus on fighting on the ground, mainly in one little confined area, very few enormous ki blasts involved and only a handful of any size ki blasts thrown, it still feels grounded in a way even the first few fights of Z don’t.

This is the only tournament arc in the original Dragonball that doesn’t have any comedic one-off characters or weird gimmicks. Well, unless you count Kami disguising himself as a nebbish to headbutt Yamcha in the dick. That’s right, Yamcha once again gets bitch-made this arc, and it isn’t even a valiant performance like his losses against Jackie Chun and Tien. He just gets turned into a rodeo clown by the Guardian of the Earth. In the only tournament arc where all eight finalists are characters that were part of Goku’s adventures prior to the tournament, Yamcha’s last showing in Dragonball is getting headbutted in the nuts. If that isn’t just a damn indicator of this man’s life story, you tell me what is. Even Krillin, who barely puts a scratch on Piccolo, gives a far more respectable showing.

Mercenary Tao puts in a performance almost as sorry as Yamcha’s—perhaps even more, since he fell so short of his real goal to kill Tien on behalf of the Crane Hermit. Tien literally tries to walk Tao out of the ring and nearly succeeds. This is the equivalent of your mom grabbing you by the ear and dragging you to your room right in front of your friends or younger siblings. Tao then slashes Tien on the boob, fires a Super Dodon Ray that super doesn’t do a goddamn thing, and is promptly chopped and carried like luggage back to his asshole brother. Tao would not be seen again until a filler arc in Z where the mere sight or mention of Goku causes him to shit in his robot pants.

Pretty much every one of the last three fights in this arc are bangers. Goku and Tien was a respectable rematch that shows how far both of them have come without there being any question about who’s on top, Piccolo manages to fight Kami without getting headbutted in the dick—such is the advantage of lacking that body part—and Goku vs. Piccolo, well, I think you can make some safe inferences about that fight and your average fan’s feelings on it. It’s a grueling slugfest where arms are ripped off and regrown, characters turn to giants and back again, the scene of the battle is reduced to flat sand, holes are put through people, and both fighters make it out with their lives by just the skin of their teeth. So, all in all, 7/10, kinda decent.

In conclusion, the three Budokais we see in Dragonball must’ve resulted in some of the funniest mid-round council meetings, I would love to have been a fly on the wall for these. Like, just a bunch of these orange-robed dudes sitting around trying to decide what to do when a fighter summons a goddamn cloud to stop a ringout, or when they turn into an ape mid-fight, or when a wolf turns back into a man mid-fight, or when the ring gets blown up, or when the only female fighter decides to flash ass and titty to distract her male opponents, or when one fighter up and goddamn swallows another fighter, or when one fighter decides to fight using their own saliva, farts, bad breath, and all around body odor, or when a goddamn half-robot man has a knife built into themselves—I know that one was decided immediately, but that’s part of the man’s body at this point, I’d have to point that out for the rest of the judges. I’d also have to start looking for another job after having to help declare a ruling on whether or not to disqualify Piccolo on the grounds of being the son of a genocidal maniac who took over the world five years ago. Whatever my paygrade is, that’s a decision resting well outside of it.

24^th Tenkaichi Budokai

I probably shouldn’t count this one since none of the main cast—save for, well, Hercule—shows up to it, but there are a couple of things to talk about so it’s worth including.

First thing, Hercule takes over the title of World Martial Arts champion by beating a bunch of other fighters that also can’t use ki, and since this occurs right around the time of the Cell Games, Hercule shows up to that and proceeds to “win” that “tournament” as well. For some reason, the citizens of Earth are already worshiping this dude like he’s curly-headed Jesus, even though when Goku actually defeated Piccolo for the second time just one tournament ago, it seems like nobody gave a shit. This is before he takes the credit for defeating Cell, at which point he becomes even more of an actual deity. The avalanche of glaze that is placed on Hercule’s name by every character in the show who isn’t a super is something to behold—people under the yoke of North Korean dictatorship who are taught that Kim Jong-un invented the goddamn sun are looking at the Hercule glaze like, “geez, tone it down, he’s not a demigod.”

We’re introduced to Spopovich in the 25^th Tournament, but he makes his first appearance in this one, a muscle-bound idiot with long red hair who gets humiliated by Hercule in their brief, pitiful excuse for a fight. Hercule just styles on him here, leaping out of the way of his punches, barely even glancing at him, just dismissing him out of hand before even connecting his first and only attack. Hercule outright said he had to hold back because if he’d have come at him as hard as he could, it would have killed him. So that’s the caliber of fighter Hercule dealt with to become the Martial Arts champion. No wonder the announcer was so relieved when he saw Goku and the boys pull up at the next Tournament.

One more thing: At some point, somebody in the Tournament staff either came to their senses or went to prison, because they decided to form a Youth Division separately from the adult tournament. Probably should have given that some consideration at the FIRST Tenkaichi Budokai, but to be fair, we didn’t get rid of child labor until like the early 20^th century and some of us are still trying to bring the shit back. Something else they added to the Z-era tournaments: the punching machine. All of a sudden, DBZ cares about filler, they don’t want to waste any time on preliminary fighting, just have a dumbass punching machine.  But it’s a martial arts tournament, not Mr. Universe, a fight is about way more than how hard you can punch, what about skill, speed, tactics, pain tolerance, endurance, athleticism—this isn’t a “who punch the hardest” competition, because if it is, assuming none of the people who apply to fight have superhuman strength, how in fuck is anyone supposed to compete against a Giran or Man-Wolf?

25^th Tenkaichi Budokai

The highlight, for lack of a better term, of this truncated Martial Arts Tournament is the fight between Videl and Spopovich. There had been this feeling of wrongness from the beginning of the arc, with the pairings of Shin/Kibito and Yamu/Spopovich hanging around, being mysterious in their own ways. Shin and Kibito look like they came from somewhere alien and far away, wearing get-ups that remind me a little of Goku’s Yardrat threads from the start of the Android saga. They appear calm and collected, however, which stands in stark contrast to Yamu and Spopovich.

These two creepy, hairless, veiny specimens (pause) are doing a piss-poor job of looking inconspicuous, and you’d think given they’re the only two dudes with M’s on their foreheads, they’d want to maintain a low profile, but no, they’re standing around clenching their entire bodies and grunting like nervous apes. I guess one could write it off as them just psyching up for the fights ahead, but no one else is doing that shit. They don’t even do that shit in televised wrestling, which is as close to cartoons as live-action sports gets. Even Goku side-eyes these two dudes and decides he doesn’t like them, and Goku’s the kind of dude who tries to see the good in everyone.

But I guess Spopovich didn’t think it was obvious enough that they were arc villains, so he squares up against Videl. Keep in mind this is taking place right after Piccolo forfeits against Shin and the latter reveals to Piccolo that he is the as-yet unheard-of Supreme Kai. I have a whole other rant about the hierarchy of the Kais, the Kierarchy if you will, planned, so I won’t get into that shit here. But before this fight even starts, we already have questions. Why is the Supreme Kai here, who the hell is the red guy with him, is that guy Videl is about to fight involved with this, what’s with this level of secrecy?

Videl puts in one hell of a showing against Spopovich, we see that she’s much more experienced and a better fighter than her opponent without a doubt. She pummels this dude time and time again like he’s a side of beef being manhandled by Rocky Balboa, but the increasingly disturbing fact arises that nothing seems to be sticking. In what is arguably foreshadowing for the main villain of this arc, every one of Videl’s attacks gets shrugged off by this massive, grimacing mugshot of a human being. It’s left ambiguous, at least in the anime, as to whether this is deliberate strategy on Spopovich’s part or if he’s just a bad fighter with a lot of endurance, but as Videl gets tired, the tide of the fight changes in Spopovich’s favor. Goku and Vegeta notice way before Gohan does, another bit of foreshadowing, that the clumsy giant Videl is making minced meat of has a lot more in his bag than is outwardly obvious.

What started off as Videl demonstrating her martial arts prowess turns into perhaps the most brutal, humiliating defeat for a character in this show since Vegeta against Frieza or Android 19 against Vegeta. Once Spopovich shows Videl that not even flying will save her, and after giving her a taste of getting hit with a ki attack, Videl is ground to a pulp by Spopovich until, finally, mercifully, she is sent toward the edge of the ring…

…only for Spopovich to fucking grab her foot and toss her back in.

Time out. I’m sorry, but I can’t fathom there not being some kind of rule for this shit. If a competitor straight up grabs their goddamn opp and forces them back into the ring after they were just beating their ass, shouldn’t this stop being considered a fight and start being looked at as prolonged meat tenderization? Like, consider it a surrender on Spopovich’s part and get him the hell out of this tournament. It is staggering to me that Goku discourages Gohan from interfering when his girlfriend is in the middle of being turned into hamburger. How the hell are you going to meet your grandchildren, Goku, when Videl’s womb has been reduced to a bowl of borscht? He has his foot on her head, for Christ’s sake! That can’t possibly be tournament legal! Eventually, the thing that saves Videl is Yamu running out of patience with his partner’s indirect revenge against Hercule and telling Spopovich to just kick Videl’s carcass out of the ring and be done with it. Which he does, unceremoniously ending Videl’s participation in the World Martial Arts Tournament forevermore.

This tournament is also notable for not being allowed to finish properly. The event was rudely interrupted in the middle of the scheduled fight between Kibito and Gohan by Babidi’s two agents, who use a strange sort of gas-cannister type of device to drain Gohan’s energy after he powers up to Super Saiyan 2. After that, all but like five (well, six, since Mighty Mask is two kids) fighters are remaining. This leads Hercule to suggest a Battle Royale, a decision he will soon regret when he realizes two of the other fighters he’s to take on are Android 18 and Goten and Trunks in a man costume.

As long as we’re on that subject, how does absolutely nobody notice that Mighty Mask has little kid limbs and two eyes looking through holes in the torso of his costume? Is everyone on that Clark Kent/Superman intelligence where they can’t see the world’s most obvious thing right in front of them? The fucking three-man costume Eric Andre was wearing in that car dealership sketch was as convincing as Goten and Trunks’ get-up. Even Android 18, presumably one of the most intelligent and perceptive people in the Z squad, has to use a Destructo Disk to reveal that the masked Super Saiyan she’s been fighting has been Goten and Trunks in disguise. Between the goddamn torso eyes and the awkward shape of the limbs, that should have been her very first guess.

Then again, we’re talking about a series where competitors with three eyes or wings or green skin and antennae who can fly, grow to enormous size, shapeshift and shoot laser beams are commonplace, I guess I can give Android 18 the benefit of the doubt and assume that she figured she was fighting some random ki-user from parts unknown. She just watched, or at least heard about, Spopovich flying around and using ki blasts while fighting against Videl.

Anyway, after Goten and Trunks’ ruse is revealed, they go look for other plot to be involved in, leaving Android 18 to make a deal with Hercule—keep your fame, but I take the prize money plus a little extra from your already-existing funds. Hercule agrees, puts in what we as spectators at home observe to be a pathetic showing against 18, but what spectators at the tournament see as yet another notch in the World Champion’s belt, and the 25^th Tenkaichi Budokai concludes with Hercule taking another win and his bank account taking a massive L.

So, that’s it for notable Tournament arcs in Dragonball. I know there’s another one at the end of Z, but since it’s basically just there to introduce Uub and very little else is shown, I don’t feel like talking about it. The 25^th feels like a fair stopping point since it’s the last one that shows some action, is drawn to a satisfying conclusion, and does not take place in Super, which I have not watched yet because I’m afraid it’s going to suck ass. And with that, c’est la vie.