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Manga Guide

Dragon Ball Chapter 229

Tankōbon Title Page
Tankōbon Title Page
Kanzenban Title Page
Kanzenban Title Page (Version 1)
Kanzenban Title Page (Revised)
Kanzenban Title Page (Version 2)
Full Color Title Page
Full Color Title Page

天下分け目の超決戦!!

Tenkawakeme no Chō-Kessen!!

A Fateful Super Decisive Battle!!

Chapter Information

Premiered: 20 June 1989 (Weekly Shōnen Jump 1989 #29)
Corresponding:
Dragon Ball Z (Original Broadcast)
Dragon Ball Kai (“Refreshed” Broadcast)

Availability:
  • Digital Monochrome Edition Volume 20 (12 October 2012)

Chapter Synopsis

Vegeta thinks Goku’s getting serious now, upping his battle power. Goku is really excited about facing this predicament, probably because of the battle-loving Saiyan blood flowing within him. Vegeta thinks that’s Goku’s limit, and wants to give him a dying present — the overwhelming power of a super elite Saiyan! Vegeta then begins to power up, and the whole Earth shakes, and dark clouds swirl overhead. Things get really messy, and Goku says it’s like a typhoon. But then Vegeta stops, and the weather calms down, and the clouds disappear. “It’s over…Kakarrot…!!!!”

Both mid-air, Vegeta rushes at Goku with a head butt, and then elbows him in the stomach down towards the ground. Goku just barely catches himself, but then Vegeta kicks him from behind toward a rock formation. Goku hops to the top of it instead of crashing, and spots Vegeta up in the air above him. Vegeta fires a blast down toward Goku, and so Goku screams, “Kaiō-Ken times two!!!!!” Goku flies up out of the way, and there’s a huge explosion where he had been.

Vegeta smirks and fires another blast up at Goku, and Goku only just barely dodges it. The blast managed to tear off most of the right half of Goku’s shirt, though. Goku then lands, and curses Vegeta’s speed and power. Even Kaiō-Ken x2 wasn’t enough. As he takes off the remains of his shirt, he says he’ll just have to up it to Kaiō-Ken x3. Vegeta doesn’t seem to think it will do him any good, as Yajirobe watches from behind a nearby rock formation.

Chapter Notes

Title Page

  • The title page for this chapter is the second full-color title page in two weeks.
  • This title page depicts Goku and Gohan riding through a jungle on the back of a dinosaur. The artbook Akira Toriyama: The World (published 10 January 1990) notes that, judging by the way Gohan is dressed, Goku is probably taking him to kindergarten; it also comments on the scene, saying that one can almost imagine the sound of leaves rustling as they pass. Separately, in Akira Toriyama: The World SPECIAL (19 September 1990), Toriyama mentions that he loves drawing reptiles, even if some girls don’t like them.
  • The original title page for this chapter was omitted from Tankōbon Volume 20, and the original title page for Chapter 230 was used in its place, likely because Chapter 229 was the first chapter in the volume, and using the original title page would have put an awkward sideways-printed title page right at the front of the book. This was corrected for the Kanzenban release in 2003, but this inadvertently caused another error (see below).

Errata

  • This chapter’s title page is notable for errors introduced to it after the fact. When Akira Toriyama first drew the title page illustration, he apparently misspelled the logo as “DAGON BALL” (with no “R”). This error was fixed in time for its publication in Weekly Shōnen Jump, but the original version of the illustration, complete with spelling error, was reproduced in Daizenshuu 1: Complete Illustrations (20 June 1995), where the commentary called the mistake “charming”. This title page was omitted from Tankōbon Volume 20 (as noted above), and when it was finally reprinted in Kanzenban Volume 16 (released in July 2003), it not only used the misspelled version found in the first Daizenshuu, but further compounded the error by accidentally labeling the chapter as “Chapter 279″ instead of 229. Both of these errors were corrected starting with the sixth printing in July 2005 (a full two years after the volume’s initial publication), as well as in the digitally colorized edition, which is based on the Kanzenban.

Author’s Comment

  • Each issue of Weekly Shōnen Jump features short comments from the various series’ authors, giving fans a brief insight into their current thoughts, ranging from series-related announcements to trivial happenings in their personal lives. Akira Toriyama’s comments from this issue were:

    2週連続の巻頭カラーも今週で無事おしまい。これで、ほんのつかの間ホッとできます…。<明>

    My two weeks in a row of color chapters finished up this week without incident. With this, I can at least catch a short breather. <Akira>

Page Breakdown

The majority of the Dragon Ball series was drawn in black and white, but chapters were occasionally published with color pages. This breakdown notes how many full-color, limited-color, and black-and-white pages appeared in this chapter. As the tankōbon volumes were not released with these colors intact, any color pages shown are taken from the kanzenban release.