Hello, ladies, gentlemen, and everyone between and beyond, and welcome to week 38 of the first Dragon Ball rewatch of the decade.
We're doing five episodes a week, and we'll be watching every single episode of Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z, and Dragon Ball GT. All 508 episodes. Plus the TV specials and the movies.
I encourage you all to watch in Japanese with subtitles, especially if you have never done so before, but watch along in whichever way brings you the most joy.
This week is pretty much all-filler, so anyone watching along with Kai only gets one episode this week; and if you watch it, you'll be roughly two Z episodes ahead of the rest of us, and will only get two next week. Sorry! If it's any consolation, it'll be three almost every week after that until TFC.
Previous thread: Week 37 (DBZ 8-12)
Next thread: Week 39 (DBZ 18-22)
Anyway, without further ado...
Episode 166 - Hands Off! Enma-sama’s Secret Fruit (DBZ episode 13)
Dub title: Goz and Mez (Funimation)
Originally aired 26th of July 1989
Kai equivalent: None.
Edited dub equivalent: Episode 8 - Home For Infinite Losers (1996-11-01)
Episode director: Mitsuo Hashimoto
Animation supervisor: Yukio Ebisawa
Goku awakens after falling to Block 1 of Hell while asleep. When he tries to eat some fruit from the Enseijū, not knowing it’s for Enma Daio’s personal use, he is scolded by the oni Gozu and Mezu. Goku and the pair then begin a contest, with the oni promising to return Goku to the Serpent Road if he wins! Goku wins at sumo wresting against Gozu, and in playing tag with Mezu. He is thus informed by Mezu of a backdoor to the Serpent Road, but it leads to Enma Daio’s drawer?! Goku is stuck running along the Serpent Road from the very beginning again…
Anime-only/filler content: All of it. Kept in the edited dub. (Written by Katsuyuki Sumisawa)
Episode 167 - Such Sweet Temptation! The Snake Princess’s Hospitality (DBZ episode 14)
Dub title: Princess Snake (Funimation)
Originally aired 2nd of August 1989
Kai equivalent: None. (Some footage incorporated into Kai episode 6)
Edited dub equivalent: Episode 9 - Princess Snake's Hospitality (1996-11-08)
Episode director: Minoru Okazaki
Animation supervisor: Minoru Maeda
Kuririn, Yamucha, Tenshinhan, Chaozu, and Yajirobe gather at God’s temple, and begin their special training! Meanwhile, as Goku is running along the Serpent Road, he meets the Snake Princess and her attendants in a castle on the roadside. The Snake Princess falls in love with Goku at first sight, but realizing after entertaining him that even the use of sleeping pills won’t detain him, she reveals her true identity, Jadōshin, the spirit of Serpent Road!! The entire castle itself was actually Jadōshin, who has the form of a gigantic snake, but Goku tangles the snake up and escapes.
Anime-only/filler content: Entire episode. Kept in the edited dub. Some scenes were used in Kai. (Written by Hiroshi Toda)
Episode 168 - Escape from Piccolo! Gohan Summons a Storm (DBZ episode 15)
Dub title: Dueling Piccolos (Funimation)
Originally aired 9th of August 1989
Kai equivalent: None.
Edited dub equivalent: Episode 10 - Escape From Piccolo (1997-10-28 or 1998-09-14; see trivia)
Episode director: Kazuhisa Takenouchi
Animation supervisor: Masayuki Uchiyama
There’s eight months left until the Saiyan arrive on Earth! Piccolo refines himself by splitting apart to create a doppelganger, then fighting with it!! Meanwhile, as Gohan runs through the desert on a sand yacht that he made, he is chased by a giant eagle and reaches the shore. Gohan runs along the shore, climbs up the next mountain, and learns that his training ground is actually an island. And so, wholeheartedly wanting to see his mother, Gohan builds a raft and sets out on the sea, and at night he encounters a storm. The entire raft is swallowed up by a waterspout!!
Anime-only/filler content: All filler. Significantly shortened in the edited dub. (Written by Katsuyuki Sumisawa)
Episode 169 - Run, Gohan! Longing for Mt. Paozu, Where Chichi is Waiting (DBZ episode 16)
Dub title: Plight of the Children (Funimation)
Originally aired 16th of August 1989
Kai equivalent: None.
Edited dub equivalent: Episode 10 - Escape From Piccolo (1997-10-28 or 1998-09-14; see trivia)
Episode director: Mitsuo Hashimoto
Animation supervisor: Katsumi Aoshima
After washing up on shore, Gohan is saved by some children who lost their homes and parents in a tsunami two years ago. Living on the outskirts of town, the seven of them refuse to enter an orphanage, but the day after they befriend Gohan, orphanage employees come and they are captured by the police! Thinking of their future, the teenager Pigero doesn’t save them, and escapes with Gohan. Gohan returns to Mt. Paozu, but thinking of the orphans who endured even without their parents, he heads back without meeting Chichi.
Anime-only/filler content: Entirely filler. Kept but slightly shortened in the edited dub. (Written by Keiju Terui)
Episode 170 - City of No Tomorrow! The Long Road to Victory (DBZ episode 17)
Dub title: Pendulum Room Peril (Funimation)
Originally aired 30th of August 1989
Kai equivalent: Parts of this episode make up the first third of episode 6.
Edited dub equivalent: Episode 11 - Showdown In The Past (1996-11-15)
Episode director: Osamu Kasai
Animation supervisor: Mitsuo Shindō
Now that Gohan has endured the half year trial, Piccolo begins their special training on the island. At that same time, Kuririn and the others at the temple are irritated at having not been given any training for two months, but Mister Popo sends the four of them without Yajirobe on a trip to the past in their minds. In a Saiyan city in ruins, Tenshinhan and the others are attacked by two warriors! After the four struggle in vain and are completely defeated, they hear from God that their opponents were only half-strong Saiyans, and their fighting resolve is renewed!!
Anime-only/filler content: Everything involving Kuririn and the others travelling in time and fighting two Saiyans. Kept in the edited dub. I think Kai uses a few of the training scenes, from before the gang travel in time. (Written by Keiji Terui)
-
Interesting trivia:
- During this time, the manga had Yajirobe save Goku by cutting Vegeta's tail, Gohan and Kuririn arrive to help Goku, Goku gives the Genki-Dama energy to Kuririn and hits Vegeta with the help of Gohan, and Vegeta keeps fighting before noticing that Gohan's tail has grown back.
- Episode 13 is of course the episode that, in the original Ocean Cast dub, infamously censored the "HELL" singlets to say "HFIL", explained as an acronym for "Home For Infinite Losers" (more on that in a moment). Either way, this particular depiction of hell is different from its later depictions in the Other World Tournament and Buu Arc filler scenes, being a sunny, grassy place rather than a dark rocky wasteland with a huge orb TV.
- As mentioned last week, Toriyama is the one who devised the ideas on what the Dragon Team got up to in this period of time, including Lunch chasing Tenshinhan, Goku encountering the living stone snake, and Piccolo fighting a copy of himself.
- Toriyama also designed the adult Oopa, now eleven years older. We last saw him at the conclusion of the Red Ribbon Arc, although he was not depicted the last time Karin's Tower was depicted, in the Daimao Arc.
- The Snake Princess is the first in a line of blue-skinned orange-haired characters exclusive to the anime, including Super Android 13, and Bojack and his henchmen.
- Edits in the original dub:
- Various scenes from uncut episode 12 were put into edited episode 8, many to replace scenes of Lunch. As a result, Tenshinhan doesn't appear in the edited dub until he present at the lookout with Kuririn and Yamucha. His history and relationship with the Dragon Team is never explained in the edited dub.
- Instances of "HELL" in edited episode 8, particularly on Goz's and Mez's T-shirts, are replaced with "HFIL", standing for "Home For Infinite Losers", involving some pretty extensive digital paint work. This change would persist into many of the video games, and the rest of the edited Z dub. Ocean's own edited dubs initially followed suit with this, for their Z dub, but in DB and GT, they switched to instead calling hell "Hades", much closer to the original meaning. Allegedly, Ocean's dub of Kai has them actually use the word "Hell."
- Some people still complain that they think this change was unnecessary and crazy, but the reality is that DBZ was under some very strict broadcast standards; as Barry Watson explained in a 1997/1998 interview (video is almost certainly mislabelled when it says 1996, as they discuss the show moving to Cartoon Network, and there's footage from the Namek saga), DBZ aired on Saturday mornings, rather than in primetime on evenings, so parents may not be as able to supervise their kids' viewing, so the restrictions were a lot harsher on DBZ than many other shows that would be subject to parents' judgement.
- In edited episode 9, all shots of Goku nudity were cut out. The scenes are basically all left in, but the actual nudity itself is cut around.
- One of the snake girls playing Russian Roulette was cut.
- A scene of Piccolo training with himself was moved to the end of the prior episode. Additionally, the scene of Piccolo causing the tornado, which should have happened in edited episode 9, was moved all the way back to edited episode 7. This is one of the last times we'd get any of this weird rearranging of scenes between episodes in the edited dub. I think a lot of it was done mainly for time, and to accomodate the other time edits they were making; they really wanted to turn the 35-episode Saiyan arc into a neat, 26-episode TV season.
- Episode 10, Escape From Piccolo, was made by cutting uncut episode 15 down into its first third, and then using a slightly-cut-down version of uncut episode 16 for the remainder. Extensive notes on this episode aren't available, however, as it wasn't broadcast during the original run of DBZ; the common belief is that the orphans disrespecting the authority figures in the episode was seen as not being okay to show (see my above note about DBZ airing on Saturday mornings), so even though this episode was fully produced, it was never aired in syndication. It had a home video premiere in October 1997, however, and it eventually aired on Toonami in September 1998.
- It's my theory that this episode's "Lost episode" status is why the copy of the episode immediately prior to it on the "Rock The Dragon" DVD set uses the wrong next-episode preview; Rock The Dragon used the first-run broadcast masters, so it's likely the preview at the end of edited episode 9 was changed out so as to not confuse viewers by showing them a preview for an episode that would never air.
- In edited episode 11, every shot of one of the Saiyans holding Chaozu by the head was cut.
- Tenshinhan spitting up blood when one of the Saiyans punches him was painted over to remove the blood.
- Tenshinhan and Yamucha's deaths were cut a little, to remove the blasts actually hitting them, and the gore that ensues.
- Yamucha's technique that would later become known as the "Spirit Ball" in dubbed media was called the "Spirit Bomb" in the original edited dub. Funimation's uncut redub didn't fix this.
- As a result of Lunch's scenes in episode 13 being removed in the edited equivalent (epsode 8.), there are no women in edited episode 8.
- Redraws in Kai episode 6:
- A shot of Tenshinhan at the lookout. (For seemingly no reason; the widescreen framing is clearly just a zoomed-in version of the 4:3 frame)
- A shot of Kuririn at the lookout. (Similarly inexplicable)
- Kaio being surprised at Goku's delivery. (Again, seemingly unnecessary)
- Goku clenching his fist at Kaio. (This one, at a glance, looks like it may have been reframed a little, but it still looks pretty unnecessary to me)
- Kaio pulling a surprised Pikachu face. (Also seemingly unnecessary, and as a bonus, the redraw uses the wrong background colour)
- Once again, I don't know how many of these redraws were in the 4:3 version, but given how they're all clearly cropped-down trace-overs of 4:3 footage in the 16:9 version this time, I think they're all in both.
- Episode 15 reveals that Gohan's training ground is actually on an island. This detail is exclusive to the anime, and you could try to poke a plot hole here because the geography depicted here doesn't jibe too well with later events; for example the news team who covers the fight with Nappa (again an anime-only event) arrives to the battlefield by land vehicles. Daizenshuu 7's map ignores this as well, depicting the training grounds as East of Frypan Mountain, the Rabbit Gang Town and South-East of Pilaf's castle... However, after Gohan escapes the island, there's no particular indication of where Gohan and Piccolo go to do the second leg of their training other than it looking a little similar to where they previously were, so it's entirely possible they went somewhere else.
- Interestingly, Daizenshuu 7 explains that Gohan's training area is placed almost halfway around the world from Mount Paozu. If Piccolo and Gohan had taken their time getting there, they would have retraced Goku's journey with Bulma from the Pilaf arc.
- The Daizenshuu 7 map is also replicated as the world map for Earth in Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot.
- Chiko, the girl who finds Gohan on the beach, has a very similar design to Chu Lee from Dragon Ball Episode 127 (in which Goku attempts to move faster than lightning), only with black hair. Revenge of the same-aged girls!
- Episode 16 is the first episode to not have Goku make any sort of an appearance.
- Episode 17 is the final time Vegeta and Nappa are depicted with incorrect colours: in his next appearance in Episode 20, they'll have the correct colours at last.
