Hello, ladies, gentlemen, and everyone between and beyond, and welcome to week 37 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.
I'm way behind right now. Looking forward to catching up, though -- I know a lot of this material is filler, but personally, I LOVE this whole training period.
Fond memories of watching the original dub of this stuff when I was a kid, too.
Sucks for anyone watching Kai, though; only one episode this week. If it's any consolation, it picks up again quite soon.
Previous thread: Week 36 (DBZ movie 1)
Next thread: Week 38 (DBZ 13-17)
Anyway, without further ado...
Episode 161 - The Great Transformation on a Moonlit Night! The Secret of Gohan’s Power (DBZ episode 8.)
Dub title: Gohan Goes Bananas! (Funimation)
Originally aired 21st of June 1989
Kai equivalent: Episode 5 - Wilderness Survival! The Moon Awakens Gohan
Edited dub equivalent: Episode 5 - Gohan's Metamorphosis
Episode director: Yoshihiro Ueda
Animation supervisor: Masayuki Uchiyama
Unable to tell Chichi and Gyūmaō about Goku and Gohan, Kuririn returns to Kame House, where Bulma and Kame-Sen’nin are waiting. Yajirobe stops by, and delivers a message from Karin that they should come to Karin Tower, as God will train them. When Chichi stops by immediately afterwards with Gyūmaō, she faints when Kame-Sen’nin tells her of Goku’s death. That night on the craggy rock, Gohan transforms into a gigantic monkey! Piccolo destroys the moon once he realizes it is the cause of this, and then removes Gohan’s tail after he returns to normal.
Anime-only/filler content: Kuririn going to Mt. Paozu, failing to tell Chichi and Gyuumao about Goku and Gohan, and staying over the night, Bulma measuring Turtle's battle power. Both the edited dub and Kai kept basically all of this. (Written by Takao Koyama)
Episode 162 - Sorry Robot-san — The Tears that Vanished in the Desert (DBZ episode 9)
Dub title: The Strangest Robot (Funimation)
Originally aired 28th of June 1989
Kai equivalent: None.
Edited dub equivalent: None. (Some footage incorporated into edited episode 6)
Episode director: Osamu Kusai
Animation supervisor: Katsumi Aoshima
Falling into a hole out in the desert, Gohan discovers an old robot in some underground ruins. After activating the dormant robot, it tells him he is interrupting his sleep, but then grudgingly begins to look out for Gohan. When the robot says that he was buried in sand by an earthquake during an excavation 80 years ago, Gohan tries to pull him out. But the ruins begin to collapse, and the robot sacrifices himself to carry Gohan to the surface! Overcoming his sadness, Gohan walks on.
Anime-only/filler content: All filler. Mostly cut in the edited dub and entirely cut in Kai. (Written by Katsuyuki Sumisawa)
Episode 163 - Don’t Cry Gohan! His First Fight (DBZ episode 10)
Dub title: A New Friend (Funimation)
Originally aired 5th of July 1989
Kai equivalent: None.
Edited dub equivalent: Episode 6 - Gohan Makes a Friend
Episode director: Kazuhisa Takenouchi
Animation supervisor: Mitsuo Shindō
While doing a part time job as a professional baseball player, Yamcha is called upon by Kuririn as he’s in the middle of a game, and learns of Goku’s death and the Saiyan attack. He then rides with Kuririn in Bulma’s air car so that they can receive training from God. Meanwhile, Gohan becomes indebted to an injured dinosaur, but the carnivorous dinosaur that had previously come after Gohan attacks it! Gohan fights, attempting to save it!! But he fails, and the dinosaur is eaten.
Anime-only/filler content: All filler. Mostly included in the edited dub, entirely skipped by Kai. (Written by Keiji Terui)
Episode 164 - The Saiyan, Strongest Warriors in the Universe, Awaken! (DBZ episode 11)
Dub title: Terror On Arlia (Funimation)
Originally aired 12th of July 1989
Kai equivalent: None. (Some footage incorporated into Kai episode 6)
Edited dub equivalent: Episode 7 - Trouble on Arlia
Episode director: Yoshihiro Ueda
Animation supervisor: Tomekichi Takeuchi
As he endures his life of survival, Gohan has become so strong that he turns the tables on the carnivorous dinosaur and uses it as food. Meanwhile, in their spaceships on their way to Earth, the Saiyans Vegeta and Nappa stop by Planet Arlia in order to take it as their own. On this planet inhabited by bug people, the two allow themselves to be captured and taken to the castle of the dictator King Moai, but Nappa easily beats all the soldiers! They even defeat the monster that is the king’s trump card!! After killing the king, Vegeta judges the planet as worthless, and wipes it out.
Anime-only/filler content: The entire episode except for Gohan eating berries and facing off with the dinosaurs. Mostly kept in the edited dub, almost entirely cut from Kai. (Written by Toshiki Inoue)
Episode 165 - Catnap on the Serpent Road — Goku Takes a Tumble (DBZ episode 12)
Dub title: Global Training (Funimation)
Originally aired 19th of July 1989
Kai equivalent: None.
Edited dub equivalent: None. (Some footage incorporated into edited episodes 7 and 8.)
Episode director: Daisuke Nishio
Animation supervisor: Masayuki Uchiyama
While training, Piccolo levitates pyramids in the air! But he makes a mistake in his power regulation, and causes the ground to fluctuate. Training somewhere else, Gohan nearly falls into a fissure. As this is happening, Bulma and Kuririn arrive at the waterfall where Tenshinhan and Chiaotzu are training while being shadowed by Lunch. After hearing their story, Tenshinhan resolves to also receive God’s training!! On the Serpent Road, Goku receives a lift from the road’s garbage truck, but he is tired and falls asleep…
Anime-only/filler content: All filler. A few scenes were kept or repurposed elsewhere in the edited dub, but Kai cut it entirely. (Written by Takao Koyama)
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Interesting trivia:
- At this point in time in the manga, Goku uses a Kaio-Ken against Vegeta, eventually using a x4 Kamehameha to counter Vegeta's Galick Gun, then Vegeta uses a Power Ball to turn himself into an Oozaru.
- In the manga, Gohan does in fact turn into an Oozaru by looking at the moon (thus re-introducing the form properly to the audience after Raditz mentioned it again).
- The anime's embellishment is to include a second moon being projected by Goku's pod. This implies that Piccolo had Gohan train in a place not too far from home, but while this helps with Episode 16 where Gohan returns home, the early manga established with Turtle that Mount Paozu is nowhere near the coast.
- Destroying the moon implies that a Saiyan needs sustained exposure to the moon in order to maintain the Oozaru form, which would make transformation without a moon present troublesome.
- When Piccolo gives Gohan his turtle school gi, it has the boots and undershirt Goku gained after training with Kami (presumably neither are weighted).
- Edited episode 5 marks the debut of the phrase "The next dimension" as a euphamism for the afterlife, and death in general, likely to address (or pre-empt) complaints from either the networks, Saban, or parents. Later on, "Other World" would become preferred. After episode 5 aired, all airings of episodes 1 and 2 (as well as all home video until 2013's "Rock The Dragon" box set) would be edited to censor all references to death, partially with retakes, partially by reusing dialogue from other scenes in the first few episodes.
- The instances of dialogue in the first two edited episodes' censored couterparts that were simply cut off ("This isn't good; I smell death in the air", "Hey you! Quit your jabbering! Goku isn't capable of killing anyone!") or reused lines from other episodes ("I'm going to worry myself to death" vs "All this worrying is going to give me wrinkles") were reverted to their original forms in Funimation's "Ultimate Uncut" dub in 2005, meanwhile any dialogue that was re-recorded ("You could get killed, for one thing." vs "I suppose you could get me angry."), the censored dialogue was retained.
- Edits in the original dub:
- Edited episode 5 cuts a 5-minute segment at its beginning including a conversation between Popo and God about the situation they're in, including the explanation that if Piccolo dies, so will God, as well as a scene of Gohan alone for the first time.
- Gohan peeing on a rock is cut.
- Kuririn having dinner with Chichi and Gyuumao was cut.
- The bar scene in the afterlife with Baba was cut.
- The scene where Piccolo gives Gohan the apples is slightly trimmed, likely just for time. Gohan remarking that the apples are sour is cut. A later flashback to this scene would reinstate this line. It's possible they recorded it for this episode, cut it at the last minute for time, but decided to include it, but it's also equally possible that they simply recorded the line new for the episode that flashes back to this.
- When Chichi and Gyuumao are driving to Kame House, the cigarette that appears briefly in his mouth is painted out.
- Bulma shooting Roshi and Kuririn was cut; it cuts straight from Bulma saying the scouter's working to Roshi and Kuririn sitting on the sofa. Actually a pretty seamless edit.
- A scene was cut in which a squirrel attempts to steal Gohan's apple, then runs away.
- Gohan peeing again, just before he sees the moon, was cut.
- A plant was digitally added to the scene of Gohan transforming back, to cover his crotch.
- Gohan peeing after waking up from going ape was also cut.
- When the pterodactyl fights the falcon in edited episode 6, some blood was painted out.
- The first few minutes of uncut episode 9 are edited into the first few minutes of edited episode 6; the episode cuts to commercial after the falcon drops Gohan, and we return at the beginning of uncut episode 10, meaning pretty much the entirety of uncut episode 9 was cut.
- The dinosaur in edited episode 6 actually shows a lot of uncensored blood, though not all of it; Chris Psaros of DBZ Uncensored theorised that only violence to humans was considered obscene to the censors Funimation were working with, whereas violence against non-human creatures such as the dinosaurs (or the Arlians) was considered A-OK. He points out in his guide that, in the edited dub of OG DB, Chichi cuts off a dinosaur's head, and blood squirts all over the place. Scenes from uncut episode 11 that were used in the edited dub also show Gohan cutting parts off a dinosaur's tail to eat, and Vegeta and Nappa massacring the Arlians is largely presented uncensored, with the only mention of "The next dimension" being when Vegeta blows up the entire Arlian planet.
- Gohan briefly fantasising about riding the dinosaur was cut, presumably for time.
- All of Lunch's scenes were cut.
- Uncut episode 12 was very heavily cut up; many scenes from it were removed and repurposed into episodes 7 and 8, while pretty much the entire rest of it (mostly centring on Lunch) was cut entirely.
- In total, approximately 66% of uncut episode 8 was kept, 12% of uncut episode 9 was kept, 88% of uncut episode 10 was kept, and 28% of uncut episode 12 was kept. In-depth information on episode 11 is unavailable, as Chris Psaros taped over his recording of edited episode 7 at some point prior to writing up his guide.
- The Ultimate Uncut dub has a scripting error in the scene where Bulma shoots Kuririn and Roshi. In the original edited dub, Bulma says "Hey guys, hop to! I got this thing working!", cut to Roshi and Kuririn standing up, where Roshi says "Hop who?"
In the uncut dub, they changed Bulma's line to "Let's go, guys!", and had her repeat that phrase after she's shot them. Roshi replies "Hop where?", which makes no sense.
The 2007 Orange Brick redub fixes this, and has Roshi use an alternate line, "Go where?", however this is only the case in the 5.1 Kikuchi-scored mix. The stereo Nathan Johnson mix uses "Hop where?" - Redraws in Kai episode 5:
- Raditz being killed in the recap.
- Gohan waking up with the sun in his eyes.
- Surprised Roshi.
- A shot of the moon.
- The moon exploding.
- Gohan transforming back from Oozaru form; this was done to censor his genitals.
- The aircar Yajirobe uses to stop off at Kame House is the same one he used to take Goku to Karin's Tower after he was nearly killed by Piccolo, and later to deliver the Senzu Beans to the Dragon Team shortly before 19 and 20 blow it up (it's okay though, Ten could see his parachute).
- Bulma wakes up Kuririn and Roshi by shooting at them with a machine gun. The last time she did this was in Chapter 4/Episode 3, where she shot at Goku for taking off her panties the previous night and accidentally making Bulma flash her privates instead of her panties.
- The edited dub of Kai censored this to her instead punching them, complete with a very impressive visual edit.
- Bulma describes her modifications to the Scouter as switching it over to "our numeric system". Presumably this means the glyphs used to display the numbers on the visor, otherwise all of the readings on Bulma's Scouter could not be comparable to those by un-modified Scouters like Raditz, Vegeta and so on.
- Turtle's Battle Power of 0.001 is the lowest Scouter reading in Dragon Ball history.
- At this point, Tenshinhan is still the most powerful of the surviving Dragon Ball Gang, followed by Kuririn and Yamucha (and Roshi in dead last).
- It's also worth noting that the Scouter did not pick up Yajirobe at all despite him being right outside Kame House. This implies that Goku's Battle Power in the Daimao Arc was below 179 (Yamucha's Battle Power when the Scouter was used to track global Battle Powers), otherwise the Scouter would have picked him up before it did Yamucha. That, or Yajirobe's been slacking off, which is also a strong possibility.
- This is the first time Kuririn and Yajirobe have spoken with each other. While Goku said that Yajirobe's voice sounds similar to Kuririn's, here Kuririn compares it to a falling log.
- Here, Yajirobe says that Goku is training in hell before leaving Kame House (a slightly inaccurate name for Other World). In the Daimao Arc, Goku said he was training in heaven before leaving Kame House (or more specifically, with God).
- This is also the first time Gyuumao and Roshi have met since Roshi accidentally blew up Mount Frypan in the opening arc.
- In the manga, Chichi showing up at Kame House asking where Goku and Gohan are is the first time she appears in the Saiyan arc.
- The anime also re-arranges events slightly, swapping the Scouter, Yajirobe and Chichi scene with Gohan turning into an Oozaru so that Gohan goes second (which is retained in Kai). This slightly befuddles the plotting, because Gohan turns into an Oozaru on his first night of wilderness training, while Chichi arrives specifically because Goku and Gohan didn't return after nightfall.
- Episode 9 of Z is the THIRD time an orange sabertoothed cat shows up, after Z Episode 1 and DB Episode 1.
- Nathan Johnson's regular recap theme debuts in uncut episode 9. It would be used in pretty much every episode from now on, in the Ultimate Uncut dub.
- In the Japanese version, Dragon Ball Z is the first Dragon Ball anime to have a theme specifically for its recap, as the original Dragon Ball never had one, and didn't even use recaps for a long stretch of its run.
- Z episode 9 was Masako Nozawa's favourite episode to play Gohan in.
- Yamucha's turn as a baseball player is referenced much later in Dragon Ball Super where he returns to the sport. This is somewhat confusing as Super treats Kai as its preceding series over the original Z, but Yamcha playing baseball was cut from Kai.
- It might have been included however because Yamucha becoming a baseball player was Toriyama's idea, with Toriyama even elaborating on Yamucha's feelings about it. Toriyama outlined many of the things the Dragon Ball Gang were up to in the year before Vegeta and Nappa's arrival, including Piccolo fighting a clone of himself, Lunch chasing Tenshinhan and running into an adult Upa (whom Toriyama drafted a design for), the giant castle snake being an obstacle for Goku, and Goku eating the Snake Way clouds. The Hell Fruit episode is also "full" of Toriyama's ideas.
- After the six month timeskip, the manga shows Yamucha is training in his turtle school gi, but with his desert bandit boots he wore in the first three arcs rather than the smaller shoes Kuririn wears.
- Gohan seems to harbour no ill-will to the giant green dinosaur for killing his beloved dinosaur friend in Episode 10.
- It's well worth noting that after six months, Gohan has learnt how to fire his ki all on his own, albiet only for the purposes of lighting a fire.
- In a previous Trivia entry I noted that Goku had to have travelled 228mph to cross one million kilometers in six months. However, in the anime Goku crosses this distance slightly faster, since he was sent back to King Yenma's desk drawer at the end of Episode 13 and had to start over.