Hello, ladies, gentlemen, and everyone between and beyond, and welcome to week 92 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.
Yeah, I know we're a little late this week. I was busy.
Z movie 12 next week! A favourite for many. Will it hold up? Stay tuned...
Previous thread: Week 91 (DBZ 241-245)
Next thread: Week 93 (DBZ 251-253, movie 12)
Anyway, without further ado...
Episode 399 - Bye-Bye, Bobbidi!! Majin Boo Rebels (DBZ episode 246)
Dub title: Buu's Mutiny
Originally aired 16th of November 1994
Written by: Hiroshi Toda
Episode director: Kazuhito Kikuchi
Animation supervisor: Shingo Ishikawa
Goku battles Boo, but Trunks cannot find the Dragon Radar anywhere. At God’s Palace, Bulma uses Videl’s phone to guide Trunks, and he finally discovers the Dragon Radar! Realizing that Trunks is on his way back, Goku tells Boo that a strong guy will appear in two days, then returns to the palace. But Boo isn’t satisfied, and he kills Babidi as he is reprimanding him for letting Goku escape!!
Anime-only/filler content: Significant extensions to Goku's fight with Boo, extensions to Trunks searching for the radar, more of Gohan training on the Kaioshin planet.
Episode 400 - Absurdly Awful Looking?! The Special Training Transformation Pose (DBZ episode 247)
Dub title: The Fusion Dance
Originally aired 23rd of November 1994
Written by: Hiroshi Toda
Episode director: Shigeyasu Yamauchi
Animation supervisor: Keisuke Masunaga
Now that Boo no longer has anyone to order him around, he rampages according to his own whims, destroying one city after another! Meanwhile, Goku has returned to God’s Palace, but because he transformed to Super Saiyan 3 and used up his energy, that length of time he can remain in the living world has been reduced to only 30 minutes. Trunks then returns, having brought the Dragon Radar. Goku finally displays the Fusion pose! But Goten and Trunks are bewildered by the pose’s ugliness…
Anime-only/filler content: Goten and Kuririn fighting while waiting for Trunks, Boo fighting a helicopter.
Episode 401 - See You Later, Everybody!! Goku Returns to the Afterlife (DBZ episode 248)
Dub title: Goku's Time is Up
Originally aired 30th of November 1994
Written by: Hiroshi Toda
Episode director: Mitsuo Hashimoto
Animation supervisor: Masayuki Uchiyama
As Goku and Piccolo teach the Fusion pose to Goten and Trunks, Boo runs wild at the Earth’s surface. He turns people into clay and builds a house for himself! But at God’s Palace, Goten and Trunks complain that they are unsatisfied with Fusion. With no other choice, Goku shows them his Super Saiyan 3 form, which persuades them to train. But with this second transformation, the time Goku can remain in the living world has run out, and so he gives his parting words to everyone and returns to the afterlife…
Anime-only/filler content: Gyuumao tending to Chichi, Goku demonstrating Super Saiyan 3 to Goten and Trunks.
Episode 402 - Where is Gohan?! Training in the Kaiōshin Realm (DBZ episode 249)
Dub title: Return to Other World
Originally aired 7th of December 1994
Written by: Masashi Kubota
Episode director: Yoshihiro Ueda
Animation supervisor: Tadayoshi Yamamuro
After returning to the afterlife, Goku hears from Enma-daiō that Gohan isn’t dead. Using Gohan’s ki, he teleports to the Kaiōshin Realm and reunites with Gohan, who is in the middle of his training! Seeing Goku easily use the Z Sword when Gohan lends it to him, Kaiōshin and Kibito are astonished. Also, at God’s Palace Piccolo is at a loss with Goten and Trunks’ training. Meanwhile, Boo heals a blind boy who he meets, but his acts of destruction are gradually escalating.
Anime-only/filler content: Piccolo demonstrating the fusion dance with Kuririn.
Episode 403 - You’re Kidding, Right?! The Z Sword is Broken (DBZ episode 250)
Dub title: Out from the Broken Sword
Originally aired 14th of December 1994
Written by: Masashi Kubota
Episode director: Kazuhito Kikuchi
Animation supervisor: Yukio Ebisawa
Gohan trains in the Kaiōshin Realm. Watching this, Goku proposes that they test out the Z Sword’s sharpness. Gohan promptly cleaves a gigantic boulder in two, then challenges Kachin steal, the hardest metal in the universe. But the sword is broken!! When this happens, the Elder Kaiōshin, who was sealed within the sword, appears. The Elder Kaiōshin says that he has the ability to draw a person’s power out beyond its limits. Gohan then begins a 25-hour ceremony to draw out his power.
Anime-only/filler content: Goten and Trunks training, everyone else getting bored and playing some sort of card game, Goku throwing a rock at the sword, the oni complaining to Enma about the influx of dead people.
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Interesting trivia:
- At this point in time in the manga, Gotenks fights Boo back on Earth before defusing, Gohan arrives to fight Boo before Gotenks and Piccolo are absorbed into him, and Gohan is defeated while Yemna and Baba revive Vegeta.
- Missed Trivia: The only time Shen Long and Porunga are summoned and present at the same time is during the Namek Arc, when Shen Long restores everyone killed by Freeza and his men, thus reviving Porunga. It lasts for a few seconds before the Earth's Dragon Balls dissapate and Shen Long disappears.
- Missed Trivia: Shen Long's appearance at Capsule Corp is the final time he's seen in the original manga-based story. He wouldn't be seen again until Dragon Ball GT when Baby uses them to restore planet Tsufrui.
- Z episode 246 is the first to use music from Z movie 11.
- Scott McNeil temporarily voiced Kaio in Z episode 246. His usual voice actor, Don Brown, still appears in these episodes, voicing Kibito. It's unclear why Scott had to fill in this dialogue.
- Boo displays a knack for being able to instantly learn and replicate the moves of his opponents. While this will of course be important for the story later on, this is something that Goku himself had a habit of doing as a kid, and both he and Boo are able to successfully perform the Kamehameha after seeing it performed exactly once.
- When Goku compliments Boo's ability to quickly copy other people's moves, he has grows a very long nose and has a pleased look on his face. This is a reference to Tengu, who are associated with pride and vanity (and wind and crows). Effectively, Boo is saying "Damn proud of it!"
- As we noted in the Filler sections last week, the scenes of Trunks looking through Capsule Corp. for the Dragon Radar is filler, and is a rare case of the filler integrating incredibly well with the main story.
- After Boo slaps away his own returned Kamehameha, the Lookout is seen shaking, despite not technically being attached to anything anymore.
- The move Boo uses to decimate the city and turn it into a barren wasteland with its own mushroom cloud is the same move Ma-Junior used to destroy Papaya Island at the 23rd Tournament (and mimics a tactic Daimao used). Interestingly, the first character we see after this is Piccolo!
- Goku explains that Super Saiyan 3's energy drain works fine in Other World because time has no meaning, whereas in the world of the living it has to borrow from his remaining time. This suggests that it's such a draw on his energy reserves that it borrows from his life force, similar to Tenshinhan's Kikoho. Fusion's ludricous ki multiplication is likely the reason why it isn't any trouble for Gotenks to use.
- Before setting off, Goku tells Piccolo that Gohan is likely most upset at not being able to see his mentor anymore, an acknowledgement from Goku of how important Piccolo is to his son.
- In the panel of Trunks holding up the Radar, it appears differently yet again: it's the Namek design, but with the button tilted to the side, making a sort of "Yin Yang" shape.
- This panel is also, to our knowledge, the final time the Dragon Radar is shown in the manga.
- Also in this panel, Trunks says "This is the radar, right?!", suggesting he didn't know what it looked like. This is lessened in the anime since his grandparents helped look for it.
- Goku has 30 minutes to teach Trunks and Goten the Fusion Dance, which is the length of a Dragon Ball episode's timeslot.
- Z episode 247 is the 400th Dragon Ball anime episode overall.
- Piccolo points out to Goku that Vegeta wouldn't have agreed to do the Fusion Dance to defeat Boo. Incidentally Vegeta would be reluctant to use the Potarra Earrings as well!
- While terrorising a city, Boo sees a celebrity's face in a magazine and takes on his appearance. We learn in Super that this celebrity is named Barry Kahn.
- Boo turns everyone to clay to build his house, showing he's not limited to turning people into candy, he just likes candy a lot.
- Boo's house has the appearance of a bug, with the elongated Xenomorph skull that Toriyama likes to use a lot.
- Toriyama includes a scene where Goten wants to give his father a goodbye hug. It's possible he included this scene after watching the anime, which made a much bigger deal about Goten seeing his father for the first time.
- Goku burning up his remaining time among the living with Super Saiyan 3 handily explains why it never became night-time while he was there. At most Goku would have been on Earth for about 9 hours (when daylight is normal and not in sunrise/set), meaning about five minutes of Super Saiyan 3 burnt up well over half of Goku's remaining time among the living.
- In English, it's unclear if the blind child is male or female. Certain details of the words the child uses in Japanese should clear this up, but none of it comes across in English translations. The closing credits of the Japanese version refers to the character as "Young blind boy".
- For some reason, Funimation decided to give him the name Tommy. They also changed his farewell to Boo; he no longer thanks him, instead he complains that he's hungry. This was fixed in The Final Chapters dub.
- Interestingly the Z Sword has a similar pommel design to Trunks' sword.
- The material that Kaioshin makes a cube out of is can be roughly approximated from the original Japanese as "Kattchin-Ko", named after the sounds of two swords clanging together (and thus very appropriate for its use on the Z Sword). It's called Klangite in the ViZ manga, Katchin in the original Funimation dub of DBZ, and Katchintite in their dub of Kai.
- The Klangite cube appears in the manga for 11 panels before disappearing forever.
- Old Kaioshin re-uses several traits and moments Roshi had in his introduction, including being a groty old man with lots of knowledge, a penchant for pornography, and the joke of assuming he can deflect an attack at any time only to take the hit dead-on (Chichi did this when she first met him in episode 8.). Incidentally, it's Goku who does the latter joke this time, who was previously the victim of the same gag in the anime when Kuririn threw the rock at him in the wait for the Cell Games.
- Gohan rightly calls Goku out on the fact that setting Bulma up with Old Kaioshin counts as sexual assault.
- Goku also lampshades that Old Kaioshin's talent for drawing out one's hidden abilities is, by this point, not that unique.
- We learn in Super that Old Kaioshin was sealed in the Z Sword by Beers, so despite him not being named or thought up by that point, retroactively Chapter 479 and its anime counterpart, Z episode 250, is the first mention of Beers in the franchise, predating his first actual first depiction in Battle of Gods by 19 years.
- Old Kaioshin's ritual to draw out Gohan's hidden strength is very similar to the Namekian Grand Elder's ability. What saves Old Kaioshin's ritual from redundancy is possibly that he pushes it "beyond human" (as in, beyond mortal), whereas the Grand Elder's draws out what was always there.
