Hello, ladies, gentlemen, and everyone between and beyond, and welcome to week 93 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.
My personal take on Z movie 12: It's overrated. It's pretty fun, but a lot of people cite it as an overall favourite. I think it's good, but it's not amazing.
Meanwhile, the Boo arc's main thrust up to this point comes to an end, so Toriyama comes up with a new direction for it next week.
Previous thread: Week 92 (DBZ 246-250)
Next thread: Week 94 (DBZ 254-258)
Anyway, without further ado...
Episode 404 - The Birth of a Superhuman Warrior!! His Name is Gotenks (DBZ episode not found)
Dub title: Gotenks is Born
Originally aired 21st of December 1994
Written by: Masashi Kubota
Episode director: Takahiro Imamura
Animation supervisor: Shingo Ishikawa
At God’s Palace, Goten and Trunks finally take a shot at Fusion. But they fail, and a fat Gotenks is born. The two failed because their poses were slightly off. After 30 minutes, the merge wears off and the two try it again, but fail once more. On the third time they at last succeed at Fusion, and the warrior Gotenks is born!! But the cocky Gotenks immediately goes off to challenge Boo, but is utterly defeated. He returns, beaten to a pulp.
Anime-only/filler content: Extra chatter on the lookout, Gotenks fighting Boo instead of him simply returning immediately having been beat up by Boo.
Episode 405 - The Final Weapon is Engaged?! Satan Will Save the Earth (DBZ episode 252)
Dub title: Unlikely Friendship
Originally aired 11th of January 1995
Written by: Masashi Kubota
Episode director: Shigeyasu Yamauchi
Chief animation supervisor: Naoki Miyahara
Animation supervisor: Naoaki Hōjō
80% of the Earth’s population has been wiped out by Boo. With the hope of the survivors on his shoulders, Mister Satan rises at last. But inside, Satan is completely terrified. Though he goes to Boo’s house, he learns that Boo isn’t there and is about to head back. As he’s doing so, Boo arrives. Frightened, Satan gives gifts containing poison and explosives, but they have no effect on Boo. Satan sucks up to Boo and begins living with him…
Anime-only/filler content: Bulma and Chichi tending to their sons' wounds and telling them off for being idiots.
Episode 406 - I’ve Stopped Killing!! Majin Boo’s Good Boy Declaration (DBZ episode 253)
Dub title: I Kill No More
Originally aired 25th of January 1995
Written by: Sumio Uetake
Episode director: Mitsuo Hashimoto
Animation supervisor: Keisuke Masunaga
Gohan continues the power-up ceremony, but he can’t hide his uneasiness at the flaky Elder Kaiōshin. Meanwhile, Goten and Trunks fuse as Super Saiyans, becoming Super Gotenks. Gotenks again heads for Boo, but the Fusion wears off before he reaches Boo’s house, and Goten and Trunks quickly run away… Boo is persuaded by Satan to announce that he will no longer do bad things. But a heartless pair appear, and shoot Boo’s pet puppy!
Anime-only/filler content: Goku having a snack and chatting with Kaioshin while Elder Kaioshin gives Gohan a powerup.
DBZ movie 12 - The Rebirth of Fusion!! Goku and Vegeta
Dub title: Fusion Reborn
Originally released 4th of March 1995
Written by: Takao Koyama
Episode director: Shigeyasu Yamauchi
Animation supervisor: Tadayoshi Yamamuro
The oni responsible for watching the soul-cleansing machine is taken over by an evil spirit, and the afterlife succumbs to his will. All across Earth, dead villains come back to life! Goku and Vegeta attempt to defeat Janenba while their families deal with the chaos up on Earth. Their only chance to win? Fusion!
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Interesting trivia about Z episode 251-253:
- At this point in time in the manga, Gohan is beaten up by Boo and Old Kai gives his life so Goku and fuse with Gohan using the Potara Earrings, Tien enters the fray and is beaten fast, Gohan is absorbed by Boo, and Vegeta arrives on Earth and reluctantly fuses with Goku.
- Trunks is the one who makes the mistake in the Fusion Dance both times, by having his fingers pointed at "-sion!", and then not having his lower finger touch Goten's at the "HA!".
- Just before Goten and Trunks try the Fusion Dance for real, Chichi workshops what she and Bulma should call the final result, coming up with Gotenks and Trunten. After the successful Fusion, Piccolo calls him Trunten, only for Mr. Popo to correct him.
- The Fusion Dance misfire forms include a very obese form and an elderly form. These have been referenced very frequently as other Fusion Dance misfires, including in Dragon Ball Super: Broly. To date no-one has ever devised any other misfire forms for the Fusion Dance.
- Rather than draw Goten and Trunks performing the Fusion Dance three separate times, Toriyama photocopied the first one and modified it with each mistake. The photocopy is somewhat noticeable the second time because the lineart is slightly thicker than normal. By the third time, Kuririn actually calls Toriyama out on it, and Tori-bot appears saying that the editor doesn't have to pay him for that page. Toei didn't adapt this gag for the anime, despite also showing the full Fusion Dance three times.
- In the manga, this is the first time Tori-Bot has appeared in the story itself since his original cameo on the palm tree way back in Chapter 3, nine and a half years prior.
- The successful Fusion scene was parodied gloriously in an ad for the Ford Fusion, where Goten and Trunks turn into the car and everyone still praises the result over how good it apparently is. (A shame they use the ugly "Remastered" Funimation footage, but everything else about it is pretty great)
- Its sister ad is Kuririn and Gohan making their wish to Porunga asking for three cars with three different features, which Porunga points out already exist in a single car in the Ford Focus. By the end he gives up and just gives them the Focus before disappearing.
- As is famous by now, Fusion not only merges the bodies, but also the personalities of the individuals. In Gotenks' case it accentuates his more negative aspects, bringing in Trunks' arrogance with Goten's naivete, and goofiness in the form of his wacky moveset. In their father's case, it brings out Vegeta's arrogance and Goku's knack for planning ahead of his opponent.
- Piccolo tells Gotenks that he knows nothing of Boo before he flies off. There's an early sign of this: Gotenks boasts that he'll bring back Boo's corpse, but by now we know that you have to vaporize every atom to kill him.
- In the manga, Gotenks' first fight with Boo isn't present: instead Gotenks returns beaten up almost immediately after flying away as a gag. The anime expands this with a proper fight sequence.
- Fans have theorized that the Boo Arc has many instances of Toriyama simply not drawing certain scenes to both save time and give something for the anime to pad the story out with, and Gotenks' first fight with Boo is one of the clearest examples. Another would be much of the romance scenes between Gohan and Videl, including the famous ki training scenes.
- The soldiers guarding Mr. Satan's bunker use the same uniforms as King Furry's guard from the Daimao Arc.
- When Mr. Satan discards his cape, he also throws aside his belt. Probably so that Toriyama didn't have to draw its more complex design over and over.
- It seems Boo has added a square ditch to mark the yard of his house.
- When Mr. Satan sticks his butt out to mock Boo, it's given a little "Boo" sound effect bubble.
- It's quite likely that Boo wasn't inititally at his house because he had just beaten the crap out of Gotenks, which is somewhat clearer in the manga since it directly shows that incident.
- The handheld device that Mr. Satan gives Boo is of course just a Game Boy, although it is unnamed in the manga. In the anime the reference was obscured: it was given two extra buttons like a Super Famicom, and was properly named the "Game Poy" (it wasn't named in the manga).
- The original Game Boy released on April 21st 1989, when the manga was up to Goku returning from Other World to save his friends from Nappa and Vegeta, while in animeland the original Dragon Ball had only JUST ended its run. This model would last so long that its first revision, the Game Boy Pocket, wouldn't release until July 21st 1996, when Goku starts his fight with Rildo in Dragon Ball GT.
- Chapter 482 marks 111 chapters between double-spread title pages, after Chapter 371 two and a half years before it. Here, Toriyama colours Boo a much paler shade of pink, looking more like Kirby in Kirby's Adventure for, well, the original Game Boy.
- When Gotenks flies off to defeat Boo after he meets with Piccolo on the ground, Piccolo says that he only has a minute left. This suggests it takes Piccolo about half an hour to fly down to Earth from the Lookout.
- In the manga, Mr. Satan reads to Boo "A Dog of Flanders", specifically the end scene where Nello and Patrasche are discovered dead in Antwerp Cathedral (which Boo finds hilarious). Incredibly popular in Japan, Korea and the Phillipines, it was published in 1872, meaning it was in the public domain by the time Toriyama referenced it.
- In the ViZ version of the manga, the two snipers have their realistic firearms replaced with laser guns or given more details to look like one, sound effects replaced with "zap"s, and all other effects, including smoke and blood, painted out (this includes the rocket launcher in the next Chapter). However when Super Boo kills the smaller thug, the machine gun is completely unedited, likely because he only uses it on Boo who is completely unaffected, and it happens in a new Tankobon, which saves them having to edit anything.
- Mr. Satan of course is absolutely right: Boo can't give the puppy chocolate because it's poisonous to dogs.
- Similarly to Marron, Mr. Satan's dog isn't officially named in the manga; the anime would reveal his name as "Bee". Simular to Shu and Mai, this forms a pun: BooBee (and thus is one reason why Boo's name should be spelt with o's rather than u's). This isn't Boo's only breast-related tie-in: Boo and Oob's names make Boooob, and in Dragon Ball Online's lore written by Toriyama (therefore in events canonically following the Super timeline), Boo makes a female version of his kind after reading a porn magazine.
- At the time Z movie 12 released, the manga was up to Goku and Vegeta preparing to fight Pure Boo, while the anime was up to Gohan returning to Earth after Old Kai powered him up.
- Of all the movies, this one is the most irreconcilable to make fit in the core manga/anime storyline. Goku and Vegeta are both dead (their state at the time the movie debuted) and Goku namedrops Majin Boo as the last time he used Super Saiyan 3, yet Videl reacts to Shen Long as if she's never seen him before, Vegeta reacts to Fusion as if he's never done it with Goku before, and Goku and Vegeta are alive by the end of the Boo Arc (all signs pointed to Gohan and Gotenks saving the day). With all that in mind, it appears the story was written to be after the Boo Arc, but anticipating that Goku and Vegeta would remain dead after their initial encounters with Boo. The Legacy of Goku 3: Buu's Fury video game alters the storyline slightly to remove the earth-based segments and places it as an additional series of events when Goku returns to Other World, since at that point Goku and Vegeta are both dead.
- This is the first Dragon Ball movie to have mystical elements for its new characters since Tree of Might, which would be continued in the next movie.
- The Funimation title card for Fusion Reborn shows the logo in the Gamer font. This is the same font they used for the Ultimate Uncut title cards, as well as for Dragon Ball Z Kai and Dragon Ball Super.
- The narrator describes Enma as the literal king of Other World. It's possible this is meant figuratively considering he is one of the most powerful beings in Other World by nature of his job.
- Some of the names on Enma's papers include members of the team who animated the movie, including Tetsuya Numako (Photography on M13), Hitoshi Kamata (Key Animation), Takahiro Imamura (Assistant Director) and Munehisa Sakai (Assistant Production Manager). There's also Atsunori Kazama, who would be the production manager for Kai, and Tokiji Kaburagi (mis-spelt "Kabragi") who was the production manager for "Sakigake!! Otokojuku" in 1988. All of them are sent to Hell.
- Emna's paperwork has him send a lot of the spirits to Hell, yet the spirits effectively just "take a left" and enter the cue for the cleansing machine, and thus never actually visit it as they're supposed to.
- The aircraft used to fly spirits to Heaven has changed, from many 747s atop Lookout platforms from the Other World Tournament filler to a single, science-fiction-looking airplane with the Grand Kao's symbol on the rudder.
- Evil ki is not a new concept to Dragon Ball, as several characters have expressed sensing it, such as with Frieza.
- Romeo and Juliano is of course a play on Romeo and Juliet. Their appearance also confirms that those in Other World don't age past the appearance of their death, something Chichi was bashfully concerned about upon hearing that Goku would be returning for the Boo Arc's Tournament.
- The obvious Hitler parody in the movie uses a red X instead of the Nazi Swastika, not that it does much to make the joke that acceptable for a kids movie today.
- Accompanying Hitler's army is an extensive ancient Japanese army on horseback. Given that Hitler and other evil people from Dragon Ball itself are present, the implication is that the horseback army follows the leadership of someone evil too. It's most likely Oda Nobunaga, who brutally swept across Japan in the 1560s to unify it, and is commonly used as a villainous figure in Japanese media. He's often given the moniker of "Demon King", which of course was used for Piccolo Daimao.
- The very existence of past villains is a contradiction within the film, as evil souls are purified into new forms using the machine. KBABZ theorises that it's possible that very evil beings are sent to Hell for punishment first, which is what Vegeta implies soon after coming back to life. Robo suggests that some souls simply have too much willpower to be purified, and thus they need to go to Hell for a while to be broken down so they can be purified. Either way, this contradicts the scene in the manga where Piccolo outright states that Vegeta will be purified: if that were the case it should be impossible for Vegeta to return as he would have effectively been reincarnated as a different person. Though it's possible in either case that Piccolo meant Vegeta will eventually be purified.
- This also highlights a logistical issue: if a person has been sent to Hell and cleansed, can Shen Long bring them back? Given the delay between wishes for, say, the people of Namek killed by Frieza, it seems he can!
- Gohan appears to be completely fine with discarding his costume in a public space. This suggests that while everyone knows his identity, he still keeps the disguise aspect as part of the flair.
- Gohan also notably does NOT use the orange helmet from Bulma's original costume design. KBABZ is sad.
- The warriors Freeza sicks on Gohan include Zarbon and the entire Ginyu Force, Ginger from the first Z movie, Misokattsun from the second, Kakao and Razun from the third, Zeiyun and Medamatcha from the fourth, Paragus from the first Broly film, and Bojack and Zangya from the ninth Z film. Bojack in particular is given emphasis, which is appropriate given that he was Gohan's villain in that film.
- Gohan manages to one-up Trunks by killing Freeza in a single move, calling to mind his defeat of the Cell Jrs.
- The Dragon Radar used by Trunks features yet another take on its UI design, adding clock-like lines around the edge of the screen.
- As is tradition this movie incorporates traits from the current anime arc. In this case, Trunks is once again paired with the Dragon Radar, a wish is again made on the grounds of Capsule Corp, and Goku uses Super Saiyan 3 again to defeat a warlock's monster going awry, with the climax occuring in Other World.
- This is the first Dragon Ball movie to have the Dragon Balls wished upon since Lord Slug restored his youth, and is only the third Z movie to have them used (Z movie 1 is the other). Counting DB movie 1, 3, Z movie 13 and the 10th anniversary movie, there are appropriately seven movies where the Dragon Balls are wished on. If you include the GT special, there's eight that use them as a central plot element.
- Interestingly, Shen Long cannot fix the current woes because the fate of the deceased is handled by King Enma, which is utterly bizarre considering the most common wish he fulfills is taking people out of Other World! The scene also doesn't give a proper ruling on whether he can move those more powerful than him if they're alive (the act of moving the dead exceeds his power, as he states).
- Strangely, Goten is the one to call Shen Long a cheapskate despite his polite behaviour in the anime, with Trunks being the one to shut him up when he should more logically agree with him.
- This is the second time Shen Long asks if his summoners have anything to wish for in an explicitly comedic fashion, the first being the end of the Cell Games after Goku says he wishes to stay in Other World and the Dragon Team spend several minutes reminiscing about him while Shen Long waits for them.
- If this were the Anime Labs Fansub, Paikuhan would have freed Yenma in SECONDS!
- It takes 23 minutes for the Super Saiyan form to appear in the movie, and then only as a prelude to Super Saiyan 3.
- Z movie 12 is the only time we see Goku push himself to Super Saiyan 3 while dead, which is how he practiced and attained the form with the higher ki reserves from being dead. Despite this, it still takes quite a bit of effort to reach.
- In Goku's reaction shot after Janemba starts to transform, he has darker pupils within his Super Saiyan ones.
- Goten and Trunks make efforts to dodge the tank rounds being fired at them, despite their Battle Power meaning they should logically be able to take them considering Goku could take a pistol shot at age 10.
- Janemba's more aggressive form has his tail coming from the middle of his spine rather than the bottom, giving him a Cell-like appearance.
- In case it wasn't clear, the blood and needle areas that Goku and Vegeta are thrown into are various punishments in Hell.
- Given how Janemba can't locate Goku and Vegeta, he may not be able to sense Battle Powers (unless they're suppressing them, of course).
- Goku explains that for the Fusion Dance to work, both he and Vegeta's Battle Power must be the same. In a much later interview Toriyama explained that it CAN work without that requirement, but is more difficult. It's therefore odd that Goku doesn't seem to know this detail.
- Oddly, Hitler's army are skeletons while the dictator himself isn't.
- Goku declaring that Janemba will be sent to Hell is redundant, considering that's already where they're fighting.
- Z movie 12 using Gogeta is the main reason why a different method would be used for the manga itself, as Toriyama didn't want to repeat something the movies already did. To do this, he repurposed the earrings worn by the Kaioshins, which was about the only thing available to him without having to place another legendary item on the Land of the Kaios.
- As a result of the above, Gogeta was not considered a "canon" character by many until Goku and Vegeta had to learn the Fusion Dance in Dragon Ball Super: Broly.
- Fusion Reborn is the first time Vegeta is depicted farting.
- Dragon Ball Super: Broly would reuse the plot point of the big bad having to be stalled for 30 minutes until a failed Fusion wears off (in Z movie 12, the reject himself has to do the stalling).
- Similar to Vegetto against Boo, Gogeta's punches leave lasting dents in Janemba's body.
- Gogeta notably only uses the original Super Saiyan when fighting Janemba, not even needing to try 2 or 3.