Dragon Ball Rewatch, Week 46 - DBZ episode 48-52

[Robo4900]

Hello, ladies, gentlemen, and everyone between and beyond, and welcome to week 46 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.

The Namek arc continues!

Previous thread: Week 45 (DBZ 43-47)
Next thread: Week 47 (DBZ 53-57)

Anyway, without further ado...

Episode 201 - Gohan in Peril! A Pursuing Dodoria Summons Death (DBZ episode 48)
Dub title: The Hunted (Funimation)
Originally aired 16th of May 1990
Kai equivalent: Episode 22 - Dodoria in Terrifying Hot Pursuit! Vegeta Learns the Truth
Edited dub equivalent: Episode 36 - Escape from Dodoria (Some footage incorporated into episode 35 - The Nameks Versus Frieza)
Episode director: Minoru Okazaki
Animation supervisor: Minoru Maeda

Dodoria ends up massacring the Namekian warriors. In order to protect the children, the elder gives Freeza their Dragon Ball. But since the elder wouldn’t tell him the location of the remaining two Dragon Balls, Freeza kills him! As the sole survivor Dende was about to be killed, Gohan flies out!! Kuririn follows after him, and the two rescue Dende and run away. As Dodoria follows in pursuit, his eyes are blinded by the Taiyō-Ken, and Kuririn and the others hide themselves behind a rock.

Anime-only/filler content: Goku exercising and training in his ship, Freeza destroying a cliff face, and some extensions to the chase scene. (Written by Keiji Terui)

Episode 202 - Dodoria Dies by Explosion! Vegeta’s Fearsome Shockwave (DBZ episode 49)
Dub title: The Prince Fights Back (Funimation)
Originally aired 23rd of May 1990
Kai equivalent: Episode 22 - Dodoria in Terrifying Hot Pursuit! Vegeta Learns the Truth
Edited dub equivalent: Episode 36 - Escape from Dodoria (last 7 minutes), episode 37 - Secrets Revealed
Episode director: Shigeyasu Yamauchi
Animation supervisor: Masayuki Uchiyama

The furious Dodoria blows up all of the surrounding area, but Gohan and the others narrowly escape. As Dodoria is about to return to Freeza, Vegeta comes in for a surprise attack! No longer a match for Vegeta, Dodoria begs for his life, telling the secret of Vegeta’s home world, Planet Vegeta. Planet Vegeta was destroyed by Freeza! But Vegeta isn’t greatly shocked by this, and kills Dodoria.

Anime-only/filler content: Bulma taking a bath and talking to her father, Goku getting lunch on the ship, the flashback sequence to the Saiyans laying waste to a planet. (Written by Katsuyuki Sumisawa)

Episode 203 - Escape From a Burning Planet!! A Life-or-Death Kamehameha (DBZ episode 50)
Dub title: Unexpected Problem (Funimation)
Originally aired 30th of May 1990
Kai equivalent: Episode 23 - Vegeta’s Secret Maneuvering! The Namekians are Tragically Attacked
Edited dub equivalent: Episode 37 - Secrets Revealed (last 9 minutes), episode 38 - A Collision Course
Episode director: Mitsuo Hashimoto
Animation supervisor: Mitsuo Shindō

Having escaped from Dodoria’s pursuit, Gohan and the others arrive at their hiding cave, and everyone is overjoyed when they hear that Goku is on his way to Planet Namek! At this time, Goku’s spaceship is damaged from a meteorite impact. At this rate, his trajectory has been thrown off. Goku goes outside and makes repairs, but the shoes of his spacesuit get stuck in the adhesive and he can’t move! A star is right before his eyes! He escapes from the star with an extra large Kamehameha. This is the result of his training at 20x gravity!!

Anime-only/filler content: The entire subplot of Goku's ship going off course. (Written by Hiroshi Toda)

Episode 204 - Courage Times One Hundred! The Warriors Gather Under Kaiō (DBZ episode 51)
Dub title:
Originally aired 6th of June 1990
Kai equivalent: Episode 23 - Vegeta’s Secret Maneuvering! The Namekians are Tragically Attacked (some footage also incorporated into episode 24 - Resurrected Comrades! The Handsome Warrior Zarbon’s Devilish Transformation)
Edited dub equivalent: Episode 38 - A Collision Course (last 10 minutes), episode 39 - Stay Away From Frieza
Episode director: Yoshihiro Ueda
Animation supervisor: Yukio Ebisawa

While having a meal following rescuing Dende, Gohan and the others sense a large “ki”. It belongs to Vegeta, who is attacking a village to steal their Dragon Ball. When Dende learns the reason Gohan and the others came from Earth, he begs them to save his friends. In order to protect the last Dragon Ball, Kuririn and Dende hurry toward the Eldest’s house! Meanwhile, as Goku continues his training in his spaceship, Kaiō speaks into his mind. The dead Piccolo and the others have come to Kaiō’s to receive training!

Anime-only/filler content: Bulma getting angry at Kuririn for saying their food isn't very good, Kuririn blaming himself for the destruction Vegeta is causing, since he could have finished him off back in episode 35. (Written by Aya Matsui)

Episode 205 - Listen to Me Goku! Hands Off Freeza (DBZ episode 52)
Dub title:
Originally aired 20th of June 1990
Kai equivalent: Episode 24 - Resurrected Comrades! The Handsome Warrior Zarbon’s Devilish Transformation
Edited dub equivalent: Episode 39 - Stay Away From Frieza (last 11 minutes), episode 40 - Zarbon Transformed
Episode director: Mitsuo Hashimoto
Animation supervisor: Mitsuo Shindō

Piccolo and the others hear from Goku that a person with a “ki” surpassing Vegeta’s is on Planet Namek. When Kaiō learns that this is the worst enemy, Freeza, he warns Goku not to get involved with him. Piccolo and the others then begin training right away. But their first task is a pun! Tenshinhan somehow succeeds after much effort, and Piccolo makes a pun purely by accident! Meanwhile on Planet Namek, Vegeta and Zarbon’s battle has begun!

Anime-only/filler content: The joke-telling sequence. (Written by Aya Matsui)

-

Interesting trivia:

• At this point in time in the anime, Vegeta defeats Gurd, Reacoom easily defeats Vegeta, Gohan and Kuririn, Freeza unsuccessfully tries to use the Namekian Dragon Balls and realizes that he can't make them work, and Goku arrives to save Kuririn, Gohan and Vegeta.
• Chapters 255 and 256 debuted together in the same issue as the first double feature in the manga's history. These chapter have title page art of Goku and Piccolo learning to drive, which would inspire Episode 125, the infamous Driving Episode, two years later. They do not feature identical artwork however: in the second one, Goku and Piccolo have switched to the yellow car, after crashing the red one (visibly destroyed in the background), and have damaged many of the traffic cones.
• Dodoria revealing the true reason behind planet Vegeta's destruction is the first time it appears, providing a retcon to Raditz's original explanation that it was destroyed by a meteor (which is now a fake story devised by Freeza). This of course contradicts the backstory provided by Kaio in Z episode 20's filler, which expanded on the original meteor story. Much like Roshi's story about the origins of the Dragon Balls in episode 33 of the original anime, Z will pretend their version was never stated.
  • Notably, Vegeta is completely unperturbed by this revelation, at least in the moment Dodoria tells it to him. Come Episode 86, and Vegeta confesses that it affected him much more deeply than it first seemed.
• Just before Dodoria attacks Vegeta, he says he gave him a chance to leave, and he blew it. This is almost the exact same reasoning Goku says to Vegeta in the Funimation dub of Kai after Freeza attacks him with the discs.
• Dodoria states that Freeza only destroyed the Saiyan homeworld when Vegeta wasn't on it, in order to spare him. The Viz manga and the Simmons subtitles (for Z and Kai) render this correctly, but the English dubs don't -- even Funimation's Kai dub only hints at this, burying the lede rather effectively, instead emphasising Dodoria teasing Vegeta, and the fact that Freeza destroyed the planet.
• Starting from edited episode 38 (uncut episode 50), Peter Kelamis, most famous for having played Rolf in Ed Edd 'n Eddy, took over the role of Goku from Ian Corlett. Corlett had become unsatisfied with the low pay of the work (specifically, the lack of pay for screams and grunts), and was butting heads with the producers on DBZ. He's said since that he would have considered staying on longer if he'd known about conventions, and the longevity of the show and its fans, but he doesn't regret leaving. Peter Kelamis said in an interview that, when he was cast, "I actually auditioned for the part and Ian's voice was the voice they were attempting to match. I guess I was the closest." Kelamis apparently got some hate from certain fans when he took over the role, even a death threat at one point.
  • Many say edited episode 37 was Ian Corlett's last episode as Goku, but to my recollection, Goku doesn't actually appear at all in edited episode 37, so Corlett's last episode as Goku was actually episode 36... Except, Z movie 3 was originally aired as a 3-episode special, which Corlett had already recorded for before he left the role, so technically Ian Corlett's last episode was episode 48 (not to be confused with the actual edited episode 48, Arrival of the Ginyu Force, or uncut episode 48).
• Edits in the original dub:
  • Dodoria punching through a Namekian's back was censored to him simply punching his back really hard; you don't see his fist go clean through him.
  • After Dodoria throws a guy into a mountain, there's a shot of him dead in a pool of his own blood; the blood was edited out, and the sound of him breathing was added.
  • When Dodoria elbows the elder in the face, the moment of impact was cut just slightly.
  • In a shot where the elder wipes blood off his face, the blood was removed.
  • Dodoria killing Dende's brother Cargo is cut so it looks like Dodoria missed the elder. Kuririn says "Whew, that was close!" to seal the deal.
  • Dodoria punching the elder's face is cut slightly.
  • Dodoria snapping a Namekian elder's neck is cut. We still see him grab the man, then we cut to the reaction shots while hearing the sounds of fighting, then we see the Namekian lying on the ground.
  • Saliva leaking from the elder's mouth as he hits the ground was painted out.
  • Cargo's body was painted out of the background of a shot of Dodoria laughing at the dead elder.
  • Dodoria says to Dende "Your brother may have escaped, but not you!", following up on the prior removal of Cargo's death.
  • Kuririn says to Dende "We'll take you back to your dad and brother later."
  • The gratuitous scene of Bulma in the bath talking to her dad was cut out. (Kai did not cut this scene, however, it just shortened it, so yet another case of the edited Z dub actually cutting filler that Kai left in)
  • Chris Psaros notes no cuts or censorship in uncut episode 50, however its contents were distributed weirdly; the first 9 minutes go into edited episode 37, the rest go to epsiode 38.
  • Bulma says to Dende in edited episode 38 (footage from uncut 51) "I'm sure your family's okay..."
  • Aside from the two below (very brief) cuts, uncut episode 51 is basically kept as-is in the edited dub, but (like episode 50) is split up, its first half making up the second half of edited episode 38, and its second half making up the first half of edited episode 39.
  • A shot of Vegeta punching a Namekian in the face with two fists was cut, so you just see him approaching, then go straight to the villager falling down.
  • Vegeta hovering over the Namekian village, littered with bodies, was cut.
  • Uncut episode 52 is also basically uncut (but, again, half of it goes to one edited episode, half to another), with only one piece of visual censorship:
  • Zarbon's mouth bleeding during his fight with Vegeta was painted over.
• In edited episode 37 (equivalent to uncut episode 50), when Goku fires two Kamehamehas, he shouts "Kaioken x10!" then "Kaioken x20!" before firing each one. This is not the case in any other version or translation.
• In episode 50, Vegeta fires an orange ki blast at a Namekian elder; in the recap at the beginning of episode 51, this blast is blue.
• Kuririn and Gohan appear surprised that Bulma set up a capsule house in the cave. She in fact told them she would do this just before they left for the Namekian village.
• Interestingly, the village elders point out that Freeza and Vegeta have something evil about them. If this is referring to their ki, this is very odd, because none of the villages seem to know that the others are being wiped out (only the Grand Elder does).
• As noted by Vegeta, this is the first time he actually gets to see a Dragon Ball.
• Vegeta using his "hand gun" to fire ki blasts in the anime would later be used by Frieza to kill Dende after he reaches his final form.
• Yamucha training with Kaio gives him one minor revision to his costume: he gets the Kaio symbol on his back, much like Goku did. This change is unnoticeable in the manga and Kai because at the end of the arc, he disposes the gi and wears civilian clothes, however it does appear in the Tree of Might movie (one of the reasons why that movie can't fit anywhere in the original storyline).
• Dende states that he's the 108th child of the current Grand Elder, putting Namek's total population at about that number if he's the youngest child. If true, this means that there are exactly 18 Namekians per village, which is slightly above the number Toriyama draws for the village Vegeta slaughters!
• Kaio states that Yamcha and co. made it down Snake Way much faster than when Goku did it. As a reminder, Goku was traveling 228km/h when he did it at the start of the Saiyan Arc.
• Kaio is convinced to train Piccolo if he doesn't attack Freeza, which Piccolo just stated he wanted to do. Kaio is forgetting that Piccolo was formerly the embodiment of evil.
• Naturally, the joke Tenshinhan tells to Kaio varies depending on the translation. A couple of examples:
  • From the original edited dub: "You can tune a piano, but you can't tune a fish!" Funimation would reuse this joke in their subsequent uncut dub.
  • From Steve Simmons' subtitles: "You think what's up your nose is secret, but really it'snot"
    • According to Chris Psaros's DBZUncensored guide, the Japanese line doesn't really translate because it's a pun, but it's something about snot getting frozen to your nose. So, Simmons' translation actually is quite a clever choice of pun.
  • The Brazillian Portuguese dub has a pun on a photographer's secret being "Revealed", but "Photo revealing" is a common term for photo rendering.
• Notably, Zarbon wears earrings and a headband with an identical design to the Potarra earrings, which won't appear for another four years (and their function won't be devised for another two years after that!).
• There are 18 reanimated scenes in Kai episode 22, there are 7 in episode 23, and there are 18 in episode 24.
• DBZ episode 52 is the first episode to not feature Gohan since DBZ episode 1.

Episode summaries, airdates, and titles courtesy of Kanzenshuu's episode guide. Filler breakdowns and Dragon Ball logo provided, and trivia co-written, by KBABZ. Additional trivia courtesy of Chris Psaros's DBZ Uncensored guide.

[ArmenianPepsi]

I'm not too familiar on how to identify which studio did what episodes, could somebody tell me which one worked on episode 51? Because everytime i've seen it, this shot of Vegeta always stuck out to me for the wrong reasons.

Spoiler:

It just looks so off. Weather it be his glass-cutter jaw, weird stance, the way he's pointing, everything.

[MasenkoHA]

Interesting that Kelamis was hired as a voice match for Corlett, they sound nothing alike. Schemmel seemed more like an attempt to split the difference between the two.

Uncut episode 50 is I believe one of the edited dub’s more infamous moments of Funimation’s bizarre attempts to inject Christianity into the show with Krillin saying “and now I lay me down to sleep” when he thinks Vegeta has found him and Gohan. The redub I think just replaced it with whimpering iirc. Obviously it borders on being offensive because Krillin is a Buddhist but it’s also just kind of weird because I’m pretty sure its usually associated with a children’s bedtime prayer and not something adults go to afaik.


Not much else to say about these episoses imo.

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

Interesting that Kelamis was hired as a voice match for Corlett, they sound nothing alike. Schemmel seemed more like an attempt to split the difference between the two.

Uncut episode 50 is I believe one of the edited dub’s more infamous moments of Funimation’s bizarre attempts to inject Christianity into the show with Krillin saying “and now I lay me down to sleep” when he thinks Vegeta has found him and Gohan. The redub I think just replaced it with whimpering iirc. Obviously it borders on being offensive because Krillin is a Buddhist but it’s also just kind of weird because I’m pretty sure its usually associated with a children’s bedtime prayer and not something adults go to afaik.


Not much else to say about these episoses imo.

I recall seeing a clip of that a while back, and i've always found it weird since first seeing these edits of the episodes on Toonami as a little kid that they were referencing real life (Christian.etc) religious things, much in the same way as Piccolo's "Did you hear the story of David and Goliath?" line because given how different Dragon Ball's version of Earth is from ours i doubt Toriyama was thinking of such things much if at all. I mean really, it is a weird line because i don't know how an alien from another world like Piccolo would even know about it, let alone the historical events of King David as told in the Bible and the other Biblical events having actually happened in Dragon Ball's world. I'll bet these were bits that FUNi inserted into the dialogue per mandate by Saban in order to cater more to younger children.

Good point on the "lay me down to sleep" line, because as someone who lived the earlier years of his life as a monk in a Buddhist temple it really doesn't make much sense for a character like Krillin to be saying a Christian prayer more commonly spoken by kids than full grown adults.

[MasenkoHA]

We know Christianity exist in the Dragon Ball universe (see Upa and Pu’erhs fight with Dracula man) but yeah there’s no reason for Piccolo to be familiar with biblical stories or for Krillin to go to Christian children’s bedtime prayers.

I think the last time Funimation made any overt religious references is when Vegeta said “if there is a God he must be good for letting me live to see this day” in episodr 86.

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

We know Christianity exist in the Dragon Ball universe (see Upa and Pu’erhs fight with Dracula man) but yeah there’s no reason for Piccolo to be familiar with biblical stories or for Krillin to go to Christian children’s bedtime prayers.

I think the last time Funimation made any overt religious references is when Vegeta said “if there is a God he must be good for letting me live to see this day” in episodr 86.

Yes, it does in some form or another on Dragon Ball's Earth as shown by the former example, though i'm more talking them directly quoting about religious things that exist in our real life world going back to ancient times. The Piccolo line in particular, because i don't think there would really be an equivalent of the Biblical era in quite the same way as how we know it (Moses, David.etc) so as a result it doesn't make sense for these characters to be referencing those types of things given the logistics within the universe of the series.

I really wouldn't be surprised if all these lines were an attempt to tone down the more edgier and darker moments to make the show palatable to viewers of the dub many of which were very young kids, even with how utterly ridiculous some of them are.

[ArmenianPepsi]

While these episodes in particular are not really noteworthy, something that always seems kinda funny in a sad way in hindsight is having all the dead Z Fighters train with Kaio.

Because at first you may think "Oh this is gonna be sick, once they're wished back, that training with Kaio will make them better and stronger than ever before, I bet whatever comes next we'll get to see Yamcha or Tien really throw down! . Then in the next arc, Piccolo is the only character that really benefits at all from the training, as everyone else is again quickly battered then swept under the rug so things can focus on the Saiyan characters again.

[ABED]

Now that you mention it, it did feel like set up for them all fighting Freeza.

[WittyUsername]

Now that you mention it, it did feel like set up for them all fighting Freeza.

I never even thought of that before, but having them get brought back to life, and having the final battle be a Return of the King style showdown between Freeza and his men against Goku, his friends and the revived Namekians might’ve been a neat idea. It would’ve also been a pain for Toriyama to draw, though.

[Planetnamek]

Even as a kid I found the Christian references super-jarring, as someone who was already forced to go to church every week the last thing I wanted to see was random out-of-nowhere Christian references in a cartoon show.

The Dende stuff is definitely the single most awkward edit of the entire Saban run, I get why they did it but after a while the whole "pretending Dende's bro isn't really dead" thing gets downright ridiculous. I remember wondering as a kid why they seemingly forgot about looking for his brother.

Dodoria is the most interesting of Freeza's henchmen as he is completely lacking any air of camp that the others possess, he's just a sadistic bastard who takes pleasure in others suffering.

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

Now that you mention it, it did feel like set up for them all fighting Freeza.

I never even thought of that before, but having them get brought back to life, and having the final battle be a Return of the King style showdown between Freeza and his men against Goku, his friends and the revived Namekians might’ve been a neat idea. It would’ve also been a pain for Toriyama to draw, though.

It would have been pretty cool, I loved the idea of the two superpowers of good and evil Goku and Freeza fighting to the death, but an all out war would have been incredible to see. I'd say if it happened we'd have a lot more people saying Dragon Ball should have ended with Freeza, especially if it did as much to wrap up and had as many endings as Return of the King did.