Hello, ladies, gentlemen, and everyone between and beyond, and welcome to week 39 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 episodes this week aired almost exactly 31 years ago in Japan.
Previous thread: Week 38 (DBZ 13-17)
Next thread: Week 40 (DBZ 23-27)
Anyway, without further ado...
Episode 171 - Last Stop on Serpent Road! Are you Kaiō-sama? (DBZ episode 18)
Dub title: The End of Snake Way (Funimation)
Originally aired 6th of September 1989
Kai equivalent: None. (Some footage incorporated into Kai episode 6)
Edited dub equivalent: Episode 12 - The End of Snake Way
Episode director: Yoshihiro Ueda
Animation supervisor: Masayuki Uchiyama
With his tail having grown back after half a year, Gohan runs wild and attacks Piccolo?! Because the spaceship that carried Goku to Earth as a baby is on the island where they are training, and the machines inside the ship emit orders for Goku, which drive Gohan to fight! What’s more, at night the machines project an illusion of the full moon, and Gohan transforms into an Ōzaru!! Realizing this, Piccolo destroys the spaceship, and Gohan returns to normal. Meanwhile, Goku runs to the end of the Serpent Road, and discovers Kaiō’s planet.
Anime-only/filler content: Everything except for Goku arriving at Kaio's planet. (Written by Katsuyuki Sumisawa)
Episode 172 - The Battle with Gravity! Catch Bubbles-kun (DBZ episode 19)
Dub title: Defying Gravity (Funimation)
Originally aired 13th of September 1989
Kai equivalent: Episode 7 - Battle with 10-Fold Gravity! Goku, Your Training is a Footrace (First half)
Edited dub equivalent: Episode 13 - A Fight Against Gravity... Catch Bubbles!
Episode director: Kazuhisa Takenouchi
Animation supervisor: Tomekichi Takeuchi
On Planet Kaiō, Goku meets the pun-loving Kaiō. After making Kaiō laugh with a pun he thought up with his utmost effort, he gets permission to be trained. Saying that the Saiyan are stronger than himself, Kaiō orders Goku to catch his pet Bubbles, on his planet with 10x Earth’s gravity. Goku sprints after Bubbles with all his might, and in three weeks finally catches him! Kaiō is impressed at Goku having conquered 10x gravity, and expects that he might be able to master the Kaiō-Ken.
Anime-only/filler content: A scene of Gohan and Piccolo training was added before their fireside conversation.
Episode 173 - The Return of the Saiyan Legend! Goku’s Roots (DBZ episode 20)
Dub title: Goku's Ancestors (Funimation)
Originally aired 20th of September 1989
Kai equivalent: Episode 7 - Battle with 10-Fold Gravity! Goku, Your Training is a Footrace (Second half)
Edited dub equivalent: Episode 14 - The Legend of the Saiyans
Episode director: Mitsuo Hashimoto
Animation supervisor: Yukio Ebisawa
Continuing on, Kaiō gives Goku the training task of hitting his own errand boy Gregory with a giant hammer. Kaiō then tells him about how the Saiyans, who used to live together with the Tsufruians on Planet Vegeta, were eventually wiped out, reduced to only four people. Angry at knowing the evil deeds of the Saiyans, Goku dreams of pursuing Gregory, radiating light as he flies rapidly through the sky. Finally, after two weeks Goku succeeds in hitting him! Meanwhile, Kuririn and the others finish their training at the temple.
Anime-only/filler content: Almost all of it. The scenes with Gregory were kept in Kai, while basically the entire episode was kept in the original edited Z dub. (Written by Takao Koyama)
Episode 174 - Come Forth, Shen Long! The Saiyans Finally Arrive on Earth (DBZ episode 21)
Dub title: Counting Down (Funimation)
Originally aired 27th of September 1989
Kai equivalent: Episode 8 - Come Forth, Shenlong! The Saiyans Finally Arrive on Earth
Edited dub equivalent: Episode 14 - The Legend of the Saiyans (last few minutes) and Episode 15 - A Black Day For Planet Earth
Episode director: Minoru Okazaki
Animation supervisor: Minoru Maeda
After studying the Kaiō-Ken that Kaiō passed on to him, Goku tests out the effect of the Genki-Dama, which he learned as well! The Saiyan will arrive on Earth tomorrow, one month earlier than expected. But Kaiō forgot about the time it will take Goku to return to the lower realm! After receiving Goku’s message, Kame-Sen’nin uses the Dragon Balls to call forth Shenlong, and restores Goku to life. The next day at 11:43 AM, the Saiyan at last land in East City!!
Anime-only/filler content: All scenes involving Gregory, which were kept in both Kai and the original edited dub.
Episode 175 - Unbelievable!! Saibaimen, Born from the Soil (DBZ episode 22)
Dub title: The Darkest Day (Funimation)
Originally aired 11th of October 1989
Kai equivalent: Episode 9 - Yamucha’s Hard Struggle! The Terrifying Saibaimen (First half)
Edited dub equivalent: Episode 15 - A Black Day For Planet Earth (last few minutes) and Episode 16 - The Battle Begins... Where Are You Goku?
Episode director: Kazuhisa Takenōchi
Animation supervisor: Masayuki Uchiyama
Vegeta and Nappa emerge from the two space pods. Nappa wipes out East City in a single blast, and he and Vegeta fly to Piccolo and Gohan’s island in search of the Dragon Balls. Kuririn shows up where Piccolo and Gohan are. They face off with Vegeta and Nappa, and Piccolo learns for the first time that he is a Namekian when he is told so by Nappa! At Vegeta’s order, Nappa plants some seeds in the ground, and from them six ferocious Saibaimen are born!!
Anime-only/filler content: Yajirobe's scenes in the ruins of East City, and the news crew filming the battle. Both were kept in the original dub, but not in Kai. (Written by Takao Koyama)
-
Interesting trivia:
- At this point in time in the manga, Gohan turns into an Oozaru and falls on top of Vegeta when he cuts his tail, Goku begs Kuririn to spare Vegeta and let him escape, Chichi finally re-unites with Gohan, the gang start problem solving how get to Namek so they can use their Dragon Balls, and Bulma accidentally blows up Nappa's spaceship on live television while Goku and Gohan are in hospital.
- Episode 18 depicts the infamous scene of Gohan going crazy and attacking Piccolo, eventually turning into an Oozaru, thanks to Goku's pod which crashed nearby. There are several issues with this, in particular that most flashbacks show the pod as having landed on or near Mount Paozu. The pod emitting orders for Goku that drive Gohan wild may be an attempt to explain why Goku was crazed on arrival, except it contradicts that a bump on the head is what made Goku peaceful... unless there's something about long-term brainwashing involved here?
- Piccolo destroying Goku's pod is also a contradiction with the manga, as Goku has Dr. Briefs build a new spaceship using it as a base after Bulma accidentally blows up Nappa's. This event had yet to happen in the manga.
- As well, Gohan will later grow his tail back a second time near the end of the fight with Vegeta. This will become odd in the future as Saiyans only seem to regrow their tail once.
- In Dragon Ball Super, it's stated that Kaio's world is so small because Beerus destroyed it. The exact reason differs: In the Battle of Gods movie, he lost to a racing video game. In the Super manga, it was a game of hide and seek, while in the Super anime, it was because the food was bad (which Goku himself notes in this very arc, after having a meal before chasing Bubbles).
- Bubbles was inspired by Michael Jackson's pet chimpanzee of the same name. On September 12th 1987, Jackson took Bubbles with him to Japan to start the Bad world tour, where they both had tea with the mayor of Osaka, Yasushi Oshima, two hours away from Toriyama's native Nagoya. This event, two years before Bubbles himself would appear in the manga, is likely the direct inspiration for the character. Today Bubbles lives in the Center for Great Apes after having grown too violent as an adult to be kept at Neverland Ranch, outliving his former owner.
- Episode 18 is one of the very few examples of Funimation reusing one of their edited dub episode titles for the uncut redub.
- From edited episode 13 onwards (equivalent to uncut episode 19), a consistent title card cue was used. For all episodes prior to this, the title cards would each have a piece of original score.
- Edits in the original dub:
- Piccolo punching Gohan in the head is slightly cut to remove the impact.
- Piccolo's face gets cut, but the blood is painted out. He still wipes his face anyway.
- A mug of beer Roshi is drinking is painted over to be blue.
- Some shots of Gohan's butt are cut when he transforms back from ape form.
- Detailed notes on edited episode 13 are not available, as Chris Psaros didn't have access to the Japanese version at the time he wrote his guide. Though he was quite impressed with the fact that the episode title, "A Fight Against Gravity... Catch Bubbles!" was pretty much an exact translation of the Japanese title.
- When Gohan is training with Piccolo in the desert, Funimation painted an eye over the huge bump on Gohan's face that covered one of his eyes in the uncut version.
- General cuts were made during the desert training scene; in particular, Gohan hanging on to the edge of the cliff (and Piccolo stepping on his hand to foce him to fall) was cut.
- Droplets of sweat falling off Gohan's hair were painted out when he's on his knees in the desert scene.
- Yajirobe biting Kuririn's butt was cut.
- During Kaio's history lesson on the Saiyans, underwear was painted onto baby Goku.
- Just below the "TOILET" sign in Roshi's house is Japanese text, which Funimation painted out. (It reads, essentially, "Occupied")
- Roshi's trousers were painted to ride higher when he bursts out of the bathroom.
- Dialogue edit: Kaio refers to Goku's halo simply as a ring.
- A puddle of blood next to a car in the wreckage of East City was painted out.
- Dialogue edit: After destroying the city, Vegeta says "Too bad it's Sunday, those buildings would have been full tomorrow." On a similar note, soon after, Nappa says "That area may have been evacuated, but it'll give them something to think about!" A news reporter echoes this sentiment a little later: "Fortunately, the area was evacuated at the time."
- Dialogue edit: When Nappa destroys the news crew, a guy in a helicopter yells "They blew up the cargo robot!"
- Gregory is of course an invention of Toriyama, created after Toei requested an additional character for Kaio's part of the story. Interestingly however Goku's task for him is almost identical to Bubbles: overcome added weight and catch him, this time by striking him with a mallet.
- Toriyama also outlined the backstory of the Saiyans, including living alongside the more populous and scientific Tsufruians. The planet was originally called Planet Plant before it was changed at some point on Toriyama's memo to say Vegeta; this name would be used in Plan to Eradicate the Saiyans and Dragon Ball GT as the original name for the planet.
- Toriyama's outline also mentions nothing of Planet Vegeta's God summoning a meteor to collide with the planet, which Kaio mentions in Z Episode 20. This detail, presumably to corroborate with Raditz's recounting, would be contradicted in the manga four months later when Dodoria reveals that it was Frieza who destroyed it, not even mentioning if Vegeta had a God in the first place. The anime of course would pretend that Kaio never mentioned the meteor.
- Tsufruians, or "Tsufrui-jin", which can be very literally translated as "The Tsufrui people", is a pun on the word "Fruits". If you render it in Japanese, you get "Fruitsu"; swap the first and second halves, and you have "Tsufrui". Funimation's rendering of their name, "Tuffle", completely discards the pun here. The Blue Water dub of GT would get somewhat closer, as it seems they knew it was supposed to be a food pun, but it seems they didn't know what the pun was supposed to be (or they wanted to keep it somewhat close to the original Z rendering of the name), as it came out as "Tsufle" (pronounced as "Tsu-ful"). They tried, I suppose.
- In the manga, Goku only needs one joke to get Kaio to laugh and agree to train him. The anime expands this to three jokes in quick succession. Due to the nature of these jokes, of course, they tend to differ between the various languages of the manga and anime.
- Kaio mentions that 158 days of training with him in 10x gravity is worth a few thousand years on Earth. This may help explain how Goku is able to increase his strength so spectacularly during the trip to Namek, as in 100x gravity he's effectively training for hundreds of thousands of years!
- Funimation's dubs changed 158 days to only 88 days.
- In order to catch Bubbles, Goku discards his weighted shirt, armbands and boots. While this is very clever, he probably should have taken them off at the check-in station to travel down Snake Way faster!
- Kaio's car is a 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air, likely inspired by Toriyama's love of model making. It has a 0-60 time of 12.9 seconds, so with a top speed of 120mph, it would take Kaio multiple laps of his world to reach its top speed.
- As noted by the manga, it takes Goku 40 days to catch Bubbles.
- Funimation changed this to three weeks in their dubs. This is contradicted after Goku catches Bubbles, because Kaio says there are 70 days left until the Saiyans arrive a couple of episodes later, but there can be no more than 67 days left if he really did take three weeks to catch Bubbles, because Kaio initially said there were only 88 days left until the Saiyans arrived.
- Kaio mentions that he was never able to master the Kaio-Ken, and possibly the Genki-Dama (the wording is vague). If the latter is true, this makes Kuririn the first person to successfully use it in an actual fight, followed shortly by Gohan's rebound.
- Famously, the 1996 dub of the anime mis-pronounces Kaio-Ken as "Kay-o Ken". This would be corrected for all the Canadian cast dubs after Saban season 2 ended (that is, the Pioneer movies and the Westwood Media dubs), and Funimation themselves would eventually correct this in their dub of Kai.
- After the Dragon Team finishes their training with God, Baba tells Roshi and Bulma that even she can't read the future this time. This is the last time she uses her diviniation skills in the manga. In the anime, the next and final time is when she visits Goku's house so that Chi-Chi and Ox-King can watch the conclusion of the Cell Games on her crystal ball after the TV crew's equipment is destroyed.
- Episode 21 is the first to begin using music from DBZ movie 1.
- Episode 21 also marks the first time Vegeta and Nappa appear with their proper colour schemes.
- In the ViZ translation of the manga, when Goku contacts Roshi via Kaio's telepathy, he mentions that he's in Hell, or the underworld. This is not technically correct as Hell is considered a region of Other World, or the afterlife.
- The calender hanging in the bathroom at Kame House has the year 1989 on it (rather than "Age 762"), referencing the year this episode aired.
- The 4Kids version of the TV edit of Kai painted the year off the calender.
- Redraws in Kai episode 7:
- A shot of Gohan flying into the air, likely for widescreen reframing reasons.
- Gohan punching Piccolo, for seemingly no reason.
- Piccolo punching Gohan, likely to tone down flashing and/or fast movement, given the motion blur.
- Piccolo foring a ki blast at Gohan's face, for seemingly no reason.
- Redraws in Kai episode 8:
- Gohan getting shocked, for seemingly no reason.
- Piccolo standing over Gohan, who's collapsed on the ground. Again, seemingly no reason for this redraw, especially since the widescreen framing is very, VERY bad here; Piccolo's head is completely cut off.
- A shot of Goku running along Snake Way, once again seemingly no reason for this one.
- And another shot, shortly after, of him jumping along Snake Way, once again with seemingly no reason for the redraw, as it's basically just a crop down of the original 4:3 drawing when viewed in widescreen.
- A shot from the next episode was shown redrawn in the preview at the end of the episode, however on its original broadcast, there was an obvious rendering error in the drawing, which was fixed for the home video release.
- In Episode 21/Chapter 212, Shen Long says that he cannot kill the two oncoming Saiyans, as they exceed the power of a God, which is who created him. This is the first time this restriction has been mentioned, and retroactively says that Piccolo Daimao, in his old form at least, wasn't as powerful as God.
- Amusingly, there WAS actually a way to eliminate the Saiyans before they arrived: wish for their craft to blow up! They could reason that the Saiyans are arriving in the same pods as Raditz did and take a chance that they can't survive in space, or at least fly as fast as their pods can.
- Shen Long also appears to instinctively know where the Saiyans are, how strong they are, and that they're who the Dragon Ball Gang are referring to in the first place. This suggests that Shen Long has some sort of telepathy and omnipotent powers so that he knows everything needed to satisfactorily fulfill wishes.
- The wish to revive Goku will later spawn the Five-Star Evil Dragon in GT.
- When Kaio restores Goku's clothes with his emblem on the back, he mentions that it's made of a powerful fabric that repels attacks. This effect is never actually depicted, although it may serve to explain his uniform's durability against the Saiyans.
- Piccolo and Gohan don't detect Vegeta and Nappa's presence until they emerge from their pods. While this suggests that the pods conceal their battle power, Vegeta will sense the Ginyu Force arriving in their own pods on Namek well before they land.
- Starting from Z episode 22, the second set of visuals for Cha-La Head Cha-La would be used. Funimation's early releases incorrectly used this second set of visuals on the first 21 episodes, likely because they didn't have textless visuals of that opening. On the Level sets, the footage exclusive to the first opening is quite plainly softer and more grainy, as it's sourced from 16mm film, which they painted the text out of, rather than the textless 35mm film they have of OP 2 from the first Z movie.
The changes are:- The shot of a landscape before the iceberg is replaced with Gohan running along Shen Long's back.
- The shot of Kinto'Un gliding against a background of lava is changed to instead have Vegeta and Nappa walking out from the fire.
- From this point, Gohan is no longer dressed in the orange gi Piccolo gave him, instead wearing purple gi with a headband and ditching the sword. Gohan wouldn't pick up a sword or orange gi again until he visits the Land of the Kaioshins in the Boo arc; the sword being the Z-Sword and the gi being given to him by Kaioshin to honour Goku.
- Nappa blowing up the city is an event that's visible from space, a first for Dragon Ball.
- In the manga, the city that gets destroyed by Nappa is initially unidentified, however in Chapter 243, a news broadcast identifies Nappa's pod as having landed in the "ruined Eastern city". The anime runs with this and adds East City in the news broadcast of Nappa destroying it, which coincidentally aired the same week Chapter 243 was published!
- Nappa destroying East City would later be rendered ironic, as much of Jaco the Galactic Patrolman is about saving it!
- East City also remains destroyed for the rest of the series' history; no wish is ever made to restore it or its citizens.
- North City suffers a similar fate in Resurrection of F, as Frieza also destroys it immediately after arriving similar to Nappa. This time however Bulma wishes the city back with the Dragon Balls.
- Vegeta is aware that Goku has a son, implying that Raditz transmitted his entire visit to Earth to him and Nappa rather than just Piccolo's speech about the Dragon Balls.
- Kuririn is unable to tell if the two huge ki signatures are Piccolo and Gohan or Tenshinhan and Chaozu, meaning sensing ki doesn't innately tell you WHO they are. Later scenes will have characters describe ki as being "evil" for some villain characters; in fact Kuririn himself will describe Vegeta and Nappa's auras as feeling "demonic", something he doesn't say for Piccolo.
- On their way to the battle, Tenshinhan tells Chaozu to stay behind. While Chaozu insists on going, he will in fact stay behind for all future battles.
- At this point, Vegeta says that Piccolo is an alien, finally revealing the information about him and God that Toriyama had in mind since Goku first met God and alluded to in their alien conversation in the 23rd Tenkaichi Budokai.
- When first meeting Piccolo, Vegeta describes him as a "gastropod" from Namek. This is an allusion to the snail/slug-themed naming of Namekians, starting with the planet itself: "namekuji" is the Japanese word for slug.
- Vegeta also describes Namekians as being sorcerers, giving Daimao and God's more mystical abilities some legitimacy despite their newly-revealed alien origins.
- The Saibaimen had their names adapted into "Saibamen" by Funimation in 1996, a change that persists to this day. This dub name implies some kind of technological nature to them (and/or a Doctor Who reference), but their actual name refers to their plant-like nature (or possibly vegetable-like, given the Saiyans use them), which Viz rendered with their version of their name; Cultivars.
