Bardock Special referencing the Tale of the Bamboo Cutter?

[KBABZ]

So when ViZ sorted out the issue with my DBZ manga box-set, in addition to providing the right booklet, I was given some volumes of other manga as a thank-you for being so nice to work with. And that's how I got into Fly Me to the Moon.

One of the recurring things in that manga is referencing the Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, and it made me realize that the Bardock Special may have actually referenced the beginning of the tale! To wit:

• An infant girl is found by an old man, Taketori no Okina, confined inside a bamboo trunk in a field of bamboo. The old man gives the child her name, Kaguya, and it's eventually revealed that she is not of Earth and has a strong connection to the Moon.
• An infant boy is found by an old man, Son Gohan, confined inside a pod in a field of bamboo. The old man gives the child his name, Goku, and it's eventually revealed that he is not of Earth and has a strong connection to the Moon.

So while I'm not saying that the Bardock team were trying to suggest that Goku is the Dragon World's equivalent of Kaguya, the fact that the Bardock Special ends with Gohan finding Goku in a field of bamboo specifically I think was a very clever allusion to the tale! Do you guys agree?

[MyVisionity]

Was the bamboo field component never referenced prior to Bardock? Not in the previous dialogue or flashbacks? I do remember the bamboo fields being present in the anime earlier, but don't know about the rest.

Taketori is a very popular folktale in Japan that has influenced many modern series, so it's no surprise that it would be referenced in Dragon Ball.

[Robo4900]

In the flashbacks in Z episode 2, there was no bamboo:

Spoiler:

I'm pretty sure the next time we see Gohan finding Goku is in the Bardock special, so I think they did indeed introduce the bamboo field in the Bardock special.

When Kai came along and they decided to put that whole reveal at the beginning of episode 1 (but they still kept the exposition dump later on, which is thus rendered mostly pointless), they used the Bardock footage, including the bamboo field. Actually creates an interesting continuity error, since they also use the scenes I showed in the screenshots above, where there's no bamboo, and Goku is alternately on top of a mountain and at the bottom of a crater...

[MasenkoHA]

When Kai came along and they decided to put that whole reveal at the beginning of episode 1 (but they still kept the exposition dump later on, which is thus rendered mostly pointless), they used the Bardock footage, including the bamboo field. Actually creates an interesting continuity error, since they also use the scenes I showed in the screenshots above, where there's no bamboo, and Goku is alternately on top of a mountain and at the bottom of a crater...

They really really shouldn’t have used the Bardock special as Kai’s prologue and that continuity error is just one of them.

[Robo4900]

They really really shouldn’t have used the Bardock special as Kai’s prologue and that continuity error is just one of them.

Indeed.

To be frank, I still think the recap at the beginning of Kai should have just been a very short one covering the events of the last tournament (that is to say, Goku & Piccolo's rivalry, really), or just completely skip it and do the exact same opening minute as Z did, because
A. All you really need to know jumping into the Saiyan arc that can easily be recapped is Goku & Piccolo's long-standing rivalry. Everything else is actually pretty well established by what the characters say and how they interact during the reunion at Kame House.
B. It means it continues more naturally on from OG DB, which -- if you're skipping to the Saiyan arc -- it should do.
C. It means the episode doesn't spend the entire first quarter of its runtime recapping events that mostly don't matter as far as the events of the first episode is concerned; and once you factor in the next 5 minutes, which is ENTIRELY filler covering irrelevant content (the fact Goku has a son and has settled down with Chichi is perfectly well established at the Kame House reunion, and him having a son is supposed to be a surprise anyway, if you're reading the manga!), you're looking at the entire first half of the episode being basically wasted time... For a version of Dragon Ball that's allegedly "Closer to Toriyama's vision", Kai's first episode does a really shit job of that, doesn't it?

... I have a lot of issues with Kai, and this thread is probably not the best place to go into detail about it.

[KBABZ]

...so anyways...

[Yuli Ban]

So when ViZ sorted out the issue with my DBZ manga box-set, in addition to providing the right booklet, I was given some volumes of other manga as a thank-you for being so nice to work with. And that's how I got into Fly Me to the Moon.

One of the recurring things in that manga is referencing the Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, and it made me realize that the Bardock Special may have actually referenced the beginning of the tale! To wit:

• An infant girl is found by an old man, Taketori no Okina, confined inside a bamboo trunk in a field of bamboo. The old man gives the child her name, Kaguya, and it's eventually revealed that she is not of Earth and has a strong connection to the Moon.
• An infant boy is found by an old man, Son Gohan, confined inside a pod in a field of bamboo. The old man gives the child his name, Goku, and it's eventually revealed that he is not of Earth and has a strong connection to the Moon.

So while I'm not saying that the Bardock team were trying to suggest that Goku is the Dragon World's equivalent of Kaguya, the fact that the Bardock Special ends with Gohan finding Goku in a field of bamboo specifically I think was a very clever allusion to the tale! Do you guys agree?

It's possible, but that's really just one possible influence. An infant being found by a mountain hermit and turning out to be otherworldly and/or of great strength isn't unique to this tale even just in Japan.

[KBABZ]

It's possible, but that's really just one possible influence. An infant being found by a mountain hermit and turning out to be otherworldly and/or of great strength isn't unique to this tale even just in Japan.

I don't doubt it! But what got me thinking about this was that Goku landed in a bamboo field specifically, which again isn't the most unlikely place for him to be found, but it got me thinking considering everything else it shares a similarity with too.