Dragon Ball Rewatch, Week 110 - GT 41, TV Special, 42-43

[Robo4900]

Hello, ladies, gentlemen, and everyone between and beyond, and welcome to week 110 of the first Dragon Ball rewatch of the decade.

It's interesting how the Black Star and Baby arcs felt like a brave new start for Dragon Ball, then the breather tournament episode is a sort of "business as usual" reprieve, then everything after that feels like an epilogue to Dragon Ball as a whole. It's been said before that Toei knew they were making the final 24 episodes of Dragon Ball, and I think it shows.
People give the Super 17 arc shit for being fanservicey nonsense, but I think at the very least it starts off in a big, bold, dramatic fashion and while it does load up on the fanservice, it's a short arc that's quickly followed by the true finale arc of Dragon Ball. While Super has largely persisted on being nothing but fanservice, Super 17 is a 6-episode dose of it about 20 weeks out from Dragon Ball concluding, which plays well into the themes and story of these last 24 episodes.
Just my two cents.

Previous thread: Week 109 (GT 36-40)
Next thread: Week 111 (GT 44-48)

Anyway, without further ado...

Episode 485 - The Tenka’ichi Budōkai: Who Will Be Satan’s Successor? (GT episode 41)
Ocean dub title: The Number One Under the Sun Martial Arts Competition: Who is Hercule's Successor?
Funimation dub title: Curtain Call
Originally aired 12th of March 1997
Written by: Atsushi Maekawa
Episode director: Takahiro Imamura
Animation supervisor: Masayuki Uchiyama

Mr. Satan gets his groove back.

Trivia:

Spoiler:

• Goku must have had to explain how he's a kid again to the tournament announcer, at some point offscreen. Either that, or the announcer saw Goku show up as a kid again and just rolled with it. It's arguably less weird than that time he was actually dead.
• Mr. Satan's ash tray has "Tenkaichi" written on the side, in English.
• This episode marks the fourth car Vegeta has totalled in GT. Five if you include his own car, which arguably Baby destroyed.
  • I would have said this is the number of cars he's totalled in all of Dragon Ball, and that this record is higher than Goku's total, but he destroys at least one in the Androids arc, and probably wrecked a few during his and Nappa's attack on earth, so it's hard to precisely count.
• As of this episode, Goku's winrate for the tournament is 1 in 5. All of his losses were in the finals, against different people. The only finalist he ever beat, he'd sort of fought before: Piccolo.
• Goku says Oob is using barely 1 billionth of his actual power. I suspect this is the point where people who take "Power levels" seriously decided they didn't like GT.
• A theme which Kenisu's guide calls One Last Reunion ~Hitori Ja Nai makes its debut in this episode. No other new themes debut around this time, so it's not part of a second package of Tokunaga themes composed for GT, so it's likely it was composed in the first package or for the movie and then just went unused until the beginning of this episode. It would go on to be used in the special and then see a further 18 uses, in the Evil Dragons arc, including a particularly memorable instance in the final episode.

.

TV Special 3 - Goku’s Side Story! The Proof of his Courage is the Four-Star Ball (GT special)
Funimation dub title: A Hero's Legacy
Originally aired 26th of March 1997
Written by: Atsushi Maekawa
Episode director: Yoshihiro Ueda
Animation supervisor: Akira Inagami

A very long time after a terrible monster terrorised earth, a student called Goku who is bullied at school loses his mentor and goes on a quest to use the Dragon Balls-- wait hang on that's Dragonball Evolution.
Ahem.
A very long time after a terrible monster terrorised earth, a student called Goku who is bullied at school loses his mentor and goes on a quest to use the Dragon Balls--
... Hmm.

Trivia:

Spoiler:

• While the rest of Dragon Ball GT was restored from its original film masters for the Dragon Boxes (and thus a nice-quality film transfer was used as the basis for Funimation's original DVDs too), Toei neglected to transfer (or couldn't locate) the film materials for this special, so all copies of this special available to us are taken from the original broadcast master videotape.
  • On the plus side, this does mean however you watch this special, the Japanese audio is the stereo master audio.
  • On the downside, every copy of this episode that you'll ever see looks terrible.
• Ocean only dubbed the 64 GT episodes, not this special. The special didn't air in Canada, and when it aired in the UK, it was the Big Green dub, which was most likely recorded a few years prior and was what AB Groupe (the UK distributor of Dragon Ball) had lying around.
  • The special didn't air in the UK as part of GT, it aired in about 2005 along with the other DB and Z movies and specials (except for Z movies 9-13 and the 10th anniversary movie), all dubbed by Big Green.
• Many would watch this special after the end of GT, but the recap specifically refers to this episode being 100 years since the defeat of Baby, since that's when this originally aired.
• Pan is about 112 in this special. One wonders if she ends up as long-lived as Roshi.
• Goku Jr. is bested by a baseball here in the GT special. Toei would eventually show that the original Goku had a mastery of baseball in episode 70 of Dragon Ball Super in 2016, 19 years after this special aired.
• Goku Jr. cries more in this 45-minute special than Goku does in 508 episodes of Dragon Ball.
  • Goku Jr. cries about four times in this special (not counting the various ponits where he's a bit teary-eyed but not fully crying), Goku only cried in Dragon Ball episodes maybe three times; once when he saw Grandpa Gohan at Baba's Palace, once when Kuririn died after the second tournament, and I'm pretty sure there's a third instance I'm forgetting.
• The post box outside Goku Jr. and Pan's house says "Son", Goku's family name. Funimation's English dub does nothing to acknowledge or explain this.
• The lighting in Goku's house when he looks at the photo of Pan holding a Dragon Ball makes it look like a lot like a Dark Dragon Ball from Dragon Ball Heroes.
• The actual ball Pan is holding in the picture is an earth Dragon Ball. Since Gill is in the picture, this could only have been taken at some point during the Evil Dragons arc. The hut in the background looks like a building from the village the Two-Star Dragon was terrorising in GT episodes 48 and 49.
  • It's quite likely this is deliberate, since the Evil Dragons arc was most likely being brainstormed at the same time as this special was being produced, so when these shots were animated and/or when episodes 48 and 49 were being outlined, they kept this little bit of continuity in mind.
• Goku Jr. remembers Pan telling him a Dragon Ball was in "Grandpa Goku's house" on Mt. Paozu; it's likely he misremembered Pan telling him about where Bulma first found the four-star ball, in Grandpa Gohan's house on Mt. Paozu.
• The eyecatches in this special are footage from the special itself with a GT TV special logo in the corner. The first of each eyecatch pair is from the segment you just finished, the second is from the segment you're about to see. The last one contains spoilers.
• Goku walks by a Route 59 sign. Route 59 runs from the Canada-US border near Lancaster in Minnesota, down to the Mexico-US border in Laredo, Texas. It passes through Longview, Texas, which is just a couple of hours' drive away from where the Funimation dub of this special was recorded.
• Getting robbed by a hungry trucker is pretty bad, but is quite tame among the kinds of unexpected things that can happen when hitchhiking. However, among the more pleasant is that you could hitch a ride from Mark Hamill when he was on his way to audition for Star Wars in the '70s and he'll let you read some of the script and discuss it with him.
• Speaking of Star Wars, the late Peter Mayhew, who played Chewbacca in Star Wars until 2015, was in the Funimation dub of this special, voicing one of the monsters who tries to eat Goku and Puck (the one who isn't a woman or a giant chicken), who also tries to eat a small bear.
• This special tells us Puck met Pan by trying to rob her, and GT episode 64 would later show her to have befriended him. This means Puck undergoes more character growth in these two supporting appearances than any character in Super undergoes in the entire 131-episode run.
• Mamba says to Goku that hair is a woman's life. Presumably this is because she is a demon whose life is entwined with the length of her hair who is speaking from a demon's point of view, and not because she is a stereotype of vain human women.
• Although Goku Jr. has a much easier time of going Super Saiyan than Goku and Gohan did, he has a much harder time at it than Goten did.
• The way Goku Jr. has trouble accessing his power and loses all memory when he does so is very similar to Gohan as he was in the Saiyan arc.
• Grandpa Gohan's house is basically just a decayed version of exactly what it was when Goku left it in the first episode of Dragon Ball, except that the four-star Dragon Ball was put there are some point in the hundred years before this special.
• Goku Jr. not realising you need all seven balls to make a wish is the same mistake Pilaf made in the first episode of Dragon Ball, when Mai had to explain how the balls work to him.
• Adult Goku appearing in this special is the first hint at the weird ending Toei had in mind for GT. As mentioned above in regards to the picture of Pan holding a Dragon Ball, it can be safely assumed this special was produced with some knowledge of where GT was to go in the Evil Dragons arc, and even if this wasn't the case, Toei's writers would have known well in advance that the ratings for GT weren't great so some thought would have been put into how they would end it if told they were producing their last episodes.
• We definitely saw Puck fall into the deep, dark abyss and didn't hear him hit the ground, so how he survived (much less made a full recovery in a matter of hours/days) is a total mystery. Maybe Grandpa Goku did something about that.

.

Episode 486 - Die, Goku!! Strong Enemies are Resurrected from Hell (GT episode 42)
Ocean dub title: Look Out Goku! The Resurrected Enemies Escape From Hades!
Funimation dub title: A Dangerous Union
Originally aired 16th of April 1997
Written by: Atsushi Maekawa
Episode director: Kazuhito Kikuchi
Animation supervisor: Tadayoshi Yamamuro

17 times 2 makes about 6 episodes.

Trivia:

Spoiler:

• This is the first time Goku and Kaio have spoken since GT episode 1.
• Kaio's planet has been restored offscreen at some point between GT episode 1 and here. Presumably one of the wishes on Porunga was used for this, when earth was restored after Baby's defeat.
• If Kaio caught a cold, does that mean illnesses can go to the afterlife too, and if so, how is the afterlife not totally overrun by illness?
• Ocean's scripts refer to the familliar 17 as Android 17 and the one in hell as Artificial 17, which is rather amusing since Steve Simmons' subtitles refer to both as Artificial Human 17.
  • Funimation opted to call the one from hell "Hell Fighter 17"
• As we should have come to expect from Dr. Gero by now, his ultimate plan involves multiple androids coming together to form a bigger, scarier one.
• It's suggested in Gero's dialogue that he did some (only partially successful) brainwashing of 17 and 18, which potentially provides an explanation for why they never switched to using their human names; they don't feel any connection with those names anymore, because Gero removed that feeling.
• While Ocean's TV edit of DBZ zoomed in the shot of 17 piercing his hand through Gero's chest, the version of the scene shown in GT isn't censored at all. It's possible the censorship in Z was done on Funimation's master prior to Ocean receiving it (I don't have it to hand to check), or that Ocean had tighter restrictions imposed on them at that time.
• This is the first time the familiar timeline Trunks has met 17. This was noticed by the writers and pointed out in dialogue by Trunks not recognising 17.
  • This is one reason Super and GT can't coexist in the same timeline, since kid Trunks hung out on 17's island in the Tournament of Power arc of Super.
  • It's also a plot hole. It's just one line of dialogue from Trunks noticing that his ki is similar to 18's which is how he deduces it's 17 so it's not a serious flaw, but he shouldn't be able to sense their ki at all since they're cyborgs.
• The resurrected fighters we see on the TV in the first shot are, from left to right, Raditz, Coola, Sgt. Metallic, Android 19, Pui-Pui, Yakon, General Rild, and Jheese. More fighters are visible but they're only outlined and are difficult to make out.
• Coola's cameo is the second time a movie villain has gone on to appear in the main anime (the first was Garlic Jr.); this would happen one more time with Broly, though in that case the character was rebooted/reworked, while here and with Garlic Jr. it was a continuation of their previous appearance.
  • It's also yet another funny little continuity problem that's baffled hardcore fans for years.
• The resurrected fighters in the second shot are, from left to right, Babidi, Reacoom, Kwi, Ghurd, Appule, and King Cold.
• The next TV shots shows a still of Staff Officer Black in his metal suit and Sgt. Metallic, followed by a slightly animated still of 19 and Pui-Pui, then one of Dodoria and Zarbon. This sequence of partially-animated stills would be shown again in GT episode 64 when Shen Long reflects on the reason the Dragon Balls turned evil.
• Of the fighters teased on the TV report, we never see anyone fight Raditz, Coola, Android 19, General Rild, Jheese, Babidi, Reacoom, Kwi, Ghurd, Appule, King Cold, Dodoria, and Zarbon.
  • Meanwhile we do see Pui-Pui, Yakon, Sgt. Metallic, and Staff Officer Black fight.
  • We don't technically see Android 19 fight, but we do see Goten and Trunks throw out a ki attack then see 19's severed head roll across the ground (just like the last time).
  • We also see brief cameos from General Blue and Captain Yellow.
  • And of course, we see Cell, Freeza, Gero, Myuu, and 17, just to complete the listing of past villains returning in this episode.
• Evil people from hell returning to the real world was also part of the premise of DBZ movie 12, but here it's the focus instead of being a side issue/side effect of the main plot.
• This episode introduces the third English voice of each of Cell and Freeza, but by no means the last; Freeza would go on to be voiced by Chris Ayres and Daman Mills in Funimation's work, and by Lee Tockar in Ocean's dub of Kai. Cell would go on to be voiced by about three different guys in video games and his cameo in Funi's dub of Kai: The Final Chapters.
  • Many assumed Cell had yet another new voice for Ocean's dub of Dragon Ball Kai, but Dale Wilson (their voice of Cell from Z) recently said to Dragon Ball Ireland via private message that he's pretty certain he was brought back to voice Cell in Kai.

.

Episode 487 - The Demon-Warriors of Hell! Cell & Freeza Are Revived (GT episode 43)
Ocean dub title: The Resurrection of the Evil Warriors Cell & Frieza.
Funimation dub title: The Resurrection of Cell and Frieza
Originally aired 23rd of April 1997
Written by: Atsushi Maekawa
Episode director: Mitsuo Hashimoto
Animation supervisor: Noboru Koizumi

Cell and Freeza sass each other for about 20 minutes.

Trivia:

Spoiler:

• Returning villains in this episode: Cell, Freeza, Saibaimen, General Rild, Nappa, and of course Dr. Myuu, Dr. Gero, and 17 (twice).
  • 18 and Vegeta are also in this episode, but I don't think they count.
• Pretty hypocritical of Goku to point out Cell and Freeza borrowing techniques from others instead of coming up with their own.
• Because this first section of the Super 17 arc is pure nostalgia, Goku uses one of the needles like it's the Nyoi'Bo and rides one of Freeza's Kienzans like it's the Kinto'Un, then defeats Freeza in the same way he killed him in the Namek arc.
• When Nappa appears, he's using the same technique as he used to blow up the city he and Vegeta arrived in, back in the Saiyan arc, with the exact same pose and shot framing.
• It may seem unlikely that anyone could stand up to General Rild when he was so powerful when Goku faced him, but he's no longer on his home turf, so he can't meld with the planet itself like he could on M-2, so the fact Gohan is holding his own in the fight makes some sense.
• Despite Super Saiyan 4 Goku using a "Light of the Sun" a few episodes ago, Cell uses a "Solar Flare" in this episode.
• Perfect Cell's tail is shown to still be functional here, despite him never using it in the Cell arc. One wonders why he didn't try using it on Gohan once he went Super Saiyan 2. Maybe he just didn't think he'd be able to catch him.

.

____

Trivia written by Robo. Episode summaries, airdates, and titles courtesy of Kanzenshuu's episode guide.

[MasenkoHA]

I seem to remember Hell Fighter 17 being used long before Funimation got their hands on GT

[Robo4900]

I seem to remember Hell Fighter 17 being used long before Funimation got their hands on GT

It's possible it was a fan term that Funi adopted, like Kid Boo or, IIRC, Ultimate Gohan. I think Majin Vegeta might also be a case of this?

[WittyUsername]

I remember the FUNimation Dragon Ball website making a big deal out of how they got the guy who played Chewbacca to be in the special.

As a whole, the special’s fine, but it’s not difficult to see why it isn’t as well regarded as the Bardock and Trunks specials. I also find it weird that despite taking place 100 years in the future, the entire look and feel of the Goku Jr. timeline seems so much more mundane. It’s like technology regressed or something. I used to wonder what a hypothetical sequel series focused on Goku Jr. would be like, but looking back, I don’t think there would’ve been any potential.

[MyVisionity]

Episode 41 was a good comedy episode, with just the right amount of sincerity in the Oob/Satan story. Uchiyama was actually the right choice for this kind of episode.

Thankfully, Tenshinhan's actor did not reprise his Announcer voice from the Boo Saga. I believe they got the guy from the Cell Games this time around.

Nice to see Palace back with Goten again, continuing their date from the previous episodes by going for "hamgers".

I'm glad that Tōru Furuya got something to do as Pack in the Special.

Lol at the Super 17 arc. It's all so very dumb! I laughed at Dr. Mu wandering around in Hell, with the narrator like "Remember this guy...??". Trunks showing up at the Son house beaten up was funny also. And then Mu and Gero drink wine and clink glasses in Hell!!

I didn't like Vegeta stopping my man from taking that TV in the beginning. It's like, damn, you ain't a cop now, dial it back brother!

Freeza and Cell down in Hell may be foolishness, but at least Ryūsei Nakao and Norio Wakamoto are still killing it.

[MyVisionity]

I seem to remember Hell Fighter 17 being used long before Funimation got their hands on GT

It's "Hell Fighter #17" in the original Japanese dialogue also. It's not spoken until episode 43 I believe.

It's possible it was a fan term that Funi adopted, like Kid Boo or, IIRC, Ultimate Gohan. I think Majin Vegeta might also be a case of this?

"Majin Vegeta" was a fan term. However, it was "Mystic Gohan" that was the fan term, not "Ultimate Gohan". Although "Ultimate Gohan" only appeared in the Daizenshuu and the video games, not within the series itself.

[90sDBZ]

The first time I heard "Majin Vegeta" was in the Budokai games. Same goes for "Kid Goku", "Teen Gohan"(for Cell Games Gohan), "Warp Kamehameha", "Final Explosion", and "Soul Punisher". Fans tend to use a lot of the game names when discussing the series.

"Ultimate Gohan" I first saw in the first Tenkaichi game, although it might go back to the fansub days? The Budokai games referred to it as "Elder Kai Unlock Ability".

[MasenkoHA]

Mystic Gohan I 100 percent remember appearing on websites well before Funimation released the Buu saga. Not entirely sure about Ultimate Gohan but I seem to remember Ultimate Buu being used as the term for Buu after absorbing Gohan.

[Koitsukai]

This is the arc where GT started to go downhill in my eyes. The previous and following arc are really good, but this arc right here really dropped the ball.
Up until episode 41 I was having a great time. The unfunny episode of the TB was... not bad I guess, I just don't care when our guys are all spectators. It's hard to care when not even the GT-senshi care.

The whole hell lab just fucks the suspend of disbelief in the ass, really. Hell is just a prison you can escape. You just have to throw your brain away, it's like a SDBH arc. Humans sensing cyborgs' ki, Enma not letting Piccolo go to hell to help, they let Goku and Paikuhan go to hell to lend a hand a few times. Goku not going SS4 and shunkanidoing back to Earth, he did so in the Bojack movie, while dead. The boring way back home they found for Goku.
Cell and Freeza looking awful and having the most boring fight possible, that ice machine thing, that old lady... yuck.

Goku got frozen like 5 times in GT. Carbonite, in hell, vs San Shinron twice... and I think again vs Omega.
I wonder why Baby wasn't brought back, I mean, Rildo came back. Is Broly the only movie character not featured in this arc? I guess Broly is part of a different timeline/universe.

It was nice to see Nappa again, and while Geets dealt with him like he should, I always wanted to see more of them, but I understand Nappa is hardly an afterthought to Vegeta.

I feel this arc would've made more sense with a different approach, without a lab in hell, without so many things. Maybe with the DBs being used for opening the portal and that being one of the last straws before they cracked.... and have this arc linked to the following.

One more thing, Enma implies he cannot do stuff because of something else going on, and then the camera goes with the DBs... so, were the DBs that opened between both worlds? weren't the 17s who opened the portal? what did Enma mean by that?

[NeoKING]

Enma not letting Piccolo go to hell to help, they let Goku and Paikuhan go to hell to lend a hand a few times.
I feel this arc would've made more sense with a different approach, without a lab in hell, without so many things. Maybe with the DBs being used for opening the portal and that being one of the last straws before they cracked.... and have this arc linked to the following.

One more thing, Enma implies he cannot do stuff because of something else going on, and then the camera goes with the DBs... so, were the DBs that opened between both worlds? weren't the 17s who opened the portal? what did Enma mean by that?

Yes, the reason why Enma could not just fix the situation so easily is because an "outside force" was interfering with the dimensions. It is heavily implied that this force was the bad karma from the cracked Dragon Balls seeping out and is meant to foreshadow and Segway into the next arc. Towards the end of the Ja'aku Ryu arc, they explicitly state this iirc. I noticed this years ago and then again just recently on a rewatch and thought it was actually clever. This is why the next arc starts immediately after the Super 17 conflict is resolved.

GT as a story is one giant saga caused by the Ultimate Dragon Balls, as it should be.

[ABED]

majin Vegeta is a term that's been around forever. Not sure about Mystic Gohan. Can't say I'm a big fan of it.

[Grimlock]

"Mystic Gohan" grew popular enough for FUNimation to use it in 2004's Dragon Ball: Buu's Fury. People also say this term appears in a FUNimation's booklet for the Dragon Ball Z Season 9 DVD (though, for the life of me, I couldn't find any picture of it, nor do I know when it was released). It must be a term that was made up around late 1990s and early 2000s.

FUNimation is known for pleasing its English fanbase by adopting whatever names they came up with, most recently (to the best of my knowledge) with 2015's Xenoverse and its "Frost Demon" as the name of Freeza's race.

[WittyUsername]

Just call him Ultimate Gohan. That’s as close to an official name as we’re likely to get, and it makes more sense and is less silly than Mystic Gohan.

[TheMajinRedComet]

Yeah Ultimate Gohan has been pretty consistent since about 2006. The first place I remember bumping into it was the Sparking American releases. Majin Vegeta goes way back possibly all the way to the gen 1 American fans maybe around the time of Hyper Dimension. I remember seeing it on the websites taking about the snes fighting games in the late 90s.