Deep Thoughts: The Tournament Saga

[ABED]

The Tournament Saga
This arc is one of my all-time favorites. The tone is slightly more earnest and we are introduced to an audience favorite and certainly one of mine, Kuririn. Like many Dragon Ball protagonists, he's introduced as an antagonist who eventually changes his ways. Unlike Yamcha, he's not a villain, he isn't even a bully, but rather he's an impish douchebag. Thankfully that antagonism rather quickly turns to an endearing friendship. The tournament itself is a hell of a lot of fun. My three favorite moments from the tournament are Goku reminding Kuririn he doesn't have a nose leading to Kuririn winning via a fart, Jackie Chun and Kuririn replaying their superspeed exchange in slowmo for the audience, and Goku losing because of he had shorter legs. It was a clever bit of writing. My opinion goes back and forth about whether I prefer this or the 22nd Tenkaichi Budokai. Last but not least, Goku and Kuririn's training under Muten Roshi among my favorite episodes of any in DB. I could watch those handful out of context and still get that heartwarming feeling.

Random Thoughts:
Dragon Ball usually takes place during the daytime but there are a number of instances events take place in at night and it always looks interesting. Is it harder to draw and animate stories that take place at night?
Kuririn kicking the crap out of the kid who picked on you is every bullied kid's dream. There's something so universal about that power fantasy of beating up the person that picks on you. The other is "this asshole thinks I'm weak, but little do they know that I am mighty." While the audience is smart enough to know that Goku wasn't killed when Muten Roshi fired that Kamehameha at him in the final round, Mayumi Tanaka and Laurie Steele's performance of Kuririn screaming for his friend is heart wrenching.

Two observations about the moon being destroyed fascinate me to this day and I feel compelled to share them with you all. First, to destroy the moon would mean Muten Roshi has more power than all the nuclear weapons in the world. It would take such a massive amount of destructive force to destroy the moon. And once the moon was destroyed, it would cause incredible amounts of harm to the Earth. The tides would be gone and so goes much of that ecosystem. The Earth's tilt would be gone so weather would radically change. Those are the two things off the top of my head. If I'm wrong on any of this, please feel free to correct me.

The dub:
The most notable bit of casting is Laurie Steele as Kuririn. I don't know what anyone else thinks of her, but I enjoy her performance. She can do comedy and drama. She can play the sweet Kuririn and the impish Kuririn. I even liked her performance in the terrible dub of movie 2. Last though about the dub is about a line reading that while it doesn't make me laugh anymore, it at least gets a smile, it's when Goku has to carry that cart of milk up that mountain and says disappointedly, "Why can't I drink the milk?" My dislike of Stephanie Nadolny's performance is well documented so I'll spare you, but in this instance, it's a funny delivery of a dub line that does feel like a Goku line.

Home Video:
I usually watch shows in order and rarely out of context (unless it's a holiday episode), but there are a few DB (meaning the franchise in general) episodes I've watched more than others, and it's mostlydue to the home video releases. I lost count on the number of times I watched the Captain Ginyu episodes. More on that later. The Dragon Ball episodes I've watched the most are the first six of the Tournament Saga. I stopped buying VHS's shortly after "Roshi's Request" and "Turtle Hermit Training" were released which was the summer of 2001. Those episodes are so much fun to watch regardless of what comes afterwards. I was willing to wait for the DVDs. I would have to wait about a year and a half before that wish was granted but it was worth it. I bought all of the Saga Sets. The increased episode count was one of my greatest desires and it was granted. I don't know why it is, or even why I'm bringing this up, but the smell of the Tournament Saga box set always brings back pleasant memories of that time. While I like the episodes being available on demand, I did genuinely enjoy the anticipation of the next home video release. Smell is one of the strongest triggers to memory and thankfully the smell of that set hasn't changed over the TWENTY years that I've owned it.

14. Goku tries to find a Pichi-Pichi gal for Roshi; Kuririn arrives to receive training; gives Roshi a stack of dirty magazines; Roshi agrees to train both of them
15. Lunch runs from the police; Goku and Kuririn save her from the police; take her to Kame House; Lunch reveals her violent split personality after sneezing
16. Roshi and Co. move to a larger island; he tests Goku and Kuririn's speed; Kuririn cheats to get the stone and wins; he, Roshi and Lunch get food poisoning
17. Roshi makes Goku and Kuririn wear twenty kilogram turtle shells on their backs; makes them deliver milk through various obstacles as morning training
18. Goku and Kuririn resume Muten Roshi's training; till earth with their bare hands, study, rest, eat, work construction, swim from a shark, and dodge bees
19. Goku and Kuririn complete their training; fly with Muten Roshi to Papaya Island; register for the tournament; meet up with old friends; receive new uniforms
20. Goku, Kuririn, and Yamcha make it through the Tenkaichi Budokai preliminary rounds; Kuririn defeats one of his elders from Orin temple who bullied him
21. Bacterian fights Kuririn; his body odors render Kuririn helpless; Goku reminds Kuririn he doesn't have a nose; Kuririn farts on Bacterian; Bacterian gives up
22. Jackie Chun wins by knocking Yamcha out of the ring with a gust of wind; Lanfan strips during her match against Namu; Namu knocks her unconscious
23. Goku's match gets delayed by rain; Goku fights Giran; his tail grows back; Giran gives up after Goku breaks free of his unbreakable Guru-Guru Gum
24. Kuririn fights Jackie Chun; they demonstrate their fight for the crowd in slow motion; Jackie Chun knocks Kuririn unconscious after he rushes in too quickly
25. Goku fights Namu; wins via ring out; Jackie Chun reveals to Namu that he's Roshi; gives him a capsule filled with water; Namu poses as Roshi in the crowd
26. Goku and Jackie Chun begin the championship match of the tournament; Jackie uses his Drunken Fist attack; Goku retaliates with his Monkey Technique
27. Jackie Chun almost gets Goku to surrender; Goku sees the full moon; transforms and wreaks havoc; Jackie Chun fires a giant Kamehameha towards his pupil
28. Jackie Chun reveals that he blew up the moon; battles Goku hand-to-hand; wins the tournament via KO; Goku and his friends eat together; Roshi pays the tab

[MasenkoHA]

The Tournament Saga
This arc is one of my all-time favorites. The tone is slightly more earnest and we are introduced to an audience favorite and certainly one of mine, Kuririn. Like many Dragon Ball protagonists, he's introduced as an antagonist who eventually changes his ways. Unlike Yamcha, he's not a villain, he isn't even a bully, but rather he's an impish douchebag. Thankfully that antagonism rather quickly turns to an endearing friendship.

One thing I really loved about Goku and Kuririn's relationship is the progression from rivals to friends is very natural. There is no Goku saves Kuririn life and now Kuririn likes him (well that's what the second movie did), Kuririn doesn't reveal something about his backstory and Goku understands him better they just overtime grow to become friends simply by enduring Roshi's training together.

The dub:
The most notable bit of casting is Laurie Steele as Kuririn. I don't know what anyone else thinks of her, but I enjoy her performance.

I'm not a fan of the South Park take but her Krillin does sound like someone who would grow up to sound like Sonny Strait Krillin so she has that going for her. Even more impressive as best as I can tell the two developed their Krillin voice completely independent of each other. Steele did her voice first for the Sleeping Princess dub and apparently Strait never heard it Barry Watson just told him he hated Terry Klassen's take and to do something different and Strait came up with "Popeye on helium"

[ABED]

I don't know if I ever knew Watson hated Klassen's take on Kuririn. Interesting. And that's a great point about the progression of Goku and Kuririn's friendship. Not that I'm averse to any of the other tropes you mentioned but terrible executions are always eyeroll worthy.

I'm not a fan of the South Park take

I'm not sure what you mean.

I just remembered something. On the commercials at the beginning of the Dragon Ball VHS tapes, there was a DB toy commercial which included Kuririn. Did they think they plan on dubbing the 21st Tenkaichi Budokai episodes, told the toy makers about those episodes, but changed course when they weren't happy with the ratings?

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

Did they think they plan on dubbing the 21st Tenkaichi Budokai episodes, told the toy makers about those episodes, but changed course when they weren't happy with the ratings?

Yes, apparently it's been mentioned elsewhere that FUNi actually had scripts written all the way up to ep 28 and intended to have the dub get that far if not beyond. The reason why they cut the dub production off at the end of the Pilaf arc (far earlier than they intended to) was apparently due to the ratings not being the greatest and it also had something to do with the syndication timeslots that Seagull/BLT/whoever else negotiated.

What's funny is the fact that said toy line had characters like Krillin and Launch, the introductory episodes of which FUNi didn't end up dubbing until around six years later which is ironic considering had the '95 dub not been cut off at ep 13 then just one to two eps more and both would've been introduced.

[ABED]

Sleeping Princess in Devil's Castle
Of the first four movies, this is my least favorite. I'm not a fan of the demon elements, but the retelling of Goku and Kuririn's meeting is good. The first two films felt like a mash up of Dragon Ball and other stories. Movie 1 feels a tad like a Miyazaki movie, and the second one feels like DB meets a horror movie. And that's not inherently a bad thing. I actually could get on board with DB movies being mashups and retellings, but in this case, it doesn't work well. The funniest part of the movie was when Kuririn is able to surpass Goku in the ocean because he's swimming away from a shark.

The most notable thing about the movie is the FUNi in-house dub. Boy is it atrocious. Apparently it was a test ride to see if they could dub on their own instead of incurring the cost of outsourcing to a dub studio in Canada. While they could dub it, that product was unreleasable. It's terrible. Not only is the acting awful, the actual recording quality is terrible. It sounds muffled and like it was recorded on old equipment. Couple of things about cast – Delgadillo is not good as Goku. Her voice is too soft for a character with as much energy as Goku. Sabat is actually better here than season 3 as Yamcha. He hasn't put on the surfer accent. Laurie Steele was good from the jump. McFarland is good with Muten Roshi's humorous moments but his voice is too goofy for the more solemn moments. Last is Leslie Alexander who I don't have much of an opinion on as this was her only performance and it's hard to tell if I would've liked her performance more than Vollmer's. I'm inclined to believe I would.

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

The most notable thing about the movie is the FUNi in-house dub. Boy is it atrocious. Apparently it was a test ride to see if they could dub on their own instead of incurring the cost of outsourcing to a dub studio in Canada. While they could dub it, that product was unreleasable. It's terrible. Not only is the acting awful, the actual recording quality is terrible. It sounds muffled and like it was recorded on old equipment.

Indeed, it's god awful even for 1998 dub production standards. No wonder why i watch this one exclusively in the original Japanese. This clearly was made in the very earliest days of FUNI's in house run because apparently they had such a small budget that there wasn't even good audio equipment available at the time. It sounds like they recorded the dub into tin cans in someone's garage. Seriously, how they deemed this acceptable to release baffles me.

Delgadillo is not good as Goku. Her voice is too soft for a character with as much energy as Goku.

Agreed, her soft spoken delivery didn't fit the kind of energetic character young Goku is. Say what you will about Nadolny's performance, but even now i feel like she captured that better. Delgadillo did do decent as Dende in Z though nowadays i've come to prefer Laura Bailey's take.

Sabat is actually better here than season 3 as Yamcha. He hasn't put on the surfer accent.

Given how much of their earliest dub work involved doing poor half baked impressions of the Ocean VA's. I thus wouldn't be surprised if Sabat was trying to sound like Ted Cole's Yamcha in this then went with that laughably awful surfer dude bro accent in DBZ Season 3 before he later thankfully ditched it by the time the dub of the OG DB came around in 2001.

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

Barry Watson just told him he hated Terry Klassen's take and to do something different and Strait came up with "Popeye on helium"

Where did you hear this from? Saffron Henderson said in a livestream recently Barry Watson was best man at Terry Klassen's wedding, so he obviously has a lot of respect for him.

I'll have more to say later but I enjoy these Tournament episodes. The back and fort with Jackie Chun trying to hide his identity is really enjoyable, as is the more unusual tactics in the fights. I was never a fan of Bacterian though.

[MasenkoHA]

Where did you hear this from? Saffron Henderson said in a livestream recently Barry Watson was best man at Terry Klassen's wedding, so he obviously has a lot of respect for him.

Sonny Strait's Geekdom interview

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

I like tournament arcs, the 21st, 22nd and 23rd Tenkaichi Budokais, particularly are classics. The fights are so well choreographed, written and executed, it all feels very organic and natural.

The training episodes with Goku and Kuririn are wonderful too, even people who haven't watched original Dragon Ball should check them out, even just to get a feel for their relationship, and an appreciation of how quickly they went from juvenile rivals to being best buds.

I understand some people enjoy the fight with Bacterian, but it never did anything for me, and I find the concept behind his character unsettling. It also doesn't make sense that Kuririn only realized when Goku mentioned that he didn't have a nose, that much should have been obvious during the fight as it would render Bacterian's strategy useless from the get-go.

Knocking Yamcha out of the tournament early was a good way of setting up how formidable Jackie Chun would be, and further exacerbated by how easily he later defeated Kuririn. All the while Goku not being aware of Jackie Chun's identity was really entertaining and endearing.

The Namu and Ranfan fight is a classic example of cheap tricks, and a neat twist to a typical tournament fight. Of course it was never going to work against Goku. I'm not sure if it was the same case with the French dub, or if Ocean did the edits themselves, but the Blue Water dub cuts a few frames from the sequence where Ranfan strips down.

Few more bits of trivia about the Blue Water dub Robo4900 mentioned in his rewatch series, but are worth pointing out here is in the episode before the Ranfan fight the Tenkaichi announcer mispronounces Goku's name several times, among them Gookee, Gookwa, Gockai, and Gokwai. The mezase Tenkaichi insert song is also replaced with Anitunes music, possibly from Megaman, which Tom Keenlyside and John Mitchell composed for Ocean's library.

Goku vs Giran was good, seeing Goku break free from the Guru Guru Gum was really enjoyable. Anthropomorphic creatures also feel really at home in Toriyama's world.

I'm too not sure whether I prefer the 21st or the 22nd Tenkaichi Budokais, but Goku vs Jackie Chun is probably my favourite fight between both tournaments. It just felt right after all the training for Goku to have a chance to school the master per se, and we as the audience knew well it was Master Roshi. Destroying the moon was a bold move on one hand it takes away Goku's hidden advantage, and as stated threatens the Earth's ecosystem, on the other it makes Goku less of a threat and a liability for accidentally killing someone dear (as was the case with Gohan) so it also feels like a narratively safe move, although the fact from this point on he can win fights and save the day on his own merits feels more admirable.

The meal afterwards, likewise was fun to watch, and absolutely hilarious when Goku's absurd appetite for 57 courses drives the bill up to the tune of 470,000 zeni.

In terms of home releases, much like the Pilaf arc there's nothing really to say about these episodes on physical media in the UK and Ireland. We never had VHS or DVDs for any of the series during their original run between 2000 and 2005, and these first 28 episodes were released on Manga UK's Season 1 set in 2014, which repackaged Madman's Saga of Goku discs. I wish AB Groupe and Warner Vision did their own single volumes back in 2004/5 though, as it would have meant there would be a way for fans to own the Blue Water dub, and in better quality than the recordings that circulate.

[ATA]

I must be the only one on this fourm that likes Stephanie Nadolny's Kid Goku. I don't understand why people dislike it so much on here. I wish she still voiced Kid Goku. I understand if people don't like her Kid Gohan voice.

[Gaffer Tape]

Smell is one of the strongest triggers to memory and thankfully the smell of that set hasn't changed over the TWENTY years that I've owned it.

Thank you! Someone finally said it. I own the entire line of these "Saga" DVD sets, and every single one of them just smells so good, so distinctly it. I can't think of a single other DVD I own that smells quite like these do. And none of them has changed in all this time. It's the craziest thing, but I will probably take that scent memory to my grave.

[ABED]

Smell is one of the strongest triggers to memory and thankfully the smell of that set hasn't changed over the TWENTY years that I've owned it.

Thank you! Someone finally said it. I own the entire line of these "Saga" DVD sets, and every single one of them just smells so good, so distinctly it. I can't think of a single other DVD I own that smells quite like these do. And none of them has changed in all this time. It's the craziest thing, but I will probably take that scent memory to my grave.

Thank you and thank any for contributing. Seeing where we all agree and disagree about the series is a lot of fun, but seeing fans talk about those small things like of all things the smell of a DVD case makes me smile. It's because prior to this, I don't know if I'd have the guts to bring something like this up, even though I would often wonder if anyone experienced it like I have.

[8000 Saiyan]

The Tournament Saga is a whole load of fun. Memorable fights, most particularly the finals between Goku and Jackie Chun.

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

Smell is one of the strongest triggers to memory and thankfully the smell of that set hasn't changed over the TWENTY years that I've owned it.

Thank you! Someone finally said it. I own the entire line of these "Saga" DVD sets, and every single one of them just smells so good, so distinctly it. I can't think of a single other DVD I own that smells quite like these do. And none of them has changed in all this time. It's the craziest thing, but I will probably take that scent memory to my grave.

Thank you and thank any for contributing. Seeing where we all agree and disagree about the series is a lot of fun, but seeing fans talk about those small things like of all things the smell of a DVD case makes me smile. It's because prior to this, I don't know if I'd have the guts to bring something like this up, even though I would often wonder if anyone experienced it like I have.

I've never owned or even seen the Saga set DVDs, so I wouldn't know if they had a unique smell, but I generally appreciate all facets of any given home video release. The feel, the smell, everything about a case or collectors box with discs in it, knowing as long as you take care of it you'll more than likely own it forever is the ultimate reward for being a fan of something you love, in this case Dragon Ball.

And yeah, I feel weird admitting to something like that in real life, especially in this day and age when physical media is largely irrelevant to a lot of people, so its great to have a forum like this where we can talk to other likeminded fans who feel the same.

If any Canadian fans are reading I'd also be interested to know when these episodes premiered on YTV. My memory admittedly isn't great on specifics for original Dragon Ball's run on Toonami UK (which used the same dub as YTV), but a source I've asked seems to recall the Tournament saga began on January 5, 2004, and as I recall the Canadian premiere of the Blue Water dub predates the UK premiere.

[Koitsukai]

The design of the characters are just so funny and adorable.
Krilin with his Family Guy eyes, his overall shape, and attitude is awesome. Goku's a giant baby, he is a ball with spikey hair, and Roshi is a fossil with glasses and a turtle shell on his back. Krilin's introduction always gets me, Roshi telling Goku to dig him up.
From the get go you are laughing with those designs, and then they act so funny, they are a great match up those two, and their training is beautiful to watch. The anime really went to town with the scenery, those sunsets.

They are tough, too, when the tournament begins. Krilin beats his bullies, Goku stomps those that think he is a kid out of his depth. Roshi's Jackie Chun antics are great, too. I don't think we ever got a tourney with so much humor and self-awareness as this one. The reenactment of the kick is mental.
The final is an insane fight, funny, exciting, entertaining, everything happens, from silly techniques to actual, serious techniques that to this day are still game-winner techniques.

Bonus: It was an ad or something where Trunks, Gohan, Bulma and Goku travel back in time to this age and adult Goku meets kid Goku.

[MasenkoHA]

I must be the only one on this fourm that likes Stephanie Nadolny's Kid Goku. I don't understand why people dislike it so much on here. I wish she still voiced Kid Goku. I understand if people don't like her Kid Gohan voice.

The voice she uses for Goku is fine.

The performance itself tends to be pretty bad:
https://youtu.be/qym9fKhhY8c

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

I quite liked Zoe Slusar's performance as Goku. Here's the Gohan reunion scene. She was only 15 when cast in the role, and it worked wonderfully as its a voice full of youthful exuberance and lacks the raspiness of Nadolny.