Hogan Reviews

After a long stay in filler land we return to the actual manga source material for more Dragon Ball Z Saiyan Arc… for the most part. This is DBZ after all, there are still some filler added, but at least we get a majority manga stuff section this time. The Saiyans Nappa and Vegeta arrive on Earth and waste no time tracking down the heroes of Earth, but what’s this? The side characters get the spotlight because Goku can’t make it to the battle? Shocker! Let’s take a look…

As not-so-subtly hinted at in the opening paragraph, this batch of episodes starts with the end of Goku’s training and sees him getting wished back to life… only for King Kai to remember that just because Goku now has a living body doesn’t mean he just gets teleported to Earth and instead he needs to head back down Snake Way to get there. Given it took him the better part of half a year to do it the last time he’s rightfully freaked out, but Kai tells him he should be able to do it in a day with his current power, so he sets off. Meanwhile on Earth Vegeta (who has mysteriously changed his outfit and hair colour) and Nappa arrive and the latter levels a whole city just for a bit of a laugh, which Vegeta chastises him for as he could’ve blown up the Dragon Balls, the whole reason they came to Earth. They pick up the power levels of Piccolo and Gohan and head in their direction, and as they do that Krillin also arrives. As the Saiyans land and have a chat they reveal to Piccolo that he isn’t a Demon (well… okay, let’s not bring DAIMA into this…) but instead an alien, from the Planet Namek. This comes as a surprise to Piccolo, but he manages to brush it off and focus on the matter at hand.

As he does this Tenshinhan, Chioatzu and Yamcha arrive and as they’ve all taken their weighted clothing off beforehand (boy that power up mechanic was dropped quickly!) they’re ready to go, but Vegeta decides to have a bit of fun first and orders Nappa to plant some seeds in the ground and out pops six “Saibamen” (not “Cybermen”, they’re something completely different…) The small green creatures apparently all have roughly the same power level as Raditz but Ten manages to take one out with little issue, show how much stronger they’ve gotten… somehow (I mean Goku did all the training with Kami and could barely scratch Raditz, but whatever helps the story move forward!) Yamcha is up next and he manages to mostly defeat his Saibaman too before challenging the rest of them, only for his opponent the grab him from behind and self-destruct, killing Yamcha with him and leaving Yamcha curled up in a far-too-often-meme’d crater. Krillin gets so angry he launches an attack that kills three of the other Saibaman, with Piccolo finishing off the final one, leaving Nappa to step forward.

What? Just because I pointed out it was an over-used meme doesn’t mean I wasn’t going to use it myself…

Everyone soon finds out that Nappa is another beast entirely as does a now-classic powering up pose for a bit and then punches one of Ten’s arms clean off. Chioatzu in response tries to “do a Saibaman” and self-destructs himself to kill Nappa but all it does is slightly damage his armour, and then a grieving Ten gives up his life in one final desperate attack that only slightly singes Nappa’s arms at best. Piccolo and Krillin manage to get Nappa off guard and send him towards Gohan so he can fire a blast at the Saiyan unprotected but the sight of seeing several of his Dad’s friends getting murdered was a bit too traumatic for the five-year-old (shocker…) so he chickens out. Piccolo tells Gohan to go home in a rage but upon hearing Gohan talk about waiting for his father to get here Vegeta decides to hold a “time out” to allow Goku, or Kakarot if you will, to arrive. In a filler-rific segment Nappa then heads out and destroys a bunch of real world-looking military vehicles (why not use the Toriyama-style ones?) before returning to hear the timer run out. Just as things seem bleak Goku arrives at Kami’s Lookout and a quick read of his power level makes Vegeta worry so he tells Nappa to kill all of them quickly and they’ll just pop over to Namek and collect the Dragon Balls there instead.

Gohan feels inspired by the arrival of his Dad and manages to land a decent blow on Nappa, enraging the Saiyan and causing him to fire a blast towards the kid and in one of the all-time classic moments Piccolo realises that he’s not pure evil like his “father” and he’s grown to legitimately love Gohan so sacrifices himself to protect him. Piccolo gives a teary eyed goodbye to Gohan and dies (and thus so does Kami and the Dragon Balls also vanish) but just as Krillin and Gohan take a beating and are about to be killed Goku arrives, and seeing four of his friends (well, three of his friends and an old rival…) dead with no way to wish them back on top of seeing his other friend and son badly beaten, he’s understandably upset…

“Just wait until it grows back!” “Sorry pal, this is the unedited version.” “Oh … crap.”

It’s a fun chunk of episodes with plenty of action, both manga adapted and anime original (for some reason they added a bit when both Krillin and Piccolo use Ten’s multi-form technique, somehow… Still, that did lead to the classic censored dub moment of Vegeta going “heheh, cool…” so, totally worth it) but there are also the bad kind of filler, scenes of Yajirobe pretending to be the leader of the group doing the actual fighting and talking to both the media and the military for fame and food, scenes of the non-combatants (not including Lunch, who is now forever written out of the show) watching the action on the TV at Master Roshi’s place complete with Chi Chi losing her mind… it can get annoying when you just want them to get to the actual fighting and the plot… what little plot there is. Get used to it though, this is why I’d normally recommend the Kai re-edit if you don’t hold nostalgia for the original show.

Overall Thoughts:

Piccolo shows he’s no Demon King.

A good chunk of Dragon Ball Z action, with some iconic scenes (both for good reasons and for meme reasons…) but it’s still not without a lot of momentum killing filler. Still, the animation is good, and voice work and soundtrack are still great (at least from a Japanese track point of view) and those few all-time classic scenes are still great, so more good than bad, but not exactly perfect, nostalgia goggles off.

Goku powers up and we get our “It’s over 9,000!” scene, though given I’m watching the original Japanese version it was over 8,000… I always wonder why they added the extra thousand to that scene in the old censored dub… Anyway, Goku then slowly takes down Nappa, complete with a little bit of humiliation thrown in for maximum revenge, but soon Vegeta calls an end to the fight as it was clear Nappa couldn’t win. The large Saiyan doesn’t like these orders though so decides to attack Krillin and Gohan (who have recovered thanks to senzu beans) but Goku uses his new Kaio Ken technique to increase his speed and power several fold for a brief second, breaking Nappa’s back in a split second.

Goku with the save… while Krillin tries to suffocate Gohan in the background?

Goku tosses Nappa’s body at Vegeta and tells him to take his friend and go home, but Vegeta isn’t the friendly-type and instead when Nappa asks for a hand Vegeta grabs it only to toss him into the sky and vaporise him completely with a large blast. Amazed by his power and appalled at his attitude, Goku gets ready to fight his next opponent…