It’s time to wrap up the first story arc in the Z portion of Dragon Ball, although unlike the other story arcs in the series this ends by going straight into the next one, with several plot-threads not resolved until that arc’s ending. Still, the fight between Goku and Vegeta is iconic within anime circles in general let alone Dragon Ball, so let’s have a good look why!
After sending Krillin and Gohan away Goku squares off with Vegeta and the two have their often-repeated conversation where the Saiyan Prince remarks about how he’s an “Elite” with royal blood and Goku is just from low-class stock, leading Goku to counter with “maybe a low-class can beat an elite with enough training!” which amuses Vegeta until their contest starts to get heated, with Goku eventually using Kaio-Ken x3 to land a few decisive blows to his opponent (at the cost of some of his body’s health) Angry Vegeta then decides to just fire his trademark attack, the Gallic Gun, into the Earth and destroy it (despite the fact that he can’t survive in space either, so not sure of the plan there…) but Goku counters with a Kamehameha and we have a rather large-scale beam struggle that ends with Goku’s victory when he uses Kaio-Ken x4, launching Vegeta high into the sky but wrecking his own body in the process. Yajirobe arrives on the scene at last and congratulates his ally but the battle is far from over as Vegeta soon regains his composure and searches for the moon so he can turn into an Oozaru, but is shocked to find Earth has no moon (well, not any more anyway…)
That’s going to be quite the punch!
Vegeta appears before Goku again and uses a special move to create an artificial moon and turn into the Great Ape form, which finally makes Goku realise that he was the monster that crushed his beloved Grandpa to death when he was a child, making him make a mental note to apologise to him about that in the afterlife, which always makes me laugh. Goku uses the good old fashioned solar flare to blind Vegeta and heads a short distance away to use his new finishing move: the Spirit Bomb but the Saiyan Prince recovers in enough time to stop him. He then stomps on Goku’s legs completely crushing them and then starts crushing him within his hands, breaking pretty much every bone in Goku’s body, with all the screaming that you’d imagine would accompany that. Krillin and Gohan return to the scene and meet up with Yajirobe, their plan: cut off Vegeta’s tail and turn him back into a regular man, Krillin’s experience at the 21st Tenkaichi tournament all those many arcs ago coming in handy. Gohan tries to distract Vegeta while Krillin goes for a “Destructo Disc” to cut the tail off, but thanks to Vegeta’s enhanced hearing the plan fails and soon Gohan and Krillin are in danger while Goku’s near-lifeless body is tossed aside.
Beam struggle in-coming! … as well as lots and lots of rocks.
Help arrives though in the most unlikely of places as Yajirobe just manages to gather up enough courage to leap and chop off Vegeta’s tail with his sword. Even tired and back as a normal sized man (or, well, a bit shorter than a normal man…) Vegeta proves too much, but Goku gives Krillin what was left of the Spirit Bomb energy he gathered and he eventually throws it and… misses, but Gohan manages to bounce it back after being motivated psychically by his Dad (by which I mean being pretty much insulted!) and as the early depiction of the Spirit Bomb tends to do, it zaps Vegeta in a white lightning bolt and sends him into the heavens. Everyone celebrates as Vegeta’s body smacks the ground but its short-lived as Vegeta wakes up and unleashes a large dome of Ki energy that sends everyone flying…
Goes without saying that this fight is great, the soundtrack and voicework are of course top tier, the animation and art style are on form, with some episodes even being overly bloody, and the filler is near non-existent, at least until the fight is over anyway.
Overall Thoughts:
Forgot to mention Goku took out an eye with a sneaky last blast before being crushed, what Goku called a “weasel’s last fart” in the Japanese script. Must be a Japanese saying I guess, but it works!
This is one of those big “epic” moments from the original Dragon Ball run, the fight between Goku and Vegeta is only surpassed by the one between Goku and Frieza in the next arc in terms of iconic showdowns, and unlike that one this fight isn’t filler-ed to all hell. Overall its not hard to see why fans like myself got hooked on the series as a whole by starting with this arc, we may have been confused about who some of the characters were at the start but by the end of these episodes we were happy to strap in for the long haul.
Vegeta realises he has so little power left that he didn’t kill anyone so he decides to try and finish everyone off starting with Krillin, but Yajirobe slashes Vegeta in the back and feels his wrath instead. While this is all going on Goku tells his son to look at Vegeta’s artificial moon and sure enough he turns into an Oozaru himself, and although it doesn’t take long for the Saiyan Prince to chop the boy’s tail off the giant body of Great Ape Gohan lands on him before changing back. This is the final straw, although alive Vegeta decided to climb into his spaceship and leave but he’s caught by Krillin holding Yajirobe’s katana, ready to stab him to death but Goku psychically tells his buddy to spare him. Why? Because killing him now would be a waste as Goku really wants a rematch. Nothing noble about saving lives or giving someone a second chance, this was, in Goku’s own words, his “selfish request”. At least in the original script, the dub does turn it into something more noble, but that’s dub Goku for you! Krillin accepts his friend’s plea and drops the sword, allowing Vegeta to take off back into the stars.
A good example of the somewhat excessive blood this episode in particular went with…
Coincidentally now everything is safe Master Roshi, Bulma, Chi Chi and Korin (oddly) arrive in a ship and they use the same cryo-capsules from the Demon King Piccolo arc to preserve the bodies of the dead (well, minus Chiaotzu as, you know, he didn’t have a body left to preserve) which is funny because a: the whole scene was cut in the censored Saban dub so it always sticks out to me as weird whenever I see it, and b: they’re never used again after this. Anyway, with no Dragon Balls to bring anyone back everyone is pretty down but Krillin soon offers hope: Vegeta mentioning heading to Namek in order to use the Namekian Dragon Balls instead of the Earth ones, and after King Kai helps Bulma calculate how far the planet is they hatch a plan to use Nappa’s ship to go there. Sadly Bulma accidentally self-destructs the ship by pressing the wrong button but a second lifeline is thrown by Mr. Popo, who appears on his super-stereotypical magic flying carpet and shows Bulma the spaceship that Kami/Piccolo arrived on Earth in. After a week or two of learning the Namekian voice commands they’re ready to go, but Goku is still recovering in hospital (they’re out of Senzu beans…) so Krillin and Gohan accompany Bulma instead. So after a quick haircut for Gohan later and they blast off into space to head to planet Namek…
Hogan Reviews 