Synopsis: As Kuririn prepares to fire a Kamehameha, Jackie Chun keeps yelling to him that it's foolish to try and stop the Dodonpa with an untrained Kamehameha, even warning him that he'll likely die if he goes through with this. Kuririn is undeterred however, and as Chaozu fires his Dodonpa at him, Kuririn dodges by leaping into the air, leaving Chaozu's Dodonpa to crash needlessly into the ring. As Chaozu looks over at him, Kuririn launches his Kamehameha from mid-air, surprising everyone and catching Chaozu full-on with the blast. As Kuririn lands back in the ring, everyone watches as it looks like Chaozu is going to spiral downward out of the ring, but at the last moment he recovers and floats back to continue the fight. Kuririn curses his luck, but Roshi praises him mentally for coming up with such a maneuver, noting that if Kuririn had more practice with the Kamehameha, that probably would have won him the match after all. As the two fighters stare each other down, Tenshinhan also praises Kuririn in his mind, unable to believe that someone from the Turtle school was able to dodge and launch their own attack in so brief an interval. Kuririn rushes back in to attack Chaozu, and while Chaozu is able to dodge at first, he soon proves unable to stop all of Kuririn's attacks. Left with no choice, Chaozu uses his strange powers again and gives Kuririn a stomach ache by holding his hands out in front of him. Communicating with him mentally, Tsuru-sennin tells Chaozu that the match is theirs now, but not to toss Kuririn out of the ring: he wants Chaozu to kill him, slowly and painfully. Chaozu agrees and starts to kick Kuririn around just as the boy figures out that Chaozu must have psychic powers. Chaozu says he's going to kick Kuririn until he dies, and Kuririn accuses him of playing dirty. Kuririn then realizes that Chaozu can only kick him right now because he must need his hands held out to keep Kuririn pinned down with his powers. Thinking quickly, Kuririn asks Chaozu what 3+4 is. Chaozu takes his hands away to start counting, freeing Kuririn who quickly punches him hard in the gut. Chaozu is almost incapacitated much to the horror of Tsuru-sennin and Tenshinhan, but he quickly puts his hands back up to freeze Kuririn in place again. Chaozu tries to turn the tables on Kuririn by asking him what 16+27 is, but Kuririn is able to shout the answer right back at him, surprising Chaozu. Kuririn again shouts a math problem, 9-1, forcing Chaozu to take his hands away to count once again, and this time Kuririn hits him hard enough to send him out of the ring and falling to the ground unconscious. Kuririn is declared the winner, and as Goku celebrates his friend's victory, Roshi says that Kuririn has matured not once but twice during this match. Meanwhile, Tsuru-sennin curses and says he should have trained Chaozu in math as well as fighting. Review: Well, I hope everyone enjoyed Chaozu's brief time in the spotlight, because it's never going to happen again. Like, ever. I won't lie, I've been looking forward to talking about Chaozu a little bit for a while now, and it's not really going to be pretty. And yes, I'll be jumping ahead of myself quite a bit again for the purposes of this observation. When first introduced in the past couple of chapters, Chaozu has carried a bit of an air of mystery about him. He has this strange powers, he has such a bizarre look, and the way he moves in a fight is even more unnatural, almost unnerving even. This was shown to be counter-balanced by his impish nature – his willingness to argue with Kuririn over something as stupid as him not being bald because he has one solitary hair was hilarious, and him continuing to egg Kuririn on after the fact was great as well. Adding even more fun to the mix is his being completely awful at math – while the two ideas shouldn't realistically be opposed, there's just something funny about the idea of a psychic being bad at math. All of these factors should add up to a fun, engaging character, right? And they do...up to this point and then no further. After this fight, basically everything that made Chaozu interesting is going to be completely abandoned and largely never referenced again. The fact that he and Kuririn were seemingly building a rivalry is never brought up, hell, if anything it's after this point that we see more of a rivalry between Kuririn and Yamcha as fellow Turtle students. Chaozu's psychic powers will be sticking around, but they'll never be utilized in as interesting of a fashion as they were here. And most unfortunate of all, basically every aspect of Chaozu's personality is going to be left behind, and in it's place is going to be left a character that largely just bleats out Tenshinhan's name on repeat – there's a reason that TeamFourStar's DBZ Abridged made the Pokemon jokes. Honestly, outside of Chi Chi who I'll be going into detail on far later, there's no character in the series that's done dirtier than Chaozu, as not even Yamcha is character assassinated as badly as Chaozu is here. And speaking of Yamcha, there-in lies the other unfortunate aspect of Chaozu's character degradation. Think for a moment if you will how often fans, sometimes just jokingly and other times far more negatively, have dumped upon the likes of Kuririn and Yamcha. They have constantly been the butt of people's jokes in the fandom for decades now. “They're weak”, “They never get to win a fight”, “They're dead again” - These are all jabs at these characters that have largely never stopped. Here's the thing though – every single one of those takeaways, if someone wanted to subscribe to them, could absolutely be lobbed at Chaozu as well. Chaozu is the weakest character on the front-line of our heroes; Chaozu never gets to win a fight, hell, it's arguable he never really even HAS a fight after this point; and despite all of the jokes comparing Kuririn to Kenny from South Park, he's not the one who dies twice first – it's Chaozu. So why is it that Kuririn and Yamcha get all of the ire from fans only looking for cool fights, and Chaozu largely gets ignored? Basically it comes down to the fact that the story itself ignores Chaozu from this point onward. Chaozu gets a small moment in the next arc, but it's nowhere near as shocking as Kuririn's nor as impactful as Roshi's. His contribution to the Saiyan arc is linked at the hip with Tenshinhan's and thus isn't remembered or meme'd in quite the same way as Yamcha's. After that point, he may as well not even be there, and often times he's not. That's where Kuririn ends up getting a lot of the flack from fans, because weaker than most of the others as he is, Kuririn manages to stay on the front lines pretty consistently all the way through the Androids arc. He's there to be shown up as far weaker than the other characters, and thus he gets piled on for that. Yamcha is there in the background talking bigger than he really is, and gets piled on for that. Chaozu...is quietly standing in a corner until it's time for him to say Tenshinhan's name again. At the end of the day, I don't hate Chaozu, he doesn't get enough given to him to elicit a feeling like hatred; but I do hate how dirty the story overall does him, and how it results in other characters who do get to be involved in the story, for better or worse, getting trashed by the fandom while Chaozu gets off scot-free. It's especially maddening when re-visiting his introductory chapters here and seeing what could have been instead. Thank you for coming to my Chaozu TED talk, no on to the rest of the chapter...is what I would say if there was really much else to talk about, but honestly there's just a few other things worth noting. Once again, this fight allows Kuririn to show off that he's going to be the type of fighter who thinks and finds ways to overcome when he odds are stacked against him, and I love seeing that aspect of the character finally get introduced here. I also love the pay-off previously teased about Chaozu not understanding numbers, because again there's just something funny about a psychic that's bad at math (I mean, couldn't he have...read Kuririn's mind as he probably thought about the answer as soon as he asked the questions?). In the end though, this chapter can't help but leave a sour taste in my mouth due to Chaozu's lackluster future on the horizon. RIP Actually Interesting Chaozu, Chapter 116 – Chapter 121. We hardly knew you. Until next time! Favorite Panel:
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About the AuthorAspiring author and big anime/manga fan, just trying to do my best in the world. For more details, go to About Me. Archives
September 2022
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