Synopsis: Continuing his speech, King Piccolo reminds the populace that the word is currently divided into forty-three different provinces. As such, he reveals he's had his attendant prepare cards numbered for each one of them, and to mark the occasion of his ascendancy to the throne, he will draw a card from the box each year and personally destroy the province matching the number. He promises that everyone in those areas will die instantly and painlessly, but laughs noting that he will get to enjoy millions of faces twisted in terror. Watching this, Yamcha and the others are enraged at how cruel Piccolo is. Piccolo however says that the luckiest people will get to live another forty-three years, as well as noting that anyone who wishes to stop him is more than welcome to try any means necessary if they want an early death. Tenshinhan flies his plane towards King's Castle as fast as he can, as Piccolo draws the first number to decide which province will be destroyed this first day. He pulls the number 29, revealing that to be an area near the King's Castle already – West City. Bulma gets back on the radio and desperately pleads with Tenshinhan to stop Piccolo somehow, promising to bring him back with the Dragon Balls. Tenshinhan agrees to stop Piccolo no matter what, but says that nobody will be coming back to life as he personally saw Piccolo kill Shenlong. The others are taken aback by this news, as Oolong wonders if the world really is coming to an end, and Yamcha decides that broken leg or no, he can't stand by like this any longer. Tenshinhan arrives at King's Castle just in time to see Piccolo and his attendant preparing to leave, and Tenshinhan opens the top of his plane to shout out a challenge to the demon king. Piccolo scoffs at how quickly the first suicidal fool showed up after all, and decides to take some time to use him as an example lest any others decide to defy him so brazenly. As Goku on kinto'un races towards King's Castle himself, Piccolo floats to the ground and tells Tenshinhan to come down and fight if that's what he truly wants. Tenshinhan prepares to leave the plane with the rice cooker in tow for using the Mafuba, but makes a horrifying discovery – the rice cooker has been cracked, seemingly having become damaged during all of his practice for the technique. Left with no other choice, Tenshinhan leaves the device behind, and resolves to fight without using the Mafuba. As Tenshinhan floats to the ground as well, Piccolo recognizes the flight technique and praises Tenshinhan for knowing it, but says that being such a skilled martial artist itself marks him for death at Piccolo's hands. Tenshinhan accuses Piccolo of arrogance, stating that he hasn't won the fight yet, but Piccolo says it's not him that will be fighting after all, deciding instead to instead leave the task to his 'new servant' so as to not dirty his own hands against him. Tenshinhan is confused, but Piccolo soon coughs up an egg as he did before, and from it hatches a large creature that Piccolo names Drum. Piccolo orders Drum to show Tenshinhan the power of a demon, but Tenshinhan vows that it's humankind that will triumph this day. Review: As much as I enjoy this arc, I can't in good conscience deny that there's a lot of weak points to it. I've already gone over how much I absolutely despise the Super Holy Water, and while this chapter doesn't have anything quite like that to draw my ire, it does start to show some of the cracks in the plot as well as the rice cooker, and yeah, I'll get to that in a moment. Firstly, Piccolo's evil plans are...well, not that smart or well thought out, really. He seems to want to revel in chaos, and as such, he says he's going to destroy all law enforcement agencies and allow people to reign free their most destructive tendencies. This is a horrifying and yet interesting threat, as it's something we can readily imagine how that would go in our own world, and it sets Piccolo apart from previous villains in a way, as he wants to be at the top of the world but doesn't want to actually control anything really. The opposite rather, he wants NOTHING controlled. That was where his machinations left off last chapter, along with a tease of more horrors to come. And how does he top this interesting idea? By threatening to slowly but surely wipe out humanity over the course of the next forty-three years. ...Huh. I mean, don't get me wrong – the idea of a super-powerful demon king taking his sweet time to blow us all to kingdom come is certainly a scary thought, and it does light a fire under our heroes to deal with him as soon as possible, especially since the Dragon Balls are out of the question at this point. Any area they fail to prevent Piccolo from destroying is going to result in a lot of dead people that they'll have no way to ever bring back. At the same time though, it just feels a little bit pointless. It doesn't really fit perfectly with how Piccolo was describing his reign prior. How much freedom to do as they wish will the people of Earth truly have if they know it's all going to be pointless in a couple of decades as they're going to die anyway? Granted, this could be Piccolo's way of making more people decide to give in to their darkest natures when they might otherwise try to resist such impulses, but at the same time, it also presents a clear end to Piccolo's fun. What exactly is his plan once he's killed all of humanity in forty-three years, just hang around kicking a bunch of corpses? As opposed to some later threats, him taking out all life on this planet is a pretty final end to his reign. I don't think he's particularly thought this one through. I mean, I guess it's also possible he's thinking that people will have time to rebuild and repopulate, so that by the time he's gotten through all forty-three districts, he gets to start all over again, but nothing in the dialogue really suggests that either, so I think that might be giving him too much credit. There's one panel showing Suno and her parents watching Piccolo's broadcast from their home, and I actually really like that however. It gives a more global feeling to the proceedings, even if only minutely, and I wish Toriyama had done even more with that. We know a few martial artists are dead by this point (something else I'll touch on in a moment), but there are plenty of other nameless folks Goku and the others have encountered in the past that we could have seen reacting to this news as well, to really sell just how far-reaching this take-over truly is. Speaking of those dead martial artists, there's far few of them dead seemingly in the manga version of events given how quickly Tambourine was dealt with, so not only were there still plenty that could have been shown reacting to Piccolo's announcement, it also begs the question of why Piccolo seems to have completely forgotten his other goal. Even with his youth and power restored, he should still be afraid that someone out there might know the Mafuba and can seal him away again. Hell, he should be more afraid of that now than he ever was before, due to having come across someone in this era that knew it in the form of Roshi. Someone alive today that knows the technique should concern him greatly as it means there's no telling how many other martial artists are out there with the knowledge, so you'd think he'd be immediately starting in on his goal of exterminating them all again too, but it never comes up, at all. Piccolo's short-term memory is apparently completely shot after spending a few centuries in a rice cooker. It's also revealed that the Earth in Dragon Ball is apparently divided into forty-three provinces (hence it taking forty-three years for Piccolo to destroy them all once a year), and honestly, I kind of wish we got more on that. It wouldn't really change or inform the story in any way, but I don't really think we've seen anywhere near that many different places in the series, even today. As far as I know, no guidebook has ever fully labeled each and every region of the Earth either, so who knows exactly how the rest of it is divvied up. The biggest crack in this storyline's seams at this point comes to a head when Tenshinhan discovers a literal crack in the rice cooker he was planning on using, completely negating anything and everything he was going to try and do. It was already extremely obvious that he wasn't going to be the one to win the day since Goku's already received his power-up, but c'mon Toriyama, at least let him feel like he's going to do something for five seconds. I realize that the Mafuba is something we've already seen and it was already really unlikely that it was going to work any better this time around, but this just feels like the weakest way imaginable to get around it even existing. I'm also far from a power-level devotee, but Tenshinhan hasn't done any training since the end of the 22nd tournament, which put him as Goku's equal at the time more or less. Goku lost to the elderly King Piccolo, and now Piccolo is much, much stronger than he was before. So just weighing the odds, they really couldn't be tipped any further against Tenshinhan's favor here. For a character that we were only just introduced to, and someone who was built up as being in Goku' league, this fall from grace is a steep one. In a way, even Yamcha doesn't have it this bad because at least he was never really built up anywhere near as much first. But hey, maybe Tenshinhan will get to do something against Piccolo's minion at least? ...*sigh* 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
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