Synopsis: Goku and King Piccolo continue to furiously exchange blows, with Goku eventually forcing Piccolo back to the ground once more. As both Goku and Piccolo try to catch their breath, Tenshinhan remarks that it looks like Goku's actually got the advantage again. From inside King's Castle, the King and his soldier attendant have noticed how noisy it is outside. Another soldier alerts them to the fact that Piccolo hasn't left for West City yet, and directs their attention to the fight happening outside.
Piccolo fires energy beams from his eyes, catching Goku in the knee with one of the blasts. It turns Goku's knee badly, crippling him, and causing Piccolo to laugh with joy and proclaim that the fight will soon be over. Goku thinks one knee is all he'll need to defeat Piccolo however, and Piccolo angrily rushes in for an attack. Pulling nyoibo from his back, Goku extends it and uses it to land a knee strike with his good knee right into Piccolo's face. As the King marvels at the power of this mysterious child fighting off Piccolo, one of his soldiers urges him that they should evacuate while they can, so that there's still a King to rule the world when this all ends. The King reluctantly agrees to leave the fate of the world in the boy's hands, though he hates the idea of running while a child fights for them. Goku asks Piccolo how that attack was, and Piccolo, now with a bloody nose, angrily asks what that stick even is. Meanwhile, Yamcha and the others continue to fly towards King's Castle in a plane, with Yamcha hoping that Tenshinhan can hold out a little longer as they're still about ten minutes away. Bulma says there hasn't been any news about West City being destroyed yet, so Tenshinhan must be alive still. Just then, the radio reports to them breaking news of two fighters, a young man and another smaller boy, holding off King Piccolo and preventing him from leaving for West City. Yamcha is at first confused as to who the younger boy could be, but Bulma says that it must be Goku, pointing out that they never actually saw him die, only assumed it when they hadn't heard from him. She also reminds them of Baba's prediction that Goku would one day save the world, restoring hope in Yamcha that it really might be Goku after all. Enraged that he continues to be shown up, Piccolo focuses his power anew, launching two energy blasts from his finger tips. The first one Goku manages to dodge, but the second connects, knocking the nyoibo from his hand. With his foe at last unable to move quickly, Piccolo launches a massive energy blast from his hand towards Goku, and the explosion quickly envelopes a large section of the city. Review: While much of this chapter is also focused on the continuing fight between Goku and King Piccolo, we start to get further reactions from characters that aren't Tenshinhan, and ironically enough? The reactions of both sets of characters, one filled with unnamed people who are on the scene but don't know what they're watching, and the other of named characters who aren't on the scene but think they know what's going on, are both far more interesting than Tenshinhan's reactions thus far have been, despite him being on the scene and knowing what's going on. The first reaction we're given is from the King and his few remaining soldiers. There's not much on the surface level of their scenes, but when you dig into it a little bit, they do tell us quite a bit more about the King himself. We've already seen that he doesn't want the people of the world to come to harm, and the only reason he's given control over to King Piccolo is because he doesn't really have much of a choice and he thinks that in the short-term, that might limit casualties. I can only imagine his reaction when he heard Piccolo's little forty-three year plan, all things considered. When he sees that two people are fighting Piccolo, especially with one of them being a child, the King isn't so much filled with hope as he is concern about them leaving all of this up to a random kid that's shown up. The entire world's military under him is supposed to protect the people, and they've been proven completely ineffective against Piccolo, but here's a kid that's fighting to save them all, and they can't even back him up? It's seemingly an affront to everything the King believes in, as well as being just plain humiliating. The King's only real scenes throughout the series are always small, but they do show us a man – er, dog – who seems to truly care for his people, and it's easy to see how he must've come into his position and why he's seemingly so well liked by the populace at large. Gee, if only any of our real world leaders could be worth this much... The second group reaction we get comes from the plane with Yamcha, Bulma, and Lunch, though naturally Lunch doesn't do more than appear in the background of panels. In fact, we've had blonde Lunch for so long now, that I'm not even sure blue-haired Lunch even knows what's going on at this point, actually. Their scene shows us that the world at large is now being made aware of Goku's fight with King Piccolo, as well as revealing to them that Goku's even alive in the first place. Granted, they don't know for a fact that it's him fighting down there, but as Bulma points out, they never knew for a fact that he was dead either, not to mention Baba's little prophecy from a few arc's ago. Baba's prediction is an interesting thing actually, as it really almost doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things – think of how rarely that happens in fictional media. A big part of that might be due to how much more story there is left for this series as opposed to other series that pull a 'chosen one' prophecy out of nowhere, but I can't help but compare this to the likes of say Naruto or Harry Potter, where us finding out that a character is a 'chosen one' kind of puts them on this pedastal afterwards. It ends up making them into something more than they were in a way, and makes it, in some ways, about that prophecy being fulfilled rather than them doing what they do specifically because of who they are. In Goku's case though, this prophecy really matters as little to him as a later revelation about him does, though in the latter's case, that one will end up having various far-reaching effects on him and the story itself. As someone who's not always the biggest fan of 'chosen one' reveals, I'm glad this doesn't really go anywhere further, but I do appreciate it coming back up after it was previously teased, rather than it just being left up to interpretation which event Baba was probably talking about. Beyond the reactions, it's basically just more fighting as I said, but it is nice to see the nyoibo get one final use in combat, as pretty soon we won't really ever be seeing it again outside of a movie or two. It's also worth noting that two of Piccolo's attacks in this chapter are seemingly techniques we saw him do previously that are now turned towards Goku. The eye beams are always neat to see, but Piccolo's massive explosion that closes out the chapter is particularly telling in how far Goku has pushed and angered him – this is seemingly the same type of attack he used to destroy much of the city before, and likely the same kind of attack he was going to use to destroy West City. Now he's employed it just to take care of one kid that's in his way. If there's one thing Goku's good at by now, it's riling up his opponents. 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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