Synopsis: Piccolo's blast bears down on Goku, and he's sure this time that it'll finish him off as Goku has no way to block it with his limbs rendered immobile. Goku's friends watch in horror as the blast hits the ground, causing a huge explosion that destroys most of the ground where the ring once stood. As the dust clears, an empty crater is all that's left where Goku had been laying before.
Piccolo floats back down to the ground and inspects the crater, saying that Goku has been blasted to smithereens, to the point that not even Shenlong could restore him now. As Goku's friends get back to their feet in sorrow, Piccolo declares himself the winner, as well as the start of a new age of demons and terror. Goku's friends are beside themselves with grief, and Piccolo promises to send them to join their fallen friend in short order. As Yamcha braces himself for a fight to the death however, Kuririn's facial expression changes. He seems to be staring at something, and he asks Tenshinhan to look as well, thinking his eyesight will prove what Kuririn thinks it is. As Tenshinhan looks where Kuririn is, into the sky just behind Piccolo, he gasps. With his suspicions confirmed, Kuririn happily shouts Goku's name. To Piccolo's horror, Goku flies down through the air towards Piccolo, showing that he learned how to fly and can move his body after all. Goku calls out to Piccolo, telling him he's lost for real this time, and slams his body headfirst hard against Piccolo. Piccolo is knocked unconscious and sent flying through the air and to the ground, with Goku hitting the ground as well. Goku's friends are shocked, but Goku asks the announcer to confirm something for him – he just knocked Piccolo out of bounds, so he wins, right? The announcer checks the ground, and though the ring is gone, it's outline is still visible, and Goku lays where the ring once was...while Piccolo lays outside of it. The announcer declares Goku the winner of the 23rd Tenkaichi Budokai, as Goku happily grins and his friends cheer and rush towards him. Review: There's one more chapter to go to close the arc, but this chapter is truly the end of Goku and Piccolo's fight, as well as the conclusion of the 23rd Tenkaichi Budokai itself. I think it's safe to say that this has been one wild ride from start to finish, and though this fight stumbled a bit in it's later portions, showing us things that we'd already seen, but it more than made up for it by showing us all kinds of things we hadn't seen. For a fight as long as it was to never let up it's intensity even after hitting the ground running, it's astonishing how entertaining this fight was. It absolutely holds up as my favorite fight in the series period, with only a few other fights coming anywhere close to rivaling it in the entire franchise – it's just that damned good, and Toriyama's artwork has never looked better, making the entire thing an absolute visual treat on every level. But that's getting ahead of ourselves a bit, as even this last chapter of the fight manages to offer a few surprises worth talking about. With Goku seemingly having no way to dodge, it really does seem for a moment that this match is Piccolo's after all, and Goku will once again come in second in the tournament – well, that and be dead, of course. Piccolo makes a rather curious statement as well, suggesting that since he completely destroyed Goku's body, Shenlong wouldn't be able to revive him. Given everything we've been told about Shenlong and his wishes up until now, it doesn't seem like even this should be a problem, and as we'll see a few times later, it wouldn't be – but this is the first suggestion that there might be some things that even Shenlong can't do. That coupled with his destruction in the previous arc shows that Toriyama's starting to think that having a perfect Deus Ex Machina around might limit the level of tension he can bring things to after all, so he's going to start playing around with different ways to shake things up in regards to the Dragon Balls and Shenlong. In the end however, it turns out that Goku actually did have a way to dodge – flying! This is such a rudimentary technique later on in the series, and it's something that prior to this we've only seen as window dressing, so to see it come in as the actual finishing move in a fight is completely surprising. The idea that people outside the Crane School could learn it had already been broached earlier as well, when we saw Kuririn do it, so it really felt like something that was only a matter of time before Goku learned it as well. The curious thing is, we're not told exactly when it was he learned it. Was this one of the various techniques he learned from Kami? If that's the case, why didn't he ever use it before now? There's actually a pretty good chance he only just now gave it a try and discovered that he could do it, after being left with no other options and likely thinking back on Kuririn's usage of it as well. The fact that flying still doesn't come second nature to him for a good while after this would seem to support this theory as well. Goku just won the tournament by using a move he'd never even done before now, how crazy is that? And yes, for the very first time, Goku is the actual champion of the Tenkaichi Budokai, proving that there really was a reason Toriyama kept showing us that they were still in the ring even when there was no ring. It took three times, but I'd say the story perfectly built Goku's eventual victory up as something major in every way possible. In the 21st Tenkaichi Budokai, we actually needed Goku to lose to gain something, and he did, though he came incredibly close to winning. In the 22nd Tenkaichi Budokai, he had even more reason to win than before, and his character development was likely ready for it to happen...but then he still didn't. But finally here in the 23rd Tenkaichi Budokai, fate conspired to make the final match about far more than just the tournament, and it's here that Goku finally gets declared the Strongest Under the Heavens. It's a sweet moment that can't not feel you with joy, as almost 200 chapters in, we finally see the little boy Bulma found in the woods prove what we've basically known since the start – there's just no beating Goku. 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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