Synopsis: Five years after the Tenkaichi Budokai, a farmer is working his fields when he sees a mysterious object crash down from the sky. Thinking it might be a meteor, or even a UFO, the farmer drives over to investigate it. In the crater created by the crash landing, he spies a weird ball-shaped ship. As the ship door opens, a large man with long black hair and wearing bizarre armor and an eyepiece on his face steps forward and leaps out before him. The bizarre man scoffs at seeing the farmer, cursing 'Kakarot' for letting life still exist on this planet. The farmer naturally begins to freak out, demanding to know who this intruder is. The device on the man's face beeps and the intruder laughs, mocking the planet for this man's 'power level' only being 5. As the intruder approaches him, the man fires his shotgun at him, but the intruder merely catches the bullet and flips it back at the farmer, killing him instantly. As the intruder scoffs again at this clearly being a planet of weaklings, the device on his face suddenly beeps again, detecting a much stronger lifeform some distance away. Wondering if this is 'Kakarot', the man flies off in the direction of the reading. In a desolate wasteland, Piccolo stands alone when he suddenly senses an incredible power coming towards him. He wonders if it's Goku, but to his surprise, it's the intruder, a man he's never seen before. As the intruder lands before him, he scoffs at Piccolo for not being 'Kakarot' at all. Piccolo asks the intruder if he has business with him, to which the intruder says no. Piccolo asks him if he came here to die then, and the man laughs, calling him feisty. As the intruder scans Piccolo with the device on his face, he remarks that although Piccolo's power of 322 is more than he expected on this planet, it's still nothing compared to him. Piccolo asks the man if he has any idea to whom he's showing such insolence, and the man quips back that he doesn't really care. Piccolo is unnerved, wondering how powerful this man thinks he is. Piccolo launches a surprise attack, blasting the intruder at point blank range, but as the dust clears, the intruder is revealed to be entirely unscathed. As Piccolo stands aghast at this, the man offers to show him 'real' power now. Before he can do anything however, the device on his face beeps again, picking up an even stronger power. Flying back into the air, the man remarks that though the power is some distance away, it seems to be the strongest power on this planet – surely it's Kakarot for real this time. As Piccolo falls to his knees and deals with how outclassed he was, to the point of actually feeling fear, the man flies off and asks 'Kakarot' if he's lost the pride of the Saiyan warriors, with imagery of 'Kakarot' showing a baby Goku. Review: Right from the start, this chapter shows a marked difference to any other chapter of Dragon Ball we've had thus far. Not only is five years a bigger time skip than any we've had before, there's absolutely no Goku in this chapter. Even the filler that didn't concern Goku generally still had him in some way (and the anime adaptation of this episode would likewise include scenes of Goku), but this chapter just plain doesn't. If it wasn't for the reveal at the end, you wouldn't even know for a fact that it was him that 'Kakarot' was referring to. This revelation and the revelation to come are all old hat for long time fans of the franchise of course – heck, for US based fans, some of this is older to them than any of the previous material I've covered – but try and think about what this chapter must have been like for fans when it was first coming out. Not only are you treated to a chapter completely devoid of the lead character, you also get a bizarre man crash landing from space (at least, that's what all the implications so far imply anyway), killing a man, and then going on to upstage PICCOLO of all people? Keep in mind that Piccolo is the second strongest person in the world at this point in time, and that not even Goku's last fight with him had him pulling off anything quite like this intruder does against him. Goku's victory over Piccolo was hard earned – this guy shrugs him off as absolutely nothing. There's a great air of mystery here even beyond this man's power however. Where did he come from, is he actually an alien like the chapter implies? If so, what did he come here for – well, that part's somewhat answered in his search for 'Kakarot', but that small answer only serves to bring even bigger questions. Is Goku really 'Kakarot', and if so, what's his connection to this guy? What are 'Saiyan' warriors? What's this device that this guy has that seems to be able to detect people's locations and how strong they are? And the biggest question of all – what does this guy want with Goku once he finds him? On the one hand, I can see why this was seemingly the perfect jumping on point for a lot of fans, and why FUNimation decided to start with this material via the 'Dragon Ball Z' anime when they first brought it over. It wasn't like attempts hadn't already been made with the original Dragon Ball as well, and that likewise always seemed to fail. This arc is going to continue the new standard for Dragon Ball that first started with the 23rd Tenkaichi Budokai, or arguably even before that with the King Piccolo arc, and it also benefitted from being the start of that second anime rather than having well over a hundred episodes to get through before getting to this point. At the same time though, I still can't help but feel that the franchise starting off with this material in the US has done it a really big disservice. It's resulted in a lot of fans overlooking the previous material to a shocking level, to the point that even with the manga, a lot of people treat it like an entirely separate series (something that Viz didn't really help by likewise separating the series into 'Dragon Ball' and 'Dragon Ball Z' when no such distinction existed outside of the anime in Japan). It's also frankly astounding, and a testament to how good the series is, that fans were able to not only follow but properly get engaged with the series by just dropping in like this. It won't be long before a good handful of familiar faces start to pop up, and it's baffling to imagine just having to go along with this group of characters with barely any indications who they are and what they've been through to explain why they care about each other. But that's exactly what we did. I'm getting a bit off topic of this chapter itself, but bear with me for a moment. While this introduction to the franchise was hardly ideal in the long run, that's exactly how a lot of fans in the US first got into the series. It's how I did as well, though my jumping on point came quite a bit later in the series. It's insane to think how so many of us just went along with half the story untold and managed to make any sense of who these characters were, but frankly? We did that a lot back in those days. The US anime scene in the late 90's and early 2000's wasn't what it is today. Streaming wasn't a thing, and you could forget about simuldubs or even simulsubs, especially on the official release side of things. Some people did have the benefit of being in an area where they could take advantage of trading fansub tapes, but in my and many other people's cases, we were stuck with whatever came on TV via the likes of Toonami and Adult Swim, and a lot of times – especially before the invention of DVR – you didn't always have the benefit of coming into a series at the very start of it, even if it was presented to viewers in that way. It would be years after first encountering it before I saw InuYasha from the very beginning, for example, and for a long time anytime I watched any part of it, I was working with extremely vague notions of who the characters were and why they did what they did. I do sometimes miss the wonder of dropping into a series with barely any idea what was happening, but overall I think it's best that that's a notion left to the past – stories are always at their best when you get to experience them from the very beginning. So basically what I'm saying is, enjoy your streaming, official simuldubs and simulsubs, and readily available DVD and Bluray box sets, kiddos, because back in my day, we had to walk ten miles home to watch something on TV and hope that the VCR recorded the ones we missed to tape in our absence. We walked ten miles. Both ways. THROUGH SNOW. Kami, I'm getting old. Until next time! Favorite Panel: Next Time: Don't you hate it when someone crashes your reunion?
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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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