Synopsis: Goku thinks that with Bulma's motorcycle and only four more balls to go, they'll have them all in a snap, but Bulma knows better and decides they should stop and set up camp for the night. She surprises Goku by making an entire house appear with one of her capsules, and he's even further surprised once he sees electricity for the first time.
Telling Goku that he stinks, Bulma insists that he takes a bath, but the boy has no idea what that is either. Bulma reluctantly helps him out, discovering that the tail she thought was some weird accessory was actually real all along. Goku guesses that since she doesn't have one it must be only boys that have them, an idea that Bulma, for all her smarts, can't really rebuke...until Goku mentions his grandpa didn't have one either, but grandpa was weird, so what can you do? Bulma then decides to take a bath herself, and is horrified when Goku waltzes right in, angrily driving him back out once he reveals he's only a few years younger than her. She threatens him afterwards, but Goku just says he's hungry. Disappointed with her food offerings, Goku again horrifies Bulma by going out hunting and returning with a wolf and some centipedes. After his 'dinner', Goku and Bulma talk for a while before going to bed, Bulma forcing him to sleep on the floor rather than sharing a bed despite Goku's insistence that he always used to use his grandpa as a pillow. The next morning however, Goku wakes up first and decides to hop into the bed to try out Bulma's crotch as a pillow. Something seems off however, and he removes her underwear to discover...'No balls!' His loud scream wakes Bulma up, who mistakenly thinks he was talking about the Dragon Balls. Once she sees that the balls are safe however, she tells Goku to stop having nightmares. Outside, a strange shadow approaches the house. Review: This chapter was a lot shorter than the first one, but also a lot heavier on the comedy. Like I said before, if you're not much for perverted humor, than early Dragon Ball definitely might be a bit more of a challenge for you to sit through, and it's definitely the crux of at least half of the jokes in this chapter. It's not all gags though. Right from the chapter's opening, Toriyama is already expanding what the technology of this world can do. We'd previously seen Bulma's capsules turn into a car and a motorcycle, so based on it alone you'd be safe assuming that it was only vehicles, but now we get a house out of one of them as well. I've always been curious exactly how these things are made. Like, were the items made from the ground up to be able to condense into a capsule, or were they pre-existing items that were then capsule-ized somehow? The series never really deigns to delve into it that much, so there's not really a good answer. I'd assume it was the former, but that's using real world logic – for all we really know, there's some sort of ray they zap things with, and BOOM, they can be capsules now. It really wouldn't be that out of left field for Dragon Ball. Goku not knowing what bathing is might be one of the most bizarre things about his early childhood. Not knowing what a tub is, sure, but bathing itself? Did Gohan never take him down to a river or a pond to wash up? Did Gohan HIMSELF not ever bathe? Questions that desperately need explained that you know what, never mind, I don't want to know, all at the same time. Bulma's discovery that Goku's tail is real is funny, but a little weird from a storytelling perspective. Sure, there's a chance that Bulma never saw it move herself earlier, but we as the audience have already seen Goku do all sorts of things with it, from using it a fish bait to untying a rope with it. We need no such assurances that the tail's legit, so it's a little weird that such a big deal is made out of proving that it's not. It does also drive home the point that even as worldly as Bulma is, she's still a young girl herself and doesn't know everything, so I guess it serves a purpose that way too. This chapter also reveals the ages of our protagonists, though one of those are going to get retconned in the near future. For right now though, Goku is stated to be 14, and Bulma says that's two years younger than her, making her 16. Really makes you think twice about enjoying some of that fan service, doesn't it? Amidst all of the gags though, we get a rather insightful conversation between Goku and Bulma that reveals more about their backgrounds as we'll learn about them later than I think Toriyama had anywhere near actually planned out – especially in the case of Goku. When Bulma asks Goku about his parents, Goku nonchalantly says that they must've abandoned him in the mountains which is where his grandpa found him. We learn much later of course the real truth about Goku being found in the mountains, but for now this is the only mention ever made about Goku's parentage or origins, even when questions about what he really is get raised by the end of this arc. It almost makes you wonder if Toriyama had something in mind for Goku's origins already, even if it wasn't what we ultimately got later on. But, again, given Toriyama's writing style of living-by-the-seat-of-his-pants, I sort of doubt it. In Bulma's case, she mentions only having 30 days left of summer vacation before she has to go back to school. This is shockingly mundane and normal, and really shows what a different world she really comes from compared to the country bumpkin that is Goku. And as we'll see when we finally see her home, her world really is quite normal – at least, by Dragon Ball world standards. And switching gears entirely to close out this review, we have Goku's infamous pat pat test and his horrified discovery that Bulma has, and I quote, 'No balls!'. Again, this is the sort of gag that you just will not find in Shonen Jump nowadays, standards have changed way too much in the 30 odd years since Dragon Ball came into this world. In a lot of ways, that's for the best, but I'd be lying if I said this gag didn't make me laugh every single time. What's less laugh-worthy though is the fact that Goku was also using Gohan's crotch as a pillow. Between that and the no bathing thing...there's some questions that we really, really don't need answers to. 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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