Synopsis: As Chi Chi and Gyu-mao fly towards Kame House in a flying car, Gyu-mao tries to get his daughter to calm down, but she's not having any of it. She told Goku to be back home with their son by dark and it's now the next day. Gyu-mao thinks he probably just lost track of time since it'd been so long since he saw his friends, but Chi Chi doesn't think that's a good enough excuse to mess up Gohan's studying. Gyu-mao says that he's only four and can probably miss a day of studying and be fine, outraging Chi Chi who tells him that with the world being so competitive nowadays, it's never too early to get an edge. At Kame House, a tired Bulma finally finishes working on Raditz's scouter, and is delighted and ready to show off her work...only to find that Roshi and Kuririn have both fallen asleep. She shoots them awake with a machine gun, saying that if she doesn't get to sleep, none of them do. She then tells Roshi to step forward, and she scans him with the scouter to show that it works and that she's reprogrammed it to work with Earth's numerical system. She gets a reading of 139 for Roshi's power level, followed by getting a reading of 206 for Kuririn. Kuririn is overjoyed to be stronger than his master, though Roshi wonders if it's really fixed after all. Bulma says the best thing about the scouter is that it also tells you how far away a reading is, so they can use it to find the others. She proves this by picking up on power levels of 250 and 177 at various distances away, with Kuririn and Roshi surmising that those readings must be Tenshinhan and Yamcha respectively. She then picks up a reading of 329 that they attribute to Piccolo, and though they briefly consider going to pick up Gohan from that location, they decide against it in the end. Roshi says that he trusts Piccolo actually does have a plan in mind, but they also realize what would happen if they tried to defy Piccolo and his much higher power level. Bulma thinks that if they gather everyone and split up, they'll be able to gather the Dragon Balls that much faster, but their conversation is soon interrupted by the arrival of Yajirobe. Kuririn recognizes him from Karin's tower but doesn't remember his name right away, greatly annoying Yajirobe. Yajirobe says that Karin knows what's been going on, and sent him to gather Kuririn, Yamcha, Tenshinhan, and Chaozu, saying that the five of them are all going to be training with Kami. Kuririn is overjoyed at the prospect of training with Kami, and as he leaves, Yajirobe also passes on Goku's request that they not bring him back for a full year since he's training in the afterlife, telling them to talk to Baba for more information. Yajirobe leaves, but the group soon spots what they think is him coming back, only for it to turn out to be Chi Chi and Gyu-mao instead. Everyone panics as they wonder how to tell her what's happened and what her reaction is going to be, and Chi Chi is naturally horrified and shocked when she's told that Gohan was taken by Piccolo. Gyu-mao asks what Goku was doing during all of this, and Roshi reveals that Goku is dead currently, causing an overloaded Chi Chi to faint. Six months pass, and Kuririn, Yamcha, Tenshinhan, Chaozu, and Yajirobe all train at Kami's sanctuary to get stronger. In the afterlife, Goku continues to run down the Serpent Road heading towards Kaio-sama, while down below on the Earth, Gohan has become much more self sufficient than he was before. He's become able to gather food all on his own, and also isn't scared of the large carnivorous dinosaur that keeps hounding him anymore – in fact, he's able to dodge out of the way of it's attack and slice off part of it's tail to cook and eat, something he's apparently been doing for some time as the dinosaur's tail is already much shorter than it should be. Watching this from above, Piccolo is pleased to see the progress that Gohan has already made, and thinks to himself that it might be time to start training Gohan for real. Review: I knew I'd come to a bit more of an issue with where I reviewed filler pretty quickly once I hit the 'Z' portion of the franchise, but even I didn't expect it to happen, uh, pretty much immediately. Dragon Ball Z, for better and worse (often worse) has a lot more filler than it's predecessor ever did, both in original stories that I'll be covering, and the moving around and stretching out of canon material that I won't be covering. As a result, especially when bouncing back and forth from the anime and manga both, there's going to be times where I won't have been able to pick an exact perfect placement for where to cover certain things. This chapter actually makes the perfect example for that. I chose to review the previous two filler episodes first based on where they found Gohan – untrained and still learning how to get better at surviving on his own, prior to Piccolo actually training him at all. That worked out great from that angle, but as you'll have just read, this chapter also shows what some of the other characters are up to, and some of their scenes take place prior to the Yamcha storyline in the last filler, with one scene at the end of this chapter taking place after some of the filler we'll have yet to cover. So basically, follow along as best you can if any of this material is new for you, because there's really no easy way to cover it in the fashion that I am. It's definitely a weakness to this method, and why I wouldn't recommend someone experience the series for the very first time in the order that I'm doing it here. With all of that out of the way, let's go over what this chapter actually shows us. Starting off, it's our first introduction to the new looks and somewhat different personalities for Chi Chi and Gyu-mao (though Gyu-mao is basically as he was in the last filler of the first anime series). Chi Chi...is a complicated character. After marrying Goku and becoming a mother, her personality seems to have done an almost complete 180, and she has absolutely no interest in fighting at all anymore. This is a bit of a shame – she was shown to be at least fairly proficient in the previous arc, she made it into the tournament proper after all. At the same time, she only came to the tournament to find Goku in the first place, so it's hard to say how serious she ever really was about martial arts in the first place. Regardless, for her to have come to a point that she seems to loathe the idea of them is extremely unfortunate, as it often leaves her acting like a wet blanket for many of her scenes – ESPECIALLY in the anime. In fact, most fans view her as little more than a nag. Chi Chi can certainly rub me the wrong way a lot of the time too – there's at least one scene in the future that I have and will always hate – but let's be fair to her here. In the last arc, she went from being overjoyed at finding her husband, to realizing the kind of crazy life he's lead, to seeing him almost die before her very eyes. It'd be pretty easy to imagine her having internalized all of that as 'martial arts are dangerous', and thus decide that she doesn't want anything at all like that for her kid. Chi Chi was also always shown to be the kind of person who was in love with the very idea of being in love, and probably spent much of her time imagining what her perfect family life was going to be – it's not that far of a leap for her to lose interest in fighting if it doesn't fit with that ideal of hers. And let's not forget either – Gohan is FOUR. How many mothers do you know that would actually be thrilled at the idea of their FOUR YEAR OLD having to save the world? I'd guess not many, as most would be rightfully horrified at the idea. Chi Chi can be annoying to have around in the story, but that's because the story itself is focused on fighting and having fun – in reality, her reactions would be entirely realistic. Most of the time anyway. Bulma having finally fixed the scouter serves a two-fold purpose. Mainly it's going to be the way that they find everyone as everyone's ki sensing skills aren't quite up to the point that they can easily detect people from across the globe just yet, but it also serves as a bit of a way to finally put the background characters in a more exact pecking order, at least for where they stand at this point. Roshi is retired, but even so, he serves as a good baseline to show how absurdly strong our heroes are compared to normal people (don't forget the farmer registered a mere 5 after all). From there, Kuririn is much stronger, but his power level is lower than who they figure must be Tenshinhan. They then surmise that Yamcha is the other power level they pick up on, placing him as stronger than Roshi but still weaker than Kuririn or Tenshinhan. And Chaozu...isn't picked up on at all. I don't know whether that's funny or just really, really sad. They also pick up on Piccolo's power level, showing both how far behind they all are currently, while also driving further in how far they have to go if they're going to stand a chance against the Saiyans. Which is where Kami's offer to train them comes in. Based on the panel we get to see of it, Popo's still involved of course, but it looks like Kami might be more directly involved this time around, how nice of him. Like with the Karin training many of the characters went through before, you'd at first wonder just how much they can really improve when going through training that's a step behind, but don't forget that we've been through this once before already. Goku trained by himself at Karin's and made great improvements, but it's arguable that Kuririn, Yamcha, Tenshinhan, and Chaozu all made even greater improvements there because they had each other to train with and against. They're all now doing that again, but with the addition of Yajirobe, at a much more intense training location – there's really no telling just how much these guys are going to be able to improve. And yes, I'm somewhat sighing in knowledge of what's to come right now. From there, the chapter also skips ahead from where we've seen Gohan as of the last episode, as he's now able to take care of himself fully. Not only is he still able to go and get food all on his own, but the likes of the carnivorous dinosaur aren't even a concern for him anymore – in fact, HE'S the one eating the dinosaur now. If being able to eat part of a T-Rex thing and live to tell the tale isn't a sign that you're ready for some demon style training, I don't know what is, and Piccolo seems to agree. Until next time! Favorite Panel: Next Time: Who needs Raid when you have Saiyans?
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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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