Synopsis: Goku's non-combatant friends and family fly towards the battlefield in one of Bulma's airplanes. Bulma asks Roshi for directions again and Roshi tells her to go a little more to the left, which Karin seconds and tells them to head for underneath the light (the remnants of Vegeta's power ball) in the sky. Chi Chi begins choking Karin and demanding to know if Gohan really is still alive, and as Karin says 'probably', Roshi says that they really should have left her behind. As Chi Chi continues to go crazy, Roshi says that he can feel at least four or five energy sources at their destination, but they're all so weak...he wonders what happened down there. Karin says he can't say for sure as he didn't see it either, but he assumes this means the Saiyan must be gravely injured as well.
Vegeta's space pod hovers above the battlefield before landing on the ground beside him, and as Goku and Kuririn watch, Vegeta crawls out from underneath Gohan and heads for his ship. Realizing what Vegeta is up to, Kuririn struggles to his feet and heads towards the Saiyan to stop his escape, as Vegeta curses how hard it is to struggle to the pod in his current state. Seeing Yajirobe's sword on the ground, Kuririn picks it up, as Kaio-sama watches events unfold from his planet far away. Kaio-sama supposes that he really shouldn't play favorites, but given how much trouble Vegeta has caused across the galaxy...he only regrets that this won't stop the true source of evil, not at all. Vegeta crawls up, trying to get inside his escape pod, as Kuririn finally catches up with him. Vegeta curses as Kuririn raises the sword above his head and says this is for all the people the Saiyan has killed. Before Kuririn can plunge the sword into Vegeta however, Kuririn hears a voice inside his head telling him to stop. Kuririn and Kaio-sama are both surprised by Goku's telepathic request, as Goku explains that his body's too injured for him to talk right now. That says, he has one request for Kuririn – he begs him to let Vegeta go. Kuririn asks Goku if he's insane and reminds him of all the things Vegeta has done, warning him that if they let him go Vegeta is bound to come back to try to kill them again someday. Goku concedes that Kuririn is probably right. Kuririn says that if Goku is thinking Vegeta will see the light someday and change like Piccolo did, he's wrong – Vegeta's far too evil and doesn't have a leaf to turn over. Goku concedes that he knows how dangerous Vegeta is but confesses that all he can think of while watching Kuririn about to kill him is “what a waste.” Goku explains that after he finished training with Kaio-sama, he thought he'd reached the pinnacle of power, but Vegeta had been much stronger than him still. Goku was shocked, scared, but ultimately excited by the idea of fighting someone so much stronger than himself...Goku admits that this is foolish and attributes it probably to his own Saiyan blood. Goku pleads with Kuririn even while admitting that it's wrong to please let Vegeta live, because Goku wants to beat him on his own the next time that they fight. Kuririn struggles with Goku's request, but ultimately gives him what he wants, dropping Yajirobe's sword and allowing Vegeta to finish crawling into his space pod. Kuririn says that Goku has probably earned the right to be selfish for saving the world, but makes him promise to take care of Vegeta if he comes back looking for trouble. As the door on Vegeta's pod closes, the Saiyan laughs mockingly, saying that there won't be any miracles the next time they meet and telling them to enjoy life while they can. Once the door closes, the pod shoots into the sky and back out into space. Kuririn walks over and picks up a still unconscious Gohan as Yajirobe gets back up and calls them all idiots for not finishing Vegeta off. Goku apologizes to Kuririn for his unreasonable request, but Kuririn tells him not to worry about it – instead, they need to think about their friends that died and try to figure out if there's any way to bring them back. The two's conversation is soon interrupted by the arrival of Bulma and the others overhead in their plane. Review: It's interesting that this chapter opens up with Goku's friends and family on their way to the battlefield. The last time we saw them, in the manga at least (the anime adds quite a few different scenes, at least one of which I'll be touching on in the next chapter most likely), Bulma was keeping track of Goku's rapidly rising Kaio-ken power and the scouter exploded. They've basically been without any way to see how the fight is going or what's happening ever since, and I guess the curiosity finally got the better of them all and they're heading out to have a look for themselves. This might seem a bit foolhardy, but honestly, if their friends haven't won? They're all going to die soon anyway, so they may as well check in on things. And yes, as you can probably tell, this sort of reaction is going to basically be Chi Chi's contribution to the manga going forward. Buckle up, you haven't seen anything yet. As much as I forewarn and joke though, let's be fair and not lambaste her too heavily, because this is 100% a realistic reaction for someone to have when their child is on a field of battle and might not survive it – especially when said child is, you know, LITERALLY a child. Seeing Vegeta crawl away in such a pathetic manner is immensely cathartic after everything the Saiyans collectively have done, and it makes for a fittingly somber closing image for this arc. Our heroes may have won, but it's came at an extremely high price, making it bittersweet at best – it's a feeling we've never had when closing out a Dragon Ball arc before. Honestly, things have never been as bad as they are here either – they've saved the Earth, but due to Piccolo's death, the Dragon Balls are no more. No Kami means no easy way to bring them back either, they are quite literally up shit creek without a paddle as the old saying goes. And that's without even going into Kaio-sama's rather curious dialogue about how Vegeta's death is totally deserved, but ultimately won't take out the roots of evil in the universe. While one might choose to look at this dialogue as just an off-hand remark about how there's always going to be evil out there (and perhaps on some level, it is), it doesn't take being super familiar with the franchise to read it another way as well – there's still something specific and much more concerning than Vegeta out there. Neither Kaio-sama or the series itself offers any hint as to what that might be, but it certainly doesn't make this already dour ending any more hopeful. And before I talk about Goku's controversial request here, I should probably point out a small detail I forgot to bring up before – Goku's psychic now apparently. Starting here and a few other times in the future, there will be weird instances where Goku will communicate telepathically with people, and there's never really been an explanation for how or when he developed this skill. I guess it's just something we're meant to think he picked up after all these years of training, but it seems a little weird that he can do this so casually while he was impressed not that long ago by Kaio-sama doing the same thing. Granted he's doing it with the person on the receiving end being just a few feet away as opposed to many, MANY lightyears apart, as Kaio-sama does it, but still. The biggest thing in this chapter of course is what happens with Vegeta, or rather what doesn't happen. Kuririn is poised to finish him off for all that he's done, and to make sure they won't have to deal with him again in the future...but Goku stops him. And why does Goku stop him? ...Because he wants to fight him again in the future and win outright instead of technically losing and only winning via an extremely specific set of circumstances as he did here. This is a decision that no doubt surprised a lot of fans when it was first published. We've always known that Goku hates “cheating” and prefers to fight and win on his own, but never before have we seen his desire for a good fight trump what clearly would be the right decision, at least not quite like this. Yes, he spared Piccolo, but that at least had the caveat that doing so would keep the Dragon Balls active, as well as Goku having outright beaten him. Here however, there are no such guarantees – there's every chance Goku would just lose again if and when they had a rematch. Goku chalks this up to his Saiyan blood influencing him, and I'm inclined to agree with that assessment as, going forward? Goku's going to make quite a few more decisions that seem entirely fueled by a desire to fight, and they're going to be decisions that fly completely in the face of logic. As I've said before though, logical decisions don't always make for the best story – oftentimes, it's the illogical choice that does end up making for the most entertaining plot. Realistically speaking? Kuririn absolutely should have run that sword through Vegeta and put him out of all our miseries. He would have been completely in the right to, and nobody, not even Goku, could really have blamed him if Kuririn had blown off his request and just done the deed. That said however, while we've already seen Goku spare Piccolo once before, this time still manages to feel different just because of how crazy a decision it is. And with everything as dark as it is right now, even without knowing where the story goes, it'd be a pretty easy guess that Kuririn's right and things aren't going to go as smoothly as they have with Piccolo. I'll be holding off on making any 'final assessment' type commentary on Vegeta as of yet, simply because there is no 'final assessment' to be had – spoiler warning, there's going to be a lot more of him to come. I will say though that for this arc in particular, he has served as a pretty serviceable final villain. His personality is closer to Raditz's then Nappa's, but his ego-maniacal side is entirely his own, and there are definite hints as to what he's going to be like in later situations if you look closely at his conduct in his fight with Goku. Again, no final assessment just yet – but let's just say that both Vegeta's best...and his maddeningly, infuriatingly, RAGE-INDUCING worst...are both still to come. And with that to look forward to, this chapter brings the Saiyan arc to a conclusion. What's that, you might ask? This doesn't feel like the ending of an arc at all, there should be another chapter or something? Well, the last so many arcs have been pretty abrupt endings themselves if you look back over them, but this arc is unique in that it flows much more naturally into the next arc than any before, and definitely any after it as well. In fact, there's many fans who consider this arc and the next one to be one, super long arc, and there's definitely ample evidence to support that idea as well. As a result, this arc's ending and the beginning of the next one definitely feel like one story beat rather than two separate ones, so it's a little unfortunate to cut the story line here – but there are enough unique features to the following arc to consider it it's own thing in my opinion, as well as a few non-manga related things that I need to cover next, so here's where we'll be closing up shop on the Saiyan arc. As the first arc of the 'Dragon Ball Z' era, the Saiyan arc brought a lot of change to the world of Dragon Ball – in some ways, arguably more than any arc before or after it. The King Piccolo and the 23rd Tenkaichi Budokai arcs started the transition into a fully combat focused outlook for the series with gags and comedy taking a back seat, and the Saiyan arc brings that outlook to it's next step by shifting away from fantasy to a more sci-fi setting. Which style of Dragon Ball you prefer has long been a bit of a litmus test between fans who prefer the earlier, fantasy-comedy storylines, and the new, combat-sci-fi ones, but honestly I like them both. They both have their highs and lows, and it's clear that Toriyama has a deep love of sci-fi as well. It's definitely going to be fun to talk about the next arc as I get into it, because while it has a ton of weaknesses, it also has some of the best material in the original run of Dragon Ball in my opinion. I might be a bit biased though, because in this next arc? We're going to be getting to my own origin as a fan of Dragon Ball. 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
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