Synopsis: Goku and Kuririn (holding a naked and unconscious Gohan) both watch as an airship full of their friends lands on the battlefield. Upon it's landing, Chi Chi rushes past everyone else to get off the ship, and runs to grab Gohan from Kuririn's arms, even leaping over her injured husband's body in the process. As Chi Chi tries to wake Gohan up and talk to him, Kuririn points out that it's Goku who's in the worst shape, but Chi Chi ignores him and promises Gohan that she'll never leave Gohan alone again. In contrast to her, Roshi, Bulma, and Karin all go to check on Goku who's in bad shape. Goku apologizes for letting the Saiyan get away and says there's no way to describe how strong he really was, as Kuririn tells Bulma that everyone else died, including Yamcha. Bulma says she figured that was the case, but says they can just wish everyone back in a year's time with the Dragon Balls. Everyone is silent for a moment before Goku tells Bulma that Piccolo died to, so the Dragon Balls are gone. Bulma thinks he must be joking and says that Karin said four people survived, so surely the fourth after Goku, Gohan, and Kuririn must be Piccolo, right? Yajirobe pops up and reveals his own survival, prompting Bulma to realize the Dragon Balls really are gone, and break down crying when she realizes that Yamcha won't be coming back. Roshi asks Karin if he knew it was Yajirobe and not Piccolo, a fact Karin remorsefully confirms, causing Roshi to lament his own assumption that it was Piccolo that survived as well. Yajirobe interjects and accuses them all of sounding like they wish he'd died instead, pointing out that he helped save everyone too, but Karin quiets him down by pointing out that everyone needs medical attention and he's out of senzu beans. Everyone carefully loads Goku onto the plane before it takes off again. With Bulma still overcome with emotion and crying, Roshi takes over piloting the plane as Kuririn gives him directions to the previous battlefield. Kuririn tries to console Bulma by telling her that he doesn't want to get her hopes up, but saying there could still be a chance to bring everyone back after all. Everyone is surprised by this statement, and Goku says that Kuririn said that once before as well and asks him what he means. Kuririn says the explanation will have to wait however as they've arrived, and when the plane lands, they stop to pick up Tenshinhan, Chaozu, and Piccolo's bodies. Karin and Roshi discuss their feelings about everyone's sacrifices and how they wish there was more they could have done, and as she takes back over the wheel, Bulma tells them to go have a good cry – it did wonders for her. As they take off into the air once again, Gohan wakes up at last and wonders where he is. Chi Chi starts to hug him and cry loudly, trying to console her little boy. Roshi tells Gohan he should be proud and Kuririn tells him the fight's over. Gohan asks Kuririn what happened to the Saiyan and Kuririn tells him he got away. Gohan worries about his father next, but Goku tells him they all made it out alive thanks to Gohan's help. Yajirobe notices that Chi Chi only seems concerned about Gohan rather than her husband, and Chi Chi angrily says she told Goku not to get their son mixed up in things like this so it's his own fault. Even Gohan objects to this and starts to say that the Earth itself was in danger, and when Chi Chi says she doesn't care about that, Yajirobe asks Goku if he can hit her. Bulma reminds Kuririn of what he was talking about before, and Kuririn tells them all about how the Saiyans already knew about the Dragon Balls by hearing Piccolo talk about them when they killed Goku's brother a year prior. He further explains that when the two other Saiyans saw Piccolo, they recognized him as an alien as well, a species called 'Namekian'. He finishes his recollection by bringing up what Vegeta said before Nappa killed Piccolo - “So it's true there are wish-granting orbs on Planet Namek as well. If we can't get the ones here, we should just go there.” Everyone is taken aback by this revelation, and Kuririn theorizes that if there really are Dragon Balls on this 'Planet Namek', then they can go there and use that set to wish their fallen friends back to life. Gohan is excited as this means Piccolo could come back as well (a thought that horrifies Chi Chi), and Kuririn realizes that if they do that, then their Dragon Balls should come back when Kami is revived as well. Everyone is excited by this idea to set things right, but Bulma interjects sadly and points out that they have no idea where this Planet Namek, if it even exists, is. Goku pipes in however to suggest that he ask Kaio-sama, as he has a feeling that he'll know where to find it. Review: As mentioned in the last chapter review for the Saiyan arc, this beginning of this arc works almost as much as an epilogue for that as it does the beginning of something brand new – hence why many people consider these two arcs to be one and the same. There really are no other arcs in the series that dovetail from one into the other quite as much as these two do (even the King Piccolo arc's lead-in to the 23rd Tenkaichi Budokai gets a time skip to handle some training off-screen first), and as such, most of what this chapter brings to the table is building off of where the last one left things rather than getting us anywhere new. Save for one big detail, that is. Before we get to that though, I suppose I've put it off long enough – let's talk a little further about what I like to call 'The Chi Chi Conundrum'. You'll notice, just as the characters do, that Chi Chi spends every bit of her time in this chapter worrying about Gohan and basically refuses to give a much more injured Goku more than a passing glance. Kuririn starts to point this out, and Yajirobe outright calls her out for it later in the chapter. Chi Chi's response? She's only concerned about Gohan at the moment, because this whole thing happened because she let Goku leave the house with Gohan in the first place. When even Gohan objects to this interpretation of everything that's happened in the past year, Chi Chi remarks that she doesn't care about the Earth itself at all, only her son. On a coldly clinical first look, this comes off as extremely unreasonable. On a certain level, it really is unreasonable too – after all, if there's no Earth, then there's no Gohan. That's thinking logically however, and I think that's a detriment to how a lot of people absorb this story beat. Think about it emotionally for a moment. I'm not a parent, but I can certainly empathize with Chi Chi and imagine how horrifying this whole ordeal would be for her. Think about it from her perspective for a moment - she let her child leave the house one day, only to find out that he'd been essentially kidnapped by someone her husband once fought to the death with, for the exact purpose of fighting people strong enough to blow up a planet when they arrive in a year's time. Her FOUR YEAR OLD child I might add. I've talked at length already about how insane that is to think about for Gohan, but it would almost be even worse for the like's of Chi Chi. It's also important to remember that this is a Chi Chi who has already seen what these fights can look like. She was there when Piccolo almost killed Goku. She doesn't want to think about the same thing happening to her son, but it's very likely that that's ALL she's been able to think about for the past year, a year where probably the only person who checked in on her at all was her father. So yes – it might be illogical to worry about her son to the point of saying she doesn't care about the Earth itself, and it might fly in the face of the ethos of the series as a whole (fighting because fighting is cool), but it ABSOLUTELY MAKES SENSE that she'd react this way. If anything, we should be feeling bad for her here rather than being annoyed by her, but the series is written in such a way that most tend to agree with the other characters reactions to her rather than Chi Chi's reaction. And I'm calling myself out for this too, because I've often opined in the past that Chi Chi could be really abrasive. The anime doesn't help matters either, as going forward, it's going to be how Chi Chi acts in this moment that they're going to run with for basically every filler scene of her character they'll ever produce, leaving her basically a shrill worrywart with nothing else to her character. They'll also put an even heavier emphasis on her concern over Gohan's studies – and don't get me wrong, she is absolutely concerned about his studies. The anime drives it in to such a point though that it's ludicrous how often that's all she talks about, and frankly, it's little wonder anime only fans are left with such a bad opinion of her as a result. Moving on from Chi Chi, there's also a couple of rather curious moments in this chapter that I don't think I ever really noticed before. Firstly, there's a few times that the subject of Vegeta's escape comes up – Goku apologizes for him getting away, and when Gohan asks about him, Kuririn says the same thing, that he “got away”. Neither of them mention that Goku CHOSE to let him get away, and other than a watching Kaio-sama and Vegeta himself, they're the only two that know. I'm...not entirely sure this ever comes up again anywhere else, so it's quite possible that none of the other cast ever learns that Goku did this really selfish and stupid thing or why he did it. Certainly makes you wonder about a similarly motivated choice made decades later (both in universe and in the real world) and how the characters react to THAT – Chi Chi may have actively divorced him if this had come out, good lord. But again, the logical choice isn't always the most interesting one, so that's the last I'll be talking about Goku's choice in regards to Vegeta for a while probably. The second interesting point is when they collect the bodies of their fallen friends. It's pointed out that Chaozu doesn't have a body left behind, and then we see two of the same kind of caskets Bulma made back in the King Piccolo arc being watched over by Roshi and Karin. Wait...two caskets? Yamcha, Tenshinhan...they surely didn't just leave Piccolo behind, right? I can't remember if the anime shows a better shot of everything to show them collecting his body as well but I'm just going to assume that Goku and Kuririn vouched for his body getting taken along as well – Gohan definitely would have, but he was unconscious at the time. This whole revelation actually gave me another one entirely, but I'll be touching on that one at a later date if I remember it hopefully, as it requires talking about a matter we won't be getting to for some time yet. Talking about Chi Chi's reaction earlier, there's another reaction in this chapter as well that's worth touching on, and that's Bulma's. Between the anime and manga, there's a bit of a division in how her grief and reaction is handled. In the anime, she already knew Yamcha was dead not through assuming but through actually seeing it with her own eyes via some help from Urunai Baba. There's a really great scene of her reacting to the loss in a heartbreaking and realistic fashion, and it's handled extremely well by the animators and actors both, to the point that Roshi doesn't even try to perv on her during it. Even the scene we get here, with Bulma realizing that Yajirobe is the one that survived instead of Piccolo, is handled differently in the anime to the best of my recollection – it's treated like a gag at least to the degree of Yajirobe's attitude, but her crying afterwards and as they gather everyone's bodies are treated with the full respect such a scene deserves. Here in the manga however, we don't see her reaction to Yamcha's dying because she didn't see it, she just figured with only four people left he must be one of those that died (wow, lot of faith in him there, huh?). When she realizes Piccolo died as well and has to deal with the fact that Yamcha won't be coming back, she breaks down in tears, but the way it's drawn and laid out in the panel comes off less emotional in comparison. It's not the worst it could have been, but I think I have to put this one down to Toriyama's limitations in regards to conveying more complex emotions – it just wasn't in his wheelhouse to handle this scene the way it really needed to be. With all of that done, we finally come to the reason this chapter is the start of the new arc rather than the end of the previous one. Kuririn tells everyone about what he overheard the Saiyans talking about, including Piccolo and Kami's alien origins, and the fact that there might well be another set of Dragon Balls out there on another planet out in space. If they could just get those, they could wish everyone back to life, and even seemingly get their own Dragon Balls restored in the process. The day is saved! Except, maybe not – as Bulma points out, they really don't have a lot to go on, and even if it is true, they have no way of knowing where Planet Namek even IS. If only they had some sort of galactic tour guide, or you know, an all-seeing deity that knows about space, to help them out at a time like this. ...Oh, wait. 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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