Synopsis: The three young adult Namekians land before Freeza and his men, looking on at the scene before them in anger. Freeza chastises their arrival as annoying, as he feels they had just persuaded the elderly Namekian to give them the Dragon Ball and now they have to waste time killing these newly arrived Namekians instead. The adult Namekians realize that the rumors they've heard of invaders raiding other villages and taking the Dragon Balls must be true after all, and the elderly Namekian warns them to be careful as these invaders are strong. Freeza is amused that they seem ready to fight and has Dodoria check their power levels with his scouter. Dodoria chuckles as he clocks them all in at about 1,000 each, hardly even a challenge for them. Seeing this, the elderly Namekian realizes that the devices on the invader's faces must be how they've been able to find the villages scattered all over the planet. As Kuririn and Gohan note that none of Freeza's men seem to be able to figure out that the Namekians are hiding their true powers, the fight between the Namekians and Freeza's men breaks out. Freeza's men are instantly put on the backfoot much to Dodoria's surprise, and most of the lower level soldiers are killed. After kicking one of their own soldiers away as he was sent flying towards him, Zarbon asks Dodoria what's going on as the Namekians are performing far better than people with power levels of only 1,000 should be. Dodoria is confused himself, as his scouter now reads them all closer to 3,000. Freeza says that the Namekians must be capable of controlling their combat power at will, and Dodoria recalls having heard of such races before. Watching all of this go down, the eldest Namekian observes that there are only three working scouters left due to the fighting – one on the ground, one on the face of a downed Freeza soldier, and Dodoria's. He tells the two Namekian children to step away from him, and as Dodoria sets his Dragon Balls down and asks for Freeza's permission to kill the three Namekian fighters, the elder launches his own attack. Firing a blast from his fingertip, the elder destroys Dodoria's scouter, catching him as well as Freeza and Zarbon by surprise. Dodoria laughs and asks if such a weak attack was meant to take him down, but the elder then leaps into the air and fires two more energy blasts, destroying the other two scouters. Zarbon realizes what the old man's true goal was too late, and Dodoria screams in rage, declaring that he'll kill all of them for this. Review: The Namekian resistance begins! After a handful of chapters showing just how overwhelmingly the odds are stacked against the 'forces of good' right now, this chapter comes along to give us a little bit more hope. Between the understandable rage these Namekians are feeling towards the invading Freeza and his men, and the fact that they have the ability to hide their true power, it looks like they might just have a chance at turning the tides as well. On that latter note, the Namekians' ability to hide their true powers? This further cements the idea that Kami knew how to do it due to his own Namekian heritage, thus kind of recycling this concept from a spiritual one to an alien one, and...I'm not really feeling that, if I'm being honest. We're very much at a point in the story where things are leaning as heavily sci-fi as they can, and that does sometimes come as a detriment to the more mystical side of the franchise unfortunately. It's nice when the two ideals can coincide though, and even with this redefinition of the ability's origin, you can still basically roll with the idea that it's still a spiritual skill, just one that's origins can be traced to a planet other than Earth's – not everything about an alien race has to be technological, after all. Seeing the Namekians kick ass is a really fun moment, with some great panel choreography on display – we might be well past my favorite style for Toriyama, but even at this point, he still has it in spades. Also shout out to the poor soldier who Zarbon just kicks backwards into a lake. Don't worry buddy. Your day will (inexplicably) come. As the fight starts and goes on, the old Namekian makes the most of his own downtime here and puzzles out exactly how these invaders have been finding and massacring his people so far. It's clear that he's never seen anything like the scouters before, but he easily determines their function and the fact that there's only a couple of them left. If he can just take those out of the equation, then while it's still possible he and his brethren in the immediate vicinity will die, they can at least rest in peace knowing they've set the invaders plans back a good bit if nothing else. This all works great to further endear us to these people we've only just met (and don't even have names for), and when the old man sees his chance, he wastes no time in taking it. With the scouters taken out however, Dodoria's anger is rising, and Planet Namek might not be out of the woods just yet... 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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