Synopsis: As the sun continues to set, Roshi says he has one more test in mind for the boys before their real training starts the next day. Goku asks if it's another race, but Roshi says no though running will be involved. Picking up a rock off the ground, Roshi scribbles the kanji for 'Turtle' on it before throwing it off a nearby cliff and into a jungle. He instructs the boys to find the stone and bring it back to him, to prove they have good constitution and stamina. The one who brings back the stone is the winner, and the winner is the only one who will get to eat dinner. As Roshi further adds the stipulation that if nobody brings it back in thirty minutes, neither of them will get to eat, Goku and Kuririn are horrified.
The boys rush to the edge of the cliff, and as Kuririn tries to figure out a way down, Goku launches down, catching a limb to slow his fall. It breaks, stunning him for a moment, but he's quickly back up and running after the stone. Kuririn realizes he's falling behind and starts to look for another way down when a sneaky idea occurs to him. He reasons that nobody could ever find one rock in a jungle that big in under thirty minutes, so instead he finds a similar looking rock and, borrowing a marker from a nearby household, makes his own 'Turtle' rock. While Goku continues searching for the real one by following Roshi's scent, Kuririn returns to the old master with his fake, pretending to be out of breath from a hard search. Upon observing it however, Roshi can tell it's a fake due to the different hand-writing, and throws it in Kuririn's face, ordering the little sneak to get back to looking for the real one. Now in the thick of the jungle, Kuririn barely manages to stave off an attack from a hungry sabertooth, just before seeing a Triceratops wander by, prompting him to wonder just what kind of jungle this is. He hears Goku loudly proclaim to have found the rock nearby, so he hurries over and finds that he really has. Kuririn takes the rock from him with the promise of checking it out, but runs off with it instead, causing Goku to chase after him. Kuririn tries everything he can think of to lose Goku, even cutting down a bridge he's just crossed, but it's no good – the other boy remains in hot pursuit. Eventually Kuririn is left with no choice but to stand and fight, but is quickly overwhelmed by the stronger Goku. Rather than returning the rock however, Kuririn throws it far away again, and Goku chases after it. Unbeknownst to him however, the rock Kuririn threw was his fake from before, and Kuririn returns to Roshi with the real rock this time. Later that night, Roshi and Kuririn enjoy a home-cooked meal from Lunch while Goku is forced to watch from the corner. The last laugh is on Kuririn however, as they all get food poisoning from poorly prepared puffer fish, delaying their training by a further three days. Review: The past few chapters have made for an excellent example of how the passage of time in this series basically moves at exactly the speed Toriyama needs it to. Sometimes, a solitary chapter will take care of one day in the character's lives, but other times multiple chapters, sometimes ones that you'd swear would have taken more time than that, all take place on a single day. This is nowhere near as extreme as it will later prove to be, not by a LONG shot, but it does bear mentioning now as this chapter concludes the first day of training under Roshi for Goku and Kuririn. Of course, even then this is only a prelude to their real training, which we'll start to see next chapter. Hunting for a rock is a peculiar training method to be sure, but once again, it's nothing compared to what Roshi really has in store for them. Despite Roshi's explanation for what it's meant to show off though, we don't really get much in the way of actually showing it off. Kuririn tries trickery while Goku hunts down the rock with his nose – neither one of these really shows off their constitution or their stamina. I guess it could be argued that the fact they still had enough energy to fight even after running all over a jungle is a pretty good indicator of stamina, but beyond that? Really, I think this was just Toriyama giving us one more 'adventure' style chapter before the training really begins, and we move squarely into fighting territory for a while. And hey, the fight does show definitively that Goku is indeed stronger than Kuririn, so it's not like it served no purpose whatsoever. I mentioned before that as much as I like the character Kuririn grows to be, I still enjoy his devious little shit routine as well, and that character quirk of his is on full display in this chapter. It's pretty foolish of him to think he can actually pull one over on Roshi of all people – I do love that his downfall comes from something as simple as different handwriting as well – but that's what's so funny about his attitude here. It's especially interesting to note how differently he comes off when his demeanor is broken somehow, but we'll talk more about that in a few more chapters, because I think the answer is fairly evident. Kuririn now makes the second character after Bulma to seem surprised by the likes of dinosaurs out in the wild. While Bulma's shock doesn't really make as much sense with information we later get about her background, it's telling that it seems to present the dinosaurs as something surprising. We never do get an answer for them either. Did they just never die off? Were they brought back to life somehow in some sort of Jurassic Park-esque way? Is it something else entirely? The world may never know. While Kuririn wins the fight, it's ultimately Goku that wins the war when his missing out on dinner is the only reason he doesn't get food poisoning. I'm kind of surprised the good-hearted Lunch didn't sneak him a little food though. It almost seems out of character for her to leave him hungry like that. Regardless, the puffer fish induced malady is another case of these characters being more than human for comedy purposes, given that this meal could prove quite a bit more fatal in reality from what I understand. This isn't the sort of series that would give us dead kids though, right? ...Surely not. Until next time! Favorite Panel:
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