Synopsis: With their early morning training of milk delivery finished, Roshi moves the boys on to the rest of their first day of training. First, he sets them to plowing fields alongside a farmer, but unlike the farmer, Roshi forbids the boys from using any tools – they must till the soil with just their bare hands! Once that task is done, Roshi chastises them for taking so long and thus delaying their breakfasts, and warns them that they'll have to be faster the following day as the field they'll be working on will be that much bigger. With their first pre-breakfast training completed, Roshi treats the boys to a hearty breakfast at a restaurant before taking them back home where an easier part of their daily training begins next. Roshi says that a martial artist must strengthen their mind as well as their body, so he begins giving them school work in the form of literature, which turns out to be reading a passage from a rather naughty sounding book... After the reading is done, it's a little past noon, so Roshi has them all take a nap to rest their weary bodies for a while first before moving on to the next stage of training. After their naps, Roshi takes the boys to a construction site and puts them to work alongside the workers, allowing them to use the tools this time as well as to earn some money. After that's done, Roshi takes them to a nearby lake to do some swimming. Kuririn is horrified that they're still not done for the day yet, and Goku asks if Roshi can't teach them some moves instead of having them do all of this other stuff. Roshi scoffs, saying that they've barely begun to lay down the foundations of their training, it's far too early to be showing them any moves. He says that as soon as they can move a nearby boulder, they might be ready to be taught techniques. Kuririn says nobody could move a boulder that size, so Roshi pushes it to show him that it can be done. While Roshi considers the matter settled, Goku decides to try his own hand at pushing it and ends up pushing it even further than Roshi did. Roshi quickly tries to save face by saying he pointed at the wrong rock, and points at a much, much larger one next. Goku tries and fails to push it, “proving” Roshi's point about them being too green, but when the boys try to get him to move it, he quickly changes the subject back to swimming. Once the boys are in the water, what they thought at first would be a fairly peaceful 10 laps turns out to be much more dangerous when a shark starts chasing them. After their swim, Roshi ties the boys to one end of a rope and the other ends to a large tree, and tells them it's time to start practicing how to dodge an enemy's attack. To illustrate this, he knocks a beehive with his staff before quickly retreating behind some rocks, leaving the boys to deal with the bees, saying if they dodge quickly enough, they'll get stung less. After that, with both boys covered in stings, Roshi declares the day's training finished at last. They're relieved, but Kuririn asks Roshi if they'll really be doing such harsh training every day. Roshi scoffs and says that today was just a warm-up: starting tomorrow and lasting through the eight months before the tournament, they'll be doing the same training every day, now with the addition of having to wear 20-kilo turtle shells on their back the whole time! Review: This chapter manages to feel both really short and yet full of content all at the same time. I think this is because, while there's not a lot of story to this chapter really, there's tons of new content in terms of what we're seeing, and man is it going to be a rough eight months worth of training for Goku and Kuririn. Much like the milk delivery test, each of these training exercises Roshi is putting the boys through feels like something that, while hard work, wouldn't really qualify as martial arts training and probably not as strength building either, at least not in the terms of what we're expecting to see happen here. When taken to the point of ludicrousness that the training takes it though, it's both hilarious and a showing of just how extreme the Kame-style training really is. There is a pretty nice variety of activities shown too, even some down-time ones about midday. While education and resting might seem silly as martial arts training, it is true that a smarter person will be able to make more out of their physical skills, and it doesn't do anyone any good to overwork their bodies, so there's enough logic to everything going on for it to work in the long run. My personal favorite bit of training probably has to be the schooling bit too, with Roshi having them read passages from a dirty book, because of course he does. Jokes aside, Goku and Kuririn might have just received more sex education than most of us in the US ever did in school, now that I think about it... The scene with the boulders is about the only section where the story takes a breather for a moment, with both Goku and Kuririn questioning if everything they're doing really counts as training at all. It makes sense that Goku in particular would want to learn some techniques, since he's the only one of the two who's already picked up one just from seeing it before. There's more to it the scene than that though, as it's setting the seeds for where the arc is ultimately going, but I'll touch on that more when it happens. Ultimately, this chapter as well as the previous one exists to give us a day in the life of Goku and Kuririn's training, so that we can better envision what it's going to be like for them for eight months. Training will remain an important part of the story moving forward from here, but as time goes on, actually getting to see said training will start to fall to the wayside a bit unfortunately, and that's a shame. As this chapter shows, it's often some of the most interesting content the series has to offer, so to see it get glazed over later on just seems off somehow. Timeskips though? Those aren't going away anytime soon. Until next time! Favorite Panel:
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
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
Categories
All
|