Synopsis: Goku and Bulma investigate the seemingly abandoned village, and when Goku lets himself in to one of the houses, he's suddenly attacked by a man with an axe! Luckily, Goku's skull is hard enough that the axe just breaks over his head. Afterwards, the rest of the village comes out of hiding, and the man explains that he was trying to protect his daughter from a monster called Oolong. The monster, he explains, is a vile shapeshifter who has continuously kidnapped away the young daughters of the village, and now has his sights set on the man's daughter.
Sensing an opportunity, Bulma shows one of their Dragon Balls to the villagers, and an old lady says she has one just like it. Bulma strikes a deal with them – if they (and by they she means Goku) can stop this Oolong monster, they get the Dragon Ball. The old lady agrees, though doubts that the pair can actually pull this off. Bulma quickly comes up with a plan and dresses Goku up in some of the little girl's clothing. She sends him outside once Oolong, in the form of a giant ogre, arrives, intending for Goku to trick him and get taken away so they can find where Oolong's hideout is. At first, the trick appears to work, but when Goku starts to tremble with the need to pee, Oolong mistakes this for fear. He transforms into a debonair man that might be more to 'her' liking, which draws out Bulma instead. Now torn between the girl he came for and this new arrival, Oolong is distraught, but not as much so as when he catches Goku peeing and figures out that he's been deceived. Enraged, Oolong transforms into a gigantic bull, ruining any interest Bulma had in him, and prepares to kill Goku for tricking him. Goku's equally eager to fight, and Bulma yells for him to just make sure he doesn't kill Oolong so they can make him take them to the girls. Review: Another chapter where, while a character is technically introduced here, it feels more appropriate to talk about them in their follow-up chapter. So for now, I'll hold back my thoughts on Oolong for the most part. Instead, let's talk about the setup for the story here and for Goku and Bulma to add another Dragon Ball to their collection. It feels very vide-game like, doesn't it? Go to this random village where what they need just so happens to be, defeat this side-boss to claim it – it very much feels like it'd be right at home in something like Dragon Quest. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, mind you – it's certainly more entertaining than them just finding the ball in the wild like they will seem to often enough later in the series. What makes this hunt so different than the other ones is that, for this first time and really just this first time alone, the Dragon Balls aren't just a means to an end. Finding them isn't just something they need to do to further the story, it IS the story. Ergo, they need interesting things to do and interesting characters to encounter to make the hunt for them fun to follow along with. So looking at it from that perspective, this storyline already has more going for it than their last Dragon Ball gain. Sure, meeting Kame-sennin becomes greatly important afterwards, and he's a fun character to have around, but I can't really deny them getting a Dragon Ball from that encounter feels a little wasteful after the fact. And yes, I hear what you're thinking. 'But Gyt, this village just so happens to have a Dragon Ball too, how's that any different?' Well, in this case they went to this village specifically BECAUSE Bulma's radar said there was a Dragon Ball there. A Dragon Ball being their reward for whatever it is they get mixed up in there was always a card that was on the table. Taking the turtle back to the sea though? That never had any promise of a Dragon Ball by the end of it, they just lucked out severely and got one by fate. I guess you could argue that it's a reward to showcase why helping people (like Goku wanted to do) rather than not (like Bulma didn't want to) is a good thing and you'll be rewarded in the end...but I don't really think that's the sort of story Toriyama likes to tell. Even if it was, Goku already gets the kinto'un there, so it's a moot point really. Speaking of dubious lessons, as of this chapter Goku has matured enough to tell girls and boys apart! And by that I mean he's realized he can pat people's crotch to feel what sort of junk they have or don't have and can figure it out from that. Yes, the one gag from a few chapters back makes it's glorious return here, and I love it so. Is it stupid? Is it something that's entirely unacceptable in real life? Of course it's both of those things, but here I can't help but find it hilarious. I said I wanted to save most of my talk about Oolong for next chapter, but there is one thing that I want to note here that tends to get overlooked sometimes I feel, and that's his age. Probably due in no small part to most of his English dub voices sounding like chain-smokers, a lot of people seem to think of Oolong as another pervy old man, not so different from Kame-sennin. In truth though, he's roughly the same age as Goku. He says as much himself when Bulma tells him she's 16 and he starts fantasizing about her, 'she's 16, older than me...'. So while Oolong's perverse nature is still pretty outrageous, I guess you can at least blame some of it on the inquisitiveness of youth? ...Okay, he's still kidnapping girls, so maybe not so much. Speaking of Bulma, this chapter does a fine job of reiterating just exactly HOW vain she really is too. We've already seen multiple times that she considers herself to be pretty much perfect, and we know she wants to use the Dragon Balls to wish for a perfect boyfriend. When she's bathing Goku though, we learn that she doesn't know much about boys overall though, so she's more inexperienced than she might otherwise let on. Here with the “handsome” Oolong though, she's throwing herself at him as hard as she possibly can, even proudly declaring her bust size! I don't think I need to go into why that's uh...really, really not the smartest thing in the world to do at her age, but again, Bulma's genius is only matched by her vanity, and apparently her lust too. Man, Goku's the only character at this point in the series that's NOT horny on main, isn't he. 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
|