Synopsis: Goku and Jackie Chun rush each other, each intending to strike one final blow and win the match. Both competitors leap into the air, flying towards the other with flying kicks. Both attacks land, with Goku kicking Jackie in the face and Jackie likewise kicking Goku in the face. Both fighters fall backwards, landing on the ring, seemingly knocked out. The announcer starts a ten count, and though both fighters regain consciousness quickly enough, neither of them are able to get back onto their feet before the ten count has passed. The announcer brings up an old tournament tradition saying that if a match ends without a winner, the first contestant who can stand, smile, and loudly proclaim their victory will be declared the winner. Both Goku and Jackie Chun struggle to get to their feet, with Goku eventually managing it first. He smiles, but before he can finish declaring his victory, he falls back over, unconscious. As Goku sleeps, Jackie finally manages to get back onto his own feet, and successfully declares his victory. The winner of the 21st Tenkiachi Budokai is officially Jackie Chun! As the crowd cheers but Goku's friends feel dejected, Roshi thinks to himself how thin the margin for his victory really was. The only reason he took less damage from Goku's kick than Goku did from his was because Goku's legs were shorter, and therefore Roshi's kick struck deeper. He thinks of how proud he is of his student for pushing him so far however, as nobody ever has before. Goku wakes back up in time to hear the announcer once again proclaim Jackie Chun's victory, and Jackie confirms to the boy that he did indeed lose. Goku is disappointed but quickly gets over it, and happily asks Jackie Chun if he'll fight him again someday when Goku has trained and gotten even stronger. Jackie Chun reluctantly agrees, while Goku's friends continue to cheer for him even after his loss. Review: At long last, the 21st Tenkaichi Budokai comes to a conclusion, and the victor actually wasn't our lead at all! Despite this chapter being fairly light on actual content, it does provide a good little bit to talk about, and first and foremost is that very notion. I talked a lot back during Goku's match with Namu about how Namu didn't stand a chance ultimately, because Goku was the main character and thus of course he was going to win. While that was certainly true in it's own right, there was no way we weren't going to see Goku get to the final round at least, we've now found ourselves in a situation where at the end of the story, that didn't hold true at all. While Toriyama made sure to tell us why it might be a good thing for Goku to lose early enough on, we were treated to a match that was so close, so down to the wire, that it almost didn't happen at all. Looking at it from that perspective, where there's two different narrative elements telling us two very different outcomes, this match definitely would have had people on the edge of their seats when it was originally coming out for the first time. I think those are two very important elements to consider when analyzing Dragon Ball that a lot of fans overlook. First of all, is trying to look at it in a way that's detached from everything that comes out after what part you're currently on. With a series as long and as old as Dragon Ball, it's almost literally impossible to do that completely – hell, I'm certainly not pulling it off here. But so long as you remind yourself that a bunch of this was designed to keep young Japanese children on the edge of their seats from week to week, wondering what's going to happen, you'll likely start to find that a lot of your annoyances with certain elements of the story don't matter or bother you as much as you think they do – so long as the story's ending sticks the landing anyway. And for this story arc, I'd certainly say that it sticks it. The other important thing to remember is something that only fellow writers or story enthusiasts are likely to notice or care about, but I do feel like it's important, and that's giving the readers what they want or expect versus giving them something that goes against that. In this case it's a little more muddied, since both the prospect of Goku winning and the prospect of him losing have both been made to feel like good endings for his character. If he wins, he wins; if he loses, he learns the lesson Roshi wants him to learn, and we'll thus get to see him go on many more adventures and get stronger and stronger as he goes. Even with that said though, the expectation lingering in the back of your head is probably still one of Goku's victory. We've not truly seen him fail yet after all, and even Roshi is constantly being surprised by how good he is, so maybe Goku will win and be surprised enough by how hard he had to fight to get there that he'll still learn the lesson, proving Roshi's fears unfounded. In a lot of ways, the expectation is to have Goku win. But we don't get that. We instead get him losing, albeit by one of the narrowest margins imaginable. While the story made sure to brace people first with how this could be good for him, it's still the opposite of your basic expectations. This is the balancing act that I feel every author finds themselves performing many, many times in their career or hobby. What does the audience want versus what does the story need? If the audience gets everything they want, does it feel deserved and does the story still function that way? If the audience doesn't get what they want, will they still feel fulfilled by what they're given instead? There are really no absolute right answers here. It's down to luck just as much as it is skill, as even some of the most celebrated authors of all time have some narrative decisions that fans have decried as lackluster. Whether he was conscious of doing it or not, I feel completely assured that Toriyama was thinking about these things as he decided how to end this tournament, and thankfully it seems like his gambit paid off – I have never once in my nearly 25 years in the fandom ever heard someone say they wish Goku had won the 21st tournament for any reason whatsoever. With all that heavy authorly talk out of the way, there's one last thing I'd like to say in regards to how Goku lost. After how big things got – literally – with the giant ape versus full power Kamehameha scene, I mentioned that Toriyama was going to have to scale things back down now since there wasn't going to be a way to outdo himself there. He did so perfectly, and by having Goku's loss now be tied to something completely incidental, something that there's nothing he could do about even if he realized what was going on, it makes it easier to stomach his loss no matter how much you may have been rooting for him. It allows him to lose the match without necessarily having lost the fight – he's clearly at least almost Roshi's equal in strength now, so if he'd been even just a little bit older and taller, this may have ended differently for him. Fate's fickle that way, isn't it? Until next time! Favorite Panel: Next Time: On the road again – Goku's next journey begins!
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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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