Synopsis: As night falls, Goku and Android 8 eat dinner at the girl's home, with Goku in particular eating enough to impress the entire family (including the girl's father who has since returned home) and the mayor. The mayor says they can't possibly thank Goku enough, and the mom says she still can't believe they went through all of this just for some ball. The father remarks that they never did find the Dragon Ball either, so he can't help but wonder where the thing ended up.
8 then reaches into his pocket and pulls out the two-star Dragon Ball, much to everyone's surprise. The father asks him where he got it, and 8 confesses that he found it one day while out taking a walk. When he heard that General White planned to kill all of the villagers as soon as it was found, so he hid it on himself to prevent that from happening. The mayor and the family are stunned, and the silence is finally broken by the mayor loudly praising 8 for his heroism. He says he's decided, he wants 8 to come live with him if he doesn't have anywhere else to go, as his wife and he would love to have someone like him come live with them now that they're alone. Goku tells 8 that this is great as he wanted to live with regular people anyway, but 8 is worried since he's an Android. The mayor insists that he's a better person than a lot of real people he knows, so he won't take no for an answer. Android 8 starts to cry and says the mayor is a very good person. 8 asks Goku if he'll stay with him at the mayor's as well, but Goku says he can't. The Dragon Ball they just found wasn't his grandpa's either, so he has to get back out there and find the one he wants. 8 says that he'll miss Goku, but Goku promises to come back and visit them all sometime. The mother asks Goku to spend the night at least, and he agrees, the mayor then saying that 8 should spend the night as well so he can spend more time with his friend before moving in tomorrow. As the mayor leaves, everyone heads to bed, with Goku changing into some pajamas the family gives him. The girl has both of Goku's Dragon Balls and is marveling at how pretty they are, and Goku says she can have those ones if she wants. She objects saying that the Red Ribbon would come back and kill them for them, and Goku agrees that she's probably right. As Goku packs the balls away, 8 sees the radar and asks if it's the one that White wanted so badly. Goku confirms and starts to show how it works only to discover that it seems to be broken. Goku wonders if it happened at some point while he was fighting since it was in his pocket the whole time. 8 offers to look at it saying that he's good with machines, but even he's unable to fix it, saying that it's too complicated. Goku realizes he has no idea where to go next without it, so he'll just have to take it back to Bulma and have her fix it. Goku remembers that Bulma said she came from a city to the west, to the girl tells him which direction that is. 8 asks Goku how he'll get there, and Goku says he'll just have to walk since he doesn't have any other way. The girl wishes they had a plane or car to give him, but they can at least give him lots of food to take with him, which pleases Goku greatly. As the trio head to sleep, 8 greatly enjoys the feeling of sleeping in a futon for the first time. The next morning, Goku surprises the villagers by saying he'll be walking to West City. He says that without kinto'un there's no other way, and an old man in the village asks him if he heard him correctly. It seems the old man and the mayor both know about kinto'un, saying that back in their youth there were a bunch of those clouds flying around, though only those of pure heart could ride them. The mayor says that if Goku really can ride one than he truly is special, but Goku says again that it got destroyed. The old man says that a kinto'un can't be destroyed and asks Goku if he's tried to call it since then, and Goku realizes that he hasn't. He decides to give it a try, and much to his delight, kinto'un comes flying down out of the sky. Goku is overjoyed to see his friend again and promptly hops onto it, waving goodbye to 8 and the villagers, and heading off to his next destination: Bulma's house in West City! Review: The Muscle Tower storyline came to an end last chapter really, so this one is all about bringing closure to it before moving on to the next story beat. It's once again something that Dragon Ball does fairly frequently that I miss a lot from newer Shonen Jump titles, as it lets the story cool down for a moment before launching into the next big thing every time. Don't mistake it being a cooldown chapter for it being pointless fluff however, as right from the start it decides to answer a lingering question from the very beginning of this storyline – just where in the heck is the Dragon Ball anyway? White's soldiers and the men they'd taken from the village had been searching for it for some time before Goku arrived, and nobody had ever yet found it. Even Goku almost seemed to have forgotten about it in the middle of everything else going on. As it turns out, his befriending Android 8 was the best thing he could have possibly done, as the gentle giant had it on him this whole time, proving himself to be the best of boys and the true MVP of this storyline. Sorry Goku, this is 8's show now, you're time is over. Goku's goodness in saving 8 is what allows him to finally gain a home with other caring people just like he'd always wanted though, so I guess we have to give Goku some due credit too though. That said, I don't really remember 8 ever actually saying he wanted to live with normal people before now...hmm. Goku having had the dragon radar on him this entire time does give it plenty of opportunity to get damaged. He's been knocked down several times, hit square in the chest by fists the size of his body multiple times, and he's even been electrocuted once. Any one of those things could potentially have damaged the thing, and he never really had the opportunity to check it out again before now either. This becomes the thread that connects us to the next portion of the Red Ribbon storyline, during which we'll be meeting up with some old friends again, and I'm looking forward to that. One can't help but wonder if that was always the plan (or at least as much of a plan as Toriyama ever has), or if ratings at the time sort-of dictated that it was time to see some well known faces again? Also, let us all take a moment to enjoy the precious cinnamon bun that is Android 8 in his too-small pajamas, quietly enjoying how comfortable a futon is. Freakin' ADORABLE. The story from the mayor and the other old villager about how there used to be kinto'un all over the place is especially curious because nothing of this sort was ever brought up before, nor is it ever brought up again later. Heck, we had some old folks in Oolong's village see the cloud and they didn't seem to know what it was. You could maybe say it was a regional thing, but if that's the case, why would that region be here in the snowy area, when the kinto'un originates from another area entirely as we'll later see? No, this really feels like just a contrived way for Toriyama to impart upon Goku the idea of calling for the cloud again so that it can show up despite it having been destroyed previously. These old guys know all about the clouds and they say that they can't be destroyed, so that HAS to be right, right? Yeah...it's an asspull, pure and simple. I guess it's better than Toriyama just having Goku “believe” and the cloud suddenly is just fine, but...I dunno. It's still pretty sloppy. Still, while that's a pretty damning moment considering it's pretty much the last moment of the chapter as well as the method of moving on to the West City storyline, I don't think it's enough in-of-itself to take away from the pretty satisfying conclusion that is this chapter. 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
|