Synopsis: As Goku and Bulma fly along on kinto'un, they soon come once again to the ocean, with Goku hoping that this next Dragon Ball turns out to be the one his grandfather left to him.
Back at Red Ribbon HQ, Red follows Goku's path on their radar, with his assistant remarking that it looks like the boy's heading for the ball that General Blue is searching for. Red reminds a nearby soldier to make sure that Blue knows he want this kid killed as soon as he's spotted, and the scene changes to General Blue being annoyed with his men that they still haven't found the Dragon Ball. One of his men assures Blue that they're searching as hard as they can, but considering the ball seems to be on the ocean floor, it's really hard to search for. Blue doesn't want to hear any excuses, but his attention soon turns to another soldier that he spotted picking his nose. He denounces it as a filthy habit and orders his other men to execute the nosepicker immediately. As Blue enjoys the sound of the man being shot, another soldier says they've received word from HQ that the boy seems to be heading their way. A soldier asks Blue if this isn't the same kid that took out Silver and White companies, and Blue says he is but doesn't seem worried. Rather, he thinks this is all turning out to be very exciting. Goku complains about the heat of the sun as they fly over the ocean, and Bulma finally yells for him to stop, the radar showing the Dragon Ball somewhere right below them. It's ocean as far as the eye can see, so Bulma says it must have sunk to the ocean floor. She tells Goku to land on a nearby island she sees that's fairly empty save for a few boats. Once they land, Goku says he'll dive into the water to get the ball, but Bulma laughs him off and says she's here to make that job much easier. She pulls out her capsule case, intending to use an aquamobile, but is shocked when she finds only one capsule in the case. She realizes she grabbed her father's case instead, and though Goku thinks it could still have something useful inside of it, Bulma has her doubts. Her suspicions are confirmed when the capsule contains nothing but dirty magazines that she rips up in a fury. Left with no other choice, Goku strips down and dives into the water to search for the ball, but soon finds that the ocean floor is too deep for him to reach. He flies back with kinto'un to tell Bulma he can't hold his breath that long, but is surprised to find the spot on the beach where he'd left her empty. Having decided that there should be at least some people living here if there's boats, Bulma decided to go walking to fin da place to buy capsules. She sees a pair of planes approaching her and waves them down, but they open fire on her instead. As they corner her, one of the pilots recognizes that it's a young girl they're firing at rather than their intended target. The pair land and apologize to her, but Bulma doesn't want to hear it. She asks them where she can find capsules to buy, and they tell her the island is uninhabited. One of the two soldiers tells her she's pretty, flattering Bulma momentarily before she gets the creeps from the second soldier asking if she wants to have some fun with them. She asks if it's the sort of fun you can't really talk about in a kid's comic, and they confirm, leading the two Red Ribbon soldiers to chase her down in their planes once more as she runs for it. Hearing the ruckus, Goku flies in on kinto'un and asks Bulma if the men chasing her are bad guys. She says of course they are, and the soldiers open fire on Goku as soon as they recognize him as the target. Goku recognizes them as Red Ribbon soldiers as well and goes into a flying dropkick through the first soldier's windshield before taking out the second by extending the nyoibo and smashing through his engine. With the soldiers defeated, Bulma wonders if that wasn't all a bit much just for chasing her around for a while, but Goku says he just had a great idea – they're not too far from Roshi's place, and he probably has something they can use to dive underwater. Bulma isn't thrilled at the idea of asking that dirty old man for help again, but as they don't really have a lot of other options... Review: As usual, this chapter is mainly focusing on setting up the new status quo for the next storyline of the Red Ribbon arc, and as such it takes things a little bit slow to get things going. We are introduced to the next antagonist in the form of Blue however, and in his few brief scenes, he shows himself to be quite different from Silver and White before him. A pretty boy by design, Blue comes off rather pompous and smarmy, but still cruel and vindictive enough to order one of his own men's death simply because he caught them picking their nose. Now THAT'S an over the top punishment in this chapter. We'll get quite a bit more with Blue as we get into further chapters, so I'll save some further commentary on him until later on. For now, I'll say he's probably one of my other favorite villains in the earlier run of Dragon Ball, though obviously he's not without certain...issues. Again, more on that later. The setup for the gag with Bulma having her father's capsule is paid off here, and while it's not really the funniest joke ever or anything we haven't already seen here before, I'll forgive it for two reasons – 1) it's really more about setting up for the next chapter rather than the gag itself really, and 2) Goku's reaction to seeing the dirty magazines is pretty great. While Goku is discovering that the ocean is in fact too deep to swim to the bottom of that easily, Bulma is...*ahem* Okay, I know I harped on Bulma pretty hard in the last couple of reviews, but I must reiterate that I do like her as a character overall. And even if I didn't? It doesn't mean she deserves what almost happens in this chapter, at all. While it's played entirely for gags, there's really no way around it – Bulma almost got raped in this chapter. Yes, we've seen her in plenty of questionable situations before in the pages of this manga, some of them were even a result of her own actions. But while all of them were also played for laughs, this one might be the most uncomfortable of them all, even outdoing that time that Oolong almost went and felt her up in her sleep. This scene is just a little too realistic in some ways for it to really be as humorous as I think Toriyama meant it to be. At the end of the day it's stopped of course, and Bulma even lampshades the moment by commenting that what they're trying to do is the sort of thing you can't even really talk about in kid's manga, but still. It's an uncomfortable moment, and one that there's a pretty good reason doesn't get brought up a lot when the series is talked about. So, with that out of the way, I'm sure the next chapter is going to be completely problem free and squeaky clean, at least by Dragon Ball standards, right? ...Why's everyone so quiet? Until next time! Favorite Panel:
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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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