Synopsis: Goku, unable to move after being paralyzed by General Blue's telekinesis, finds himself unable to defend himself from Blue's attack as he viciously kicks the boy hard enough to send him flying. The cave continues to collapse and Blue again realizes he has to finish this quickly and get out of there himself. He pulls a capsule from his pants and activates it, turning it back into a rifle. With the barrel pointed at Goku's face, he orders Bulma to tell him where the Dragon Ball is or he'll open fire. Bulma tells him that the radar shows the ball should be somewhere in a pool of water to the right, and Blue thanks her for her cooperation. He says however that the Red Ribbon can't allow anyone to interfere in their business, so he prepares to shoot Goku anyway. Bulma nad Kuririn call him cruel, and Blue relishes in the word. Before Blue can open fire however, a mouse skitters before him on the floor and Blue freaks out, screaming in fear and dropping the gun. The shock also frees Goku from his telekinesis, and the boy asks Blue if he really enjoys cruelty that much as he grins mischievously. Blue curses the mouse and tries to freeze Goku in place once more, but Goku launches towards him declaring a rock Janken fist – only for the boy to use scissors instead, jabbing Blue in both eyes with his fingers. Blue recoils in pain and is left wide open as Goku strikes once more, this time using rock and punching Blue into the ceiling and falling to the floor in a heap. There's no time to celebrate however as the cave continues to collapse, even faster now than before. Goku asks Bulma where the Dragon Ball is and Bulma points to the pool but says there's no time to get it now. Goku tells them to get out of here and he'll join them as soon as he gets the Dragon Ball, before leaping into the water. Left with no choice, Bulma and Kuririn evacuate while Goku searches underwater, eventually finding the Dragon Ball. As Goku resurfaces, he looks for the mouse that saved him. Grabbing it by the tail, he thanks it for it's help and says he'll repay it for saving his life by saving it's life, and puts it in his mouth to keep it safe. Bulma and Kuririn make it back to the pirate port just in time to find the way blocked by falling debris, and Bulma says their only hope now is to try and use one of the smaller pirate subs to escape. Back in the cave where they fought, Blue wakes up and finds that the trio has left the treasure behind. He starts dragging the chest away in the hopes of getting something out of this endeavor at least. Bulma is thrilled to find the pirate's sub starts even after all this time, but now they're left waiting for Goku, who is running quickly down a corridor. Review: And so that's the end of General Blue...or so you'd think. The end of the chapter certainly seems like it's cuing things up for him to meet his demise in this cave, or to just simply never be brought up or seen again as the heroes escape, but don't worry – there's a little bit more Blue left in the story yet. And I for one am both terrified and really excited to cover what's coming in the next handful of chapters down the line. But that's getting ahead of ourselves a bit. Which is only fitting in a way as the opening of this chapter actually rewound things a bit. At the end of the last chapter, Blue had already picked up the rock to use to smash in Goku's skull. In this chapter however, that rock is never picked up, and in it's place we get Blue attacking Goku a bit more before resorting to a never-before-seen-or-mentioned capsule rifle from his pocket. Replaying the end of a previous scene and having things play out a little differently is something the anime will do quite often, especially going from the end of one episodes to the beginning of the next, but scenes like this don't happen very often in the manga. This might even be the first one that I can recall, it's certainly the most blatant one so far. I'd be curious to know what lead to this too. If I had to wager a guess, Toriyama may have found he didn't have quite enough content to hit his page count in this chapter unless he re-worked things a little, since this chapter is pretty light on content overall. Let's just be honestly surprised but thankful that he didn't just resort to Bulma trying to appeal to Blue for a third time in a row. We're instead introduced to another quirk of Blue's, that being an apparent fear of mice. It's probably tied in to his distaste for dirty things period, especially given how he overreacts to things of that nature as we've already seen prior. In the past I've also seen it explained as another dig at Blue's orientation, but I'm not really sure I see that one myself. I've certainly never heard the stereotype that gay men are supposed to be scared of mice at any rate. Unless it's meant to be calling him a woman as a result, since it is a stereotype that women are supposed to be scared of mice...hmm. Again, extremely curious to hear how LGBT people, especially gay men, feel about Blue nowadays. Goku's “cruelty” by attacking with scissors instead of rock is a great moment, and you can tell Goku really enjoys turning the tables on someone who was fighting dirty and winning just moments before. He really can be a cheeky little monkey sometimes. All in all, I think you can tell that the pirate cave has basically worn out it's welcome as a locale for the characters to interact with and fight in, and I think Toriyama realized that as well. This is at least the third chapter in a row where a character has had to reiterate that the whole place is collapsing, and it's been doing that ever since Goku beat the pirate robot a handful of chapters ago. ...Huh. An explosion causing the entire area to start crumbling, while Goku and someone else fight and everyone else tries to get out of there before the whole thing is nothing but dust...why does that...seem so familiar to me... Until next time! Favorite Panel: Next Time: Abandon cave!
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
|