Synopsis: Goku continues to fly the skies on kinto'un in search of the next Dragon Ball. He checks the radar to make sure he's heading in the right direction, hoping that this time it'll be his grandfather's four-star ball. At Red Ribbon HQ, Black reports to Commander Red that Goku appears to be heading westward, with Red noting that should take him to Colonel Yellow's base. Red asks if Yellow still hasn't gotten the Dragon Ball he'd located, and Black says it appears he still doesn't have it in his hands, causing Red to curse both Yellow and Goku. In a forest known as the Karin Sanctuary, a large Native American looking man holds off a group of Red Ribbon soldiers with his spear. A tiger man (Colonel Yellow) demands that the man hand over the Dragon Ball since he has no use for it, but the man insists that he is a guardian of this sanctuary and cannot allow it's land to be plundered. He tells the men to leave or they'll all be killed, causing Yellow to scoff. Just then, a small child hiding on top of a nearby teepee warns his father that another soldier is sneaking behind him, and the man heeds the warning, throwing his spear and impaling the soldier to a tree behind him. Yellow orders the rest of his men to open fire, but the man takes the bullets with ease, telling them that he already warned them that wouldn't work. He defeats all of the soldiers except for Yellow who promptly escapes back to his plane and flies away. The young boy starts to run to his father's side, but the man says he has to go bury the soldiers. From his plane, Yellow calls back in to Red Ribbon HQ to report the complete decimation of his squad. Black tells him that he has to get the Dragon Balls by any means necessary or face execution himself, but Commander Red interrupts and takes the phone himself. He tells Yellow that he has only one more hour to get the Dragon Balls, and if he fails, Red is calling in Taopaipai. Yellow and Black are both horrified, with Black asking if that's really necessary. Red says at least this way they'll be able to get rid of Goku at the same time, and if Yellow fails, he'll have Taopaipai kill him too. Yellow insists he can ge the job done, and quickly comes up with a plan, remembering that the man that killed his soldier's has a child. As the small boy cooks some fish and says he can't wait to get as strong as his father, Yellow flies his plane low and snatches the child up, taking him hostage. HE flies overhead of the man as he buries the soldiers, and shouts down for him to hand over the Dragon Ball immediately if he wants his son back alive. Still on the phone with HQ, Black and Red overhear this, with Black certain that Yellow has succeeded this time, but Red isn't so sure... Suddenly, their radar shows that Goku is rapidly approaching Yellow's position, and Red curses how fast the boy is. The man shouts up to Yellow that he'll give up the Dragon Ball but he must come down first, but Yellow objects saying he's no fool and orders him to throw the Dragon Ball up to him instead. Before either can happen, Goku sees this going on and flies in for a closer look. Once he recognizes Yellow's plane and thus him as being from the Red Ribbon Army, he lands on it and punches Yellow, sending him flying out of the plane. Goku catches the young boy on kinto'un, much to the confusion and relief of both he and his father. At Red Ribbon HQ, Black confirms that contact with Yellow has been lost, and Red angrily orders him to call Taopaipai. Review: The next storyline in the Red Ribbon Army arc is the penultimate one, and as such, things are going to start getting heavy and hitting hard very, very fast, in direct contrast to the more casual pace of the story up until now, and definitely providing a bit of mood whiplash when coming right off of the Dr. Slump crossover. There's still humor to be had, but definitely don't expect the likes of Supaman here. I could be misremembering, but I think this might be the first time in the manga that Red's assistant has been referred to by name, which unfortunately happens to be Black. This fits the naming scheme of everyone in the Army having a color-based name, but considering Black happens to be, well, black, it's...yeah. Thankfully the character ends up seeing some pretty good usage by the end of the arc, saving him from feeling like as much of an issue as he might otherwise, but there's certainly a reason character designs like his don't pop up very often anymore. We're introduced to a few new characters in this chapter as well, but two of them are a little hard to talk about just yet given that they haven't received names, so I'll hold off on talking about them until the next chapter when I'm pretty sure they get them. The other character though is Colonel Yellow, a member of the Red Ribbon Army so unimpressive that I honestly forget he even exists half the time. The Generals of the Red Ribbon Army might have proven to have a little something to them, or at least Blue did, but the Colonels are just laughably bad. Not only does Yellow get completely upstaged by one of the unnamed new characters, he gets taken out by Goku immediately and what could have been his 'arc' is given to the as-of-yet unseen Taopaipai instead. Poor guy. It's a shame too, it would have been interesting to see Goku have to tangle with an animal guy for a while. I will say that I kind of love how brutal the unnamed guardian of Karin Sanctuary is at this point too. He SPEARS a guy THROUGH a TREE. DAMN MAN. He follows that up with an even further show of strength by not only tanking bullets, but killing every single one of the soldiers who tries to fight him with seemingly only one blow each. And yeah, they're not unconscious, they're dead. Either that or the guy was about to bury them alive, which seems even more cruel. Needless to say, you do not go to Karin Sanctuary to play, because you will fuck around and find out. All of this serves to better build up the threat of this Taopaipai that Red keeps mentioning too, but we'll talk about that once we actually get to those story beats. For now, as said, brace yourselves – things are about to get kinda dark. 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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