Synopsis: As night falls, Oolong has finally broken out his emergency capsules and he, Goku, and Bulma are spending the night in his camper. While Goku eats, Bulma asks where the bathroom is so she can take a shower. She threatens Oolong about peeking, but the pig smugly thinks to himself that he has something much better in mind. Back at his hideout, Yamcha comes up with a plan to get his revenge on them and take their stuff yet: he'll just have Puar turn into either Oolong or Goku and lure Bulma away, allowing him to take everything without interference. Genius! Creeping into the night, Yamcha first catches sight of a naked Bulma through the bathroom window, but soon overhears something even more interesting. Oolong, having grown curious about what Goku and Bulma are looking for exactly, finally gets filled in about the Dragon Balls and the wish they can grant. Overhearing this, Yamcha is thrilled. If he can take those Dragon Balls from them and gather the rest himself, he can wish away his fear of girls and finally head towards his dream of getting married! Puar wonders if this isn't too low of a goal considering what else they could wish for... Oolong is amazed that all Goku wants out of he and Bulma's deal is to get to see the dragon, since all he himself is interested in is girls. Goku likewise is bemused by that, since girls are 'missing parts'. Bulma finally gets out of the shower and finds that the pajamas Oolong left for her are too small, so she'll have to make do with nothing until the morning when he'd better have her laundry done. In a rare moment of kindness, Oolong gives both Goku and Bulma glasses of juice, which Bulma thanks him for before forcefully reminding him about no peeking. As she heads off to bed, Oolong is pleased to see that Goku has fallen asleep, meaning the potion he put in the juice works and Bulma should be out soon too, allowing the pig to do whatever he wants... Meanwhile, Yamcha and Puar launch their plan of attack as Oolong skulks away into the upstairs bedroom of the camper. Seeing that Goku is already asleep, Yamcha directs Puar to turn into Goku and lure both of the others away. When Oolong sees what he thinks is Goku coming upstairs, he quickly turns into Bulma and lies saying that Oolong already went for a walk. Puar-Goku leads Oolong-Bulma outside, leaving Yamcha alone to search for the Dragon Balls. When he sees a group of mounds on the bed, he thinks for sure that he's found them, and pulls back the sheet to see...! Back outside, Puar reveals his trickery to 'Bulma', only for Oolong to revert as well. Realizing that he's left Yamcha in more danger than they'd realized, Puar rushes back. He ends up leading his master back to their hideout by the hand, while Yamcha stumbles around in a daze with boob-eyes. Review: This is a chapter with a lot of moving pieces. Outside of Kame-sennin and turtle, it makes use of every single major character that's been seen in the series so far, and it switches back and forth between their narratives in a rapid-fire manner, sometimes on the same page and back again before the next page is through. It's honestly pretty amazing to see Toriyama pull it off so seamlessly given the rather straight-forward pacing of the previous chapters' storytelling. It's therefore a little unfortunate that this chapter that showcases his writing abilities so well also happens to be one of the most dated and potentially controversial content wise. Up until now, we've seen a fair bit of T&A or at least had it teased, and there's been plenty of sexual based humor throughout as well. Heck, we even had Oolong being a kidnapper, but that storyline somewhat averted some of the most uncomfortable feelings that could come from that by it's end. Here though, there's uh...there's no side-stepping to be done. Oolong is 100% planning to take advantage of an unconscious teenage girl, and while the extent of which might be debatable based on translation, the context itself isn't, and the context is just plain gross. Oolong being younger than her doesn't do any favors to the scenario. This chapter also marks the first full-frontal nudity of the series, as we'd previously seen Bulma's butt, but now we see her chest (though the English release censors this with some bubbles in most editions). Again, not the sort of thing you'd usually see quite as blatantly in most Shonen Jump titles nowadays. While the nudity might be a bit much for some, especially factoring in the ages of both Bulma and the intended readers, I've honestly got far more of an issue with the aforementioned Oolong plotline than I do Bulma's body being on display, but maybe that's just me. Amidst all of the raunchy content though, we actually get a couple of comments that really read into the characters of Yamcha and Goku. When Yamcha declares his intention to use the Dragon Balls to curse himself of his fear of women, Puar pointedly asks him if it wouldn't be better to wish to rule the world or to be rich or something. Yamcha bluntly replies that ruling the world holds no interest for him, and he can get money if he needs it by stealing it. His moral compass might be a little askew, but even at this point in his life, Yamcha's already wise enough to know what he can and can't do by himself, and to admit what he wants most in this life. A dream of getting married that...never...gets...fulfilled... Well that brings down the mood. Goku meanwhile comments to Oolong that in addition to seeing the dragon, he gets to travel around and see all sorts of places and gets to fight. These are both things that the Goku we come to know later enjoys greatly, especially getting to find strong people to fight, so it's nice to see him start to grow into those more recognizable traits at last. He's spent the first portion of this story really being more of a plot device than anything else, and now he's finally starting to come into his own at last. More on that later though. I love that both Oolong and Puar's transformations here are shown to be less than perfect. Only Oolong is said to have gotten kicked out of school though, so I don't know if this is roughly the extent of transformation's powers, or because they only went through kindergarten there, or what exactly. It is a little weird seeing as how Oolong didn't have that particular problem at the start though. And with the chapter's conclusion, Yamcha loses once again not to Goku really, but to Bulma. She's the real MVP here. Until next time! Favorite Panel: Next Time: That show wasn't free Yamcha buddy boy, pay up.
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