Synopsis: After leaving the 23rd Tenkaichi Budokai, Goku and Chi Chi fly on kinto'un back to Gyumao's rebuilt castle, which towers above a nearby village. Gyumao is thrilled that his daughter and Goku are finally getting married, and treats Goku to a lavish dinner and says he's going to throw the two of them a big wedding ceremony as well. Gyumao then tells Chi Chi that he still has her mother's wedding dress from when they got married, and he'd like to give it to Chi Chi to wear for her wedding as well. Chi Chi is ecstatic and wants to have the wedding ceremony as soon as possible, and Gyumao promises her it'll be the biggest ceremony the area's ever seen, but as they'll need help from the local villagers, it will take a little time to put together first. The villagers all help set up the castle as Gyumao oversees their work and thinks of his own late wife. The festivities are soon interrupted however by an earthquake strong enough that it starts to break the castle apart. Things only get worse from there however as fire begins to erupt from the ground, and the villagers flee for their lives. Goku and Chi Chi start to leave as well but stop when Chi Chi remembers that the wedding dress is in her father's room. Gyumao tells them to leave it to him, and rushes upstairs to get the dress. Goku tries to rush after him but is cut off by the fire, which soon engulfs the entire castle. Goku tries using a Kamehameha to put out the fire, trying to do a weak enough one to spare the castle from being destroyed much as Roshi's did years before. The attack is successful, but the fire immediately starts back up just as fierce as it had before. Goku next gets on kinto'un to try to fly overhead and rescue Gyumao, but the fire once again stops his efforts. Inside the castle, Gyumao rushes through the hallways with the wedding dress under arm, noting that the fire is acting weird. Once on the rooftop, he shouts to Goku, telling him that only the Basho Fan can put out these flames, causing Goku to remember the fan that Roshi was said to once have. He recalls that it got dirty and Roshi had thrown it out, and seeing little other choice, Goku decides to go ask Urunai Baba for help divining it's location. Baba tries to help, but has caught a cold that causes her to have a hard time using her magic. She eventually divines an octagon, saying that it seems to have something to do with the fan and that it seems to lie to the east, so Goku grabs both her and Chi Chi and flies away on kinto'un once again. Following Baba's crystal ball, the trio eventually finds their way to a small village where Goku sees a familiar face. He walks up to a pig that he thinks is Oolong, but the pig tells him that his name is Jasmine. Goku is surprised to see a second 'Oolong' step out, and Jasmine has the new pig help explain to Goku that he's not Oolong, though both pigs do vaguely remember that being the name of a guy who studied at the Southern Transformation Kindergarten and got kicked out for harassing the teacher. Jasmine is offended that he'd be mistaken for some pervert like that, seeing as he's the greatest gentleman in all of Octagon Village. Hearing that name, Chi Chi immediately asks if they know where the Basho Fan is, but neither pig has ever heard of it, and wonder if she instead means the Basho Hot Spring. Baba has heard of it and says it's said to be able to cure any ailment, so she drags Chi Chi along to bathe in it (exciting the two pigs who begin to drool at the idea of a naked Chi Chi), as Baba thinks she'll be much more help to them once her cold is cured. Thinking that Goku will only get in their way, the two pigs lie and say they do suddenly remember that some kind of magical fan is said to be in a valley nearby, and Goku decides to go investigate while the girls head to the hot spring. As Goku looks for the fan, the pigs lead Chi Chi and Baba to the open air hot springs, and are excited to start peeping on Chi Chi. Chi Chi is worried about Goku, but Baba eventually convinces her to trust him and get into the water with her. Goku finds the valley at last and comes upon a large octagon shaped 'pond', just as a large crowd of pigs is revealed to have gathered, all of their peeping attempts causing the changing room to collapse. Chi Chi screams, just as Goku spots something in the water and dives in to grab what he thinks is the Basho Fan. As Chi Chi knocks away the perverted pigs, Goku causes the whole hot spring to drain away like a bath tub, as it's revealed what he thought was the Basho Fan was actually the stopper keeping the water in the hot spring. All seems lost at first, but Chi Chi soon spots an odd inscription on the side of the large stopper, that seems to be instructions on how to make a Basho Fan. Chi Chi can't quite understand part of it however, but Baba recalls seeing this diagram once in a book at her brother's house, so Goku and Chi Chi rush off to Kame House, leaving Baba to soak in the puddle of hot springs water that's left. Review: In the manga, everything about Goku and Chi Chi's marriage is handled entirely off-screen – er, off-page. By the time the next chapter that I'll be reviewing rolls around, there will already be some rather big developments and changes for the characters (though I don't think we're made privy to most of those changes until the following chapter, if I recall correctly). Because it needed a few weeks to let the manga get a little further ahead again, the anime decided to jump on the good opportunity presented to them to flesh things out a bit further, resulting in this five episode filler arc to close out the original Dragon Ball anime. For the most part, this first episode does a pretty good job setting up the problem that the characters are going to need to deal with, as well as seemingly presenting the way to fix it, though that of course leads to new problems of it's own. It's pretty fun to see the series delve back into a bit of an 'adventure' story, when it's been almost entirely focused on martial arts for the longest time now, though whether this story will be ultimately memorable will be something we'll talk about as we go along. As far as the characters themselves go, it's particularly interesting to see what Gyumao is like nowadays, as well as what his new lot in life appears to be. Gone is the armor-wearing monster of a man we saw way back when, and in his place is a large, doting man wearing normal clothes and an ox-horned hat on top of his head. This design actually comes from further into the manga than where we are currently, but I guess the anime staff decided to introduce it a bit earlier here. What's even more interesting is that all around his rebuilt castle is a village of people that seem thrilled to have him there. It's weird, it was implied that there were nearby villagers back in the first arc, but this is the first time we've seen them. Given how Gyumao acted back then, I guess he probably drove most of them away, and now they've come back? Either that or these are all new people invited to the village as a result of his changed demeanor. Either way, it's a little weird to see him treated as actual royalty, though it does explain his stores of cash that he apparently still has. The most interesting aspect of this early part of the episode is the brief moments we get talking about Gyumao's (presumably) late wife and Chi Chi's mother. What we get isn't much, but it does serve to make you all the more curious about what kind of woman she was in life. You also can't help but wonder...well...not to be too lewd, but how in the hell did they even PROCREATE? We don't see her face, but a painting shows that the woman was normal sized as opposed to Gyumao's massive build, so...yeah. It's uh...it's certainly a quandary. Moving on from that, the story itself changes suddenly after this opening act as well, as the fire that Roshi once put out once again engulfs the castle. Back then, we never really got much details as to how the castle got caught ablaze, but it did seem weird that it just kept burning for as long as it apparently did, and nothing was able to put it out. Well, now that we see the fire starting again, we can tell that there's definitely something particularly strange about it. This time around, even a Kamehameha doesn't do the trick, leaving only the Basho Fan as a method for putting the fire out. This of course presents the same problem it did back in the original story arc of the series – the Basho Fan's long gone, tossed away when Roshi got rid of it. The roster of characters have expanded greatly since then however, so Goku immediately thinks to go ask Baba for help, but of course, Baba's sick, leading to yet another side quest opening up – it really does basically turn into an RPG fetch quest at this point. Goku takes Baba and Chi Chi to where her crystal ball points to something 'Basho Fan' related, and they run into pig people that Goku mistakes for Oolong. A little bit racist, when you think about it, actually... You'd think we'd get a bit more on Oolong's backstory here, but all we really get is a repeat of what we already knew, which is a shame. The entire hot springs situation basically serves to set up things to happen in the rest of the arc to follow, with their next stop being heading to Roshi's after all. But will this wild goose chase actually result in a Basho Fan, or will that ultimately be just as much of a dead end as it was in the first story arc? The arc's only started, but one thing's for sure – it's definitely going to be a different sort of ride than what our last storyline was. Until next time! Favorite Scene: Gyumao and Chi Chi thinking back on the 'Ox Queen' is a sweet moment. Next Time: If they really needed someone that could eat fire, all they had to do was put in a call to Fairy Tail.
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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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