Synopsis: Goku and Chi Chi hurry back to Chi Chi's village just in time to see Pilaf's ship fleeing from the scene, with Silver's jet in hot pursuit of it. With both ships almost knocking them from kinto'un, Chi Chi ends up causing their fall due to grabbing Goku's tail, prompting Goku to have to call kinto'un back to save them. Pilaf, pleased to have gotten the real Dragon Ball at last, is still worried about the enemy that seems to be chasing them at a distance, while Silver speculates that the airship must belong to some rich person with too much spare time on their hands. He doubts that they're an adversary of any real importance, but still calls in more of the Red Ribbon's fighter jets to assist him in taking out the ship so they can retrieve the Dragon Ball. The remaining soldiers in the village try to pack up their tanks and leave but are stopped by Goku and Chi Chi's attack. With the soldiers stopped, Goku asks them where Gyu-mao is, and one of the soldiers points out the net holding Gyu-mao just as the gigantic man is finally able to pull himself free from it. One of the soldiers tells the others not to get involved, and they all quickly throw capsules containing fighter jets and rush off to aid Colonel Silver, leaving Goku and Chi Chi to tend to Gyu-mao. Silver runs into a problem however when the airship mysteriously disappears all of a sudden. He orders his man to take them above the clouds, but the airship is nowhere to be found – that is, until it reappears from the clouds below and gets a sneak attack on Silver's jet, opening fire on it without warning. Pilaf jubilantly declares victory as Silver's plane is shot down. Back in the village, Chi Chi bandages up Gyu-mao while Goku asks who did this to them. Gyu-mao has no idea but speculates that it might be someone he once wronged, given what a terrible guy he used to be, saying he has no right to complain if someone came back for revenge. Goku says they must have been strong if they were able to take Gyu-mao down though, and Chi Chi just wishes they hadn't attacked on the day of her and Goku's wedding. Gyu-mao apologizes to Goku for letting the wedding ceremony get interrupted, but Goku confusedly says that he wasn't there, confusing Gyu-mao even further. Meanwhile, Silver and his pilot, having survived the plane crash, get picked up by the other Red Ribbon fighter jets, and Silver calls back in to RR headquarters to request assistance via the army's Dragon Radar in locating where the airship has gone now. Goku inhales much of the food that was meant for the wedding ceremony while Chi Chi tells Gyu-mao that Goku was with her up until now. Gyu-mao wonders who the others were then, and Goku wonders if they were looking for the Dragon Ball. Gyu-mao says that he already gave that to Goku and his other friends before, but Goku explains that there are actually seven of them and he's looking for a different one, one that was a memento of his grandpa's. Goku checks the radar and sees that the ball has already moved really far away and starts to leave, but Chi Chi objects, asking 'what about the wedding?'. Goku says he'll come back later and they can all eat it together, before hopping back onto kinto'un and jetting away, leaving Chi Chi to yell after him that a wedding isn't food. Gyu-mao consoles his daughter, saying all they can do is wait for Goku to get back his grandfather's memento. The Red Ribbon HQ's radar picks up the now stationary Dragon Ball reading somewhere in a large desert, but Silver can't see how it could possibly be there unless they threw it away, as the airship is nowhere to be seen. Red insists that the radar is accurate however, and orders Red and his men to find the Dragon Ball immediately. Goku soon runs across the same problem, finding that despite his radar's reading, he's not seeing the airship or the Dragon Ball anywhere nearby. Silver grows frustrated, thinking that if the ship crashed, they should have found wreckage by now. The only answer could be...but it couldn't be that. As some Red Ribbon soldiers dig in the sand and wonder if HQ is too reliant on the radar, a few of them get sucked down by quicksand, soon landing in a holding cell in Pilaf's underground base. Pilaf questions the men and offers for them to join him instead, but Mai interrupts when one of their cameras picks up Goku just above them in the desert. Goku continues to be confused by the radar's readings, while Silver discovers that none of his men are answering his radio call. When Goku runs towards one of their cameras, Pilaf briefly worries that they've been caught, but Goku simply pees on the cactus camera. When Silver spots Goku down below instead of his men he questions what's going on, but doesn't have time to do anything about it before gun turrets pop out of the ground and open fire on both Goku and Silver. Silver's hunch was right, there's an underground base in this desert! Goku gets sucked down into one of the cells while Silver calls back in to headquarters for backup, only to be told to be on standby. Pilaf taunts a captured Goku who demands they give him the real Dragon Ball, but Pilaf instead sends an attack robot into Goku's cell. Goku promptly takes it out with a single Kamehameha, as well as blowing a hole in his cell. Before Pilaf can respond to that however, Silver begins to attack the underground base with everything his jet and remaining men can muster, damaging much of it. Seeing no other choice, Pilaf and his crew start an escape effort with only the Dragon Ball in tow, but they run into Goku in the base's corridor who starts chasing them. The escaping Pilaf crew hit buttons as they run, stalling Goku with a continuing series of dropping walls, until they finally manage to get back into their airship and escape from the base, unaware that Goku has caught up and has grabbed hold of the outside of the airship. To Pilaf's horror, Silver's reinforcements have arrived, and countless fighter jets surround the airship as soon as it's airborne. They all open fire upon the airship, destroying it and sending Goku flying off in a matter of seconds. Pilaf and crew escape the destroyed ship with the Dragon Ball thanks to parachutes, but on the ground below Silver and his men wait with guns trained on the trio. Once they land, Pilaf begrudgingly gives up the Dragon Ball, while Goku is nowhere to be found. Review: If the previous episodes were a setup to showcase just how rough the Red Ribbon Army could be, then this episode was definitely the payoff to show just how badly in over his head Pilaf was, and how much trouble Goku is about to tackle. I've harped on quite a bit about how much better the anime's version of events are for setting up this arc, and here at what is essentially the finale of this new material, I'm still astounded by how much better it is. Everything about the Red Ribbon Army in this version is a much better showcase for how things will be moving forward, and while a lot of credit still has to be given to Toriyama – the manga was much further along by the time these episodes aired, so they had a much better idea of what the Army was going to be like than Toriyama did when originally drawing the events these episodes extend upon – the anime staff still deserves a lot of kudos for putting this all together so cohesively. If one didn't know that this was largely filler, you'd almost never guess. The Gyu-mao and Chi Chi part of the storyline is wrapped up pretty quickly all things told, and that's probably for the best. Though they had no way of telling at this point in the story, Goku needs to have as little contact with Chi Chi as possible to make a certain story point later work better, and all things told what they bring to the table here has already been accomplished, so it was time to move on. There was one interesting bit early on in the episode with them though, when Goku and Chi Chi are almost knocked off of kinto'un. Goku is able to keep them aloft for a little bit by grabbing the tail-like end of kinto'un. I'm not entirely sure this ever happens in the manga, so I'm not really sure if it would work like that. I assume if you're able to ride it though, it'd probably work? Hmm. The real story of this episode is seeing the three-way grab for the Dragon Ball between Goku, Colonel Silver, and Pilaf who has obtained the six-star ball. Pilaf's craftiness is more than enough to stave off either enemy for some time, but he quickly proves to be completely outclassed in tenacity by them both as well. He knew how much of a challenge Goku was going to be and maybe because of that he paid more attention to him when he should have been putting all of his efforts against the unknown threat the Red Ribbon represents. Oddly, Pilaf never does seem to figure out who they are, nor does Shu and Mai – as big of an organization as the army is as we'll soon find out, you'd think Pilaf and gang would have heard of them somewhere before. Unfortunately, this brings Pilaf's involvement in the arc to an end (or until it's very end, again depending on how you divy up the arcs). We won't see them again until the next time they appear in the manga. Shame, that. Until next time! Favorite Scene: Goku peeing on the cactus camera. Classic Dragon Ball, pure and simple. Next Time: We finally find out the origin of the Dragon Balls! ...Kinda. But not really.
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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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