Synopsis: In a remote area some distance away from Baba's palace, a group of villagers are seen gathering food not for their own benefit but for someone else's, someone that has them so scared they won't even allow a child to keep so much as an apple for themselves. Elsewhere, Goku has begun traveling the world as per the orders of Roshi, for the purposes of training himself. Goku soon becomes crippled by hunger, only to come across a young girl who is trying to buy a large tiger bandit's services to come help her village. The tiger bandit instead wants to eat her, but Goku gets involved and ends up taking out the bandit, much to the girl's surprise. The girl promises to give Goku plenty of food to eat if he'll come with her back to her village and save them. Back in the village, some of the villagers are worried that Chao hasn't come back yet, and hope that the food they've gathered is enough to please the people on their way back to the village. A lookout post soon spots the devious pair of Kinkaku and Ginkaku headed their way on a motorcycle, and the pair announces their arrival loudly by terrorizing the villagers with their bike and by firing a gun into the air. The girl, Chao, explains that the Ginkaku and Kinkaku pair took a liking to the food the villagers grow and have been taking food from the villagers as a monthly payment for their continued survival for a while now, and it's causing the villagers to suffer. Goku thinks this sounds like the perfect thing to continue his training with and promises to take out the pair for her. As they run through a barren patch of trees, Chao explains that the land is usually quite pretty, but they're experiencing a drought on top of everything else. Ginkaku and Kinkaku are enjoying all of the food brought to them by the villagers, but they notice that there's less offering this month than the prior one, and accuse the villagers of holding out on them. The villagers say they need some food to survive, but the pair say it's either they die later or die now, their choice. Kinkaku suggests an alternative and has Ginkaku gather everyone for a roll call just as Goku and Chao arrive back in the village. All of the villagers quickly gather together fearfully, and Chao quickly sneaks back into the crowd along with Goku to tell her father that she found someone strong to take out the pair for them. Kinkaku starts the roll call as Ginkaku uncorks the gourd, and everyone whose name he calls out has to stand up and say 'here!' loudly enough to be heard. Goku is confused, but Chao explains that the gourd is their secret weapon, and anyone that doesn't respond immediately upon their name being called gets sucked into the gourd and dissolved into sake. Seeing that nobody is failing to respond, Ginkaku asks a lady in the crowd for the name of her two-week old baby, knowing that it won't be able to respond. Before Kinkaku can call the child's name however, Goku interrupts and says he was brought here to put a stop to them. Kinkaku starts to laugh this off, until Goku easily flings him around a few times. Outraged, he even tries to shoot Goku, but Goku stops all of the bullets with his nyoibo. Ginkaku stops his partner, telling him he won't be able to handle Goku, and steps into the fight himself with his sword, but soon finds himself unable to stop Goku either. Chao's father tries to grab the gourd while the pair are distracted, but Kinkaku stops him and tosses the gourd to Ginkaku, who calls Goku's name, and when Goku fails to respond, the gourd sucks him into it. Seeing their one hope defeated, the villagers quickly fall into despair, and are left with no choice but to try pleasing the bandit pair into the evening. Still trapped in the gourd, Goku has stopped himself from falling to the bottom and dissolving by extending the nyoibo, but soon finds that even firing a Kamehameha isn't enough to break him free. He's suddenly overcome with the need to pee and does so, so when Kinkaku checks to see if there's any liquid in the gourd, hears it sloshing around and thinks Goku has finished dissolving. He pops open the gourd to take a drink, inadvertently freeing Goku who quickly takes the gourd away from the pair. He torments them by repeatedly calling their names fast and repeatedly, tripping them up so that they both get sucked into the gourd as punishment. Trapped in their own gourd, the pair soon begin to wail to be let out, just as rain finally returns to the region, allowing the villagers to grow more and better crops than they'd been able to do for some time now. Goku leaves the gourd in the care of the village's elder, and Ginkaku and Kinkaku are revealed to have been freed and are being made to work to repay the villagers for everything they took, lest they get sucked into the gourd again. Goku leaves the village, continuing on his journey to grow stronger and stronger. Review: As a stand-alone episode and the anime's first foray into filling the series first time-skip – something I only now realized we were looking at and wish I'd brought up in the previous chapter review – this episode works pretty well. It's not my favorite piece of filler by any means, but it's innocent enough in that nothing in it breaks any conventions of the series either before or after this point, so there's really nothing to say that this doesn't actually happen in the manga's version of events as well. Given the dubious nature of plenty of other Dragon Ball filler, that's a pretty refreshing distinction actually. This episode also benefits in a way by going back to Dragon Ball's very origins – for those unaware, the characters of Ginkaku and Kinkaku as well as their magical gourd, are all taken straight from the original Journey to the West story that inspired Toriyama to create Dragon Ball. That's also where the characters by the same name in Naruto came from as well, so while we know Masashi Kishimoto is a huge fan of Dragon Ball, it's more likely he pulled the characters from that source rather than this one honestly. Anyway, I'm always for even more fantasy elements from Journey to the West being brought into the world of Dragon Ball and viewed through it's lens, so this was definitely enjoyable in that regard. Beyond that though, I can't really say the episode is a must-see for any fan that hasn't seen it before. The new characters introduced are largely forgettable and basically feel like another version of the townsfolk from Oolong or Suno's villages, and Chao herself is basically just another little girl Goku runs into and saves, ala Suno or Penny from the first movie. Ginkaku and Kinkaku are a little more interesting, especially with their design motifs screaming Fist of the North Star mooks (potentially on purpose too, considering Toei also animated the original anime of that series), but there's not really a whole lot more to them than that either. Ginkaku does get a moment where he's really into the idea of liquifying the baby because it'll probably be very tender and make really great sake, so you know, HOLY CRAP man – but even that's not enough to make him particularly engaging. So in a way, while I'm glad this episode exists and the idea of Ginkaku and Kinkaku did get used in Dragon Ball, it's almost a little sad that they did already because it makes it that much more unlikely that the concept of them would ever get used in the franchise again later in a more satisfactory fashion. Ah well. You can't have everything. Until next time! Favorite Scene: Goku peeing in the gourd and that being the reason Kinkaku thinks he's already dissolved is absolutely priceless, and it's made even better by a scene just a little later where Kinkaku notes that it 'smells like pee' inside the gourd. Next Time: Goku gets involved in a fight between two rival martial arts schools. Wait, is this already the 22nd Tenkaichi Budokai?
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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
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