Synopsis: On a rainy night, Gohan does math inside of a cave while thinking back to living with his mother and father before all of this started, and misses his old life and his parents greatly. As it starts storming heavier outside, Piccolo thinks back on the fight with Raditz and how it took Goku holding Raditz still for him to hit his opponent with the Mankankosappo. Piccolo focuses his power and splits a second body of himself off from his main body and begins to spar against it through the night. The next morning, Gohan has built a raft and is sailing down the sands of a nearby desert with it. A large bird flies overhead and tries to capture him, but Gohan is able to easily avoid it, though it pushes him through an area that ends up breaking his raft and stranding him on a beach near the ocean. Gohan runs into the sabretooth again but ignores it, instead marveling at the size of the ocean. Gohan runs along the edge of the beach to try and see how far it goes, eventually finding no way off of it as night falls once again. Another day passes as Gohan continues to try to find a way off of the beach, and the next night, Piccolo resumes training with his body double. At Goku's house, Gyu-mao arrives to give his daughter some food in the hopes of making her feel better, but Chi Chi doesn't want to leave her house due to her worry for her son. Back on the beach, Gohan continues running and tormenting the poor sabretooth, and eventually finds his wrecked raft, realizing he's come back to where he started. Climbing a nearby mountain, Gohan realizes that the beach he's on is actually part of an island entirely surrounded by ocean. Realizing what direction his home must be from here, Gohan draws plans in the sand. As Piccolo's body double training continues, Gohan begins gathering trees and builds his new boat, as well as food, all under the watchful eye of the sabretooth. As Gohan finishes the boat, he assures the sabretooth that he'll be back soon as he just wants to see his mother for a bit first, and sets out onto the open sea. As Piccolo's training continues, he suddenly senses Gohan leaving the area, and his body double combines back into his body. As Gohan floats on the sea at night, a storm starts to rage overhead, putting the boy in a perilous situation. As the ocean churns beneath him, he tries to tough it out and keep the boat from capsizing or sinking as he can't swim, as Piccolo searches for him from the sky above unbeknownst to him. A twister ultimately knocks Gohan from his boat, leaving Piccolo with no idea where the boy is or if he's still alive out there, as the Saiyans grow ever closer and Goku continues running down the Serpent Road. Review: You might remember how, a few episode reviews ago, I commented that an episode's title barely addressed what the episode was actually about. I also noted that said episode was basically a series of scenes strung together to reach a runtime, with the end goal really being just setting up for the next episode in line. Well, this episode could be considered an improvement over that one in that the title here kind of fits better as at least part of it pertains to the entirety of the episode and not just it's ending...but there's no getting around the fact that this episode also just exists to prepare for the next one. There is some neat things here, both action and character wise. Seeing that Gohan misses his mom even after getting much stronger is a nice touch, and it makes sense – remember, this kid is FOUR YEARS OLD. Of COURSE he misses his mom. It even follows that he'd use his newfound survival skills to try to find some way to get back home. It's also great to see him mess around with the sabretooth some more. Beyond that though, this is largely all material we've already seen with him. We know he can survive in the wilderness now, so seeing large sections of him just running around a backdrop, even if the backdrop is a little different now, doesn't really do much to engage or keep your attention. Then there's Piccolo's portion of the episode. The training we've seen him do up until now has mostly been mental, largely built around meditation seemingly. This makes sense as he's training on his own, he doesn't have a sparring partner the way everyone else does. This presents a problem when Piccolo puzzles out that one of the biggest drawbacks to his most powerful technique is that it takes too long to charge, and is apparently too slow to hit someone if they're that much faster than him. So how does Piccolo get around this? ...He buds off a second body and starts fighting against it, both to try to get stronger and faster himself, while also trying to see if he can find ways to make the Mankankosappo more workable in a regular fight. ...Huh. Piccolo's ability here is neat, don't get me wrong, but it's a little difficult to tell what exactly the idea behind it might be. Is it like Tenshinhan's move? It kind of looks like it, though I'd say visually it looks closer to his initial four-armed technique than how we saw his version of the Shadow Clone Jutsu did. If it's not that, is it meant to be something similar to the budding off that lead to the original King Piccolo? This seems even more unlikely as the new second Piccolo doesn't seem to have any difference in personality or character at all. There's really nowhere for this move to have come from, it's just something that the anime writers decided he could do, and they ran with it. It's cool, but inherently bizarre. Like I said back during the Goku V.S. Tenshinhan rematch, Dragon Ball just doesn't seem to know how to make a clone technique work well. And that's really all the episode brings us, Gohan trying to find a way back home, and Piccolo trying to figure out his own weaknesses. These are both things well worth exploring, but I don't think this episode pulled it off at all to be honest. It really just feels like it wanted to get Gohan away from where he was so that it could teach him the lesson he's going to be learning next time, and it got so focused on that that it didn't really do much with it's own runtime for THIS episode. It's a shame too, because the next episode I always remember as being really, really good. Until next time! Favorite Scene: Gohan tormenting the poor Sabertooth is great, arguably better than him doing the same with the dinosaur ever was. At least the Sabertooth halfway still wants to eat him. Next Time: After a robot and a dinosaur, Gohan's next life lesson comes from...orphans?
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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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