Synopsis: As the sun rises the day after Gohan's transformation into an Oozaru, the young boy awakens to find himself off of the destroyed rock pillar, and wearing new clothes and sporting a sword to boot. He doesn't remember anything, and as he tries to stumble over to some water to wash his face, he discovers his balance being thrown off by his tail being missing. Gohan doesn't have long to worry about any of this however a she soon finds himself being pursued by a large alligator and a sabretooth. Gohan flees from them while trying to back them away with his sword, and ends up being grabbed by a giant eagle. As the eagle flies, it gets into a fight with a large pterodactyl, ultimately dropping Gohan who falls through a hole in the desert's sand. Gohan finds himself in a large cave of ruins that Gohan recognizes as being from a long-lost civilization. Looking around the cave, Gohan soon runs into a large, old robot trapped in debris. He powers the robot on, and it immediately asks who has woken it up. Gohan introduces himself to the robot and the robot warns him not to speak too loudly, as the slightest vibration causes sand to fall down into the cave, something that's already been happening since Gohan's arrival. Gohan asks the robot what it's doing here, but the robot tells him that it's none of his business and requests to be turned off once again, telling Gohan that there's an exit behind him. Gohan turns the robot off and starts to leave through the exit, but soon finds that it leads to a deep ravine. Heading back to the robot, he powers it back on and tells him that he can't get out that way, but the robot chastises Gohan for turning him on again when all he wants is to sleep. Gohan begins to cry, causing more sand to fall, and the robot tells him to stop, telling him that that exit is the only way out if he wants to live. As the robot talks to him, Gohan becomes scared stiff of a snake and stops talking, causing the robot to think that he's left, revealing to Gohan that the robot's visual sensors are damaged. Gohan opens the robot's front and fixes it's sensors much to the robot's complaints, though it now sees that it's dealing with an actual child. Gohan insists that he needs the robot's help to escape, but the robot tells him not to depend on it, demanding once again to be turned off and left here. Gohan turns the robot off again, leaving him feeling more alone than ever, and as he still can't bring himself to brave the ravine, goes and sits down to cry. As day passes on into night, Gohan eventually falls asleep laying next to the robot. Gohan is rudely awakened as a scorpion falls onto his chest, and he turns the robot on again. The robot tells him that he can expect a scorpion or too as long as he's here underground and again orders Gohan to power him off. Gohan does so, but soon turns him on again to complain that he's hungry. The robot tells him there's no reason there'd anything here to eat unless he wants to eat scorpions or snakes, and Gohan's crying begins to cause the cave to collapse again. The robot agrees to help him out just this once, and tells him to go check the corners of the cave, and when Gohan does, he finds numerous mushrooms he can eat. The robot tells him to turn him off again, but Gohan says he can't eat them raw. Gohan says the robot should have a cooking system as he remembers reading about this kind of robot in a book, describing him as a 'superior unit'. The robot is immensely flattered, and agrees to cook the mushrooms for him. As Gohan eats the mushrooms, the robot asks him how he ended up in here in the first place. Gohan says he just wants to go back to his mother's but has no idea where he is or how to get there. The robot thinks that's rough for someone so young, but says it'll be even harder for Gohan to live if he stays in this desert. Gohan then asks the robot how he ended up here, and the robot explains that he was excavating these ruins when the ground gave way and he became trapped and abandoned after the collapse. Gohan says finding ruins like these must have been a great discovery, and the robot is impressed that Gohan knows about them. Gohan thinks that someone else coming to look at the ruins might come help them eventually, but the robot says he's been trapped here without seeing another person for eighty years before Gohan showed up. Gohan starts digging the robot out of the debris with his sword, but the robot objects and tells Gohan to leave him be, as if he stores up enough energy he can eventually escape on his own.. Gohan's digging eventually causes the cave to start to collapse faster, and the robot tells Gohan to leave immediately if he doesn't want to die. Gohan wants the robot to come with him, but the robot tells him that he'll be okay, he is a 'superior unit' after all. The robot tells Gohan to use all his courage and leap past the ravine, but before Gohan can, he wants to turn off the robot's switch. As the cave-in gets worse, the robot is half-crushed stopping a pillar from crushing Gohan, and the pillar also blocks the only exit. The robot tells Gohan to connect the blue and red wires inside his front, and when he does so, the robot uses all of it's remaining energy to pull itself free from the debris and move the pillar out of the way. With the exit unblocked, the robot picks up Gohan and throws him out of the cave and over the ravine, telling him to take care of himself. As the cave collapses, the robot is left behind in the rubble. Gohan rushes over and finds the crushed robot, who tells Gohan that his energy is all but spent now, and tells Gohan not to cry even when he's on his own, as he only has himself to rely on if he wants to survive. As the robot powers down one last time, Gohan cries for a bit but steels himself to become tougher than he was before so that he can survive this ordeal and get back to his mother someday. Review: At long last, the first foray into DBZ era filler begins. Technically we've already had a little bit of padding filler here and there – the first episode of the anime gives us quite a bit more time with Gohan trying not to get eaten in the woods by their house, and Goku coming to help him – but this was the first material that felt worthwhile to cover. In a similar vein though, it's all about Gohan. The 'Z' era of of the series definitely has high expectations for Gohan from the very start. And why shouldn't it? Being Goku's son already carries with it pretty lofty expectations in-of-itself, and as we've seen, Gohan's got an innate power that just might rival or even outdo his own father's potential. At the same time however, we've seen that he's an incredibly different kind of character compared to his father. That's all just from the few times we've been exposed to him thus far too – in truth, we really don't know Gohan that well at all yet, which is something that I think the anime staff picked up and ran with, because at least a good handful of filler in this portion of this story (both things we'll be covering, and scenes in episodes that won't be covered due to being primarily canon material) are stories with Gohan at their center. They're stories designed to see how he changes from where we first met him at Kame House, to become more the character we'll be seeing from him moving forward. This first episode dedicated to showing the change in Gohan goes about it in a somewhat unique manner. Following immediately after Gohan's Oozaru rampage, Gohan awakens to find himself with new clothes and even a sword to protect himself, but he's still in no real condition to do so. As such, he's immediately predated upon by the local wildlife, before ultimately falling into a cave where there's seemingly no way out – at least, no safe way out. It's in that cave that Gohan meets a dilapidated and damaged old robot, a character that used to be quite the fan favorite in the earlier days of fandom. I've never been entirely sure why – maybe it's because of the heartstrings pulled upon by this episode, or maybe it being skipped in the original Toonami run of episodes had something to do with it as well, rendering the character a little more mystique than he'd otherwise have. That said, the robot is an entertaining enough character to endear yourself to at least a little bit. He reminds me a bit of the robot that assisted Goku when he took a Red Ribbon plane and ended up crashing near Muscle Tower, though whereas that one was nothing but snark, this one's old and cantankerous. Imagine a robot version of an Ed Asner character, and you've got it. While Gohan is immediately drawn to the robot, the robot in turn wants nothing to do with the boy. At first it seems like he's just repulsed by having anyone around at all, but throughout the episode, he starts to like Gohan a little more with each encounter. He's impressed by Gohan's intelligence for such a young age, though he's continually annoyed by his crybaby nature, though his attitude changes at least a little bit once he realizes that he's dealing with an actual child. Gohan's flattery wins him over in the end, and though he's still very abrupt with him, he's won over enough that he seems to not want Gohan to die. Dying is exactly all Gohan can look forward to if he doesn't leave the cave however. The only way out is through an opening behind the robot, and it requires leaping across a huge ravine. This wouldn't be an issue for the likes of our other fighting characters, but for Gohan, who's still young and timid and not in control of his great powers? It's a seemingly insurmountable obstacle. As the robot tries to help Gohan, it also tries to make him realize that nobody is coming to save him either – to get out of this situation alive, he's going to have to take it upon himself to be brave. Every time he tries to get Gohan to leave however, he tells him to make sure and turn him back off before he goes. This is at first interpreted as the robot just not wanting to sit there and be aware as he rusts into nothingness, but eventually the real picture comes into focus – the robot has his own plan to escape from this situation someday, under his own power no less. He just needs to conserve enough energy, and eventually he'll be able to push his way free and get out of the cave. It's not readily clear wha this plans are after that fact, as he was pretty well abandoned by whoever had been using him to excavate the ruins, and other studies were conducted at some point apparently due to Gohan's knowledge of the lost civilization. Regardless, the robot very much has it's own plan to see through. In the end however, Gohan's insistence on needing the robot's help, as well as his own refusal to just leave the robot buried there, causes the cave to collapse further than it had, including blocking the only exit he could have made it out of. With no time to waste, the robot tells Gohan how to enable his power reserves, and the robot uses the last of it's strength not to escape at long last, but to allow Gohan to escape instead. At the cost of it's own “life”, the robot saves Gohan, but it also forces him to finally make the realization that he's been needing to make since the beginning – when you're on your own in the wilderness, it's up to you to survive, as there's never a guarantee that someone will come save you. A bitter addendum to the lesson too, is that sometimes those saving you can get hurt in the process, so it's still best to do all that you can to not make the situation any worse either. This...actually sounds really familiar to a plot point that we'll be coming up on in due time, so I'm curious if this episode came out before or after that plot point was a thing in the manga. I'd assume after, but I can't say for certain without checking dates. By the end of the episode, Gohan has become at least a little more matured and self-reliant than he was before, but that's only the first step in him becoming more than a crybaby, and it's far from the last story the anime has for him to give us a little more insight into what he's thinking. Until next time! Favorite Scene: The robot's grouchy attitude is fun all-around, but I especially like the part where he gets flattered by Gohan's words. Next Time: Two tearjerker episodes in a row may have been a bit much.
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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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