my sweet, sweet, peace-hating baby. I'm so glad I got to see him as a tiny child. So cute. (Not quite as cute as Dende, but I guess we can't have everything.) Confession: I love Piccolo. He's one of my favorites. I'll try to restrain my silly gushing to appropriate moments, like seeing him for the first time. and maybe admiring his incredibly large ears. Anyway, moving on: Ch 162 somehow I'm feeling like we'll have /another/ time skip soon. Goku's back to 100%! Senzus are just too convenient. Karin, I'm starting to doubt your omniscience. Shenlong being dead is a problem, and apparently people killed by "demons" don't rest easy. Karin says they must "travel the universe in suffering", which really kinda sucks. :/ Goku thinks it sucks too. But Karin suddenly has an idea. So they're not a natural phenomenon on DB-universe earth! I mean, I already knew that, but I think the assumption would generally be to assume it's just kinda a thing that happens, not that they're the creation of someone. I dunno. The creator of the balls is Kami-sama (= God.) Yajirobe's an atheist. "God" lives up above Karin's place, and Goku's lucky because he's a) strong b) pure of heart and c) owns the nyoibo, which apparently isn't meant to be for fighting so much as connecting Karin's place to Kami-sama's sanctuary. Hence the extension properties. But of course the bo is with Tien at the moment, because it got left behind when Yajirobe whooshed off with Goku in his fancy hovercar. Goku can't find it at the site of his fight with King Piccolo, so he runs off to ask Uranai Baba about its location. I suppose that makes sense if you think it might have been taken, but why not ask the people who were there (i.e., Tien) about it first? Rude ghost ... what's gonna happen up there? 〳 •́ ﹏ •̀ 〵 Ch 163 Such high-waisted boxers!! also, what a funny >: < face WHY THE FUCK IS KARIN TURQUOISE it's familiar but I like it better than King Piccolo's face. dragon ball is just full of nightmares of mine: climbing upside-down on a ladder around the bottom of this huge top-shaped thing in the sky is pretty far up there too! So, um. I'm not going to dwell on this too much, and I'm sure there have been many, many words written about him already, but: Mr. Popo has a pretty fucking problematic design and makes me uncomfortable. I'm probably going to avoid screenshotting him for the most part, but I don't really want to repeat myself every time I happen to, so I guess just take this as my statement about Mr. Popo in perpetuity. Goku and Mr. Popo have a conversation, and Goku has the opportunity to fight Mr. Popo. Mr. Popo has no problem with Goku and mocks him and tells him to just go home.
Ch 164 It doesn't matter how powerful you get, there's just /always/ someone to whom you're absolutely nothing Man, if Mr. Popo's so strong, why didn't he go down and deal with King Piccolo? Some sort of non-intervention clause? Or just not wanting to because Kami might die too? Goku gets a scolding because he was arrogant and is told to give up again, but he's determined and asks if he can train up here. Which I imagine would be beneficial at least because there must be like, very little oxygen up here. Build up RBC concentrations. Goku runs in circles around the sanctuary. I know Karin said his clothes are just gonna get trashed again, but I do wish he could have gotten another set beforehand. it is very exciting I was right about the low O2 concentrations. Mr. Popo takes this as an opportunity to tell Goku he makes too many extraneous movements and to be more chill by "empty[ing] your soul". Goku's first attempt. those eyes are searing into my soul It's also important to be fast! and to not rely on your eyes too much; you have to be able to sense the smallest changes in the atmosphere. Goku's very excited by all of this: he's absolutely ready to train for as long as it takes to be able to be a match for Mr. Popo in battle. Aaaaand he doesn't have to because Kami likes him and says "ehhh, okay". !! ominous silhouette opposite robes (+ kami kanji) Goku understandably reacts badly and attacks and Kami just flicks him away. Huh, so I knew that Piccolo and Kami had split, but I had no idea there was a previous Kami that this Kami replaced once he was able to expel the evil in his heart/old Piccolo. Kami offers Goku a single wish for defeating evil Piccolo, but tells Goku it's the only time and not to rely on him (but he will resurrect Shenlong, which seems a little.... like. C'mon, Kami, you do realize that you're providing the means for Goku to continue getting wishes for as long as he can gather up dragon balls?) But Goku has to (I think) train with Kami for a while (it's not 100% clear because of the not-super-great translation), which is totally okay with Goku, it's what he wanted to do anyway! Ch 165 Shenlong is a statuette of a dragon that's super broken, and Mr. Popo has to put him together again. Kami wasn't planning to bring Shenlong back, because people keep using the dragon balls for selfish reasons, but people like Goku give him hope. Shenlong gets resurrected and flies off toward the dragon balls. there's that timeskip I was expecting Heck! It's revealed to us, the audience, but not Goku that if Piccolo dies, Kami will die too. Meanwhile, at the Kame House, Shenlong has been summoned and the three who were killed by Evil Piccolo get revived. and I guess the others as well, because we get some shots of Namu and Gilan being brought back as well. There's some surprise but not too much at the revelation that Goku's being trained by someone named "Kami-sama" (=God), although Yamcha does make a pretty prescient comment about feeling like they're falling far, far behind. In any case, everyone gets excited about the next tenkaichi budoukai. training montage!
Ch 166 is called "Everyone's Reunion" so let's see if Goku's grown this time! Looks like there's some pretty heavy rain ("Jason!") at the Tenkaichi Budoukai this year. Feel like that can't be fun to fight in. MOTHERFUCKER HOW DO YOU GROW SO MUCH IN THREE YEARS!! In any case, it's big-size Goku. Low O2 concs must agree with him. No one recognizes him at first, probably because of the hat. When they do, they're astounded. Which makes sense. You don't expect someone to double in height over three years unless they're a very small child. Lots of alternate fashions going on here. back to normal "Hey everyone, check out Goku's ass!" So presumably Kami did bring back the moon after removing the tail (permanently). Poor guy. I feel for Goku, sucks that he can't just keep the tail. sorry for basically the full-page cap, but LOOK! IT'S HIM! FULL SIZED! dumb shoes and cloak and hat and everything. incredible ears. Hands that could crush a watermelon with ease. Uh. So. Wait. Piccolo is only... barely 3 years old at this point, then, right? I mean, I guess there's some weirdness because he's a... clonal creation of Evil Piccolo, but. Still. (☉_☉) i take it back, goku, your growth spurt was nothing compared to piccolo's Ch 167 sometimes a family is two halves of the same being and the clone child one of them who replaces the one who created him Chichi! Goku doesn't remember her, which shouldn't be surprising in the least, but Chichi gets pretty upset. I bet she's still thinking about his ""promise"" to marry her. Piccolo: * waits patiently in line, thinking about what to have for dinner * Chiaotzu spaces out the numbers so that none of our heroes have to fight each other in the prelims, which, unfair to the other fighters, but if you have an advantage, I guess you should use it. He also makes sure Piccolo there is in a different bracket so they can observe him. Goku fights King Chappa again and uses the tricks he learned up at Kami's place to win with ease. I feel bad for him, he's had two pretty bad budoukais now. Chiaotzu gets knocked out by none other than... robotically-enhanced Tao?! Well, that's a bit of a shocker! Here I was thinking he was dead! Ch 168 Tao's back, baby!! And he wants sweet, sweet revenge. All the next bit is about qualifying. well, I guess I'm glad he put pants on, but why is he wearing that mask?? Well, Yajirobe didn't last long; his opponent knocked him out after tripping all over himself and then standing up, hitting Yajirobe squarely in the chin. Is this a new style? Klutz-ken? HELL YEAH! MY MAN ANNOUNCER IS HERE AGAIN!! AAHHH BUT HE HAS A MOUSTACHE! I don't like it, no sirree. FINALISTS: Tao, Tien, Goku, "Stranger", "Ma/Demon Jr.", Kuririn, Yamcha, and Shen (the klutz-ken user). (Stranger is Chichi, and Ma or Demon Jr. is obviously Piccolo.) MATCHES: Tao v Tien, Goku v. Chichi, Kuririn v. Piccolo, Yamcha v. Shen
Ch 169 Tien v Tao Tsuru-sennin shows up while the gang is discussing the first match (Tien vs Tao). He's pretty confident Tao will wipe the floor with everyone. Personally, I'm thinking the final match will be Goku up against Piccolo, so I don't think that Tao will get too far. I know that it's supposed to be a "huh?" or "hn?" kind of noise, but it looks like Yamcha is calling Goku hun, and that makes me laugh. Once again they make Lunch do the dirty work of getting a ringside seat. Seems like everyone went to train with Karin, so senzus are now a known and widely distributed commodity (among the usual gang, anyway). It's Time! Tien v Tao match is a go, and they do a bit of fighting, and Tien is very obviously the stronger right from the start. There's something particularly sad about the obviously weaker member of the match telling the stronger not to get cocky. Ch 170 Tien is trying to be a good sport, and I appreciate his efforts, but it's probably just a waste of energy and kindness on his part. HEY NOW!! Tao uses his secret wrist blade to slice up Tien's chest. Since weapons are prohibited, Tien is the winner, but Tao doesn't care about that anymore; he's just after revenge on those who have ~wronged him~. can't be a badass unless you rip your shirt off Cyborg Tao has an actual beam weapon ("super dodonpa") and when he uses it on Tien, Tien continus to be a bamf and simply cancels it out by screaming. He's real pissed, guys. He takes out Tao with a single hit and then delivers the body to Tsuru-sennin. That takes care of that, but Tien seems a bit upset. Probably because his old master is kinda a lousy person. Next up: Goku vs. Chichi, who the translators have decided to call "Anonymous" now instead of "Stranger", further making me a bit mistrustful of their skills. Ch 171 well gee i just wonder what might happen in this chapter guys i'm sure stumped I appreciate seeing Chichi in this light, also she looks great in a wedding dress and I love that she's driving the car in the title art. watch where you're aiming!! Chichi's pissed because Goku never came back and married her. And also that he doesn't remember her now. Which, fair, I guess, if you really thought someone was serious about marrying you and then they just fucked off for... 6+ years and you never heard from them. Considering the basis for the marriage was Goku's complete lack of ability to interact with anyone in a normal way, I do feel like you should probably at least take some times to get to know each other now, as adults. HOW. WHY. Chichi says she'll tell Goku her name if he can beat her (he's very relieved, because he thought he'd have to spend his life with someone whose name he didn't even know), and he... defeats her handily with a ring-out. can't you just hang out down below like a normal person not in the least bit surprised AT LEAST MAKE SOME MOTIONS OF TRYING TO GET TO KNOW EACH OTHER FIRST Off they go, presumably to get married. And we move right along to the Kuririn and Piccolo fight!
Ch 172 I have to go back to school tomorrow so all I want to do is read dragon ball manga double-barreled! I laughed at this panel for a good 20 seconds. I'm so glad eyelasers are a heritable trait. Piccolo uses his eyelasers to destroy Kuririn's twin beam attacks, but Kuririn uses his distraction to get behind him. It's not a definitive blow, but Piccolo seems a bit more willing to treat Kuririn as an actual opponent now. They do some sparring and Piccolo kicks Kuririn hard enough to make it impossible for him to get back into the ring... except Floaty Kuririn! He's mastered whatever that technique is that Tien and Chiaotzu use that makes them bop around in the air. There's a bit of smack-talking this match, but Piccolo's seen enough to apparently go full strength. Ch 173 this has nothing to do with the chapter, but more alt fashion gokus for my collection. JESUS H. F. CHRIST. IS THIS YOUR REAL STRENGTH? BEING STRETCH ARMSTRONG?? same hat kuririn Kuririn gets knocked around a bit and ends up tossed high in the air. He feels that his only chance is an extra-strength kamehameha and he thinks he's got Piccolo, but it's an afterimage-type thing and Piccolo ends up behind him. I know this is a pretty shit situation for Kuririn, but I kinda love this panel. There's something very dynamic about it and, let's face it, it's a good Piccolo shot. After getting slammed into the ground, Kuririn forfeits. Everyone is very supportive and Piccolo has the thought, "Maybe taking over the world won't be so easy after all..." Dude it's just Kuririn, you haven't even really gone up against any of the real big guns yet. Ch 174 Yamcha versus Shen, the clumsy one who defeated Yajirobe and probably a bunch of other people in the prelims. What is his deal??? He looks like a nerdy Roshi. The "clumsy attack" pattern continues with a hefty kick to Yamcha's ribs, followed shortly by a crotch hit. Yamcha is very embarrassed by all of this. Shen gets serious, and it's clear he packs quite a punch despite his looks. He gives Yamcha a bit of a lecture on not underestimating your opponent because of their looks, which, totally deserved. Shen says he must win and that he'll give Yamcha a bit of a lesson, because he can tell that Yamcha's talented. by this point, Yamcha is angry.
Ch 175 What is up with Shen? more lessons for Yamcha. The delivery could use some work, it's awfully patronizing. ?????????????? excuse me Yamcha has a new attack! It's called "sokidan". He makes a ki baseball and chucks it at Shen, and like most of these energy attacks, it can be manipulated after being "casted". He seems to miss Shen the first time, and the ball smacks into the ground, but it's still in one piece and he uses it to hit Shen in the chin. This probably won't mean all that much in the end, but it's still an impressive display. Also I literally cannot remember seeing this attack anywhere at all in Kai. Shen retaliates by immediately knocking Yamcha out of the ring. Possessing someone's body to use in a martial arts tournament seems like not exactly an up-and-up thing to do, Kami! are you sure you got rid of all the evil? Moreover, what the hell are you doing? Do you not believe Goku can win? Are you trying to save him the trouble? Are you trying to weirdly circumvent the "can't commit suicide" thing? I don't know what your purpose is and it's bothering me. Ch 176 toriyama you're killing me Show-offs!! I feel kinda bad, but I can't really see this one taking too long. Sorry, Tien, I really don't think that you'll be progressing, and I don't think it'll be such a close match that it takes a number of chapters to complete. It's an intense match right off. Lots of sky fighting. Can Goku do the float thing yet? My guess is no, he seemed awfully impressed when Kuririn did. CAN YOU NOT HANG OUT DOWN BELOW LIKE A NORMAL PERSON also you've become less thicc than when you were (re)introduced Tien and Goku are pretty evenly matched... except for the fact that Goku's not out of breath, while Tien seems to be flagging a little. Apparently the website is down at the moment, so I guess I'll be stopping here for tonight.
I think this is my favorite incarnation of Goku, like, visually? He's taller but hasn't reached the ultra-ripped stage he has by DBZ. Also Piccolo is the best green toddler pickle boy. Spoiler: long and kinda off topic Also just to provide a point of contrast, there's a podcast of two of the Giant Bomb dudes watching DBZ Kai for the first time, with literally no prior knowledge of Dragon Ball or any other anime. I've known Dragon Ball longer than I've known long division so it's super weird to hear two guys speculate if Vegeta is coming back, or how they'll win against Freeza. Anyway it's just cool to see two parts of the same franchise getting liveblogged in very different ways, from very different perspectives.
Very much agreed on the most visually appealing, shit gets kinda... Grotesque sometimes. Spoiler the GB podcast is the entire reason behind me experiencing any DB, actually! I'm enjoying listening to it, although they make me despair whenever they mispronounce "Freeza"
Ch 177 website is back up and I have 15 minutes before I have to really get stuck into setting up my experiment, so let's see if I can finish a chapter in that time to round off the shortened installment from yesterday I guess "speed" is the word of the day. Tien makes a pretty bold claim about Goku's speed not having changed from three years ago, to which I say: you don't knoooooooooooooooooooooow don't make claims that you can't back up! But, as a person who always prefers fast attacks over strong attacks in all my MMORPGs, I'm interested to the fight between an AGI monk and a STR monk. (those are probably not actual viable monk builds in Ragnarok Online, and Tien and Goku are probably more like champions anyway, so this whole analogy is just kinda falling apart around my ears, but let's just pretend it works. BTW this whole party would absolutely fall apart in RO, everyone's a monk, there's no priest of any sort unless you bring Dende in so you're reliant on healing items, there's no ranged or magic DPS, there's no tank....) Anyway. eyes emoji the introduction of the weighted training clothes! JFC. Is that safe??? I TOLD TIEN NOT TO MAKE CLAIMS HE COULDN'T BACK UP!! rude
This thread is my first introduction to dbz. I keep wondering, Pu-er and Oolong are teas, but the closest tea thing to Yamcha is yumcha, even though he seemed to have belonged with them. Also in the beginning the art kinda reminded of stuff like calvin and hobbes in style, rather than what one usually thinks of as manga style.
I used to watch DBZ when I was a little and between this thread and a mysterious uptick in Dragonball art on my twitter feed I have developed a mighty need to get back into it myself. So now I'm some 90 chapters in. Just got to time to fight the ghost of grandpa. I love baby Goku. I don't recall liking him much before but my smol son is great. That said I don't remember that much about Z and how much I liked various characters aside from how I was very gay for the androids. Anyway very much enjoying the thread it has added a lot to my own reading as I catch up to you. And when I do catch up I think I will try to keep an even pace
The shapeshifters seem to be named after teas, but since there are only two of them (at least of the small, animal-formed type) it's hard to say. Yamcha is a pun on yumcha, from what I understand; maybe he gets to be a meal because he's human? There's definitely been some art evolution, that's for sure! I can see where you're coming from with the C&H comparison; I think it has to do with how the backgrounds were drawn, maybe? I'd have to go back and do some comparisons to nail it down. :> I'm very happy that you (and others, I hope) are enjoying the thread!! I... did not think anyone would be interested, honestly, so the positive response has just been amazing.
For me, it´s actually the faces and expressions that remind me of that era of art. Not in a badway, it was just interesting. Also I am amused at the tea theme.
I've been really enjoying this whole thing but I don't comment much because my only settings are 'silent', 'Explaining a fact I Googled', and 'wild rampant spoily infodumps' and I'm desperately trying to dodge the latter now that I know there's some folks new to Dragon Ball. Also I don't want to flood someone else's thread too much. Spoiler: Personal childhood rambling ahoy I grew up in the '90s in Canada, and if you watched anime, your choices were Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball Z (or both, I watched both). There were broadcast laws concerning what percentage of content had to be Canadian made, so we flat-out didn't get a lot of the cartoons available in the USA. And some of the stuff we got instead was pretty good but most of it was, eeeh. We barely had internet yet (I mean it existed but 1995 dialup, amirite?), so if you missed an episode you had to pray a friend taped it or learn the rest from schoolyard rumors. When the video store started renting out anime tapes it was a Huge! Deal! The Holy Grail was the time a friend got his hands on imported untranslated manga so we could finally see how [villain] dies, as the show had fallen into rerun hell. I don't know how hard it was to get imported manga in Canada back then. Also there was a thing going on with multiple English dubs covering different parts of the series, and for whatever reason the local station wasn't getting episodes fast enough, so we'd get eight episodes into an arc, restart to the beginning, get twelve episodes into the same arc, and restart again. By '98, Cowboy Bebop, Evangelion, Pokemon and Princess Mononoke all came out so anime was properly a Thing, but in typing this it turns out I have Deep Nostalgia for 1995/6/7 Yggi and her Dragon Ball watching peer group. That's enough outta me.
Oh right Canada suffered the dub woes. I never experienced that personally in the US. I just got the Funimation dub and eventually started buying the uncut dvds when they were available. Now what was an experience is back when Viz tried to sell manga chapters in floppies like how American comics work. This model never worked well and it eventually died off while the magazine format remained. But during this time Dragon Ball was one of the manga this was done with. before viz began censoring the shit out of it See before places like Toys 'r' Us would sell copies of the Dragon Ball manga but there were complaints about the variety of ecchi jokes found within it. Viz got these complaints and basically began an effort of censoring the fuck out of the manga. To my understanding we've yet to get an official uncensored release in the states manga wise. It was some shit though to go from seeing like my normal kids cartoons to people literally fucking being murdered including children to holy shit Bulma's panties. It was a formative experience for a young Aon. Toys 'r' Us also sold floppies of fucking Tenchi Muyo before we stopped selling harem manga to children.
Oh man, we used to check out supremely censored VHS copies of the Tenchi Muyo series... what a trip. From Hollywood Video, no less. I was a popular kid in elementary school (well, for a certain value of popular) because my mom was very good at taping anime and I could led videos to people.
I got to rent Akira and uncensored harem anime for a dollar from a local store as a kid. The owner did not give a fuck. Needless to say I was scarred for life. As in actually traumatized by Akira.
Like it legit haunted my nightmares till I was 16 and watched it again? Which was a...harrowing experience. To put it mildly. But without this I don't think I'd be the sort of morbid fuck I am. So in a way I am somewhat grateful to Akira because it shaped my tastes quite a bit. god damn though. DBZ had a similarly huge effect on me but in a far different way. Gohan and Vegeta in particular got to me, and they're getting to me even more as I age. Vegeta honestly kind of hurts to watch now that I've not ended up with the life I thought I would and I've run into situations where I literally cannot be as good as someone else no matter what I do. (also i'm an emotional tantrum baby who pushes away and hurts my loved ones like an ass)
