The final part of the recap entries before we get to how I’m gonna carry on these enteries is the first seven episodes of the Red Ribbon Army Saga. So after the Tournament, Goku decides that he’s going to go find his Grandpa’s Four-Star Dragon Ball, now that they are no longer inert (I’m not sure how. It’s suppose to be a year, right? Well Krillin and Goku spent eight-months training with Roshi. The tournament seems to have only last a couple of days at most. And the time before the training couldn’t have been longer than a couple of days either. And one would assume Goku wasn’t travelling for long before that. I don’t think it stretches quite to a year). Purar, Oolong, Yamcha and Bulma decide to go back to another city, and Krillin decides to go stay with Roshi (disappointing Roshi because he was wanting to sexually harass Launch). Goku takes off on his Nimbus in search of the Dragon Balls.
Meanwhile Nam has arrived back at his village, where he releases all the water he has collected. Apparently this is not enough, so he goes to work out why the river has dried up. On the way he is grabbed by a pterodactyl. Despite being apparently helpless in his claws, Nam seems only mildly annoyed by the inconvenience caused to him, which is hilarious. Goku sees this and rescues Nam. Deciding to help Nam, they fly what would be up stream until they find a dam that is restricting the water flow. A bunch of Giras (the species that Giran was part of) have apparently made this dam. The Giras aren’t willing to release their water, and would rather beat Goku and Nam to death. Booooo! Goku responds by beating them up effortlessly. Yaaaaay! Their leader then turns up and oh look who it is it’s Giran. Giran remembers Goku and tells the rest of his people to show Goku some respect. He rather graciously gives Goku permission to destroy the den if he can. Goku does so with a Kemhameha, and the river flows.
This episode is very much a filler. Apart from the opening where we establish the plot is now back to searching for Dragon Balls, nothing from this episode has so far any impact on the other six. The Red Ribbon Army don’t even appear in this episode.
Clearly the episode hasn’t filled up the episode enough, so a random dust cloud appears and somehow causes all the water in the river to go. Fortunately a random lake has appeared in the distance. No, I’m not even condensing this for time. That’s literally what happens. Well done, writers. You gained yourself five mins extra with that sequence!!!!
Hey, who’s this making a return- oh.
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| Tweedlewoof and Tweedledumbo |
Emperor Pilaf has apparently moved from his castle and rented out a flying fortress from Dr. Eggman (or, if you prefer, Robotnik, for all of those who are older than 15). He has also realised the Dragon Balls are no longer inert (he he he) and starts to search after them.
Meanwhile Goku is swimming naked, so Puss in Boots a young boy comes and steals his clothes and stuff. When Goku realises its been stolen, he flies off in search (because, unlike the prince in Puss in Boots, Goku has no qualm going about his day naked). He then has a surprising moment of intelligence and shouts for his Power Pole to extend. It does so, freaking the young boy, who drops the clothes and Goku’s bag, but keeps the Dragon Radar around his neck. Curiously the Young Boy looks like Goku but sans spikey hair, leading me to believe we’re about to get a Prince and the Pauper style romp.
We don’t. Damn.
The thief sells the Radar to a pawn (no, Roshi, not that kind) shop owner, who monologues loudly to himself that he’s going to rip off the boy before ripping off the boy. Pilaf then appears and after an extended scene where he tries on hats (I can’t complain, I love hats) the pawn shop owner sells Pilaf a Four-Star Dragon Ball!!! Pilaf actually pays for it, instead of being all evily and just stealing it, which is nice of him. We then get this brilliant moment when Goku, who has been following his nose, bumps into them
Pilaf and Mai flee, with Goku in hot pursuit. Apparently Goku has forgotten he has superspeed abilties and a flying cloud.
Now we are introduced to the Red Ribbon Army, who in stark contrast to the cartoony Pilaf, are actually rather competent, malicious and ruthless. They also only promote officers who have colours for surnames (I assume they’re big fans of Captain Scarlett) and their uniform is that all their shoulders have to wear red ribbons, which is adorable! It’s like a kid’s club or something. Like when young children try to form a gang and give themselves a name and a logo. Sort of like the Purple Hand Gang from Horrid Henry.
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| We need to find this Dragon Ball before 0800! That’s my bedtime. |
Despite their childlike naming habits, as I said, they are in contrast with Pilaf. Our first introduction shows Silver and his team bursting into a house and ransacking it and actually threatening and terrorising its occupants with their rifles. When he arrives at the pawn shop, they discover that the owner has a whole trunk of fake Dragon Balls (and that the one Pilaf bought is a fake too, which Pilaf discovers at the same time, because it breaks when dropped, which real Dragon Balls don’t do). When the owner decides to fight back, Silver just shoots him. And because he’s not Goku, he dies. I think this is our first death in the anime (if we don’t count Gohan’s pre-anime death)!
The real Dragon Ball is on a birds nest above the shop and the seagulls nesting fly away at the sound of the gunshot, taking the Dragon Ball with them (?!?! why?!? They’re not like magpies, are they?!)
Goku is meanwhile still chasing Pilaf’s flying fortress. Pilaf decides to get rid of Goku by glueing the Dragon Ball back together and giving it to Goku. Goku is fooled and flies off with the ‘Dragon Ball’. However he drops it and it breaks. We never learn if Goku realises this means its fake or not, because the episode cuts away from him and the next time we see him, he’s back to searching for more Dragon Balls.
Hey, remember Chi-Chi from the Emperor Pilaf Saga? Well she’s at home pining over Goku. Her father, rather than tell her to suck it up, decides to take them to a fortune-teller, who foresees Goku coming their way soon. Chi-Chi tells her father she wants to marry Goku. Her father seems surprised at this idea. I don’t know why, because the last time they met, the Ox-King betrothed Goku to Chi-Chi. But whatever.
The seagull with the Dragon Ball is being chased by Silver inside a jet. Suddenly the Seagull is eaten to by a pterodactyl. The pterodactyl is then killed by the Ox-King, who plans to eat it at the wedding.
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| There was an Ox-King who swallowed a pterodactyl. |
Meanwhile Pilaf and his right-hand men arrive. The Ox-king, who for some reason believes Goku travels by flying fortresses now, believes that Goku has arrived and puts up a sign welcoming him. Pilaf sees this and decides he’s going to steal the Ball by being sneaky like. So they make a Goku mask and put it on Shu (he is the only one of them with a tail). This successfully tricks the Ox-King which isn’t surprising, considering that he apparently only looks out of two binocular scopey things.
Meanwhile, Chi-Chi is picking flowers when Goku bumps into her. There’s actually this cute scene where they hang out, with Chi-Chi teasing Goku and Goku being innocently ignorant that he’s the object of Chi-Chi’s affection.
At that moment, the Red Ribbon Army burst into the Ox-King’s palace, eager to remind everyone the saga is actually named after them. Pilaf uses this opportunity to enter the cooked body of the pterodactyl and extract the Dragon Ball, escaping Silver’s grasp. As Silver chases after them, his soldiers prepare to follow by … jumping out of their tanks, converting their tanks into capsules, and then producing planes from some more capsules … apparently it’s just that easy. At this point Goku and Chi-Chi arrive in the village via Cloud (we see the journey, and it is some distance, which begs the question as to why Chi-Chi needed to walk so far for some flowers!). Goku decides he wants to kick butt and eat food – and they blew up all the food. After beating them up, they find the Ox-King (he had been caught in a net) and the three discuss what just happened (while Goku stuffs his mouth, of course). They soon realise (finally) that there had been an imposter in the wedding as Goku. The Ox-King theorises that the men who attacked were some of his enemies, but Goku tells him they were Red Ribbon. He then goes after them, assuring Chi-Chi he will be back to try some of the ‘wedding’. (“Wedding isn’t a food, Goku!”)
Meanwhile Pilaf has hidden in an underground lair. Eventually the Red Ribbon Army catch up with him and start bombarding the base and then the fleeing Fortress. Eventually it blows up (no doubt killing all the people inside it, but this kid’s show, which does not shy from sexual abuse and nudity, does not want to dirty a child’s innocence with the idea of mass deaths … well, not yet anyway), causing Pilaf and gang to jump ship. He is captured by Silver and forced to surrender his ball.
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| Dragon Ball! What kind of show do you think this is?!
Actually, ok, you could be forgiven for making that mistake. |
We briefly cut back to Krillin, Launch and Roshi as Roshi tells the two the story of the Dragon Balls over lunch. It’s quite an uninteresting story which involves there being one big Dragon Ball which was then split into seven to prevent evil from using it. Meh. It’s also wrong, but we won’t find this out until later. It’s also strange because Roshi apparently didn’t know what a Dragon Ball was when he gave Bulma his. Apparently he’s being spending time on Wikipedia. (Actually, I find it hard to believe that if Roshi had a computer, he’d spend it on Wikipedia. Not unless he was reading articles on certain body parts.)
Goku is meanwhile flying over a forest when he stops for a snack. His attempt to eat some fruit is foiled when a monkey rudely steals it straight out of his hand. In terns out she wants to feed it to her baby, so Goku lets it slide. Karma does not, however, and it causes the baby to fall out of the tree to the ground below. As its mother tries to nurse it better, a panther comes out of the trees and pounces on it. Goku decides to interfere with natural selection and beats the panther. Clearly Goku is not cut out for being a natural wildlife observer. The monkeys show their appreciation by summoning their troop, who proceed to shower Goku with food. Fully fed, Goku falls asleep, and the monkeys just leave his sleeping body there … unguarded. Wow.
The monkeys find the Dragon Ball, and play catch with it (because monkeys are famous for their tendency to play catch). Soon the Red Ribbon Army appear and go about attacking the monkeys. Goku’s monkey senses are riled and he Hulk smashes the tanks. He and Silver have a stand off until the two monkeys Goku rescued earlier swing by with the Dragon Ball. Silver tries to shoot the monkeys, but misses and hits the branch they were about to swing onto. This causes them to fall into a gorge. Goku manages to catch the monkeys, but the Dragon Ball falls into the river and flows downstream. Overnight their is a storm and the Dragon Ball is lost, so Silver has his men search the valley for it. Goku, with his Radar, finds it easily, pissing off two Red Army officers who have been searching all day for it. They attempt to steal it from Goku with a predictable outcome. They radio into Silver who proceeds to use a rocket launcher to blow up the Flying Nimbus?!?!?!??!?! WHAAAAA?! I mean, first of all, how does one blow up a cloud?! I mean, wouldn’t the missile just pass through? Unless it hit Goku and then blew up the cloud (in which case, Roshi’s got an awesome tailor, because his school uniforms don’t appear to be damaged by explosions). Goku is understandably upset with Silver for blowing up his Nimbus and refuses to give him the Dragon Ball unless he apologises (which makes me wonder … if Silver had apologised, would he have?). At this point Silver has gone from being a badass to being really annoyingly cocky. So when he tries to pummel Goku, only to have Goku dodge his every move while not even looking and just casually walking away is really satisfactory to watch. Eventually Silver tries to swipe kick Goku, but Goku just leaps up, slaps Silver with his tail, then kicks him out cold in the chest.
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| If it wasn’t 0400 in the morning and if I wasn’t in bed, I would’ve jumped up and cheered. YAAAAY! |
Goku then nonchalantly walks away to look for a form of transportation. He finds a capsule that gives him a really condescending robot. The robot points out which capsule will give him a plane, and offers to fly it for him. They fly to the next Dragon Ball.
Meanwhile, we are introduced to the commander of the Red Ribbon Army – Commander Red, who has the most obviously faked Irish accent I have ever seen in a cartoon. Honestly, just google it up and listen to how bad it is.
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| I half expected him to start shouting out words like ‘potato’ and ‘Guinness’ and ‘leprechaun’ , Nic Cage style. |
Commander Red berates Silver on being a fail. Silver is like ‘just gimme another chance’ and Red’s like ‘lol no’ so Silver, apparently tired of Red’s bad Irish accent, just walks out and leaves, determined to have his final appearance be a badassy as possible.
Meanwhile, the robot flying the plane crashes because of the cold. So the plane crashes. I mean, I’m not expert on technology … except I sort of am, and I’ve always thought systems work better when colder, but whatever. General White (his name is a big clue to which certain colour-schemed ribbon army he may be part of) is alerted to this and sends his men. However a mysterious girl gets their first and drags Goku’s frozen body away. Somehow she gets away from the crash site and far enough from to not be in eyesight of what seems to be fairly flat land before the soldiers arrive. I mean, she can’t have been much closer to the crash site when the crash happened than the soldiers, but somehow she escapes.
The girl, called Suno, and her mother, revive the frozen Goku. He expositions for them what Dragon Balls are, and in return they explain what the Red Ribbon Army want with them (world domination, duh). They also tell him that they’re using their men as slave labour and holding their village chief hostage. They ask Goku to give them his Dragon Ball, in the hope they will release the chief. Goku decides he’s gonna just kick their asses. But first he needs to go pee. He goes to the bathroom at the same time two of the Army appear at the house. These two are jerks who have been shooting up people’s houses. When they hear someone in the toilet, they proceed to shoot up the toilet. Goku comes out and dumbly asks Sonu if the men who just shot him are her father (one of the men being forced to search for the Balls). Sonu exasperatedly explains they are Red Ribbon, so Goku happily beats the living tar out of them. After borrowing some warm clothes from Sonu, he proceeds to assault Muscle Tower, White’s HQ. He also leaves the two unconscious soldiers behind. The next time we come back to what Sonu and her mother are doing, they are no where to be seen, so presumably the mother buried them alive or something. (Darker things have happened in Japanese kid’s TV shows.)
Goku proceeds to bulldozer mooks left and right. He then enters the Tower where he is faced with a group of cocky thugs who make wisecracks about giving Goku an ‘education’. Goku hasn’t got time for wisecracks! He’s got butts to kick. And kick butts he does. Watching this take palace are White and Ninja Murasaki, a ninja (I guess?) who only moves in blurs and by jumping zig-zaggy on furniture.
Next Goku fights Major Metallitron, who seems to be an obvious Terminator expy. He speaks with the Austrian accent and at one point even says ‘I’m back’ so …
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| Just don’t eat his cookies. |
What proceeds is a scene which I actually feel goes on for far to long. Goku dodges the Terminator’s punch and knocks him out. The Terminator then gets up and tries to crush him, Goku escapes. The Terminator shoots a missle out of his mouth at him, Goku counters with a Kemehameha which blows off his head. The Terminator seems dead but as Goku walks away it starts moving again and fires its first at Goku. Goku punches several holes in the robot. It appears dead … and then starts moving. Eventually it dies … but that’s because it’s battery has run out. The fight scene between the two takes up most of the episode but is actually really repetitive and becomes dull quickly, unlike all the other fight scenes ever.
And we are done with he recaps. These are all the episodes I have so far scene. I am now going to watch the next four episodes (probably not now, but tomorrow) and then discuss those. And so on. So hopefully we should start getting shorter blog enteries. Yay! SLEEEEEEEP TIME! 😀
The Dragon Ball franchise is copyright of Bird Studio/Shueisha and Toei Animation. Most screen caps are thus owned by them and used in this blog under Fair Use. The Dragon Ball logo (by Toei Animation) used in this blog is also released under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license. Scenes from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Princeare copyright of Warner Bros., and are used under Fair Use.
