#dr mu

[kathrsiss]

[duhragonball]

Dragon Ball GT 45

✨GT Stands for Generating Trichomania✨

✨Positivity Page✨

This Super 17 Saga sucks, so I’ve decided to give myself a side-challenge of giffing every single time he sweeps back his long, silky hair, like Kevin Nash used to do.  This episode has two such hair-sweeps, so I almost missed one.  But I got them both, plus the one from Episode 44, so we’re all caught up.  Don’t worry, I’ll be making a gallery post soon.

Also, we see the oni who run Hell taking Cell and Frieza away in a cage.  Wait, they’re already in Hell, so where are they taking them to? Mostly, I like this shot because I’m pretty sure this is the last time my favorite character (Cell) will appear in this shitty, shitty show.  Also, I like how Frieza is shoulder-to-shoulder with Cell, so there’s no way his feet can touch the floor.  Cell’s basically wearing him like a backpack. 

All right, let’s get down to business.  Piccolo died in Episode 40, and Goku got trapped in Hell in Episode 42, and then Piccolo tricked King Yama into sending him to Hell in Episode 44, all so he could carry out some idea to get Goku back to Earth.  Ideas?  I know just the place to talk about this!

✨”Good” “Ideas”, Poorly Executed✨

Okay, so this is the stupidest shit...

So this all started when Dr. Gero and Dr. Mu teamed up to build an exact duplicate of Android 17, and then they somehow linked the minds of both 17′s and used them to send energy at each other, which somehow opened up a rift between Hell and Earth.  It makes no sense because they literally refused to explain any of it. One minute the doctors were shaking hands, and then the title card, and then they show them toasting their newly created Hell portal. 

Somehow, Piccolo knows exactly how they did this, even though he wasn’t there.  He was in Heaven the whole time, which sounds about as far removed from Hell as you can get.  Like, people write poetry about how far apart these two things are from each other.  Meanwhile, King Kai and King Yemma, who are literal gods responsible for keeping an eye on this sort of thing, they had no idea how the portal opened in the first place, but Piccolo has the whole thing scouted.

Piccolo’s plan, then, is to just do what the 17′s did in Episode 41, so he telepathically contacts Dende to assist him from the other side.  They send “concentration” at each other, and this is supposed to re-open the portal.  But they have to time it just right, and that seems to be the only real problem they have with it. 

So Goku suggests they use the same chant that he and Pan used to defeat Luud back in Episode 14.  Piccolo is furious about having to use such a stupid chant, but it works.  I’m more furious that they flat-out admitted that this whole portal-to-Hell business was swiped from an earlier episode, and one of the shittiest episodes, at that.  

Also annoying: Just like Episode 14, it takes for-flippin’-ever to get the portal open, because they keep trying and trying and trying until finally Goku suggests the thing that works.  Above all else, GT’s primary mission is to waste time.

Goku wants Piccolo to come with him, but Piccolo can’t move, or the portal will collapse.  This means Piccolo will be trapped in Hell forever, but he says he knew what he was getting into when he came up with this plan.  Goku thanks him, and dives through the portal.  As Piccolo watches it close, the bad guys start to return, and Piccolo decides he can spend his time whoopin’ all the bad guys’ asses. 

Okay, three things that make me livid about this.

1) Piccolo is now not only dead, but he’s stuck in hell?   This is bullshit.

2) Piccolo clobbering dead villains sounds a lot more appealing than whatever Goku does next to round out this series.  If they took it seriously, GT Piccolo vs. GT Cell could actually be a cool fight, so let’s just see that instead.

3) NONE OF THIS WAS NECESSARY!  GOKU COULD HAVE TURNED SUPER SAIYAN 4 AND TELEPORTED OUT OF HELL WHENEVER HE WANTED!

Oh, also, when the re-killed villains return to Hell, they go through the same process as the first time they died, so King Yemma has to stamp new papers to send them back to Hell.  I bring this up because when Piccolo asked to be sent to Hell to help Goku, Yemma refused, saying that once he stamps your paper you can’t change your afterlife assignment, no matter what. 

My point here is that it sounds like if Piccolo had jumped through the portal and returned to Earth, he could have gone through the line again and gotten a new paper stamped, allowing him to return to heaven.  But none of this matters, because Goku can teleport anywhere he wants.  He should have just used Instant Transmission to meet Piccolo in Heaven, and they could have done Piccolo’s portal thingy there instead.  Or Goku could have just teleported directly to Earth, because HE ALWAYS HAD THAT OPTION!

Oh, and why do the dead people in GT lose their halos when they’re in hell?  They get to have halos everywhere else, but in DBZ, every dead person had a halo, no matter where they were.  What’s the deal?  Did they forget about this?  Did they change it for some reason? 

Sigh....

Let’s move on.

✨Is this episode worse than “The Roaming Lake”?✨

Yes, it is.  GT has lost forty-six straight matches with the worst Dragon Ball/Dragon Ball Z episode ever made.  That’s 45 episodes of GT, and the TV Special, by the way. 

So, when I came up with this idea, my thought was that a lot of GT would fail to clear this bar, but once I got to the episodes with some fighting, things would improve.  I just assumed that an action-heavy episode of GT could overcome all the shitty writing and annoying side-characters.

But so far, that hasn’t panned out, and I think this Super 17 fight provides a good illustration of the problem.  Let me pick out two examples.

First, we have this shot of 17 landing a heavy punch on Trunks’ abdomen. 

Now, the still image doesn’t look too bad.  We’ve even got the thing where it looks like 17′s arm is pushing all the way through Trunks’ body, a classic trope from the glory days of DBZ.  Hell, it wouldn’t surprise me if they used this because it was a callback to the 17 vs. Piccolo fight in Z. 

Well, here’s the gif version of this shot.

It just doesn’t work at all.  The whole point of those “my arm went through your tummy” spots is that they’re very fast.  So fast that by the time you realize that it doesn’t make any sense, the action has already shifted to something else.  And that’s sort of what happens here.  The next cut is a closeup on Trunks coughing up spittle as he reacts to the blow, and then 17 rises up behind him.  That part’s kind of in slow motion, and then it cuts to a wide shot of 17 following up with a kick.  I think that’s in slow motion too.

I say “think”, because this whole sequence is very slow, and some parts of the sequence are probably supposed to be slowed down for dramatic effect, but I’m positive that this tummy punch wasn’t supposed to be one of them.  I’m not an animation expert or anything.  I’m just a guy who watches a lot of Dragon Ball Z.

The point I’m getting at here is that this fight sucks.  The story is that 17 is too strong and too fast, and Trunks can’t even touch him.  17′s punches are so hard and quick that there’s just nothing Trunks can do.  That’s the script, but the animation tells a completely different story, one where 17′s punch isn’t hard or quick.  It looks like he’s gently pressing his arm into Trunks, and Trunks is holding perfectly still as 17′s arm passes through him.  Also, the “camera” shakes around. 

There’s just no impact to any of this.  It’s so plodding and slow, and when the characters hit each other, there’s no flashes or other effects to make it feel more authentic.  And this happens all the time in GT.  There’s a handful of episodes where the animators seem to be on their game, but those episodes are always dragged down by the shitty storytelling.  But most of the time, the show is like this, where all the fighters look like they’re moving underwater.

 Okay, next example: Uub tries to jump back into this thing, and 17 removes his left forearm and reveals a machine gun.  It’s kind of like Dr. Cochin shooting Krillin in DBZ Movie 2. 

Except Uub doesn’t dodge the bullets.  He just lays there and covers up his head. 

Super 17 shoots him for a while, and then Uub sort of lays there like “Ohhh, those bullets hurt me so much, you guys!  Now I can’t do anything!”  He’s not dead or anything, he’s just worn out.

And this is the big problem with every fight in this series.  The idea here is to show off all the characters’ powers, and demonstrate which ones are stronger than the others.  In this case Super 17 is outclassing everyone.  The others are no match for him, even when they work together.  And yet, scenes like this completely muddy the waters.  Who is strong in this scene?  Who is weak?

I mean, 17 seems strong because he shut down Uub so easily, but think about it.  If he’s that much stronger than Uub, why didn’t his bullets kill him?  And if the bullets can’t kill Uub, why is he using them?  Why doesn’t he just run over and cut his head off or something?

You could argue that this is being done to show how strong Uub is, but I don’t buy it.  If he’s strong enough that the bullets can’t hurt him, then why is he just lying there, letting them hit him?  Shouldn’t he at least roll out of the way, and try to find some cover?

I want to stress here that this has nothing to do with power scaling.  I’m not bringing this up to talk about whether DBZ characters are bulletproof, or make up some fanlore about how Dr. Mu made special Machine Mutant ammo for 17′s gun arms.  That’s irrelevant.  All that matters is that 17 is supposed to be dominating this battle, and yet we see him using attacks that don’t actually hurt anyone, at all.  He hit Trunks and Uub with TWO Flash Bombers before this.  I think Flash Bomber is Super 17′s finisher, but they took two of those last episode, and they’re still putting up a fight in this one.  And Super 17′s like “Let me finish the job with a really slow punch and some non-lethal bullets!”

Then Vegeta tries to rally, and from here on, it’s basically Vegeta vs. Super 17, which would make sense except 17 already beat him down in the last episode.  Somehow Vegeta lasts longer this time, even though he’s still using his Super Saiyan form, which did him no good earlier.

So while that’s going on, Pan gets fed up and takes matters into her own hands.  She sneaks up on Dr. Gero and puts him in a hammerlock AND a choke hold at the same time, then has Giru hold a gun to his head.  She threatens to kill him unless he orders Super 17 to stand down, and Gero... agrees?   Shouldn’t Gero be a lot stronger than this?  No, wait!  Shouldn’t he be using the receptacles on his hands to steal Pan’s energy?  He could just launch himself into the air, faster than Giru could follow, and drain Pan before she knows what’s happened. 

I mean, what was the point of turning himself into an android if he can’t do things like that? 

Anyway, he orders 17 to halt his attack on Vegeta, but then 17 aims at Gero instead.  Gero is shocked, and then he’s shocked again when Dr. Mu reveals that he reprogrammed 17 to follow Mu’s orders alone.  Apparently, every time 17 seemed to obey Gero, Mu was transmitting the same orders to him.

So 17 betrays Gero again, and Mu gloats that there’s no one left to stop him, now that Goku is trapped in hell.  That offends Vegeta, who gets up and turns Super Saiyan one more time, insisting that he can win this fight without Goku’s help.  Normally, this would be the part where Vegeta gets clobbered for a while, but instead Goku shows up almost immediately, and tackles Vegeta before he can eat another blast from 17.  Why?  Was this the blast from 17 that was actually going to kill someone?

So Goku’s finally here to take on Super 17.  All he has to do is turn Super Saiyan 4 and even the playing field, but no.  No, he won’t do that.  Instead he turns Super Saiyan 1, and starts fighting 17 that way. 

Motherf--! 

Vegeta was already doing that this whole time, and it didn’t work!  At all!  Just turn into a Super Saiyan 4!  What the hell is wrong with you, Goku?!

✨The Blade Braxton Memorial Haiku*✨

Piccolo’s in hell.

Can it get worse? Ask his new

Roomate: Castiel.

[goshark97]

[duhragonball]

Dragon Ball GT 43

✨GT Stands for Garish Travesty✨

✨”Good” “Ideas”, Poorly Executed✨

So the “idea” here was to have Goku fight Frieza and Cell in Hell.  We already saw this in DBZ 195, and it didn’t even go down, because Pikkon swooped in and took out both of these guys and King Cold before Goku could get to them.

But still, this could be a good time.  The plot here is that all the classic villains have returned to invade Earth, and Goku’s trapped in Hell with Frieza and Cell, so this seems like a decent set up for some great action.  You’ve got plenty of star power, and even if Goku has these two outmatched, it’s a two-on-one deal, so maybe it can still work out. 

Except for one thing.  This is Dragon Ball GT, and for some reason they decided that this episode should look like absolute dogshit. 

Frieza kind of looks all right... I guess?  He looks pretty crappy, but he seems more or less recognizable.

But Cell looks like some shitty new character wearing a Cell costume.  His eyes are too big, and he just looks wrong in every shot. 

This is just a really unpleasant episode to watch.  I knew this was coming, and I thought I was prepared for it, but man, it’s just ugly.  There are some off-model characters in episodes of DB and DBZ, but somehow this one just sinks to a completely different level. 

It’s something about the eyes, I think.  I can’t quite put my finger on it, but everyone looks really wrong.  And unfortunately, there’s a lot of close up shots of the characters, all looking like misshapen bootleg action figures.

This is so bad.  I’m not even kidding a little.  If the episode had a better plot or script, I could forgive the bad animation, but no.  It sucks in every possible way. 

This was my introduction to Dragon Ball GT, by the way.  In 2004, I bought a strategy guide for one of the games, Budokai 2, and it came with a DVD of this episode.  The idea was to promote GT, which would be airing on Cartoon Network later that year.  I assume they picked Episode 43 because of all the star power.  In addition to the main cast, you also have Cell, Frieza, Nappa, 17, and Dr. Gero.  It’s like a damn reunion.  Except the episode sucks ass.  Everyone looks terrible, and even thought there’s a lot of fighting going on, all of it is pathetic. 

All right, let’s dive in to this turkey.

In brief: Goku’s fight with Cell and Frieza sucks because none of them take the fight seriously.  All I wanted was for Goku to blow the bad guys mind with some Super Saiyan 4 action, but instead he refuses to transform at all.  He still does an overblown power-up any way, but he doesn’t transform.  Goku still styles all over these two, and they can’t even touch him.  When Frieza tries a ki disc, Goku rides it like a surfboard.  Then he grabs a needle spike from the scenery and weilds it like his nyo’ibo.  So he’s just recreating his classic look from the old days.  That’s how seriously Goku is taking this.  Cell fires a Kamehameha at Goku, and he just knocks it back at him with his stick.  Cell gets blown up by his own attack, and the ki disc slices Frieza in half. 

But that doesn’t matter, because Cell and Frieza are already dead, so they just come back and keep fighting.  We don’t see them regenerate or anything, because the animators are lazy, as well as bad.  Cell manages to sucker Goku in and... catches him with his tail? 

Yeah, so he tries to absorb Goku and assimilate his power, the way he absorbed 17 and 18 to achieve his perfect form.  But... that’s not how Cell works.  For a moment, it seems like Cell has actually increased his power this way, but then Goku just forces himself back out of his tail, and escapes.  This is stupid.

So Frieza and Cell use a new technique to turn the tables on Goku, the Hell Buster.  This traps Goku in a ki structure, which they then launch down into the lower depths of hell.  So they’re not really defeating Goku so much as relocating him to some place else where the environment will finish him off.

Then this old lady subjects Goku to four different torments on the “Hell Pilgrimage”: She cooks Goku in a giant stew pot, then subjects him to tickle torture, then a sauna, then she freezes him with a big machine.

Frieza promises that they’ll come down there to finish him off.  So if they could do that Hell Buster move from the start, why did they even bother attacking him with anything else?

Meanwhile, the Earth is being besieged by all the other villains, like... uh... the Saibamen!  Remember them?  Well they’re back!  Yeah, who else have we got?

More Saibamen!  Wow, look at them go.  This is pretty bad news for the Earth.  It’s too bad Goku isn’t here to put a stop to this.  But it’s not just Saibamen plaguing the world.  No, there’s also...

... Saibamen.  I don’t remember there being this many of them before.  Did they have an orgy or something to make more? 

Goten and Trunks just sort of watch all this with a mixture of disgust and fear.  Uub literally flies over and asks them to step in and help.  I have no idea why this is happening.  The Saibamen aren’t even that tough.  Uub just flies through the streets, taking them out with one hit apiece, but Goten and Trunks seem reluctant to pitch in.  

Meanwhile, Pan and Mr. Satan are being chased by... General Rildo.  Can we go back to the Saibamen, please?  Gohan shows up to save them, and now we’ve got Rildo vs. Gohan, a dream match if there ever (yawn!) was one.

Okay, so this appearance by Rildo is the only confirmation we have that he died in Episode 23.  This episode makes zero effort to reintroduce the character.  He doesn’t even get any lines!   Shouldn’t Rildo be using his final form in this thing?  Is he helping the bad guys because of his loyalty to Dr. Mu?  Or is he actually loyal to Baby?  Shouldn’t he be asking where Baby is during all of this?  I mean, either he wants to keep working for Baby, or he should want to kick Baby’s ass because Baby killed Dr. Mu. 

Or, you would think he’d want to stay in Hell to fight Goku, since he’s supposed to be stronger than anyone else on the bad guy team, remember? Goku said his ki was “even greater than Buu’s”. 

Oh, and Nappa’s also here.  He blows up an entire city, which is the most any of these guys seem to have done since they invaded, but then Vegeta confronts him.  Strange that Vegeta waited until after the city got destroyed before stepping in, but whatever.  At least this promises to be an interesting scene.  Nappa’s no match for Vegeta, but they know each other well, and you could get some drama out of this encounter if....

Yeah, Vegeta one-shots him.  Never mind.

Then Gero and Mu show up and introduce Vegeta to their latest creation, “Hell Fighter 17.”  He bursts out of the rubble and there’s flames and everything, and Vegeta doesn’t seem too impressed.  Then they fight, and Vegeta doesn’t bother turning Super Saiyan.  He can’t hit Hell Fighter 17, but since he won’t transform, it makes it seem like he’s not even trying. 

As they fight, Hell Fighter 17 telepathically contacts his counterpart, the original 17, and asks him what’s taking him so long.  Remember, the plan was for both 17′s to link up and fuse into a single, invincible warrior.  Apparently Hell Fighter 17 is having some trouble with Vegeta, so he’s anxious to get that boost in power.  Well why did they go picking a fight with Vegeta, then?  They could have waited for both 17′s to combine, and then gone after him.

Instead, Original 17 tracks down his sister, Android 18, and invites her to join them.  We’ve yet to establish how Gero and Mu are controlling the original 17, but presumably they’re using Hell Fighter 17 to do it, and now Original 17 is using the same trick to influence 18.  Except Gero’s team never told him to do this, so I have to assume this wasn’t part of the plan.

Let me add some context here.  Nobody has seen 17 in years.  It was assumed that he got resurrected at the end of the Cell Games, but they never actually showed 17-- dead or alive-- until the very end of the Kid Buu fight, when he makes a cameo appearance to send energy to Goku’s Spirit Bomb.  This episode is set sixteen years after that battle, and no one ever says anything about keeping in touch with the guy. 

In fact, in the previous episode, it’s strongly implied that Trunks had never met 17 before the ambush.  He sensed 17′s ki, noticed it was similar to 18′s, and figured it out that way.  Which is bullshit, by the way.  17 and 18 don’t have ki signatures for Trunks to sense. 

So when 17 confronts 18 (and Krillin and Marron), it’s the first time they’ve been on screen together since 17 got  absorbed by Cell.  That was 23 years ago.  It’s never established whether they’ve been in contact during that time, or if this is their first meeting since 17 was wished back to life.   This is a stupid way to reintroduce a character.

I think the idea with this arc was to focus on 17, because he was the one villain who never got killed or rehabilitated.  We never found out what happened to him, and this arc would finally address his final fate.  But it turned out to be a colossal shitshow, in part because 17 is mind-controlled the entire time, so we never find out what he wants, or what he’s been up to all these years.  Instead, we just get two versions of him, and one of them hypnotizes 18 for no obvious reason, and the other one fights Vegeta in a weak, watered-down brawl.   If anyone liked 17 enough to be excited about this arc, Episode 43 has made sure to punish them for their enthusiasm.

Meanwhile, Goten, Trunks, and Uub are still zapping Saibamen, literally repeating shots of them zapping Saibamen earlier in the episode.   And Gohan is still fighting General Rildo, and not much is happening there.

And Goku’s frozen.  Good times.

✨Positivity Page✨

Perhaps the one decent shot in this episode is this one where Vegeta watches Hell Fighter 17 surrounded by flames.  He doesn’t look much like Vegeta, but at least he looks very handsome and cool.  It’s like he bribed the animation director to make him look good for one shot. 

✨Is this episode worse than “The Roaming Lake”?✨

Hell damn yes it’s worse than “The Roaming Lake”.  That episode was really pleasant to look at.  Not like this garbage dump. 

The only real question is whether Episode 43 is the worst episode of GT.  That’s a tough call, because it has to compete with the Para Bros. and Doltaki.  But Episode 43 definitely has a safe spot in the Bottom Five. 

✨The Blade Braxton Memorial Haiku*✨

Hells Pilgrimage stop

Number 5: Hell of watching

GT 43.

[duhragonball]

Dragon Ball GT 42

✨GT Stands for Gero’s Teammate✨

All right, so we’ve reached the final leg of GT. The series began with the Black Star Dragon Balls and then changed course into the Baby Saga, and now both of those things are in the rear-view mirror.  The big question is, where does GT go from here? 

Unfortunately, the answer is “not very far.” 

✨”Good” “Ideas”, Poorly Executed✨

All right, so let’s get this out of the way, since this is easily the most creatively bankrupt part of the series.

In DBZ, Dr. Gero created Android 17 as part of plot to kill Goku.

In DBGT, Dr. Gero and a second Dr. Gero create a second Android 17 as part of a plot to kill Goku. 

That’s what we’re doing.

Let’s dive a little deeper here.  So Dr. Mu was killed in Episode 22.  As you may recall, he was the Machine Mutant scientist who thought he was the evil mastermind behind Baby, the Machine Mutant army on M2, and the Luud Cult, but then Baby revealed that he had created Mu, and not the other way around.  So Mu seemed to be a clueless puppet, someone who thought he was important, but then turned out to be nothing special. 

And yet, after Baby, Mu is pretty much the top bad guy in GT.  I think the logic was that they needed to dip into the GT Rogues’ Gallery for the next arc, sort of like how Batman will fight the Joker in one story and the next one will have him fight Riddler or Penguin.  Except GT’s “Rogues’ Gallery” sucks eggs.  It’s Baby, then a bunch of idiots who worked for Baby, and then Ledgic and that one asshole who predicted earthquakes.   Dr. Mu’s kind of the only choice, here, but I can’t overstate how weak this is. 

Like, okay. So Mu is dead, and Dr. Gero approaches him in hell and says he says he needs his expertise in Tuffle science.  That makes sense, except Mu isn’t a Tuffle.  I don’t think he even knew what Tuffles were, because he seemed to have no idea what Baby’s true nature was, or that all of the science he knew was given to him by Baby.  So why doesn’t Gero just go find Baby instead?  He’s dead too, right? Goku blasted him into the sun.  And don’t tell me Baby went to heaven. 

Also, unlike Mu, Baby has a grudge against Goku.  I mean, sure, Mu probably doesn’t like Goku either, but Goku didn’t kill Mu.  Baby killed Mu, and Goku killed Baby.  So you’d think Mu would be writing Goku a thank-you card.

Actually, while we’re at it, let’s talk about Dr. Gero.  In DBZ, he wanted to kill Goku to avenge the destruction of the Red Ribbon Army.  This was later retconned to a more personal grudge.  Gero had a son, Gevo, who was killed during Goku’s attack on Red Ribbon HQ.  And that made perfect sense in DBZ, when Gero was still alive.  But now he’s dead, and it wasn’t Goku who killed him; it was Android 17.  So you’d think Gero would now be more angry at 17 than Goku.  But he’s not trying to get revenge on 17.  No, he’s making another 17.  Somehow, Dr. Gero has been in hell for 23 years and he seems to think that his fatal mistake was in not having enough Android 17′s.

Anyway, the two doctors somehow build a copy of 17.  He even has all the same clothes he wore in DBZ, which is oddly specific.  Somehow, this duplicate 17 is in contact with the still-living original 17 on Earth, and the two of them can produce some sort of energy that opens up a portal connecting Hell with Earth.  How did Gero and Mu pull this off?  We never find out, because they did all this off-screen. 

Phase 2 of the plan is to send a bunch of dead bad guys through the portal to attack the Earth.  So we’re not just ripping off the Androids Saga.  We’re also ripping off the B-plot of Fusion Reborn. 

Phase 3 will be to get the original 17 and the duplicate 17 to merge together, which will produce an invincible Super 17.  Sort of like DBZ Movie 7, where Android 13 combined with parts from his comrades to become Super 13.  So for those of you keeping score, this arc is now ripping off the Androids Saga and two of the DBZ movies. 

So, this arc is off to a pretty weak start.  Don’t get me wrong, this could work.  Ripping off all these old DBZ stories is cheap, but it does make a pretty solid premise for an action-adventure story.  In the hands of a great creative team, this could have turned out to be a lot of fun.  But it’s Toei, and it’s GT, and by now I think we see their track record for this sort of thing. 

Again, the point I’m trying to make with this segment is not that GT isn’t allowed to borrow ideas.  The point is to poke holes in the idea that GT “had some good ideas”.  It didn’t.  There isn’t a single new idea in this whole episode.  It’s just a mashup of stuff we’ve seen before.  And that could still be okay, but it’s that “poor execution” that damns the series. 

✨Positivity Page✨

How can combining 17 with himself make him stronger?  Well, this is the one part of the plan that they bother to explain.  According to Gero, he had designed 17 to be the ultimate android, or cyborg, or whatever you want to call him.  He even says in this episode that 17 was meant to be even stronger than Cell turned out to be.  But 17 never achieved his true potential.  Gero blames this on his failure to completely erase 17′s former identity when he rebuilt him into a cyborg.  I’m not sure I follow that logic, but we do know 17 was never truly loyal to Gero, so maybe what Gero is saying is that he had to leave out certain powers from 17′s design, because he couldn’t be trusted. 

But the way Gero says it, it sounds like he means 17′s disloyalty made him weaker somehow.  Anyway, Gero seems to have solved that problem, because the duplicate is completely under his control, and he original 17 seems to be doing what they want him to do.  And the duplicate contains special upgrades and enhancements that the original lacks, so when they merge together, they’ll finally become the ultimate artificial warrior that Gero had intended from the start.

And you know, I guess that does sort of add up, now that I think about it.  I’ve always balked at this explanation for Super 17, because the whole point of Cell was that he was Gero’s “ultimate weapon”, except he kind of wasn’t.  Cell was a failsafe, something Gero gave up on because it was taking too long to finish. 

So I guess the narrative here is that Gero planned to achieve the ultimate android in #17, but he couldn’t suppress 17′s personality, so he had to nerf 17.  Then he made 18, perhaps as a second try, and she had the same problems, so he put both of them in storage, for fear that they’d turn on him.  He ended up designing 19, using some different powers that weren’t included in 17 and 18, but given what we know about Super 17, it seems like the idea was to have one android with all of those powers, and some more besides.

Anyway, since 17 didn’t work out the way Gero planned, he tried to create Cell as a way to salvage the project.  But Cell would only combine with 17 by literally consuming him (and 18).  He’d become incredibly powerful, but not necessarily as powerful as the original Super 17 design.  But Gero had to settle for that, because it was the only way to approach Super 17 power levels while also eliminating 17 as a potential threat. 

But now, with Dr. Mu’s help, and 23 years in hell to consider the problem, Gero thinks he can finally build Super 17 the way he wanted from the start.  And that kind of makes sense too, because it took Gero’s computer about 20 years to finish making Cell, and you have to figure that Gero could improve on that in the same amount of time, especially when he has the completed Cell available for reference. 

So I don’t know, it’s not all terrible.  But it is mostly terrible.  Also, I like this mad scientist toast that Gero and Mu share.

✨Is this episode worse than “The Roaming Lake”?✨

This episode is pretty much focused on setting up the plot, which is a good thing in principle, but it takes a really roundabout way to get there.   I just explained Gero and Mu’s scheme, but I had to jump back and forth across this episode’s runtime to do it.   Let me run through these scenes in order to give you an idea of the problem here.

So we open on Goku’s house, I think?  It looks like Mt. Paozu, except there’s a town around them.  Anyway, the Son Family is having Bulma, Trunks, and Bulla over for dinner.  Trunks is running late, and then he shows up and collapses in Pan’s arms.  He says “17″, and passes out. 

Then the good guys notice the giant hellhole in the sky, and King Kai contacts Goku to tell him what that is.  He doesn’t know how it happened, though.  Also, King Kai has a cold for some reason, and I don’t know if that’s supposed to be a plot point, or if they just wanted to do something different with his visual.

We get a lot of panicky Earthlings reacting to the Hellhole, and then we find out Mu and Gero are behind it, and they explain their plan, which I’ve already covered.

Then Trunks wakes up at Goku’s house, and he explains what happened to him.  He was on his way over for dinner, when the original 17 ambushed him, beat him up, then told him about the Hellhole.  Note that a lot of this information has already been explained elsewhere, but this is how Goku finds out about it.  The only new detail in this scene is that 17 told Trunks to send a message to Goku, challenging him to face the bad guys in hell. 

After Trunks tells his story, the gang sees a news report about all the dead villains invading, and Goku decides the only thing to do is take the fight to Hell before Cell and Frieza come to Earth.  Again, we’re just sort of rehashing the basic problem.  King Kai told Goku about this Hellhole problem early on, so we didn’t really need 17 and the news media explaining that dead bad guys could come through it to get revenge.

So we can finally move on to the real meat of the story, except most of the episode was spent over-explaining the situation. Goten and Trunks kill Pui-Pui, Yakon, and Android 19 while Palace watches.  I guess fans of Bisexual Goten really did this shot?  I don’t have much of a head for this sort of thing, but it seems like something they’d like.

And Pan wipes out just about all of the Red Ribbon Army guys.  Wait, why did Staff Officer Black get to keep his robot suit?  It’s weird enough that No. 19 and Sgt. Metallic are in this episode, but I can sort of buy into the idea that they had souls.  But Black’s mech was just a machine.  Did Gero build him a new one?  Or did Black come to Earth, and then he went to an old Red Ribbon storage facility and get a new robot suit just like the one he used when he died?

As for Goku, he flies into Hell by himself, like an idiot.  When he finds Gero, Mu, and the duplicate 17, they just nope out there and fly through the hole, closing it up behind them.  Goku stands there like a dummy and just watches them escape.  So now Goku is trapped in hell, while Gero and Mu are free to wreak havoc on Earth with no one to stop them.

Mostly, Goku’s pissed because he came here to fight Cell and Frieza, and he’s worried that it was all a lie, but then Cell and Frieza show up, and it looks like they stayed behind to keep Goku company. 

And this is presented like a terriffic cliffhanger, but... it really isn’t?  The idea here is that the Earth is besieged with dead villains while Goku is trapped in hell.  But... we already know there’s a way out, since Gero and Mu just used one.  Sure, the trick will be for Goku to find his own escape, except.... no, Goku can just turn into a Super Saiyan 4 and use Instant Transmission to leave.  We’ve seen him do this before.  He teleported back and forth between Earth and Otherworld during the Buu Saga.  The only limitation seemed to be that he couldn’t move freely while he was dead, but he’s not dead this time. 

Then there’s the dead villains.  Well, they could cause all sorts of problems for our heroes, except... no, they can’t.  Goten, Trunks, and Pan just took out a bunch of them already.  Most of the bad guys in this arc are so outclassed that they’re not even remotely a threat.  Cell and Frieza might be able to cause some trouble for the weaker heroes, but they stayed behind to fight Goku, who... Well he’s a Super Saiyan 4 now!  Frieza died to a Super Saiyan 1, and Cell died to a Super Saiyan 2.  Do the math. 

The only real tension to any of this lies in the pair of 17′s, but they don’t really become a threat until they combine together.  So this whole arc is really just a one-villain deal, but we have to wade through all of these small fry just to get to that part, which is a waste of time.  And as we’ve seen, GT loves dragging things out. 

So yeah, this is worse than “The Roaming Lake”, because of the way it sort of repeats the explanation of the conflict, rather than giving the audience any reason to care about it. 

✨The Blade Braxton Memorial Haiku*✨

That android is toast!

Yeah, more like... burnt toast... again!

And again... and... a--

[duhragonball]

Dragon Ball GT 46

✨GT Stands for Gently Tousled.✨

This episode doesn’t have any shots of Super 17 sweeping his hair back with both hands the way he did in the last two episodes.  But it does have four scenes of him at least touching his hair and moving it out of the way, which makes up for it, I suppose.

✨Positivity Page✨

✨”Good” “Ideas”, Poorly Executed✨

Here’s a moody shot of Goku to start us off.  The animators for this episode were clearly trying to make this thing look really cool, but there’s only so much you can do with a crappy story like this.  So there’s lots of “““aesthetic”““ shots of the destroyed city they’re fighting in, and the sun is going down, so large chunks of this episode are bright orange.

It’s a rare departure from the usual washed-out pastels we see in most of this series.  I was watching some clips of the Super Android 13 movie the other day, and it was just so pretty.  Red, yellow, blue, so many beautiful colors in that movie. 

Let’s just get to the point.  Half of this episode is Goku fighting as a Super Saiyan 1, which the whole audience knows is a waste of time.  17 just got done fighting four vanilla Super Saiyans, and he kicked all their asses.  Everyone was waiting for Goku to come back and save the day, but that was because he’s the only one who can transform into a Super Saiyan 4.  For some reason, Goku seems to be the only one who doesn’t understand this. 

Anyway, he keeps attacking, and nothing works, and 17 says its because he can see through all his moves.  So Goku starts shooting energy blasts at him, like that’s some zany new thing no one could possibly anticipate.  Well, it doesn’t work either. 

Meanwhile, Chi-Chi and Videl have decided to take matters into their own hands and defeat the bad guys themselves, because the menfolk have been gone too long.   Videl puts on her Great Saiyawoman costume and she’s thrilled that it still fits. Chi-Chi cobbles together armor made out of various kitchen utensils.  This is really stupid.

Bulla approves, and tells her mom she wants in on this stupid mission.  You know, Bulla, you could just train and become a Super Saiyan yourself, and then you could go with the boys for the first wave, instead of doing whatever this is.

Meanwhile, Goku has finally turned into a Super Saiyan 4, but his tactics haven’t changed at all.  He keeps firing ki blasts at Super 17, and none of it works.  It finally dawns on Goku that 17 is letting himself get hit on purpose, because he could easily dodge these blasts, but he’s not even trying. 

So fires a 10x Kamehameha at Super 17...

... who absorbs all of the energy, becoming even stronger than he was before.

Okay, so this is incredibly stupid, because Goku has already seen this ability from Gero’s androids.  He fought Android 19 back in DBZ, and when he fired a Kamehameha at him, 19 absorbed it through the red implants in the palms of his hands.  Android 17 never had this power before, but that doesn’t matter, because in this continuity, Goku never met 17 until today, so he’s only ever seen him in this Super 17 form.  And besides, Goku ought to be able to see the same red implants on Super 17′s hands.  He never had them before the upgrade, but he has them now, and Goku should have recognized their function right off the bat. 

More importantly, even when Goku did figure out what was happening, he stupidly decided to test his suspicions by firing his strongest blast at Super 17, just to see what would happen.  I could criticize this decision, but Dr. Mu does it for me.  He’s like, wait, you knew that would happen and you did it anyway just to make sure?  “You’re a cretin!”  Goku tries to defend his reasoning, saying that he wanted to see how Super 17 would handle his strongest blast, just in case it would overload him or anything like that.

Okay, here’s what Goku could have done instead.  Mu and Super 17 had no idea about his Super Saiyan 4 form. So Goku could have shot a much smaller blast at him, and then started talking about he finally figured this out, and then let Dr. Mu gloat about it.  Mu would probably let slip some useful information, because Goku’s been doing this long enough that he knows the villains get chatty when they think they’re winning. 

It wouldn’t change the problem, but at least Goku wouldn’t be feeding vast amounts of his own power to the enemy. 

So Goku realizes that he can’t use ki blasts for the rest of this fight.  That shouldn’t be a problem for him, since he’s equally skilled at close-quarters combat, but this is GT, and for some reason, 80% of the fight choreography in this series is “Shoot fireballs at the opponent”.  At one point, Goku starts to set up another Kamehameha, then he stops himself when he remembers he’s not supposed to do that.  It makes him look like a hack. 

So instead, he tries to get in close using Instant Transmission, except 17 has that scouted.  Turns out he can sense the air displacement when Goku teleports into a location.  Two things:

1) Fuck you, GT Goku, for deciding to use Instant Transmission now, several episodes after it would have actually come in handy.  You could have saved Piccolo a lot of trouble and taken out Hell Fighter 17 before he had a chance to turn into Super 17. 

2) Goku shouldn’t need to teleport just to slug it out with 17.  He could just... you know... fly closer to him and throw hands.  Dammit, it’s like everyone who worked on this show never paid any attention to DBZ. 

So Goku gets his ass kicked, deservedly so, and he just lays there like a dope while Super 17 prepares the Revenge Death Ball Electro Eclipse Bomb to finish Goku off. 

And this right here is why I’ve never been a big fan of Super Saiyan 4.  They introduced this new transformation for GT, but then they kept making it look weak and useless.  They also kept making Goku turn into a giant idiot every time he used it.  He fought Baby with this thing and it took five episodes to beat him because Goku kept making stupid mistakes when he should be old enough to know better.  And now we’re seeing his second-ever fight with this form, and he just lost.  And sure, SSJ3 Goku has a lousy track record too, but he always made the form look strong the whole time he used it, and whenever he lost at SSJ3, it was usually because he ran out of gas.  With SSJ4, the problem is he keeps running out of brain.

✨Is this episode worse than “The Roaming Lake”?✨

This episode is supposed to be the payoff to the past four episodes, where Goku was trapped in Hell and the world was depending on him to escape and save everyone from Super 17.  And now, Goku’s finally fighting Super 17, and it isn’t making a lick of difference! 

This arc is only six episodes long, but it still feels like it takes forever.  You spend most of it just waiting for Goku to turn Super Saiyan 4, and he stubbornly refuses to do it until there’s only 1.5 episodes left in the story, and then he gets his ass kicked.  It’s like Toei is punishing the viewer for caring about this story. 

Well, “The Roaming Lake” never played those kinds of games.  Sure, it contradicted the payoff to another episode, where Nam got all that water, but it didn’t contradict itself.  The Roaming Lake was promised at the start of the story, and then it saved the day.  It didn’t turn out to be full of vinegar or anything like that.  Man, fuck GT forever.

✨The Blade Braxton Memorial Haiku*✨

Goku dropped the ball.

Not to worry.  His wife will

Clean up after him.

[duhragonball]

Dragon Ball GT 47

✨GT Stands for Gainsaying Trimmers✨

Last time, Super 17 had Goku dead to rights, and was just about to finish him off with his Revenge Death Ball Electro Eclipse Bomb.  But Goku spots an opening when 17 launches the attack.  It’s so big and noisy that it masks Goku’s teleportation.  Before, Super 17 bragged that he could tell where Goku would pop up, because of subtle vibrations in the air.  But those subtle vibrations don’t mean squat when there’s a giant ki blast flying through the air.

So Goku teleports behind 17 and grabs him by the arms and legs.  17 can’t attack from this position, but Goku can’t do a whole lot either.  Wait, can Goku shoot ki blasts from his eyes?  He really should learn how to do that.  Maybe a tail laser would be a nice touch.

Anyway, Goku’s big idea is to pull a Chiaotzu and blow Super 17 up with all of his ki.  It’s not entirely clear if Goku means to kill himself with this attack, but it doesn’t matter, since it doesn’t work.

When the blast subsides, Goku is left laying in his base form, completely spent...

But 17 is totally fine.  He says he might have been in some danger, but he managed to throw up a barrier just in the nick of time.  I assume this is the same force field he used to protect himself from Piccolo’s Hellzone Grenade back in DBZ.  Then again, 17 complains that his clothes got damaged, but I don’t see how that’s possible if he was surrounded by a force field. 

Anyway, he prepares another Revenge Death Ball Electro Eclipse Bomb, when suddenly--!

Android 18 shows up!  Recall that 17 approached her in Episode 43 and tried to mind control her into joining him, but then he killed Krillin and ran off in Episode 44.  Well, she’s finally tracked him down and she wants revenge.  I don’t think 18 realizes how much 17 has changed since she last saw him, but she’s too upset to care. 

Okay, but 18 already tried to fight 17 back in Episode 44, and she got clobbered.  So what can she do here?  Bluff, that’s what.  18 says that 17 tried to kill her before he left, but he deliberately held back his power, so as to miss a specific spot in 18′s chest.  Why?  Because Dr. Gero installed a powerful bomb in her body, and I’m pretty sure 17 has one too, so he knows about hers. 

18 says that he had to miss this bomb when he shot her, or otherwise he would risk setting it off, and he would be damaged in the process.  So he held back, and that’s how 18 survived. 

More to the point, 18 believes that the same caution will keep 17 from firing on her this time as well.  So she stands between 17 and Goku and dares him to shoot, because she knows he hasn’t got the guts.

Also, she rips open her blouse for some reason.  I guess this is to show him the spot on her body where the bomb is located, but... I mean, he still can’t see it, so why not just leave your shirt on?

Maybe the point here is to show him that she never had the bomb removed, since a surgical extraction would leave scars in this general area.  But he’s pretty high up, so he probably wouldn’t be able to tell.  So I’m pretty sure this is just an excuse to show cartoon boobs. 

Of course, there is no bomb, because Krillin used the Dragon Balls to ask Shenron to remove the bombs from 17 and 18′s bodies. This was 23 years ago, after the Cell Games ended.  I guess 17 never noticed his bomb was removed, or maybe he just forgot about it.  Or maybe he got a new one when he merged with Hell Fighter 17.  In any case, Super 17 doesn’t seem to be aware of any of this, but Goku knows. 

Dr. Mu angrily tells 17 to just shot them already, because he’s certain that no bomb could possibly harm him.  17 says he knows that, and he isn’t afraid of any bomb, but  then why doesn’t he shoot.  Mu gets irritated and calls him “pathetic”...

So 17 shoots Dr. Mu instead. Well, okay.

But he’s still evil, I guess?  I mean, there’s no one left to mind-control him, so I don’t know what’s going on here.  17 seems to just be lashing out now, killing Mu for calling him “pathetic”, and now he’s attacking 18 for calling him a “coward”, 

But 18 refuses to roll over and die, so she starts shooting energy blasts at 17.  He absorbs these, and Goku warns 18 to stop, but then he notices that 17 has to pose in a certain way to make the absorption ability work.

So Goku charges up one more attack, and flies through 18′s barrage...

... and lands a Super Dragon Fist, tearing a hole through 17′s body. 

Then he shoots him with a Kamehameha for good measure, even though we’ve repeatedly established that 17 can absorb ki blasts.  I guess Goku figured he couldn’t do it with a hole in his body. 

And that’s the end of 17.  After the smoke clears, 18 and Goku reflect on the tragic battle, and he explains to her that 17 was being controlled by Gero and Mu.  He also speculates that 17 knew that she was bluffing about the bomb, and he deliberately held back because he was resisting Mu’s control.  Of course, he can’t be sure of any of this, but, as he says “you’d sure like to think so, huh?”

✨”Good” “Ideas”, Poorly Executed✨

And that’s kind of the problem burdening this whole arc. 

You’ve got three villains in this story that drive the whole plot: Gero, Mu, and 17.  I think any one of them could carry a Dragon Ball saga with the right story.  Mu’s the only iffy one in the group, since his only claim to stardom is his role as the big boss of the M2 arc, and he didn’t do a whole lot there. But he’s an evil alien scientist, so I think he has potential, at least.  We already saw what Gero could do in the Androids Saga, and while he died early into it, he got a lot done posthumously through Cell.  And 17 was one of the main heavies in the “History of Trunks” special. 

So then, which one of them was the main villain of this Super 17 arc?

It can’t be Gero, because even though this whole scheme was his idea, it turned out that Dr. Mu had been playing him the entire time.  Gero was a patsy, and maybe that’s for the best, since he already blew his shot at revenge.  Giving him another try just sounds stale. 

It can’t be Mu either, because Super 17 turned on him, which kind of throws his entire “evil mastermind” role into doubt.  This whole business depended on his ability to control 17, and in the end he turned out to be just as bad at this as Dr. Gero.  Mu is more like Babidi or Hoi, releasing an evil monster on the world (like Buu and Hirudegarn), and then get destroyed during the rampage.  The thing that made Babidi stand out is that he had a really great run manipulating everyone into helping him get Buu going.  But in this arc Mu’s work is already completed, so he never shows us what he can do, other than bossing 17 around.

It can’t be Super 17 either, because he’s being mind-controlled, so he’s not responsible for his own actions.  And that’s not necessarily a deal-breaker for a story.  It doesn’t always have to be a mustache-twirling villain.  Sometimes it can just be an uncontrollable monster, who isn’t at fault, but still has to be stopped.  However, that kind of falls flat when the story features two mustache-twirling villains. 

From start to finish, this story has been about 17.  Gero hails him as the key to everything.  Forget Cell, 17 was always his ultimate weapon, but he could never get him to work the way he wanted to.  Mu has bigger ambitions than Gero, and superior technology at his disposal, but he seems to need Gero’s design to fully realize his objectives.  For Mu, 17 is like the answer to all his problems.  Meanwhile, Dragon Team doesn’t seem to be very close to 17, but they don’t regard him as an enemy, and they seem pretty upset about what’s happened to him.

So there’s a lot of hand-wringing about 17, and yet, the story never actually develops 17 as a character.  What does he want?  What is he really like?  We never find out, because he’s being literally mind-controlled throughout the entire story.  Everything we learn about him in this arc comes from someone else.  Gero tells us that 17 resented him for rebuilding him as an android.  18 has a lot to say about what 17 would and wouldn’t do.  Goku suggests that 17 was resisting Mu’s control, which was why he couldn’t kill 18.  But he never met 17 before all this, so he really doesn’t know.

And that’s the big issue here.  17 didn’t have a lot of appearances in Dragon Ball Z either.  I think that’s why Toei wanted to bring him back in GT.  He was a popular-yet-underutilized character, one they could bring back and develop further.  Except they only gave him six episodes, and he was mind-controlled the entire time.  If the audience were more familiar with the “real” 17, it might have been more effective.  Baby’s mind-control victims were a lot more effective, because we knew what they were like before they fell under his influence.

Anyway, this arc sucks, and I’m pretty sure a lot of that is due to Toei refusing to put any serious thought into their Android 17 comeback story.  They just decided to do it and never planned on how to make it good, or how to convince viewers that 17 was someone worth tuning in for.

✨Positivity Page✨

Well, this flashback shot of 18 on Kami’s Lookout is pretty cool.  That’s all I can come up with. 

✨Is this episode worse than “The Roaming Lake”?✨

Yeah, let me go over the rest of it.

So Bulma finds Goku and tells him about all the death and devastation around the world, which she believes is due to the portal being opened between Hell and Earth.  Chi-Chi suggests they use the Dragon Balls to fix the problem, and Goku agrees, since they have to wish Krillin back to life anyway.  So Trunks repairs Giru, and the GT Crew take off in their ship to track down the Dragon Balls.  Not sure why they need the ship, but they went to a lot of trouble to introduce it, so okay. 

Note that we’re now talking about the classic Dragon Balls, which have been part of this franchise from the beginning.  We are not referring to the Black Star Dragon Balls, which drove the plot for the first 40 episodes of GT.  Those balls are inert, but the classic Dragon Balls are still active, even if they’ve barely been mentioned throughout this series. 

However, when the GT Crew find them, there’s something quite wrong.  All seven balls have cracks in them.

No one is sure what to make of this, but they agree to summon Shenron anyway, because they need his help, and maybe Shenron can explain to them what happened to the Dragon Balls.  But then there’s an earthquake, and an evil ki, and...

Black smoke billows out of the cracks in the Dragon Balls, so instead of Shenron appearing in a burst of light, the smoke coalesces into...

... this guy. 

So yeah, we’re just jumping right into the next arc, which ought to say a lot about how dumb the Super 17 saga really was.  I’m not a big fan of Goku and 18 teaming up to defeat 17. Nothing against 18, but double-teaming an opponent like that isn’t exactly heroic, and the implication is that Super 17 just let them win because he couldn’t bear what Gero and Mu had done to him. 

And now we have Shenron, who seems to have ended up in the same predicament.  Like 17, and Vegeta, and the Machine Mutants, and the Luud Cult, and Zonooma, and Ledgic, Shenron has been corrupted by unfortunate circumstances, and it’s up to Goku to beat him up and restore him to normal.  It’s a pretty irritating pattern, you know. 

Roaming Lake wins again, 48-0.

✨The Blade Braxton Memorial Haiku*✨

17′s dead, too.

GT keeps killing our faves.

But Giru still lives.

[duhragonball]

Dragon Ball GT 44

✨GT Stands for Glorious Tresses✨

Last time, Dr. Gero and Dr. Mu had two Android 17′s working for them.  Their new version, “Hell Fighter 17″ is currently battling Vegeta, while the original 17 is on his way to lend a hand.  Or he would be if he hadn’t stopped along the way to try to mind-control 18 into joining him. 

I don’t understand this scene, because Original 17 is himself being mind-controlled, which is the only reason he’s cooperating with Dr. Gero, whom he has always resented.  And yet, Gero and Mu never ordered him to recruit 18 this way, so it’s like he’s resisting somehow, except he’s trying to mind-control her, so how does that work?  Anyway, he almost succeeds, until Krillin reminds him that he always hated Gero, and that sort of snaps him out of it.  So 17 kills Krillin in a fit of confusion, and that snaps 18 out it. 

18 runs wild, attacking 17 in an emotional frenzy, but it doesn’t work.  17 then tries to kill Marron as she flees, so 18 takes the blast instead.  She passes out as she reaches over for Krillin’s hand, and tells him she loved him.

I just want to say that, as much as I hate GT’s penchant for making all the main characters dress like they just got out of church, 18 is the only one who managed to pull this look off.  Respect.

Meanwhile, in hell, Cell and Frieza have defeated Goku, not by overpowering him, but by using the (super)natural environment of Hell against him.  There’s some sort of ice trap that can freeze Goku, and that seems to hold him long enough for them to strike a killing blow, but then the ice starts to melt.  According to... some old lady who is never properly introduced to the story, this ice deal only works on dead people.  Since Goku is still alive, he thaws out immediately.

But Cell and Frieza are very much dead, which means it works just fine on the two of them.  And now that Goku’s seen how the ice machine works, he turns it on his enemies, and catches them in their own trap.  Then he accidentally knocks them over, and their bodies shatter. 

This is... kind of cute, but it’s a total waste of Cell and Frieza. Even if only one of them had been in this battle, it would still be a huge waste of that kind of star power, and Toei used both of them.

Meanwhile, General Rildo appears to be the only dead villain still active in the field, and he’s beating up Gohan.  He manages to turn two of Gohan’s limbs into metal, immobilizing him, but before he can finish him off, Uub shows up and takes out Rildo in one hit. 

I suppose this is fitting, since Goku said Rildo’s ki is “even greater than Buu’s”, and Uub now has the full power of Majin Buu, in addition to his own strength, so he ought to be able to pull off a stunt like this.  On the other hand, these dead villains were a total joke.  If heavyweights like Cell and Rildo couldn’t get anywhere, what good were the Red Ribbon guys and Nappa supposed to be? This was just busywork to give the supporting characters something to do.

Giru turns Gohan’s metallized arm and leg back to normal, and they all head off to help Vegeta. 

When they find him, the other 17 arrives, and Gero and Mu explain, rather painstakingly, that the two 17′s will combine to form a super warrior.  For some reason, the good guys just stand there and watch.  In particular, Vegeta seems extremely confused by the entire thing, despite Gero and Mu spelling it out for him. 

Everyone tries to attack 17 (though no one turns Super Saiyan), and 17 just no-sells all their attacks, basically repeating Cell’s whole deal when he became Perfect. 

Then 17 goes on the offensive, and we get this stupid sequences where it’s just still images of him hitting each good guy, but with speed lines animated over it, and they shake the image a little.  It’s the cheapest bullshit ever. 

Then everyone turns Super Saiyan, but it doesn’t make any difference. 

Super 17 uses a new technique called “Flash Bomber” to show the good guys the folly of their resistance.  I seem to remember this being especially cheap in the Xenoverse games. 

But it apparently doesn’t do jack shit, so Vegeta busts out his new move, Final Shine Attack.  It’s just a green, one-handed Final Flash.

And it doesn’t do jack-shit either, so Super 17 just uses Flash Bomber a second time.  This show absolutely sucks dick.  It sucks eggs.  It sucks shit.  It sucks rocks.  It sucks a lemon. 

Meanwhile, Goku appeals to King Yemma, asking to be sent back to Earth, but Yemma can’t do it.  This is stupid, because Goku doesn’t need King Yemma’s help. He can just turn Super Saiyan 4 and use Instant Transmission to go back.

According to Yemma, there is a “great power” at work between the Earth and Otherworld, and it’s interfering with his authority over Hell.  As he says this, we see one of the classic Dragon Balls begin to crack.  So presumably this is tied in with whatever Yemma’s talking about.

Then Piccolo cuts in and asks King Yemma to send him to Hell to help Goku.  Piccolo died in Episode 41, and he’s been sent to Heaven, but he has an idea, and he needs to be in Hell to make it work.  But Yemma refuses, saying that once he’s assigned a soul to the afterlife, he cannot change that assignment, no matter what.  Irritated, Piccolo starts shooting stuff in Heaven, claiming to still be a villain.  That enrages Yemma, so he sends him to Hell after all. 

And now Piccolo has a free hand to try out his idea.  Spoiler alert: It sucks.

✨”Good” “Ideas”, Poorly Executed✨

This whole episode is like a highlight reel of every crappy cliche used in Dragon Ball Z.  Characters standing perfectly still and allowing their enemy to transform.  Characters beating each other up but doing no actual damage, so they just get up and keep fighting anyway, with no sign of injury or fatigue.  Characters winning fights simply because the plot calls for it. 

The thing is, Dragon Ball Z usually did it right.  When Nappa attacked Tien, he didn’t just use a big move and then Tien lay down for a few minutes before getting right back up.  No, Nappa hit Tien and broke off his arm.  So even though Tien got up and kept fighting, there was a clear indication that he had been hurt. 

When Vegeta fought Android 19, he basically let 19 work him over, but none of it hurt him.  This wasn’t done to extend the fight, it was for the sake of getting 19 to try to drain Vegeta’s energy, so that he could rip off his hands and neutralize that ability.  And when Vegeta used his big new technique, it worked. 

When Vegeta used the Final Flash on Cell, it didn’t work, but it did blow off a large chunk of Cell’s body, showing how effective it was.  Cell then grew it all back, and started beating the shit out of Vegeta.  What Vegeta did not do was repeat the Final Flash several more times. 

It’s kind of ridiculous to me that Cell and Frieza spent a considerable amount of time perfecting the Hell Buster Technique, yet never thought to ask whether it would be effective on a live opponent.  I guess they were too busy doing absolutely nothing else. 

It really pisses me off how they remembered Giru’s device for reversing the metalization ray, but they forgot about Goku’s Instant Transmission, which he used repeatedly throughout Episode 40, which wasn’t even that long ago.

✨Is this episode worse than “The Roaming Lake”?✨ 

Yes!  It’s not as awful as Episode 43, but it’s really fucking terrible.

✨Positivity Page✨

It’s not much, but at least we finally got both 17′s merged together so they can stop doing this stupid “we are one” shtick.  I’m not a big fan of Super 17, but at least there’s only one of him.

Also, this will be a lot less confusing for Vegeta. 

✨The Blade Braxton Memorial Haiku*✨

Vegeta versus

Super 17.  Two kids

Spamming ki supers.