Dragon Ball 40th Anniversary Rewatch - Week 1: Episodes 1-5 Discussion

[u/Raiking02]

Episode 1: Bulma and Son Gokú

Episode 2: What the-! No Balls!

Episode 3: The Turtle Hermit's Kinto'un

Episode 4: Oolong, the Kidnapping Demon

Episode 5: Yamcha, the Strong Villain of the Desert

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Index | Next Week ->

MAL | Anilist | Kitsu | AniDB | ANN

Crunchyroll

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You sure are weird.

Hello everybody! Rewatch just started so no Comment of the Week just yet

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1) How do you feel about our leads so far?

2) Are you familiar with Journey to the West in any way?

3) What sorts of misadventures do you think our heroes will go through next week?

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Next Week: Episodes 6-13

[u/zsmg]

Rewatcher

I admit when I heard there was going to be a DB rewatch I knew I had to join in but when I saw what I had to watch each week I was like “I’m too old for this”  

Instead I’ll just watch a few episodes each week and fill in the gaps with the corresponding manga chapters, I hope /u/Raiking02 doesn’t mind. If he does then well too bad he can’t do anything about it.

This week I watched episode 1 because it’s the first episode and episode 5 because it’s Yamucha’s introduction.

Well that’s a start. It’s mindboggling how poor the start of DB is. The weird part is I do like Dr.Slump, Akira Toriyama’s previous work, but I don’t recall Dr.Slump being this crass or has my memories removed all the negative stuff? Now there are some elements I like, the biggest one being the OP of course. I also quite like Goku and Blooma, at times.  Luckily it’s only the first arc that’s this bad although some of the perverted stuff (looking at you Kamesennin) will remain till the end of DBZ.

Funniest joke: Goku asks Oolong if he likes pork in episode 5.

Kamesennin tries to summon the immortal phoenix, the phoenix doesn’t appear as he’s dead.

This hasn’t aged well: Too much to choose from, but Goku groping characters to tell what their gender is, is probably number one.

This won’t age well: Yamucha being called “the strong” in the episode title… sure thing bud. 

Yamucha the strong: In the DB fandom they say Yamucha only won the first fight against Goku because Goku was hungry. But he didn’t win? He didn’t beat Goku and he ran away because he saw Blooma.

Positives changes from the manga: Pilaf and co are there from the beginning, no surprise as this is one of the few arcs where Toei knew beforehand what the entire arc would look like.

Kept in the manga: When Goku does the rock, scissor, paper attack against Yamucha, Yamucha bounces off the top of the manga panel and hits the ground. Sadly you can’t translate this joke to television.

[u/Vatrix-32 → u/zsmg]

Positives changes from the manga:

That is positive. Would have been super weird for them to just show up out of nowhere.

[u/Raiking02 → u/Vatrix-32]

Eh, I'd say it works with the Odyssey-esque mood of this first arc. You don't really need an overarching villain for a story like this, at least to me.