Dragon Ball 33
March 17, 2008
Here’s Mr. Satan! The fact that the gag was played out over the course of several chapters was actually the best part. I thought he was a bit more of a major character, and maybe he gives commentary on the “Cell Game,” but what he did in this volume was just fine. I loved the fact that not even Cell could bring himself to really hurt him because he was just too stupid. That was made even better by the fact that everyone on Earth really just believed in Mr. Satan in the most intense way possible.
The fact that Trunks just gives up and asks Cell to simply kill him struck me as hilarious for some inappropriate reason. Maybe because I’m used to battles being played out for a long time, and it was just weird to see someone give up after only a few blows were exchanged.
There was actually a good amount of fairly silly Dragon Ball-esque moments. Before the Cell Game, the characters are given 10 days. While training, Goku and Gohan somehow get permanently stuck in Super Saiyan form because this is somehow “the best.” Chi-chi asks them if they can please stop doing that while they’re having a picnic.
I’m pretty pumped about the Cell Game after all this buildup. I think I can kind of guess what happens since there’s a picture of Goku saying “Good-Bye!” on the cover of the next volume, but I know the stuff leading up to that will be worth reading.
March 17, 2008 at 4:24 pm
Fun to read your thoughts on the dragonball manga too, this series was one of the constancies in my childhood. My favorite is prolly the first 10 volumes or so with the “quest” structure of finding the dragonballs. Goku was a cute kid, the capsule inventions were really cool and fresh, and the funnies kept rolling. Prolly hard to sustain that level of comedy so we eventually went to the tournament-style storylines, but Toriyama still managed to inject nice moments of comedy and emotion as you noted here. :)
March 17, 2008 at 11:33 pm
HA!! Ten days, I love it. Get ready for more ’stalling for time’, in the Boo saga as well. More of that magic room, I can’t remember the name, the room where one day outside equals one year inside. Heh, ten days.
Do they even call him Mr. Satan in the books? They call him Hercule in the books I have. I don’t know how the original Japanese books had it, but I know that the Cartoon Network anime called him Hercule and the store bought episodes called him Mr. Satan. I don’t know,the name Hercule just, if I may be blunt, irks the shit out of me.
March 20, 2008 at 2:50 am
When he’s introduced, they mention that his wrestling name was Mr. Satan, and that he changed it to Hercule when he became champion of the world or whatever. Mr. Satan is definitely the better name, so I just decided I’d call him that.
I wondered how long the training room would be useful. Goku seemed to think he was pretty much done with it here, though Vegeta couldn’t get enough. Of course, I should probably know better than to think anyone has finished with their “training.” There may have been some rule about not training in it for more than 48 hours too, but I’m guessing they probably won’t have much difficulty totally disregarding that later.