Dragon Ball 40

I was kind of confused while reading this, because the art is… sort of less than you’d expect from Toriyama in this volume.  Characters look bizarrely off-model at several points, there’s some downright sloppy and bizarre bits of artwork, and at one point, he apologizes for xeroxing an entire page of panels while Goten and Trunks are fusing (more than one page, actually, I think the exact same panels get used three times).  Sloppy art is not something I normally notice, surprisingly, but Toriyama’s art is normally so good in a comical way that it’s hard not to notice.  Then I remembered the thing he wrote in the front about his dog dying of kidney disease and how he’d been taking her to the vet for treatments and stuff.  Then I felt bad for noticing it.

At this point, the story just defeats itself.  Unless I’m forgetting something, the best scene in the book is when Goku meets back up with Gohan, and Gohan shows him the new ultimate sword that Kaio-shin had him pull from the ground.  Goku wants to test it by throwing a boulder and having Gohan cut it, but Kaio-shin says they may as well test it on the hardest substance in the universe, so Goku throws that instead.  The sword breaks, much to everyone’s disappointment.  While they’re lamenting this (Goku not so much), an old man shows up who is apparently the… 15th Kaio-shin?  He says he’s the real treasure inside the sword.  Goku, excited to test him out, fires energy at him and sort of blows him up.  He lives, and chews Goku out, but Goku is no longer impressed.  He says his real power lies in his magic, which calls forth the potential past a warrior’s limits.  Goku, who does this every day, wanders off.  Gohan is open to try his ritual, which is a really ridiculous dance where Gohan has to stand still and not interrupt the man for 30 hours.  Everyone else takes a nap while this goes on, and it takes Gohan out of commission for the rest of the volume.  This scene was absolutely brilliant.

There are other things, too.  Goku’s fusion technique is demonstrated with Piccolo first to show Goten and Trunks, and Piccolo really wants no part of this since it is also a ridiculous dance.  Piccolo also ventures a guess that there is no way in hell Vegeta would do this with him, either.  The two little boys look cute doing it, though.  This part was where the xeroxed panels come in, but it’s easy to overlook given the fact that they keep failing at their fusions and the results are very funny.

Goku, to distract Boo at one point, shows him the different levels of being a saiyan, and powers up to level 3 for the first time.  He doesn’t actually fight in this form, and he isn’t like that for long since it sort of burns off all the time he’s allowed to spend on earth, but still… Super Saiyan 3.  We’ve got it now.  I suspect that Goku will be the only one who will be able to do it.

The only other notable thing that happens is that Hercule and Boo become best buddies and wind up playing with a puppy.  The match of Hercule and Boo was also quite amazing, and I’m sad it had to end with a morphing of Boo into a form which ensures that the final battle will probably be a rather typical, somewhat boring Dragon Ball battle.  Of course, now I’ve got the fusions to look forward to, and whatever it is that Gohan’s going to do, and it’s only going to last for two more volumes, so I plan on enjoying it.