Dragon Ball 41

This story arc just gets better and better.  I approve of any attempts to humiliate Piccolo, and there are several in this volume.  To see him as the… voice of reason for Gotenks is great because Gotenks doesn’t understand that what he does is really, really ridiculous.  The entire fight between Boo and Gotenks consists of Gotenks showing off the insane attacks only little kids would think were cool, except he has to pose and yell out the attack names before he does it.  Things like this have been going on the entire series, except taken to the next level like it is here means that your villain sits around and drinks smoothies while you finish going through the motions of your attack.  Toriyama just parodied his own series at the end of said series, which is something you don’t see very often.

Gotenks, for whatever reason, only has attacks named after food, I assume because Trunks was so put out by the cuisine in the room of spirit and time.  During the fight, Piccolo is embarassed for Gotenks as things keep ratcheting up the weirdness scale.  After an assault of exploding ghosts that do things like make faces, talk about how scary they are, and pull pranks on Boo in an attempt to kill him, Piccolo blows up the entrance to the room of Spirit and Time to keep Boo inside.  After a volley of name-calling between Piccolo and Gotenks (Piccolo blew up the door after Gotenks lied about being fully powered-up), Boo blows a hole in the fabric of space and time with his voice after he finds out there’s no snacks in there.

But I’m summarizing in detail, which I try not to do.  Gohan joins up again, and much to my disappointment, the old man’s spell works and he’s had his potential unlocked.  I wanted so badly for that old man to be some sort of joke and just have Gohan fly off anyway without anything useful happening.  He IS a joke, but he pulls through anyway.  He does other cool things too, aside from being an old man, to the point Goku starts razzing the current Kaio-shin for not being nearly so useful.

Things go badly in the fight against Boo after Boo goes Cell on everybody and starts absorbing their powers (which I was hoping would be turned into a joke since this JUST HAPPENED, but no such luck).  As a final gift from the old Kaio-shin, Goku is given a new life and earrings he can use to fuse way better than the fusion dance.  Except the earrings only work one time and you have to stay fused permantly after that.  Of course, he only mentions this after Kaio-shin tries it out and fuses with his assistant, which was very funny (as was the explanation for why the old Kaio-shin looked old).  Goku goes to earth to fight and fuse with Gohan… except after fumbling the earrings, there is no more Gohan.  Only… only Hercule.

I’m still blown away by how much humor has been in this story.  I was worried after Boo got serious that we’d just be getting a straight Cell-like fight, but even with Boo cured of his dopiness, Gotenks more than makes up for it, and I’m still impressed with how funny Goku and Gohan can be.  Plus that old Kaio-shin is a great character.  I wish this kind of thing had been in full force since the Freeza story.  It’s like a merging of the old and new parts of Dragon Ball, and it’s making for a wonderful finale.