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duhragonball · 1 year

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Yo! Son Goku and His Friends Return! (2008)

2008 marked the fortieth anniversary of the manga anthology Weekly Shonen Jump. To commemorate the occasion, Toei produced two anime shorts, which would be presented during the Jump Super Anime Tour. One of these was One Piece: Romance Dawn Story, and the other was Yo! Son Goku and His Friends Return.

With respect to One Piece, I think the Dragon Ball special was a much bigger deal, as this was the first new anime from the franchise since Dragon Ball GT signed off in 1997. Today, it’s kind of easy to overlook, because we have four new movies, 131 episodes of Dragon Ball Super, and however many chapters of the DBS manga. But in 2008, it was pretty much understood that Dragon Ball had ended and would not return. So even a one-off special like this was pretty historic.

In the fall of 2008, Shonen Jump put the special on their website, and I remember having to install a special browser to watch it. I thought I had downloaded the episode as well, but this afternoon I went looking through my files and apparently I only got the browser. I guess that might still work after all this time, except they took down the OAV in 2009. The only official release was in 2013, when it was included as a bonus feature of a limited edition of the Battle of Gods DVD. So it’s on track to become another “lost movie”, like “Plan to Eradicate the Saiyans”.

You can track down Return on YouTube, but I couldn’t find a very good upload of the video. A lot of fans tried to dub it themselves, probably because there was never a proper English localization. The only version I found with English subtitles was a “remastered” version, and from what I can tell, they just slapped their shitty watermark in the corner and did a horizontal flip of the footage to avoid a copyright strike. So when I started this liveblog, I assumed this OAV was already in my collection, but it turned out to be the hardest one to arrange.

There was also a 2009 manga adaptation of this anime, so maybe that version is easier to find than this special, but I sure hope they just put all this stuff out there where people can buy it. Anyway, let’s take a look at what we’ve got.

So, in case you’re not familiar with this OAV, this is the one with Tarble, Vegeta’s brother. I’m pretty sure he hasn’t appeared anywhere else since, unless you count his inclusion in the roster of Raging Blast 2, and some other video games. He was also mentioned during Battle of Gods and the recent Broly film, but mostly this was done just to remind the audience that they didn’t forget about him. In Battle of Gods, Vegeta says that he has no idea how to find or contact Tarble, and I suspect this means that we may never see him again. Then again, I never expected Dragon Ball to return before 2008, and here we are.

This OAV also set the stage for a lot of what was done with the characters in Super. Goku’s got the same farmer’s outfit here that we see him wear in Super, and he mentions that Mr. Satan recently gave him some money, which is depiced in DBS Episode 1.

Continuity-wise, this takes place two years after the defeat of Kid Buu. As I recall, Battle of Gods was supposed to be set four years after the defeat of Kid Buu, to give you an idea.

So during that two-year peacetime, Chi-Chi has gotten Goku to start a radish farm, while Mr. Satan has built a new hotel. The grand opening will take place soon, but he wants to hold a private party there the day before, and invite everyone from the Buu Saga to celebrate their victory.

This greatly embarrasses Videl, so she calls Gohan to tell him about it. Mr. Satan got all the credit for defeating Buu, but that isn’t true at all. So she thinks his ego has gotten out of control.

Also, there’s this cute sequence in the background as Satan and Buu give their dog a bath. First they shove him down the hall, then Buu carries him back the other way, with suds all over him.

That night, Gohan tells the rest of the family that they’ve been invited. Goku and Chi-Chi aren’t interested, but Gohan casually brings up how it’s all-you-can-eat, and suddenly Goku’s on board. The weird thing is that Gohan seems extremely relieved about this, and even thinks “Now Videl won’t yell at me.” I don’t understand where he would have gotten that idea. Videl just seemed frustrated about her dad’s extravagance. I never got the sense that she wanted or needed Goku to come to this party, or that she would have been upset with Gohan if he couldn’t convince his dad to attend.

Anyway, I just really like this shot of the four of them sitting at the table. We never got to see this sort of thing in DBZ, but now we can. It’s nice.

The next day, Videl arrives to pick them up, and Roshi immediately gawks at Chi-Chi’s boobs, so she hits him in the face with a frying pan.

They get to the hotel, and Goku greets Buu’s pet dog. He’s called “Bay” in the subtitles, and the name “Bee” seems to be official, as it gets used throughout the dub, but the weird thing I discovered in 2019 was that the dog never gets named throughout the entire Japanese script for the anime. So I’m not sure when the name was finally introduced. Maybe it was in the manga, but if that’s the case, you’d think it would have been used in the anime as well. Or maybe it was one of those things they put in the guidebooks or whatever.

I just always liked this interaction with the two of them, where Goku greets Bee like a fellow veteran of the Kid Buu Saga, even though Bee was just a frightened puppy on the Sacred World of the Kais. But he fought as hard as the others. He borked and borked and then Kid Buu finally dropped dead, so I call that a win.

So one really weird thing about this special is how Mr. Satan somehow got Kibitoshin and the Elder Supreme Kai to show up for this. Also King Kai, Bubbles, and Gregory are in attendance, they’re all dead. I’m pretty sure this is the first and only time we ever see King Kai in the mortal plane. Maybe this was why Gohan thought it was so important to get Goku to come to this thing. Goku’s the only one who could get in touch with some of these characters, so without his help, Mr. Satan’s party would have been a very small affair.

Then the press shows up, despite Mr. Satan’s best efforts to keep this private. They just want to know the name of the hotel, and it soon gets revealed as “The Mr. Satan World-Saving Defeat of Majin Buu Super Gorgeous Hotel.” Try saying that three times fast.

Satan seems mortified to have the name revealed, like he’s ashamed of it or something, but they were going to reveal this tomorrow anyway, so I don’t understand his reaction. Then the media seem really pleased with the name, and he embraces it. I don’t understand this whole plotline.

So, first of all, no one in the general public should even remember the name “Majin Buu”. That’s because Goku used the Dragon Balls to wipe their memories of Majin Buu, so that Fat Buu could live among them without causing a panic. They remember the Buu crisis, and that a terrible monster killed them all, but they don’t remember what the monster’s name was, or that it looked exactly like the big pink dude Mr. Satan hangs out with all the time.

So I get Videl’s embarrassment, because it resembles her feelings in DBZ Episode 289. As she put it, everyone believes her father saved the world from something, but no one knows what it was. Also, it was during the Buu Saga that she learned her dad never beat Cell either, so I think she’s still coping with the fact that her dad’s business empire is all based on lies.

However, Dragon Team takes the whole thing in stride, because they’ve known the truth all along, and they never resented Satan about it before. Now, they like the guy, because he really did help them out with Majin Buu. And now that he knows the truth about them, he’s been extremely humble around them, albeit privately. I mean, the fact that he’s throwing this party in their honor kind of sums it up, doesn’t it? He’s opening a hotel that commemorates “his” victory over Buu, but the day before, he invites the gang over to celebrate the true heroes of that struggle.

And it’s kind of an awkward balance for Mr. Satan, made even more awkward when the press unexpectedly show up and he has to play both roles at once, but I don’t get how the hotel is an example of Satan’s ego getting out of control.

Also, why a hotel? This sounds like a museum or a monument would make more sense, but maybe hotels have a different significance in Japanese culture? It’s also kind of weird how this is like Mr. Satan’s project. You’d think that someone else would build the hotel and he would simply get royalties for attaching his name and likeness to it.

Anyway, just before the gang can start eating, a pair of Saiyan Attack Balls land on Earth, and everyone senses a powerful ki. It’s someone new, and that someone heads straight for the party, and Vegeta recognizes him as Tarble, his younger brother.

Why have we never heard of this guy before? Because Tarble had the same origin story as Goku. During the rule of the Vegeta dynasty, Saiyan babies were tested for battle potential, and those determined to be unfit were launched into space to defenseless planets, where they could grow up and conquer in relative safety. And say what you will about King Vegeta III, but he was no hypocrite, as he followed that policy with his own son, sending Tarble to some other planet because his test scores weren’t up to snuff.

And this always illustrated the nonsense behind the Saiyans’ attempts to breed better warriors. The whole idea was to remove the weakest specimens from their own population, and devote the best training and resources to the strongest, so that they could produce even stronger generations in the future. Except Goku had extremely low test scores, and yet he wound up becoming the Legendary Super Saiyan. Meanwhile, Vegeta and Tarble are brothers, yet one of them tested well and the other one didn’t, which sort of exposes the notion of Saiyan power is hereditary.

Anyway, Tarble grew up on some remote world, and apparently he became its defender instead of conquering it. Then some new threat appeared, and it was too much for him. So he went looking for help, and a Namekian once told him that Vegeta went to Earth after Frieza’s downfall. So he’s here to ask Vegeta to save his adopted world.

Vegeta finds it unseemly for Tarble to ask others to handle his problems, but he’s in the mood for a fight, so he’s down to clown. But several other guests at the party want to fight, and Goku points out that they can’t all just gang up on the enemy, so he proposes a lottery. They all teleport back to his house, where they can pull radishes out of his farm. The one with the longest radish gets to fight.

Goten seems to have the game won, but then Trunks’ radish turns out to be like 100 feet long, so he gets the nod.

At this point, Tarble’s companion wishes Trunks good luck, and Vegeta finally asks who that is. Turns out, it’s Tarble’s wife, Gure.

Roshi makes some dumb remark about Saiyans always choosing strange wives, so Chi-Chi and Bulma beat the shit out of him with cookware.

So they go back to the hotel just in time to meet Tarble’s enemies, who have followed him here. Vegeta recognizes them as Frieza’s men, Abo and Cado, who were once on par with the Ginyu Force. Tarble says they were away during Frieza’s downfall, and since that time they have gone into business for themselves, and they’ve become as powerful as Frieza himself.

So you have to assume that Tarble must be pretty strong himself by now, if these guys came to his planet and he managed to put up any sort of resistance, right? I mean, he didn’t know about Super Saiyans, but if Abo and Cado are as strong as Frieza, then Tarble must be at least as strong as Vegeta was on Namek, right?

Anyway, since there are two bad guys, Goku finagles Goten into this contest to even things up.

Also, Oolong is dressed up like a sexy maid, and serving coffee and sandwiches to the spectators. That seems like a long way to go for a bit, but Oolong’s a shapeshifter, so maybe he can just will himself to have different outfits on.

Oh, I didn’t notice Puar’s doing the same bit. So why wouldn’t they both use their shape shifting powers to look like actual maids? I mean, if that’s what they’re going for, right?

The four combatants fight evenly at first, but we know Trunks and Goten aren’t even trying that hard because they’re still in base form. This is just the beginning. And see, this all makes sense, because none of the main cast is sweating Abo and Cado for a second. Tarble is afraid of these guys, but everyone else knows they’re just jobbers, fit only for a little practice with the boys.

Then Abo and Cado use some sort of multiform technique to turn the tables. Goten and Trunks are stymied...

... until Gohan offers to coach them. He tells Trunks which way to hit, and tells Gohan to use his ki senses to figure out which one of the multiforms is real.

Wait... I just figured that out. It seemed strange to me that Gohan would give each one different advice, but maybe that’s the idea. So it looks like Abo and Cado are doing the multiform technique just like Krillin and Piccolo did against Nappa back in the day. However, that technique produces three copies of a fighter’s body. There is no “real” one because they’re all real.

However, the advice about closing your eyes and using ki senses sounds very reasonable for countering the Afterimage technique which produces illusions. So what if Abo and Cado are actually using both tricks at the same time, switching back and forth to confuse their opponents? Pretty tricky. Well, not really, since Goku, Vegeta, Gohan, and Piccolo all seem to see through it very easily, but it’s tricky enough to confuse Goten and Trunks.

Then Abo and Cado combine into a single, purple alien. This form is known as “Abocado” although Goten and Trunks are the only ones who call him that, so maybe they made it up on the spot. I think we all know what’s coming next...

Fusion! Wait, they fucked it up. Well, they haven’t had to do this in a while.

There we go. I think this OAV is the first indication that characters can de-fuse and re-fuse quickly like this. In the Buu Saga, Gotenks didn’t know how to separate, other than just waiting for the thirty-minute time limit to expire. But maybe Goku showed him how. And maybe it’s possible for Goten and Trunks to re-fuse without the rest period. Originally, there was a cooldown period for the Fusion Dance, but that seems to have gone out the window in later works, such as this one.

So Gotenks uses the Wolf Fang Fist on Abocado, then follows up with the Volleyball Fist, which was Tien’s signature move in the 22nd Budokai. This is kind of special, because Tien’s not even in this OAV. His voice actor, Hirotaka Suzoki, had died of lung cancer in 2006, and so Tien wasn’t included in this production, to honor his memory. And so the Volleyball Fist is kind of the only reference to Tien we get in this thing.

And then Gotenks turns Super Saiyan to finish with the Dynamite Rolling Thunder Punch, which is one from his own personal moveset. See, he started as base Goten and Trunks, then they fused, then Super Saiyan. The fight escalated as it went on, and the different forms followed that progression. That alone makes this little side-story better than every episode of GT.

But Abocado doesn’t go down so easily, and he starts shooting his big finishing blast. Gotenks blocks it, but it wrecks the hotel, and the other Z-Fighters have to bust out their own signature moves to protect the civilians. Goku and Vegeta finally step in, but Goku distracts Vegeta and teleports ahead...

Where he delivers a Kamehameha and big punch to put Abocado down for the count. Not sure why he’s blue here.

When it’s over, Vegeta complains about Goku distracting him in order to steal the win. Goku’s like “Yeah, that was kind of inconsiderate of me, Vegeta. Remember that time you broke every bone in my body and beat up my son?”

So the battle’s over, but Mr. Satan’s new hotel is destroyed. Videl tells him he should take this as a lesson in humility, which seems to sink in, until Goku suggests that he use the Dragon Balls to ask Shenron to restore the place. Videl scolds him again and that seem to talk him out of it.

Also, Launch has been here the whole time, but she never says or does anything. Just stating that for the record.

So they go back to eating, because I guess the food wasn’t damaged in the battle. Gure is shocked-- shocked I say-- to see Saiyans eating lots of food. Does Tarble just never eat in front of her? That seems kind of like a strange way to live.

Maybe Gure is finally realizing that this was what happened to her prize racehorse, Marmalade Thunder. She didn’t escape from the stable that night after all. It was Tarble. It was Tarble all along.

“This is a good spread, Kakarot, but you know what would make it even better?”

“I dunno, a racehorse?”

“Hell yeah.”

Also Abo and Cado have turned good and are joining the party. I guess they just love radishes so they’re gonna eat all of those.

Then Goku eats Vegeta’s sushi, and he takes some of Goku’s pork in retaliation, so they both turn Super Saiyan and look like they’re about to throw down. But that’ll have to wait for some other anniversary special, I guess.

This special is about “an evil menace that failed to register in public memory.” As the narrator points out, Abo and Cado might have been a big honkin’ deal, if they had shown up years earlier. But they didn’t, and so they turned out to be a one-shot affair.

And that’s it. I’ll close out by noting that the opening credits for this OAV feature all new animation with Goten and Trunks worked into the classic DBZ opening.

And the end credits feature a new song, “Orange Hero”, which features scenes of various characters just chilling out. I like this one of the Son Family with Satan and Videl.

So that’s it. The special wasn’t too big a deal in terms of its plot. The whole point was to introduce a threat that would only be dangerous enough to justify a lot of fun callbacks. Still, it added some new lore to the franchise, and it set the tone for everything that came after.

#dragon ball #2023dbapocryphaliveblog #yo! son goku and his friends return!#goku #goten #trunks #tarble #gure #abo #cado #gotenks #mr satan #i don't want to tag the other characters there's too many of 'em

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