#I debated on whether to include the last image since it's literally unedited

[photondoesstuff]

So that comic huh

[slothcritic]

Dragon Ball Z Abridged - Episode 5 Review

Weird yet creative cutaways with strong overarching momentum.

Vegeta: Kills Bugs Dead opens with Goku finally reaching the end of Snake Way and the end of his journey to reach King Kai. The "nice job, jackass" as Goku literally craters into the planet sets the tone for this character in a big way. We're also treated to the incredible hijinks of Vegeta and Nappa.

[Title Sequence]

The pit-stop at Arlia at least receives a well-fitted and rather hilarious incarnation in this series. Even though the episode alternates its focus between King Kai and Arlia, I'm going to talk at length about Arlia first, and then move onto the King Kai segments.

I'm already going into this scene with some personal bias, as the "stronger guy playing along with the weaker guy because it'd be funny" trope is one of my favorites. And here we have exactly this. Vegeta and Nappa allow themselves to be captured and thrown in jail by the Arlians, where they meet an assortment of varied bug characters.

"Don't drop the soap" seems a little outdated for the modern style of TFS, as I feel they've leaned away from really older, cruder, less PC subject matters like calling someone retarded or insinuating prison rape, etc, but it fits Nappa's character completely as someone who is childish, crass, annoying for the sake of being annoying, and kind of a jerk. TFS has at least acknowledged the idea of possibly re-dubbing Season 1 with better equipment and perhaps a more refined script, and I dearly hope they keep this line unedited simply for the sake of nailing Nappa’s character identity.

After very nearly becoming a prison bitch, Vegeta decides he's had enough and promptly kabooms his way out of prison, landing smack-dab in the middle of a coliseum with the king of Arlia and his queen.

Nappa's blunt manner of introducing himself with simply "Hi." will never age.

It’s noteworthy that scene is also the first moment we get a good look at Vegeta as a character. Nappa was firmly established as the goofball from the start, but Vegeta's portrayal has more depth to it than could be conveyed in one-liners. Most of which is just sass, smug pride, and anger, but still.

It's also made clear very quickly that despite their bantering idiocy and gruff talk that they're not just for show, as Nappa no-diff's the thirteen elite Arlian guards with a massive shock wave that we later see level a city.

The king and queen are then more or less blackmailed into fucking. Nappa's eager fascination during this whole scene, the descriptions, visual edits and sound design are... Well, there's no other way to put it, it's fucked up. And it is hilarious! These are some very creative takes and decisions that were made entirely for internal experience of the show itself rather than as a parody of something else. Nappa even takes a photograph of it and sends it to Vegeta, since he's abstained from watching.

The comedic jabs don't stop there either, as Nappa tries to adopt the Arlian Rancor, but just like the kid who can't sit still, Nappa ends up breaking everything he plays with. Just as Vegeta is about to kill the king, rocks begin flying around the coliseum.

"What are you doing?"

Vegeta smirks. "I'm about to rock you, like a hurricane." And then boom, he hurls a rock into the king and kills him. Let's put a pin in that brick joke for later.

The long flashback scene doesn't play any music, which feels like a weird editing misstep after a series of home runs. They leave the planet as heroes, and Nappa sets Vegeta up for another predictable bit of mood whiplash, where Vegeta obliterates the entire planet. This is a huge escalation in power scale compared to everything else we have seen thus far. But then, this is Dragon Ball Z. We've already reached “destroying planets” at only the fifth episode, and everyone knows that it only goes well past 11 on the dial from here on out.

Granted, there is controversy in the official version about whether or not this would’ve been possible for Saiyan Saga Vegeta, considering Arlia is not canon, but I will not be considering that simply because DBZA contains no filler. Everything shown in the flagship series (not counting movies, DBZA Kai, or other shorts) is presented as being canon to DBZA. Also, Vegeta and Nappa are shown standing outside of their pods... in the vacuum of space. Series veterans will understand the massive can of worms this opens. I'm looking at you, Battle of Gods.

Once everyone, including the people that they JUST SAVED from a tyrannical king, have been reduced to space dust, Nappa closes off this scene nicely.

Now that we've discussed Arlia, let's focus on King Kai's role in the episode.

He explains to Goku that the planet has high gravity due to it's small size. Gregory from off-screen pipes up that this doesn't make any sense. I suppose "higher planet density" wasn't considered when writing the script - or perhaps it was, and they just decided that the easy answer wasn't the funniest one. Maybe “there’s an incredibly powerful pirate trapped in the core of the planet, which is why the gravity is so strong" was deemed better for a parody.

Honestly, I agree. Bojack works as an in-the-know reference, and is also fleshed out enough within the show that a newcomer would understand what's being discussed.

At the time of this review, the Bojack Abridged movie has not yet been released, but this is easily one of the longest brick jokes in all of DBZA, since Episode 5 was released in 2008 and it is my expectation that Bojack Abridged will be released within the year, leaving in its wake an 11 year old callback.

When King Kai asks Goku why he had been sought out, Goku explains that the Saiyans are coming to Earth and he requires training. Excellent fade-in and musical choice for Goku's uncharacteristically serious speech to King Kai.

Of course, it gets cut off at the peak swell with King Kai's indifferent "sure", leaving Goku gobsmacked.

In this series, King Kai's indifference and easy acceptance of Goku is attributed to the mind-numbing loneliness of only having a monkey and a grasshopper (cricket, sorry) to talk to for the last 500 years. Goku agrees, as he couldn't imagine anything more boring.

Major flash-forward to Namek. Just this scene being here at all is a major instance of a sequence break. But it is the introduction of another exceptionally interesting character in the series.

In terms of placement, this works as a long-term cutaway gag and reminiscent humor but not much else. We're still about half a season away from even considering Namek within the story, and the Saiyans haven't even arrived on Earth yet. The decision to slide this segment into the middle of this episode leaves some serious questions in my mind. But at face value, it's not that bad.

We're treated to a solid ten seconds of just staring at a massive fat green alien while birds chirp in the background. We hear a fish go "plonk!" in the water, and Lord Guru calls for someone named Nail, who looks a lot like Piccolo, to approach him.

"I saw a fish. That was all, you can go back outside now." 

Definitely reinforces the point of boring. And while Nail is lamenting how boring his job is, Lord Guru tells him that he saw a bird and then promptly instructs him to "kick its ass."

But we’re not Nail, are we? We’re the viewer, and for some reason in the human mind, segments of extremely boring content usually pique our interest even more, because we have it drilled into our psyche that something is going to happen to break the tension sooner or later. That notion, the idea of slowly leaning closer to the monitor during the ten long seconds of a single still image, both conveys the boring tone of Namek, but also leaves the reader waiting in anticipation long enough for these dull scenes to just fade from their perspective and only latch onto the climatic moment. In this case, Guru commanding his apparent servant/bodyguard to assault a fish.

Not to overstate the obvious, but if it’s not the viewer’s own sense of tension and curiosity, it’s the pure absurdism and characterization of Guru that carries this scene. Disregarding source material, the design of Guru is meant to make him look old, wise and compassionate. Making him a lazy, annoying, verbally violent fatass is a near-infinite cash cow of writing material. It’s very difficult for me to judge this scene unbiased, knowing what comes next, but I imagine this would be a tryhard non-sequitur at worst, or promising potential for the future at best, with regards to this scene on its own, within the context of this episode and nothing more.

This episode also saw the genesis of perhaps not the first, but one of the most popular jokes in all of DBZA: Piccolo just jobbing the shit out of Gohan. DODGE! The scenes chosen and the delivery are outstanding compliments to this cheesy, simplistic joke. At this point I feel it's important to address that my editorial reflections or descriptions of these skits are relative to the context of these episodes. Even with the best of what this episode has to offer, we're still in peak 2008 internet humor era. The use of the word "outstanding" here will not carry a similar significance should I use it to describe a later episode.

Also the most random cutaway in all of DBZA, full-stop, is the brief look into the Hall of Justice, as Superman, Batman and Aquaman debate how they will stop the approaching Saiyans. This is humorous only in its absurdity, but less-endearingly than Guru was. Even if this scene makes zero sense, and relies upon an almost lower form of comedy than slapstick, Aquaman's voice is still just Krillin's voice. At least Superman and Batman sound different than the main cast. I'm really tempted to dislike this more, but the lackadaisical attitude and context of the whole scene definitely draws your eye more than a lot of the sensible but base-line plot progression of the story. I don't know if it belongs. To me, this scene just screams out that TFS is flinging spaghetti wildly at the wall, any and everything that might be funny, and while some of it sticks for one reason or another, (Jadoshin as Solid Snake, Antics on Arlia, even Guru's abrupt cameo) some of it flops. If anything, this show builds upon the corpses of its failures, and learns what works and what doesn't work surprisingly quickly.

Conclusion

Bizarre, but I liked it. Nothing in this episode that's bad is memorable. I might criticize the Namek cutaway for being out of place, but after letting this review sit for a few days, I just remember Goku saying "Man, nothing could be more boring than that!" and the immediate cut to Namek, and Nail pleading for the love of his sanity for something to happen. I might criticize the Justice League cutaway for being wildly out of the place, but I just remember "WHAAAAAALES!"

The meat of the episode was also decent, as it establishes Goku training under King Kai, and Piccolo's continued training of Gohan, the origin of DODGE! and the realization that Gohan can transform into an Ozaru. And you can nod your head and say that these may be necessary to the story all day, but they're also presented with... let's call it a clumsy grace. It's not bad, but it's miles away from official dub quality. This is in essence what the benchmark or gold standard was for early abridging back in 2008. The quality that TFS will continue to evolve the series into simply defies all logic or explanation, and in comparison makes these episodes look downright crude. 

But let's face it, if Episode 1 began with a person lying on the ground and shot in both kneecaps, Episode 5 shows that same person at least hobbling down the street to the hospital. 

It might not look pretty on the whole, and some of the dialogue might be clunky, but it seems like a lot of the flaws in this episode are simply caused by being products of their time.

Whether we're looking at Namek or The Hall of Justice, even the most outlandish oddities of this episode have still made me laugh. That's really the end of it.

Score: 75

Passing Thoughts

"I hope something exciting happens around here soon. I don't care what it is." - Ominous!

"You're surrounded by my thirteen elite *KABOOM* ...dead guards."

"SUMMON THE RANCOR!"

[berniesrevolution]

A lot of the debate around black NFL players kneeling to protest police killings and racism seems to take place in a historical vacuum. The history of athletes and protest is seldom mentioned and, what’s worse, the reason why Colin Kaepernick and his comrades began protesting during the national anthem has been drowned out in the shouting. On #MAGA twitter, flooded in recent weeks with angry mobs calling for a boycott of the NFL, various images have been making the rounds depicting Martin Luther King Jr. with his hand over his heart in respect for the American flag. One photo was accompanied by a message saying MLK “didn’t take the knee in protest of the flag or the anthem, he took the knee in prayer to God.” It was followed by the hashtag #BoycottNFL.

Invoking King’s name on the right is nothing new — ahistorical versions of King have been used to defend gun ownership, racial discrimination, and the Republican Party. In this current climate surrounding the NFL protests, King has once again been transformed into a malleable symbol for rampant deployment by people trying to tell protesters and black people today to shut up. One of the biggest problems with all of this is that it is based on complete fiction and total ignorance of who King actually was and what he actually believed. It is also particularly vile when used to try to suppress protest against police killings.

The same pattern applies to Rosa Parks and her civil disobedience against segregation on public buses. It applies to the civil rights movement in general. Caricatures have been created after being sanitized, historically revised, and made palatable for mass consumption and abuse by crass politicians. It is these sanitized versions that are made into statues, given national holidays, and may one day end up on U.S. currency.

An important and groundbreaking new book coming out in January digs deep into this manufactured mythology surrounding King, Parks, and other figures and movements. It is called “A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History.” Its author is Jeanne Theoharis, a distinguished professor of political science at Brooklyn College in New York. Her previous book, “The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks,” won an NAACP image award and other accolades. Theoharis joined us last week on Intercepted. Below is a transcript of the entire, unedited interview.

Jeremy Scahill: 

Jeanne Theoharis, welcome to Intercepted.

Jeanne Theoharis: 

Thanks for having me.

Jeremy Scahill: 

Before we get into some of these specific examples, I’m just wondering about your overall view of how key historical figures or moments in the civil rights movement are kind of used or inaccurately portrayed in our current discourse, either by politicians or by ordinary people having arguments online.

Jeanne Theoharris: 

I mean I think what we’ve seen, and this has happened over the past number of decades and I would argue since really Reagan changes his position and signs the King holiday, is the kind of creation of a national fable of the civil rights movement.

And so now the civil rights movement is used to make Americans feel good about themselves. You know, from 50th anniversary commemorations of the March on Washington, to the Selma to Montgomery march, from the dedication of King’s statue on the Mall, from the statue of Rosa Parks in Statuary Hall. All of these events have become places where we now celebrate the United States, where we feel so good about the progress we’ve made.

And I think in the process, these kind of dangerous ideas about what the civil rights movement was, what it entailed, how it went forth have become cemented. And so, as you’re implying politicians, citizens, constantly invoke the civil rights movement in the present to justify certain kinds of positions, to chastise contemporary movements; whether it’s Black Lives Matter, whether it’s Colin Kaepernick’s stand that has now turned into a much broader stand by athletes. We’re constantly being bombarded with, “This is not what King would do.” You know, “Be like King, be like Parks,” that strip and utterly distort what the civil rights movement was and what people like King and Parks actually did and stood for.

Jeremy Scahill: 

Well, in fact you had this meme floating around online, of Martin Luther King and one of his advisers, standing hand over heart in front of an American flag and the message there was, “Martin Luther King stood for the American flag, he’s not like Colin Kaepernick or any of these other black athletes that are engaged in this.”

Jeanne Theoharris: 

Right and you then we also saw the King Center and Bernice King tweet a couple weeks ago basically how unpopular Martin Luther King was. You know, what it took to be like him.

And then some of the comments, you may have seen this, to Bernice King’s Twitter was literally like, “you’re defacing the memory of Martin Luther King,” and you’re like: do you know who this is? Like, do you understand?

I mean so this idea of what King was and who King was has completely become separated from like what the life of Martin Luther King was like and what particularly his political life from 1955 to his assassination, 1968, actually looked like, and what Americans thought of him at the time.

Jeremy Scahill: 

Right, and we interviewed Tavis Smiley who wrote an excellent book about the last year of King’s life, where King was basically disinvited to everything. He was no longer embraced by the mainstream of the civil rights movement and he was increasingly denouncing US imperialism talking about how “my own government is the greatest purveyor of violence on earth.” It’s the one King quote that I would love to see at an NFL game, when they have all the rockets and the war craft flying over it. Let’s put that Martin Luther King quote up about the US government being the greatest purveyor of violence on earth.

Jeanne Theoharris: 

Absolutely, but I think we also need to remember that even the King at the high water mark of 1963, is not popular. So, in Gallup poll, the week before the March on Washington, two-thirds of Americans don’t support the March on Washington. You have Congressman denouncing it as un-American. And in the wake of the March on Washington, the FBI and the Kennedys, this is the moment when you see the escalation of surveillance of Martin Luther King, to kind of wall-to-wall surveillance of him. They call him a demagogue, the most dangerous. Even in this moment, right? We’re not even at ’67 King, with the public speech against the War in Vietnam, we are at King and the March on Washington, and that King is seen as dangerous and that King is surveilled. Right? It’s not just ’67 and ’68 King.

Jeremy Scahill: 

Let’s talk about that King in the earlier 1960s, when the public figure of Martin Luther King became a hotbed issue for all kinds of debate and discussion. What were media outlets and sort of broader liberal society saying about the tactics that Martin Luther King and others in that movement were using?

Jeanne Theoharris: 

I mean, again, if you look at polls in the early 60s, most Americans do not agree. They don’t agree with the Freedom Rides, they don’t agree with the sit-ins, they don’t agree that the civil rights movement is the way to go. They don’t believe — again, with the March on Washington, there’s this mob justice. They’re constantly paranoid about violence. They constantly talk about violence, even though there’s no violence.

I’ve been particularly interested, partly because of my own work, which focuses a great deal on the civil rights movement outside of the South, how King is received outside of the south. And if we look at how King, for instance, was received in California in the early 60s, and this is before 1965, Watts Uprising.

King is in and out of LA a number of times in the early 60s, including in 1964. In 1963, after much work and much civil rights activities, you see California pass a fair housing law, and white people go crazy, realtors go crazy. And they get on the ballot, Prop 14 in 1964, on the November ballot which is going to be the presidential election, and basically trying to repeal this law.

And King comes multiple times, right? There’s a massive civil rights campaign in the state to try to keep the law and to vote no on the proposition. And King is repeatedly called a communist, King is picketed, King is denounced for that work in California in 1964. And then we will see, white Californians by a 3:1 margin vote for Prop 14 in 1964, and they sent Lyndon Johnson back to the White House, but they, still, like in my home, I don’t want any fair housing laws. And what King will call this is a vote for ghettos, right? Because that’s what it’s about.

And so, he’s not popular in the north when he’s talking about — I mean, he writes this really beautiful thing that most people have not read in the couple months after Watts, where he’s basically like, “You invite me to your cities, and you sit up there with all this regalia, and you praise the actions of Southern black people, but, you know, when talk turns to condition local conditions, basically it’s polite but firm resistance.”

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