#anyway if anyone has an idea of how to bring in a reference to Poirot lemme know

[leupagus]

Thank God I had an afternoon's worth of entertainment at Scotland Yard — and no darling, I wasn't arrested. Do you remember old Finchy, that dour chap they sent down to us with the Mysore Diamond in late '55, and we had a jolly good shootout with that devil from Pretoria? Turns out Finchy's been putting off his climb up the ladder and the top brass have absolutely had it; something about a body in a suitcase that sealed his fate, poor man. (London must be going to the absolute dogs if there are bodies being stuffed into suitcases these days. Buenos Aires will be heaven in comparison, and not just because you're there waiting for me.) At any rate, word was out that the blessed event was to begin at 1600 and you can bet that tremendously expensive lipstick you're so fond of that I was there as the clock struck. I'll give Finchy this much, he looked a bit less like a wet funeral than I remembered; perhaps he's resigned himself to his fate. The real fun came afterward, when all were gathered in Peel Hall for the obligatory champers and chinwag. Who do you think was there chatting with everyone and quite at her ease? Your funny little friend who helped you a bit with Aunt Ada's murder, Miss Marple! I confess I didn't recognise her at first. I'm so used to identifying aged relics by their hats, and she's done the unthinkable and changed it.

[duhragonball]

Dragon Ball Z 173

Last time, King Furry sent the royal military to take out Cell, and he slaughtered them all.   Now, King Furry’s addressing the world to admit that all hope seems lost, unless someone like the boy who beat King Piccolo happens to show up and save them all.    He asks for everyone to pray to Kami.   

Only there is no Kami, and there hasn’t been for about a week or so.

  Fortunately, Goku’s tight with Kami’s boss, King Kai, so he hits him up to find New Namek.   Goku’s plan is to ask a Namekian to return to Earth with him and become the new Kami.  Then that guy can reactivate Earth’s Dragon Balls, which were lost when Kami and Piccolo fused together.   Boy that sentence sure would be confusing if you weren’t familiar with this show.   

Anywaay, King Kai can locate the planet with his powers, but he needs some quiet to do it right, and Goku gets chatty at times like these.

Once he points out the way, Goku can sense the planet and travel there with Instant Transmission.     Now, at this point, King Kai realizes what he can do, and starts talking about Instant Transmission until Goku gets annoyed and asks him to pipe down.     But the bigger point is this: King Kai doesn’t know how to teleport himself.  

I say this because I’m pretty sure the dub included a line where King Kai claimed he could have taught Goku how to do Instant Transmission during the Saiyans Saga, but there wasn’t enough time.    This implies that King Kai can do it too, which begs the question of why he didn’t just teleport Goku back to the other end of Snake Way when he was restored to life in the Saiyans Saga.   Well, in the Japanese version, he never mentions having this ability.    He simply recognizes the technique as the one used on Planet Yardrat, and that’s all.    So that’s why King Kai didn’t take Goku back to King Yama’s in the Saiyans Saga.  He couldn’t.   

So Goku goes to New Namek, which looks a whole lot like the original Planet Namek.   There, he introduces himself to Moori, who’s pretty much up to speed on things.   He knows the Earth is in trouble, because they can sense Cell’s evil power all the way from here.  Goku explains his plan, and Moori has the ideal candidate to become Earth’s new Kami.   Turns out Dende misses the Earth, and he’s a skilled Dragon Type, which makes him more than qualified despite his young age.  

So it’s settled.    Goku teleports Dende back with him, and we’re in business.   I never quite understood why Dende had to be installed as the new Kami to get the Dragon Balls working again.    I kind of thought those were two separate things, but maybe they’re more inter-connected than that.   

Meanwhile, a reporter announces to the world that the champion martial artist, MISTER SATAN, has decided to enter the Cell Games and take out Cell once and for all.    A lot of the localizations of DBZ media refer to this guy as Hercule, because, quite frankly, that’s a lot easier to pull off on cable TV.    Also, I’ve heard that Funimation prefers to keep characters’ names somewhat distinct, so it’s easier for people to find them on the internet.    “Satan” probably brings up all sorts of things on Google, but “Hercule” probably only calls up this dude and Hercule Poirot.  

It took me a while to get used to the name, because I didn’t find out about it until I bought my first uncut VHS tape of DBZ, and heard the version of the dub where they called him that.  And the name is just ridiculous.   It’s perfect for a flashy pro-wrestler-looking mofo who wears a cape.   World Champion of Martial Arts, Mr. Satan!

Here’s the deal, this guy really doesn’t have any powers.    He’s quite formidable in his own right, but he has no understanding of ki or how to use it in battle.   It’s never quite spelled out in this episode, but at some point it gets established that there was a 24th Tenkaichi Budokai that took place during the events of Dragon Ball Z, and Mr. Satan won, mainly because all the most powerful fighters were occupied doing DBZ stuff.   Chiaotzu’s pretty much the weakest Z-Fighter, and things drop off pretty sharply from there.    But it’s not hard to imagine Mr. Satan beating a field of guys including the likes of Nam, King Choppa, Panput, and so on. 

So why would he dare to challenge Cell, then?   He may not understand ki blasts or flight powers, but he’s seen what Cell can do, right?    Well, there’s a simple answer for that one: Mr. Satan thinks Cell’s super powers are merely tricks.    That seems pretty simple, but it’s actually kind of messed up.  

I mean, setting everything else aside, Cell just killed the whole army last episode.   We know he used a ki blast to do it, but Mr. Satan thinks it was a trick.   But the killing part was real, he’s not disputing that.   All those guys are dead.   So Cell used a trick that kills people.   You know, a weapon.    So even if he’s right, what’s to stop Cell from using that same weapon on him when he tries to fight him?   He seems to think that merely knowing it’s a trick is enough to win.  

And this is the main thing that Mr. Satan brings to the table.    While he’s powerless to actually defeat Cell, and clueless as to what’s actually going on, at least he’s there to reassure the populace that Cell can and will be defeated.    His sales pitch makes no sense when you think about it, but it’s convincing because the people are desperate to be convinced.

But Krillin’s not very impressed with any of that.   To him, Mr. Satan is what Master Roshi warned him against way back in the day.    Here’s a guy who thinks he’s the strongest man in the world simply because he won a world title.   He has no idea of the greater powers beyond the combat sports industry.

Goku teleports Krillin and Gohan back to the Lookout so they can hang out with Dende.   It’s pretty cool seeing these three back together again.   

Getting down to business, Dende starts out by saying that it’ll take him 100 days to create a new set of Dragon Balls, but then he realizes that he can just reactivate the original set if he can see the model of the Dragon.   Krillin asks if he can make it so Shenron will grant three wishes instead of one, and Dende thinks it’ll work, but then Piccolo reminds him that they’ll still need to keep Shenron’s ability to revive large numbers of people on the same wish.    Namek’s Dragon, Porunga, couldn’t do that.    Dende thinks it over, and decides that he can make that work, but Shenron will only be able to grant two wishes.  

Now, this has been a sticking point for me for a long time.    The two wish thing seems pretty clear here, but there’s a lot of places where Toei seems to suggest that Shenron can grant three wishes.  I’m pretty sure Shenron says “three wishes” in Movie 12, for example.   However, he only grants two wishes in the Buu Saga.   But in Movie 15, Shenron is back to two wishes.    Sorbet uses one to revive Frieza, and then the Pilaf Gang uses the second to wish for money.   However, when that scene was recreated in Dragon Ball Super Episode 19, Shenron’s back to three wishes.   He even explains to Sorbet that he can always grant three wishes, unless one of them is to revive large numbers of people, in which case that uses two wishes at once.    And that’s fine, but why didn’t they spell that out in the movie?    Or did they spell it out in the movie, just not in the dub?   Questions for later.

I suppose it’s possible that this is just a matter of Dende upgrading Shenron’s power as he gained experience.   In this episode, he suggests that it might be possible to have it both ways, but this is his first casting, and he’s not yet experienced enough to pull that off.  So maybe a few years later he perfected his technique and was able to go back and do it again.  

Anyway, no one is terribly concerned about this, since two wishes is still better than what they had before, so Popo gets out the model of Shenron, and Dende does his thing.    I’m kind of confused on how they just sort of took it as a given that Dende is the new Kami of Earth.   Shouldn’t there be a ceremony or a ritual or something first?  

Piccolo seemed skeptical that Dende could do the job, but now that he’s pulled it off, he’s quite impressed with his talent.   

With that taken care of, Goku teleports to Capsule Corp. to fetch the Dragon Radar.  

Back at the Lookout, Trunks asks Gohan if he knows what Goku’s plan is, but Gohan is just as much in the dark as the rest of them.    When they first got out of the Time Chamber, Goku told Gohan that they would train for three days out of the nine they had left, but now he’s abandoned that schedule so he can gather the Dragon Balls.    But what’s the point of having Shenron ready to wish back Cell’s victims if he doesn’t have a way to beat Cell?

The consensus seems to be that Goku must have something in mind, even if he won’t tell anyone what it is. 

As for Goku, he finds two Dragon Balls pretty quickly, and he’s pleased that Dende’s casting worked.   Not so much about the elephant that trampled his hand, though.

So everyone does their thing for the remaining days.    Except Cell, who has nothing to do but wait.    He’s starting to regret giving them so much time to prepare.