#he changed his mind about geets too -- even once said him beating goku would never happen but then canonized it years later

[shannonsketches]

years ago Toriyama said 'i didn't really like vegeta but he was really helpful to the story' and honestly?? more of that. more of those. you don't have to like him but is he good for your story? he'll be good for your audience too, bet

[duhragonball]

Dragon Ball Z 031

Last time, Goku started powering up to use a Kaio-ken X3.   Today, he’s still powering up, and Bulma’s scouter explodes from the raw intensity of... wait a minute, it already exploded last episode.  

And King Kai already said this last episode too!   Also,  I never noticed before how small his hands are.    Got some Donald Trump hands on him.

FInally we get some new footage, and Goku breaks up the rock that Geets is standing on.    This distracts him just enough...

To punch the shit out of him!   Yeah!

And here’s a kick!  BAM!

And another one, right in the mush!    I had to slow down the video player to get these shots, but it was worth it.    Goku’s just clubberin’ this guy.

Vegeta keeps trying to hit him but he can’t!   Goku’s on fire!

And now Vegeta’s beginning to feel the same frustration Nappa experienced before.   Not much fun in Goku Town, is it?  

Geets tries to punch Goku, but he catches his fists and starts squeezing!    Vegeta manages to wriggle loose and tries to fight back...

Then Goku headbutts him in the face!  

There’s this sequence where Goku just unloads on Vegeta, and it’s 100% Goku offense.   Vegeta can’t do anything but suffer.  It’s only a few seconds, because the animation is so quick, but damn, it is savage. 

Vegeta jumps up to a butte to get some breathing room, and then he drops to his knees in pain.

Then he collapses into a fetal position.    This is insane!

This whole “Goku Fights at Kaio-ken X3″ segment is pretty short, but really, it’s the most important part of this fight, which is in turn one of the most important parts of Dragon Ball.   However briefly, Goku just overwhelmed Vegeta, avoiding all his attacks and raining heavy blows on him at will.    Part of the reason for this is that Goku knew he’d only have a short time to fight at this level, so he was determined to make every shot count.   

However, this flurry of offense isn’t enough to actually beat Vegeta.    Instead, it just makes him furious. 

Every so often, you see Goku twinge while he’s fighting in this mode, because it’s taking too much of a toll on his body.   This was what King Kai was talking about when he warned Goku never to go above a 2X Kaio-ken.   But Goku had no choice.   He had to use a triple, and now it looks like even that’s not enough.

The sight of his own blood is what pushes Vegeta over the edge.   He decides to destroy the whole planet, just to punish Goku for the humiliation he just inflicted on him.

Goku has no choice.   He has to use the 3X Kaio-ken one more time to save the Earth.   He powers up and fires a Kamehameha...

... to intercept Vegeta’s Gallick Gun, which looks like a very similar move, only Vegeta sort of does it overhand, and from the opposite side.

And the two beams meet in mid-air.   We saw a similar beam struggle during the Goku/Piccolo fight at the 23rd Budokai, but this one’s much bigger.   The fighters are stronger, the beams are more powerful, and the stakes are much higher.   

But Goku can’t hold out, so he plays the only card he’s got left, and goes for a Kaio-ken Times FOUR.   

King Kai is horrified, but it works!   Vegeta’s Gallick Gun is reflected back on him, and he gets shot up into the sky.     Amazing!

But Goku paid a heavy price for that stunt.  Yajirobe comes out of hiding to congratulate Goku, but when he pats him on the back, Goku screams in agony.    Worse, Vegeta isn’t beaten yet.    Goku’s just waiting for him to come back down, and he’ll be super-pissed whenever he does.

So Yajirobe nopes the hell out of there.

Up in the sky, Vegeta is indeed not beaten, and he’s super-pissed.    He plans on using the Giant Ape form to destroy Goku once and for all.   The irony is that he probably doesn’t need to go to such lengths.   Yajirobe almost beat Goku a minute ago, and he wasn’t even trying.    But Vegeta doesn’t realize how fragile Goku’s game plan is right now.    He just knows he’s fighting a guy who outpowered his Gallick Gun, which means he’ll have to escalate this even further.

There’s just one problem: Vegeta can’t find the moon.   He says he timed their arrival on Earth to coincide with the full moon, but it didn’t matter because Piccolo blew it up months ago.  

But that’s no big deal.   Vegeta has a substitute in mind, although it’ll cost him some of his power to make it work.

Naturally he blames Goku for destroying the moon, and he explains exactly how the Oozaru transformation works, in order to explain how his power allows him to bypass the need for moonlight.

Too bad Goku has no idea what he’s talking about.   He didn’t even know Saiyans could transform.    Which is odd, seeing how Raditz told him in Episode 2, and King Kai mentioned it when he told him the story of the Saiyan/Tuffle War.

Here’s the deal: When sunlight is reflected off the surface of a moon, it generates “Blutz waves”, which enter a Saiyan’s eyes and trigger a reaction in their tail, producing the giant ape form.    So there’s three ingredients to get a Great Ape going: Blutz Waves, a tail, and direct visual contact.  Only a full moon produces enough Blutz Waves to make it work, but Vegeta knows a technique that allows him to create a Blutz Wave source with his own energy.   

The key thing that I hadn’t noticed until today is that it does take a substantial amount of power to make the thing work.    Vegeta doesn’t mind, since the Ape form will more than make up for it, but the point here is that he’ll be considerably weaker when he changes back, and his Ape form won’t be quite as strong as it would have been under natural moonlight.   So Piccolo destroying the moon wasn’t a wase of time after all.   Vegeta can manage without the moon, but at least his ape form won’t be at full power.  

And yea, Vegeta transforms.   Goku does not, of course, because he’s been without a tail for about six or seven years now.   Tough break.

I gotta say, this has got to be one of the best Dragon Ball episodes ever.  You’ve got Goku’s epic beatdown of Vegeta to start, and you get the classic beam struggle and Vegeta’s fake moon reveal.   A lot of episodes only have one big moment at most, but this one has three.   You just can’t lose.