#i just wanted to doodle out tears being a fucker also. he sucks i love him

[creatively-cosmic]

had approximately 30 minutes of time to kill before having to do shit and decided to try and fill a sketch page . ft @your-friend-silver and @blue-tearss bc. theyre fun

[duhragonball]

Dragon Ball Z 202

Last episode, Gohan created a superhero persona to disguise himself while he fights crime.   By acting as the Great Saiyaman, no one at school will find out that it’s really Gohan.

This episode, he blows the whole thing on the second day, because some girl is on the roof when he switches out of his costume.   Hijinks, as they say, shall ensue.

Gohan isn’t sure what to do here, so he just sort of walks past the girl and worries about it.

He gets so wrapped up in the problem that he doesn’t pay attention in class, so the teacher makes him stand outside.  

Meanwhile, the girl is in the same class, and she’s doodling Gohan in her notebook.    This looks pretty good, but I always wonder if when cartoon characters sketch someone in the house style, is it supposed to be photorealistic, or cartoony? 

Anyway, the girl, Angela, is so consumed with thoughts about Gohan that she doesn’t pay attention to class either, and she breaks down in tears when she gets in trouble.

But she uses this as an excuse to go stand outside, where Gohan is.   The teacher didn’t actually tell her to do this, but what’s he gonna do?   Punish her for pre-emptively punishing herself?  

So, out in the hall, Angela asks Gohan if he has a girlfriend, and when he doesn’t answer right away, she gets all upset.   Then she threatens to tell everyone his secret unless he takes her on a date, so Gohan agrees.     Angela tells him to meet her in town tomorrow on Sunday.   Wait, so they’re in school on a Saturday?    That’s bullshit.  Also, why does Gohan have to hold pails of water but Angela doesn’t?  

Gohan tries to deal with this properly, so first thing’s first, he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do on a date.    So he asks his mom, who probably isn’t the best person to go to for advice on this, but who else can he ask?   Piccolo?  Krillin?�� Yamcha?   These guys all have no business giving out advice.

Chi-Chi fondly recalls the time she and Goku hung out alone while Emperor Pilaf and Colonel Silver fought over a Dragon Ball.   I want to say this was Dragon Ball Episode 31?   This isn’t a flashback to that episode, though, since this is all-new footage, so I sort of wonder if Chi-Chi might not be embellishing things somewhat.    In any case, she tells Goku they’re on a date, and when Goku doesn’t know what that is, she tells him that it’s the most fun thing a boy and girl can do together, so he naturally assumes she wants to spar with him.  

Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww...

So yeah, none of that helped Gohan at all, so he just asks Angela not to reveal his secret, and she tells him to take her to see a movie.  

Here’s a nice shot of the Satan City Theater.   I guesss this movie is about a volcano?   Anyway, Gohan falls asleep in the middle of it, and Angela gets upset and thinks he doesn’t want to spend time with her.   Well, duh.    You’re blackmailing him, remember?

Gohan follows her outside and tries to patch things up, and she immediately cheers up and tells him to take her to a cafe.  

There, she instructs him to ask her how many sugars she wants in her coffee, so he can add them for her.   

So, I get the sense that Angela really wants to have a paint-by-numbers romance, hitting specific moments that she’s seen in books and TV shows.    But she needs a boy to actually execute all of these spots, so she strongarmed Gohan into doing all of these things, but it’s never going to feel quite like it did when it happened on TV, because it’s not spontaneous.   Right now, she’s only enjoying this because she’s experiencing it firsthand, but it’s a hollow fantasy.

I say this because I’ve seen men over the years pining for similar fantasies.    Well, maybe not similar, but the same formulaic approach.   Like, “I gotta get me a girl who will dress up in a red wig and a yellow dress and a white vest and ask me to tell her how many sugars she wants in her coffee, so we can re-enact this episode of DBZ.    Yeah, that’s hot.”  Or whatever your thing is.    The reality is that even if you found someone to humor such a specific request, it would never quite hold up in real life.    You can’t manufacture this stuff.    

Maybe that was the point of Chi-Chi’s story earlier.  It was romantic for her because it actually happened, and it wasn’t just Goku doing whatever she wanted him to do.   They were both being themselves, and they hit it off, and that’s why she thinks so fondly about that time he punched a tree.   Krillin’s first date with 18 was probably nothing at all like he had in mind, but he probably loved it because it ended up cementing his relationship with the love of his life.   And I’m sure he would have loved to take 18 to a movie and a cafe, but not as an end unto themselves.    You can scoop your own sugar, and if you wait your whole life for someone else to do it for you, you might miss out on something better.    I’m not sure where I’m going with this analogy.    I take my coffee black, so maybe I should move on.   

Anyway, Angela wants thirteen sugars in her coffee because of course she does.

Over coffee, Gohan tries to get some sort of reassurance that she won’t tell anyone his secret, but that’s the furthest thing from her mind.   She mentions that “it” is cute, but that’s about all she has to say about it.  

Then there’s a fire at Satan Tower.    Well, I think this was supposed to be Satan Tower, because that’s where they were going to go next, but maye they saw this building on fire while they were on their way.   

So, little bit of trivia here, this episode didn’t air on Cartoon Network because it was originally scheduled for September 19, 2001, eight days after the 9/11 attacks.   That sort of flew under my radar at the time, because I had already seen this episode on VHS a couple of months earlier, but when I heard about it I wasn’t sure what to make of it.   Were they just not going to show any TV program that featured a tall building on fire?   I think for a little while, that’s what the networks did.   At the time, no one really knew what was appropriate and what wasn’t.    I have to admit, seeing this screencap does remind me a lot of the footage of the towers burning.   But at the time, that was a very distinctive image, and no cartoon of an unrelated incident could compare. 

Anyway, the episode finally aired on Toonami about eight weeks later, but this is a filler ep, so it’s not like anyone really needed this one to keep up with the story.

So when Gohan and Angela find this, they hear that there’s people trapped on the roof, and Gohan realizes that he needs to change into Saiyaman and save them.

But Videl’s already on the scene.    Her aircraft can’t land because of the thermal updrafts, so she jumps down to the roof herself and tries to open a valve on a water tank, figuring that flooding the roof will at least buy time for a rescue.    There’s a whole sequence where she consults a team of computer guys about it, and this dude checks the building’s schematics and runs a simultation to see what good the water will do.    But Videl’s not strong enough to open the valve, and her fingerless gloves don’t help matters.    They’re stylish, but not much protection against the hot metal. 

But then Gohan rushes in, despite Angela’s protestations, and Saiyaman shows up to save Videl when the water tower falls over.    He punches a hole in it, which I guess does more than Videl had counted on?    Anyway, he saves all the people on the roof, including Videl.

Afterward, Videl spots Gohan in the vicinity, and she wonders if that might mean something.   Remember, she still harbored suspicions that Gohan is the Golden Warrior, and this is the second time she’s seen him at the scene of a crisis.   

Then Angela finds them and assumes that Videl is Gohan’s girlfriend.   Uh-ohhhhh!

Funny thing is, despite knowing Gohan’s secret, she seems to have no idea why he ran into a burning building a minute ago.   She thinks he was just trying to save Videl, or maybe she thinks they like to make out in burning buildings?  I dunno.   

Heartbroken, Angela tries to play her best card, and tells Videl Gohan’s secret.   Gohan’s horrified, but he can’t really do anything, so he just starts screaming, as if he can drown out the truth.   Then again, screaming usually works pretty well on this show, so I can’t fault him for falling back on the basics. 

But between breaths, Angela gets the secret out: Gohan wears teddy-bear underwear.   Wait, what?

In perhaps the stupidest flashback ever, we see Angela wandering around after gym class, only to find Gohan pulling up his pants.    I guess he was changing out of his gym clothes?   Why would you do that with the door open?   

So that’s the secret Angela’s been holding over Gohan’s head this whole time.    So what about on the roof?   Didn’t she notice Gohan wearing the Great Saiyaman costume there?   No, she didn’t, because she didn’t have her contact lenses in at the time.    Womp-womp-waaaaaaaaaaaaa.

Videl is not amused.    I’m pretty sure in the dub, Angela wonders what Gohan is talking about, so she asks him if he had his pants down on the roof too, and Videl tells him to keep his pants on, or else.

Of course, Gohan could care less about how many girls see his sexy undies, so he just laughs the whole thing off and claims that his mother bought him the wrong kind by mistake.    Really?   That’s the best you can do?    She bought the wrong kind, and you just keep them in your rotation anyway?    My mom bought me this shitty tank-top looking thing when I was in seventh grade and I absolutely despised it, but she wouldn’t listen to me and bought it anyway, so I knew she’d probably try to make me wear it and I wanted no part of that, so I stuffed it in a box in my closet where she wouldn’t be able to find it.    Out of sight, out of mind, right?   Well it worked.    I still don’t know where that fucker went.    I probably threw it in the trash one day just to be safe.    That shirt sucked.   Not just because it looked stupid, but because my mom wasted money on it rather than just listen to me, the only person who was ever going to wear the thing.   

Sorry, I went off on a tangent there.  That’s what this liveblogs are all about, though.    If you just wanted a dry recap of the action, you’d watch these yourself, or look it up on the wiki.   Point is, Gohan wouldn’t wear teddy bear underwear unless he wanted to.     He killed Perfect Cell.    He wears a vest.   He does what he wants.

So Gohan’s secret is safe, but he still feels terrible about hurting Angela’s feelings, so the next day he goes to apologize to her, only to find that she’s moved on to some other boy, and she’s got a date with him next Sunday.   Badda-bump da-da-bump!