Dragon Ball Z #79-97

Dragon Ball Z #79-97

Originally released in 1990

Written by Akira Toriyama

Art by Akira Toriyama

Last time on Dragon Ball Z!  Gohan, Krillin, and Vegeta have been forced to team up in order to keep the wish-granting Dragon Balls out of the hands of the sadistic Freeza and prevent him from making his terrible wish for immortality.  However, Freeza has five aces up his sleeve - the Ginyu Force! With Goku hours away from Namek, can this unlikely trio recover the Dragon Balls, or is all hope lost for the universe?

Unlike with Jujutsu Kaisen or Demon Slayer, I am very familiar with Dragon Ball Z. However, there are some days where I want to go back to something that I'm familiar with and see if there's anything I've forgotten. (I can recall watching the series as a kid where they'd air the series, reach some new episodes, and then start from the beginning of Dragon Ball Z with the Raditz fight. As a result, it felt like they were stuck on Namek forever)

Guldo is the weakest member of the Ginyu Force; he's short, out of shape, and wildly unprepared for Krillin and Gohan to unleash their full power. (Along with being unaware that they can sense ki energy) However, he can stop time; I forgot that him needing to hold his breath is something that was only in the anime, as he has no such problem in the manga. (Though it's too draining for him to use it for long)

Surprisingly, the fight with Guldo only lasts a single chapter, and these chapters are shorter than what seems to be the average. (Only lasting about 13 pages, compared to the usual 17-19) The Ginyu Force aren't particularly broken up about losing a member so quickly, though.

Next is Recoome, the big brute of the team.  He's considerably more difficult to take down, withstanding all of Vegeta's attempts to end the fight quickly.

The action is fast paced and frantic as Vegeta hits Recoome with everything that he's got, but only manages to mess up Recoome's hair and break his armour. (On one hand, it raises the question of why he needs armour if his body is more durable than it, but on the other hand, the Ginyu Force do like to coordinate with each other, and it is a uniform for Freeza's forces)

Recoome's already a big guy, but with Vegeta and Krillin being shorter than average and Gohan being about five or six years old, he looks downright massive, filling up what feels like most of any given panel that he's in. I'd say it's like a David vs. Goliath scenario, but David wins that battle, whereas Vegeta, Krillin, and Gohan stand no chance, either separately or together.

Meanwhile, with Captain Ginyu having brought him the seven Dragon Balls, it seems like eternal life is within Freeza's grasp. There's just one problem - the dragon isn't being summoned. Freeza quickly figures out that there must be a password or a trick that only Namekians know, which makes things difficult since he's practically committed genocide on the planet. (There are a grand total of three left)

When things seem their darkest - Krillin was taken out with no effort, Vegeta has lost all hope, and Gohan has had his neck snapped - Goku arrives with the rejuvenating Senzu beans and enough power to take out Recoome in one hit.  After everything that they've been through in the past few minutes, Vegeta is concerned that with his newfound power, Goku just might be the legendary Super Saiyan!

The Super Saiyan is a myth, something rumoured to appear once in a thousand years, though as the series goes on, it turns out to be nowhere near as rare as that.  Vegeta assumed that, if anyone was going to be the legendary Super Saiyan that even Freeza supposedly feared, then it would be him rather than Goku, so this new development annoys him, especially when Goku proceeds to toy with Jeice and Burter, two other members of the Ginyu Force, and proves to be faster than Burter despite Burter's boasts of being the fastest in the universe.

The fight with Recoome, Burter, and Jeice has some distinct parallels to the Nappa fight from earlier in the series, though thankfully the consequences aren't as fatal for the heroes.  An opponent who can shrug off everything thrown at him, the heroes buying time for Goku to arrive - even a shot of Goku lifting Burter's beaten body over his head, or Goku momentarily powering up to hide his true strength and conserve energy, are similar to that fight.

Jeice flees, abandoning Recoome and Burter's unconscious bodies to warn Captain Ginyu about what just happened. Goku's fine with leaving the defeated Ginyu Force members where they are so their allies can collect them later and leave the planet, but Vegeta isn't so compassionate. (Also, much like Freeza, he doesn't actually know how the Dragon Balls work, so he's confused when the others are so confident that Freeza hasn't made his wish yet)

With Freeza gone to interrogate the last three Namekians, Captain Ginyu decides to clean up this stain on the Ginyu Force's reputation by taking care of the ones who beat Guldo, Recoome, and Burter himself, after ordering Jeice to bury the Dragon Balls so nobody can find them. He has some sense of honour (telling Jeice to stay out of the fight), but once Goku proves to be much stronger than he initially assumed, Ginyu pulls out his secret weapon: the ability to swap bodies with someone.

As Ginyu heads for Freeza's ship, where Goku's friends and Vegeta are looking for the Dragon Balls, Freeza is battling the Namekian warrior Nail to try and get the secret of the Dragon Balls out of him.  While the fandom places too much emphasis on power levels (for something that was proven to be unreliable time and time again during the handful of arcs where they came up), it definitely says a lot that Ginyu is concerned when Goku's strength (with the help of the Kaio-Ken technique) jumps up to 180 thousand, only for Freeza to reveal a few chapters later that his power level is basically three times that amount.

Krillin and Gohan find Bulma to get the Dragon Radar. Despite being a main character since the first chapter, Bulma doesn't get much to do in this arc, which an earlier cover page pokes fun at.  It's a shame that, for many fans, this would have been their first impression of her (as she didn't do much in the Saiyan invasion), because her technological know-how comes in handy during a lot of other parts of the series, but here, she's out of her element and can't contribute much to the plot.

When Ginyu-as-Goku shows up, Gohan quickly figures out that this isn't his father, while Goku-as-Ginyu, who's wounded and has trouble sensing ki energy, realizes that Ginyu won't be able to take full advantage of Goku's body as he doesn't know Goku's techniques.  This gives Gohan and Krillin a chance to show off how strong they've become, which is good since they didn't even get to beat Guldo earlier.

Vegeta dispatches Jeice, claiming that he's on his way to becoming a Super Saiyan.  This is going to be a running theme for Vegeta throughout the arc, thinking that any Saiyan that's powerful enough is a Super Saiyan when the actual process for gaining that form isn't so easy.

When Ginyu attempt to switch into Vegeta's body, Goku jumps in the way, returning both Ginyu and Goku to their normal selves. (well, assuming that this is Ginyu's original body)  When Ginyu tries again, quick thinking and a frog remove him as a threat.

With Goku badly injured from Ginyu fighting in his body, he's left in a medical machine to heal while Gohan, Krillin, and Vegeta try to find out how to activate the Dragon Balls.  Meanwhile, Freeza is still fighting (or rather torturing) Nail, who is stalling for time so that Dende (a Namekian child that Gohan and Krillin saved earlier) can reach the heroes and tell them what to do.  Upon finding this out, Freeza doesn't take it well.

For a group that was only around for less than twenty chapters, the Ginyu Force were certainly a memorable bunch.  This seems like an ideal stopping point; while its infamy is largely due to the anime version being padded out, the fight with Freeza is a long one, even with the chapters being relatively short.