Dragon Ball: 21st World Martial Arts Tournament Saga, Episodes 14-28

The 21st World Martial Arts Tournament Saga, often simply called the Tournament Saga, is the second arc of Dragon Ball: fifteen episodes that aired on Fuji TV between May 28 and September 3, 1986, adapting chapters 24-54 of Akira Toriyama's manga. It follows Goku and Krillin's eight months of training under Master Roshi and their first big martial arts tournament, all the way to the final against the mysterious Jackie Chun.

What the saga is about

With the Emperor Pilaf Saga behind him, Goku flies to Kame House to be trained by Master Roshi. The old hermit agrees, but only in exchange for a pretty girl. While Goku tries to work out what that means, a bald boy rows in from the sea, crafty and a little cowardly: his name is Krillin, he trained for eight years at Orin Temple and he wants to become the great Roshi's student. Together the two find the right girl, Launch, who has one small problem: when she sneezes she turns into a heavily armed robber.

The training

The first half of the saga is a long coming-of-age story. Roshi moves Kame House to a bigger island and puts the boys through a program that looks like anything but a martial arts course: delivering milk at dawn across mountains and deserts, plowing fields by hand, working on a construction site, swimming with sharks, dodging bees. From the early days they do it all with a turtle shell on their backs: 20 kilograms, rising to 40 in the final month. When they finally manage to move the boulder the master had set as their goal, Roshi admits he has no secret techniques to teach: the foundation is the work they have already done.

The tournament

The second half is the World Martial Arts Tournament, the gathering of the world's best fighters. 137 contestants compete for eight spots in the preliminaries, and Goku and Krillin discover they have become incredibly strong without realizing it. In the finals Krillin beats Bacterian, the fighter who has never bathed; Jackie Chun overwhelms Yamcha without even touching him; the serious Nam, fighting to bring water to his village, defeats Ranfan; and Goku beats Giran, the winged, gum-spitting monster, thanks to a tail that suddenly grows back.

Jackie Chun

In the semifinals Jackie Chun knocks out Krillin and Goku eliminates Nam. The white-haired old man is, of course, Master Roshi in disguise: he wants to beat his students so they do not get big-headed and stop improving. The final between master and student fills three whole episodes, with clashing Kamehamehas, afterimages, the Drunken Fist and hypnosis. Then the full moon rises, Goku becomes a Great Ape again and the old man destroys the moon to stop him. The match comes down to one last simultaneous kick: Jackie wins by a whisker, and the prize money mostly ends up paying for Goku's dinner.

Characters introduced

• Krillin: training partner, rival for a couple of episodes and then Goku's best friend. Sly, insecure and more interested in girls than in purity of heart: the Flying Nimbus will not hold him.
• Launch: the girl with two personalities, dark-haired and kind or blonde and violent, depending on her last sneeze. She becomes Kame House's housekeeper. Her Japanese name is Lunch.
• Jackie Chun: Roshi's tournament alter ego, a cheerful, unpredictable old man who turns out to be the strongest fighter in the tournament.
• Nam: the fighter who wants the prize money to save his village from drought, the saga's most serious character.
• Giran, Bacterian and Ranfan: three underhanded opponents, each with a trick of his or her own.
• The tournament announcer: the sunglasses-wearing host who calls the matches. He will return for later tournaments, all the way into Dragon Ball Z.

Bulma, Yamcha, Puar and Oolong are back too, watching from the stands, and of course Goku, who surprises everyone by revealing he is twelve, not fourteen: until Roshi's lessons he could not count.

Episode list

The titles are translations of the Japanese originals. The Funimation dub, which aired from 2001, used its own, from Goku's Rival to The Final Blow.

Anime vs. manga

The pace stays close to the previous saga's: fifteen episodes for thirty-one chapters, about two chapters per episode. The anime's additions mostly keep on screen the characters who disappear from the manga during the training. Bulma, Yamcha, Oolong and Puar trek through a jungle and a desert after their plane crashes; Yamcha trains at a city dojo and later saves Bulma from a truck. Some entrances change too: Krillin is seen before he lands at Kame House, and Launch gets a Western-style introduction, with a saloon and bounty hunters, that is not in the comic.

Our take

This is the saga where Dragon Ball finds its true identity. The Pilaf hunt was a picaresque adventure; here the series discovers the coming-of-age story and the tournament, two ingredients that will become its backbone for decades. The training with Roshi remains a fan favorite precisely because it does not look like training: it is work, toil and daily life, and the payoff only arrives when the boys step into the ring.

The tournament works through variety. Every match has a different tone: gross-out with Bacterian, melancholy with Nam, comic with Ranfan, almost horror with the Great Ape. And the stroke of genius is putting the disguised master in the final: a challenge that is also a lesson, ending with a defeat that teaches more than a win would.

Not everything has aged well. Roshi's antics with women, the panties trick and Ranfan's striptease weigh more today than in 1986. But the substance is solid, and the final image, with Goku losing on his feet and then eating the entire prize, says everything about who the hero is.

Up next: the Red Ribbon Army Saga, episodes 29-68 →