The 22nd World Martial Arts Tournament Saga is the fifth arc of Dragon Ball: eighteen episodes that aired on Fuji TV between October 21, 1987 and February 17, 1988, adapting chapters 113-134 of Akira Toriyama's manga. Three years after their first tournament, Goku, Krillin and Yamcha return to Papaya Island and run into a rival school out to humiliate Master Roshi: that of the Crane Hermit and his students Tien Shinhan and Chiaotzu. It ends with a classic final and with the darkest twist the series had delivered so far.
What the saga is about
After the Fortuneteller Baba Saga and Goku's three years on the road, the gang reunites at the World Martial Arts Tournament. Goku makes it at the last minute, having swum across the sea. Waiting for Master Roshi is a former fellow student turned enemy, Master Shen, the Crane Hermit (Tsuru Sen'nin in Japanese), who has entered his two pupils to prove his school is the better one. And among the contestants, once again, is a certain Jackie Chun.
The preliminaries
The qualifiers show how much everyone has grown. Goku dispatches King Chappa, a champion famous for never having been touched, eight-arm technique and all. Tien immediately displays an arrogance and a cruelty that infuriate Yamcha; in the anime, the price is paid by Nam, the fighter from the first tournament, who is beaten brutally. The eight finalists are the students of the two schools, Jackie Chun, a wolf man and the kickboxing champion Pamput. At the draw, Chiaotzu uses telekinesis to rig the pairings.
The quarterfinals
The first bout sets the tone. Yamcha throws everything he has at Tien, Kamehameha included, but Tien sends it straight back, knocks him out and breaks his leg out of sheer contempt. Goku vows revenge. Then Jackie Chun faces Man-Wolf, who has held a grudge ever since Jackie destroyed the moon at the previous tournament: without a full moon, he cannot change back into a human. Jackie beats him effortlessly and, out of pity, hypnotizes him into mistaking Krillin's bald head for the moon.
Krillin against Chiaotzu is the match that changes the tournament's mood. Chiaotzu flies and fires the Dodon Ray; Goku recognizes Mercenary Tao's technique and says he beat him, which reveals that the assassin was the Crane Hermit's brother. From then on, Master Shen wants Goku dead. Krillin wins anyway, with a delightful bit of cunning: he asks Chiaotzu arithmetic questions, forcing him to count on his fingers and break his telekinetic hold. In the last quarterfinal, Goku makes short work of Pamput.
Semifinals and final
Tien and Jackie Chun are evenly matched. Tien blinds his opponent with the Solar Flare (Taiyōken), Master Shen works out who is hiding behind the disguise, and Jackie steps out of the ring on purpose after urging the young man to choose a different path. In the other semifinal, Goku and Krillin fight as friends: Krillin grabs Goku's tail, but in three years Goku has trained that too.
The final takes up almost five episodes. Tien strikes with the Volleyball Fist (Haikyūken), Goku counters the blinding trick by putting on Roshi's sunglasses. Then Goku starts freezing for no reason: Chiaotzu is paralyzing him on his master's orders. When Tien notices and refuses to win that way, Master Shen orders Goku killed, and Tien rebels. Roshi blasts the old man away with a Kamehameha. Freed, Tien unleashes the Four Witches Technique (Shiyōken), sprouting a second pair of arms, and finally the Tri-Beam (Kikōhō), which obliterates the ring. Goku escapes by leaping, but touches the ground outside the arena a split second before his opponent: Tien wins the tournament. The celebration is short-lived. Krillin goes back for the Power Pole and the Dragon Ball that Goku left behind, and is found dead.
Characters introduced
- Tien Shinhan: the three-eyed fighter who goes from an assassin's pupil to one of Goku's most loyal friends.
- Chiaotzu: Tien's inseparable companion, small, pale and gifted with psychic powers.
- Master Shen, the Crane Hermit: Master Roshi's longtime rival and Mercenary Tao's brother.
- King Chappa, Pamput and Man-Wolf: the supporting opponents, somewhere between parody and gag.
Returning are Goku, Krillin, Yamcha, Bulma, Master Roshi, Launch, Oolong, Puar, Turtle and Nam. Tien has his own character page.
Main characters in this saga
Episode list
Titles are literal translations of the Japanese ones. The Funimation dub used its own, such as Rivals and Arrivals for episode 84 or The Fallen for episode 101. The American DVD releases call this block the Tien Shinhan Saga; Spanish Wikipedia starts the tournament arc one episode earlier, with Goku's swim in episode 83.
Anime vs. manga
The anime adds extra scenes to every match and, above all, splits the tournament across several days, with overnight breaks the manga does not have. Those breaks hold the most obvious additions: Master Shen trying to assassinate Goku at night, Pamput's manager, the fighter now recast as an action-movie star, trying to keep Goku out of the ring, and constant squabbles in the stands. Nam's defeat in the preliminaries is also anime-only. In the manga, Bulma, Launch and Puar stay at the hospital with Yamcha and follow the rest of the tournament on the radio; in the anime they come back to cheer.
Our take
This may be the best tournament of the original series. The 21st was a life lesson with a disguised master in the final; the 22nd is a clash between two ideas of martial arts. On one side the Turtle School, which teaches fighting as a way to grow; on the other the Crane School, which teaches killing. Tien's arc, from cruel bully to a young man who defies his master, is Dragon Ball's first great redemption story, and it foreshadows what the series will later do with Piccolo and Vegeta.
The matches are varied and well built: the brutality of Yamcha versus Tien, the comedy of Man-Wolf, Krillin's arithmetic trick, Jackie Chun's moral lesson, the friendship between Goku and Krillin. And for the first time Goku loses a final not to a trick or to experience, but to an opponent as strong as he is, by a hair.
The drawback is length: eighteen episodes for twenty-two chapters, with many bouts inflated by breaks and crowd reactions. But the last scene pays for everything. After so much lightness, Krillin's death ends the tournament with a sudden chill and opens the darkest stretch of the series.
Up next: the King Piccolo Saga, episodes 102-122 →
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