Episode 110 of Dragon Ball, first broadcast in Japan on May 4, 1988 and known in the English dub as Piccolo Closes In, ends Goku's first fight with King Piccolo in the bleakest way possible. The demon leaves him lying in the mud with no heartbeat and walks off with his Dragon Ball. Meanwhile Master Roshi realizes his plan to steal the last two balls has collapsed, and decides to face King Piccolo by himself.
Summary
The fight resumes in pouring rain, but by now it is completely one-sided. King Piccolo pounds Goku with blow after blow, then charges a two-handed beam. Goku dodges it by a hair, only to be caught square by a second blast. He stops moving, and his heart stops beating. The demon plucks the One-Star Ball from the boy and climbs back aboard Pilaf's airship, heading for the rest.
Yajirobe, who had been hiding, walks over to the body expecting to bury it, then notices that Goku's heart has started again. He drags him to a river for a drink and loads him into his hovercar. Battered as he is, Goku has only one request: take him to Korin Tower. On the way, Yajirobe tells him who King Piccolo really is and what atrocities he committed before he was sealed away.
Elsewhere, Chiaotzu recovers the ball that Roshi lost down a ravine, bringing the group's total to five. The last two belong to King Piccolo, and he is heading straight for them. Roshi tries to outwit him: he buries his own balls in the dirt and plans, with Tien, to snatch the other two so that Chiaotzu can summon Shenron. But the demon sees through the trick the moment he arrives and swallows both of his Dragon Balls.
Tien is itching to fight, so Roshi knocks him out with a spray of sleeping gas and tells Chiaotzu to stay hidden behind a rock. This is a battle the old master means to fight alone. King Piccolo leaps down from the airship and finds himself face to face with the Turtle Hermit.
Our take
This is a bridging episode, but a careful one. The rain, the mud and the silence of a stopped heart mark the lowest point Goku has reached so far; even his loss to Mercenary Tao never felt this final. The anime stretches out the opening beating, and for once the slow pacing helps, giving viewers time to genuinely fear the worst.
Yajirobe is the counterweight. Greedy and cowardly, he is the last person you would expect to rescue anyone, yet he is the one who gets the hero back on his feet. His account of the demon's past, illustrated with images created for the TV version, also reminds the audience exactly why King Piccolo is so frightening.
The second half shifts the focus to Roshi. Putting Tien to sleep so he cannot fight is a protective gesture that foreshadows the next episode: the old master already knows how this is likely to end and chooses to put himself in harm's way instead of his students. The original title cheers Goku on while the screen shows nothing but defeat, and that contrast makes the wait even heavier.
Trivia
- The episode adapts chapters 144 and 145 of Akira Toriyama's manga. It drew a 13.7% ratings share in Japan, the lowest figure of the whole saga.
- The rain, the long beating that opens the episode and the images accompanying Yajirobe's story about the demon's past are anime additions.
- In the anime, King Piccolo and his offspring have five fingers; in the manga they have four.
- Written by Michiru Shimada, directed by Daisuke Nishio with storyboards by Satoru Kusuda, with animation supervised by Mitsuo Shindō.
Did you know? In the Japanese version, as in the manga, Yajirobe briefly considers eating Goku's apparently lifeless body before dismissing the idea as too disrespectful. The English versions dropped the joke.
Characters
- Goku
- King Piccolo
- Yajirobe
- Master Roshi
- Tien Shinhan
- Chiaotzu
- Emperor Pilaf, Mai, Shu and Piano