Episode 131 of Dragon Ball, first broadcast in Japan on October 26, 1988 and known in the English dub as Walking Their Own Ways, splits the story in two, just as its title suggests. On Kami's Lookout, Goku faces an exercise that looks like a children's game, while down below Tien, Krillin, Yamcha and Chiaotzu wander into a village in the middle of a celebration. The cheerful evening ends badly: the mountain the villagers worship as a god is waking up.
Summary
Tien and the others are camping on the road to the Holy Land of Korin when, during the night, they hear drums beating somewhere in the distance.
Up on the Lookout, Mr. Popo introduces a new kind of training: a game of tag. Popo ties a blindfold over his eyes and chases Goku, guided only by the energy the boy gives off. Goku runs as fast as he can, but Popo catches him every time and throws him to the ground. When the roles are reversed, it gets even worse. Goku cannot lay a finger on Popo, who keeps telling him to search with his ki, not his eyes. Focus, however, keeps slipping away from him.
On the ground, the four travellers find themselves surrounded by men wearing demon masks. The scare does not last: the villagers are friendly, and a young woman named Mint invites them to their festival. The village sits at the foot of a huge mountain that the locals regard as their guardian deity. As the preparations go on, a flock of crows suddenly takes flight, which the villagers read as a bad omen.
During the festivities Chiaotzu senses that something is off without being able to say what, while Krillin is handed a drink and gets tipsy in a matter of sips. Paoru, the biggest man in the village and Mint's brother, challenges Tien to a bout, but Krillin, emboldened by the alcohol and eager to impress Mint, steps in first and floors him with a headbutt. The party is cut short when the animals start fleeing in panic, and Chiaotzu realizes that the mountain is about to blow. Moments later the volcano erupts and lava begins rolling toward the houses. Tien decides to stop it, and the others race after him toward the crater.
Our take
This is anime-original material, and it shows. The village half has the flavour of the road-trip adventures from the early part of the series: a small community, a local tradition and a natural disaster to avert. It is not the most memorable episode of the saga, but it gives screen time to a group the manga leaves offscreen during these years.
The character who comes out of it best is Krillin. His drunken bravado is a simple gag that lands, and the bout with Paoru shows how far he has come from the insecure kid of Orin Temple: sober, he would never have taken on a giant like that; drunk, he drops him with a headbutt. Tien, meanwhile, stays true to himself. When the lava threatens the village, he is the first to move, without stopping to ask whether he can actually pull it off.
Goku's training with Mr. Popo is the more meaningful half in story terms. Finding an opponent through ki instead of sight may look like a minor lesson, but it becomes one of the pillars of every fight in the rest of the saga and throughout Dragon Ball Z.
Trivia
- This is an anime-original episode with no corresponding manga chapter. It drew a 17.3% ratings share in Japan.
- It was written by Keiji Terui and directed by Mitsuo Hashimoto, with Yukio Ebisawa as animation supervisor.
- In the Japanese version the village elder is Mint and Paoru's grandfather; the Funimation dub never mentions it. The dub also calls Paoru "Paul".
- Funimation turned the alcohol Krillin is offered into root beer, although he still ends up drunk.
- In Japanese, in this episode and the next, everyone refers to the lava pouring out of the volcano as "magma".
Did you know? One of the villagers is a dead ringer for Gyaosu, the Penguin Village police chief from Dr. Slump, only taller and wearing a hat.
Characters
- Goku
- Mr. Popo
- Tien Shinhan
- Krillin
- Yamcha
- Chiaotzu
- Mint
- Paoru
- The village elder