Episode 136 of Dragon Ball, first broadcast in Japan on November 30, 1988 and known in the English dub as Tien Shinhan vs. Mercenary Tao, opens the quarterfinals of the 23rd World Martial Arts Tournament with a score to settle. Tien steps into the ring against Mercenary Tao, the assassin who trained him as a boy and who has come back rebuilt with machine parts, hungry for revenge on him and on Goku. The fight is short: the pupil has far outgrown the master, and the master reaches for the dirtiest trick he has.
Summary
The first quarterfinal pits Tien against cyborg Tao. For minutes on end neither fighter moves a muscle, until the crowd and the announcer start losing patience. When Tao finally attacks, Tien turns aside every blow without effort. Tao studies him with his mechanical eyes, but the gap is obvious: his former student is in another league.
As they fight, Tien remembers his training years, when the young apprentice kept ending up in the dirt under Tao's fists. Now the roles are reversed, and Tien offers his old teacher a way out: give up, or be walked out of the ring. He grabs Tao by the arm and steers him toward the edge, but the assassin detaches his artificial hand to break the hold. Beneath the wrist is a blade.
The announcer warns that weapons mean disqualification. Tao does not care. He has come to kill Tien for siding with Master Roshi's students, and promises to deal with the referee and everyone else afterwards. The blade slices Tien across the chest. Yamcha and Krillin offer to step in, but Tien turns them down: this is his business. He snaps the blade with his bare hands, then barely reacts when Tao pops off his other hand to reveal a cannon for the Super Dodon Ray.
The shot goes off, Tien dispels it, and, angry at last, he ends the match with a single punch to the stomach. He carries the limp assassin to the Crane Hermit, who had been watching from the stands, and tells him never to show his face again. The pair leave swearing that Roshi and his pupils will not die in peace. Tien steps aside to cool off while Roshi says he is proud of how much he has matured. Meanwhile the mysterious young woman with a grudge against Goku takes the stage.
Our take
On paper this was the most dangerous match of the bracket, a professional killer willing to do anything. On screen it becomes something else: proof that Tien has truly left his past behind. At the previous tournament he was still the Crane School's enforcer; here he looks at the man who was supposed to turn him into a hitman and treats him almost with pity.
The long standoff at the start, added by the anime, works better than you might expect. The audience grumbles, but viewers understand that a battle of nerves is already under way, and that Tao is losing it.
Tao, for his part, ends his arc in the most fitting way possible: rebuilt as a weapon, he behaves like one. It is a melancholy exit for one of the best villains of the original series.
Trivia
- The episode adapts chapter 169 from page 11 and chapter 170 of Akira Toriyama's manga. It drew a 19.8% ratings share in Japan.
- The opening standoff of more than ten minutes, Tien's memory of training with Tao as a boy and his attempt to escort Tao out of the ring, foiled when the assassin detaches his arm, are all anime-only.
- In the manga Tien does not break the blade; in the anime the gesture visibly rattles Tao.
- In the Funimation dub the Crane Hermit is called Master Shen, a name that easily gets confused with Shen, the odd contestant of this same tournament (renamed Hero in that dub).
- This is the Crane Hermit's last appearance in the series. Tao only returns much later, in an anime-original episode of Dragon Ball Z.
Did you know? The cut Tao's blade leaves on Tien's chest never heals: the scar stays with the character for the rest of the saga, and no Senzu Bean ever erases it.
Characters
- Tien Shinhan
- Mercenary Tao
- Crane Hermit
- Master Roshi
- Yamcha, Krillin, Goku, Chi-Chi