Episode 150 of Dragon Ball, first broadcast in Japan on March 22, 1989 and known in the English dub as The Fire-Eater, continues the hunt for the fan that should save the Ox-King from the flames. Goku and Chi-Chi follow the instructions in an old book and end up inside a volcano, chasing a legendary bird.
Summary
Nobody is home at Kame House: Master Roshi has not yet returned from the tournament. The only one there to greet the pair is Turtle, who confirms the bad news. The fan was thrown away long ago. On the bright side, he digs out an old book of the master's explaining how to make a new one. The key ingredient is the feathers of the Fire-Eating Bird, which lives on Mt. Kiwi, a volcano on an island to the south.
Goku and Chi-Chi set off on the Flying Nimbus and venture into the volcano's caves. A gigantic lizard attacks them, but Goku calms it down with a few pats. Further on, Chi-Chi slips off a ledge and lands beside an enormous egg, guarded by an elderly scholar who lives down there. It is a Fire-Eating Bird egg, the old man explains, and probably the last one: an eruption wiped out the rest of the species, and he has spent years trying to get it to hatch.
They are not the only ones interested. Pilaf, Shu and Mai burst out of the rock in a drill vehicle, eager to sell the egg for a fortune. They try to take Chi-Chi hostage, but she frees herself and knocks out both henchmen, while Goku reduces their machine to scrap. Mai, meanwhile, starts to suspect she knows this young man, and the gang bolts the moment it sinks in who he is.
The wrecked drill shakes the mountain and the volcano rumbles back to life. Just then an adult Fire-Eating Bird smashes through a wall, feeds on the flames and cracks the egg open. A chick emerges, and the two birds fly off together. Goku blasts an exit with a Kamehameha and carries Chi-Chi and the scholar to safety. But the feathers stay out of reach: they cannot be gathered away from the volcano's heat, and a bird that lives on fire was never likely to put one out. The book, in short, was nonsense. The scholar has heard, though, that the fan lies on an ice mountain to the north, so the couple sets off again. Chi-Chi quietly keeps a fragment of the eggshell.
Our take
This is the most classic episode of the batch: a quest, a cave, a monster, the usual villains and a final twist. What makes it work is the couple. Goku is his usual self, but Chi-Chi is no damsel in distress: when the Pilaf Gang grabs her, she handles it on her own. It is a small reminder of who will really run the Son household in the years of Dragon Ball Z.
The return of Pilaf, Shu and Mai carries a whiff of nostalgia. The gang that opened the series shows up right at the end, as greedy and clumsy as ever, and runs from a grown-up Goku they can barely recognize at first. The eggshell fragment Chi-Chi pockets, meanwhile, looks like a throwaway detail. It will come in handy in the very last episode.
Trivia
- Anime-original episode with no counterpart in the manga. It drew a 16.9% ratings share in Japan.
- Written by Keiji Terui, directed by Yoshihiro Ueda, with animation direction by Tomekichi Takeuchi.
- Turtle recognizes the grown-up Goku but does not seem to remember Chi-Chi, whom he met as a little girl in episode 8.
- Chiaotzu, Yajirobe and Kami are missing from the plane carrying the rest of Goku's friends home from the tournament.
Did you know? In Japanese, hikuidori, "fire-eating bird", is also the everyday word for the cassowary. And the volcano it lives in is called Mt. Kiwi: two real birds behind one imaginary one.