Episode 152 of Dragon Ball, first broadcast in Japan on April 12, 1989 and known in the English dub as Mystery of the Dark World, is the second-to-last episode of the series, and it takes Goku and Chi-Chi to the doorstep of the afterlife. The Bansho Fan is not enough: to save the Ox-King, they have to trace the fire back to its source.
Summary
Goku keeps waving the fan, but the flames around the castle show no sign of dying down. Fortuneteller Baba arrives to explain why. This is no ordinary fire but the special flame of the Hakkero, the Furnace of Eight Trigrams. The furnace sits on the summit of the Mountain of Five Elements and is tended by an ancient, venerable being known as Taijō Rōkun. Only that being can put it out. The catch is that the road to the afterlife runs across that mountain, and it is said that nobody who has climbed it has ever come back.
Goku and Chi-Chi go anyway, but the Flying Nimbus refuses to go anywhere near the mountain, so they have to continue on foot. The path is an obstacle course: a chasm bristling with spears, a swarm of bats that nearly knocks Chi-Chi in, ghostly warriors, a rock giant and finally a dragon. As he fights, Goku notices that these enemies leave no trace. They are illusions. So when the dragon opens its jaws, he leaps straight in without hesitation, and the way opens up.
Back at the castle, things are getting desperate: the Ox-King has retreated to the building's highest point, now completely ringed by fire.
At the summit, Goku and Chi-Chi find the furnace, and beside it a surprise. Working there is Grandpa Gohan, who serves as a guardian in the afterlife. Overjoyed, Goku introduces him to his bride-to-be. Goku assumes his grandfather must be the mysterious Taijō Rōkun, but Gohan corrects him: the furnace's keeper is Annin, a beautiful woman. The boy asks her to shut the furnace down to save his future father-in-law, but she refuses. Stopping that fire would throw the world of the living into chaos.
Our take
In its penultimate episode the series returns to its literary roots. The Mountain of Five Elements, the Furnace of Eight Trigrams and Taijō Rōkun, the deified sage Laozi, all come straight from Journey to the West, the Chinese novel that gave Akira Toriyama the idea for his Goku. In the book, it is inside that very furnace that the Monkey King is locked up, and under that very mountain that he is imprisoned for five hundred years. Ending the series here feels like a knowing tribute.
The best idea, though, is Grandpa Gohan's return. Goku had already been reunited with him for a single day in the Fortuneteller Baba arc; meeting him again on the eve of the wedding lets the man who raised him meet the bride. It is a sentimental touch the manga never went for, and here it feels right.
The gauntlet of illusions is more routine, but it has a nice idea at its core: to win, Goku has to stop fighting and trust his instincts.
Trivia
- Anime-original episode with no counterpart in the manga. It drew a 17.3% ratings share in Japan.
- Written by Katsuyuki Sumisawa and Takao Koyama, directed by Mitsuo Hashimoto, with animation direction by Yukio Ebisawa.
- The Japanese names are Hakkero for the furnace and Gogyōzan for the mountain; the five elements are the wood, fire, earth, metal and water of Chinese tradition.
- The English dub renders Taijō Rōkun as "Tajoro" when Baba first mentions the keeper of the furnace.
Did you know? In Journey to the West, even the Flaming Mountains, put out with the palm-leaf fan, are born from Laozi's furnace: they are the burning bricks that fell to Earth when the Monkey King knocked it over. The anime borrows the idea with a fire that travels from the furnace all the way to the castle.