Episode 30 of Dragon Ball, first broadcast in Japan on September 17, 1986 and known in the English dub as Pilaf and the Mystery Force, is the first episode made up entirely by the anime, and the one that introduces the enemy the saga is named after. Goku chases the four-star ball, bumps into his old foe Pilaf and, without realizing it, crosses paths with a mysterious army that is also hunting the Dragon Balls: the Red Ribbon Army.
Summary
Goku is roaming the world with Bulma's radar. He stops for a swim in a river, and when he gets out he finds that a petty thief has made off with everything: clothes, backpack, staff and radar. He calls the Flying Nimbus and goes after him just as he is, stark naked. The forest is too thick to see anything, so he tells his Power Pole to extend above the treetops; the terrified thief drops almost everything and runs. He keeps only the radar, which he sells to a pawnbroker in town.
Meanwhile Pilaf, still shaken by memories of Goku wrecking his castle, is back on the hunt with Mai. At the pawn shop he tries on a crown the owner passes off as a relic of an ancient emperor, then buys a four-star ball. Goku, who has sniffed out the thief and made him say where the radar went, reaches the shop, takes it back and sees the signal pointing straight at Pilaf, who escapes in his aircraft. Goku follows on the Nimbus.
Shortly afterwards, uniformed soldiers walk into the shop, led by a red-haired officer, Colonel Silver. They too ask for a Dragon Ball, and the owner brings out his stock: a whole box of them, all fake. Silver drops his and it shatters, and the soldiers kill the shopkeeper. Pilaf's ball, we learn, is also a fake that breaks at the first bump. The signal on the radar was coming from a nest on the roof, where a bird was guarding the real six-star ball. Startled by the gunfire, the bird takes off with the ball in its talons.
In a distant room, a man whose hands are all we see strokes a cat and follows the search: he is the army's leader.
Our take
For the first time the anime has not a single manga page to adapt, and the tone gives it away: this is light comedy, with a naked Goku on the cloud, a hapless thief and Pilaf swindled by a pawnbroker. The aim is to buy time on the comic, but the writers use it well, with a welcome return for Pilaf and a simple, clever idea: a shop full of fake Dragon Balls.
The real point of interest is the Red Ribbon Army's entrance. In the manga Toriyama introduced it later, straight against Goku; here it slips in sideways, a menacing presence at the edge of a comic episode. The cold, almost offhand killing of the shopkeeper changes the register in an instant and makes it clear these opponents are not as goofy as Pilaf. The leader stroking a cat without showing his face, in the style of Blofeld from the James Bond films, completes the picture.
The only drawback is that the plot spins its wheels: in the end nobody holds anything, and the ball flies away with a bird. But as a prologue to the saga, it works.
Trivia
- It is the first Dragon Ball episode with no counterpart at all in Akira Toriyama's manga; it drew a 21.6% ratings share in Japan.
- The newspaper the pawnbroker reads says "Mexico '86", a nod to the football World Cup held in Mexico that summer.
- In the English dub the crown Pilaf tries on is said to have belonged to Alexander the Great; in Japanese, the shopkeeper credits it to an invented ancient emperor.
Did you know? The Red Ribbon leader's face stays hidden for a few more episodes: viewers only see him in full when Silver reports back after his defeat.
Characters
- Goku
- Pilaf and Mai
- Colonel Silver and his soldiers
- The pawnbroker and the thief
- The Red Ribbon leader (from behind)