Episode 46 of Dragon Ball, first broadcast in Japan on January 14, 1987 and known in the English dub as Bulma's Bad Day, opens the second block of the saga, the one American releases call the General Blue Saga. Goku and Bulma set off together like old times, but the next Dragon Ball lies at the bottom of the ocean, in the area run by a new Red Ribbon officer: General Blue, elegant, vain and ruthless.
Summary
At headquarters, Commander Red has General Blue warned that the boy who routed Silver and White is heading into his sector. Blue, meanwhile, is starting his day: he carefully puts on his armband, admires himself in the mirror and then moves on to scolding his soldiers, who cannot pinpoint the ball that sank underwater. When he spots one of them picking his nose, he has him dragged off and executed, and orders his workstation disinfected. Then he receives Goku's photo. A child? He is not worried in the least, and dismisses Silver and White as an embarrassment to the army.
Goku and Bulma, meanwhile, reach the spot shown on the radar and find that the ball is on the seabed. They land on a nearby island and Bulma returns to normal size. When she opens her capsule case, though, she finds only one: she grabbed her father's case by mistake. And that single capsule, once thrown, releases a pile of dirty magazines. Furious, Bulma tears them up, declaring men are all the same, while Goku feels sorry for those girls, too poor to afford clothes.
Goku dives for the ball, but the bottom is too deep and he cannot hold his breath long enough. Bulma, left alone, wanders the island looking for a shop, and runs into two Red Ribbon soldiers who harass her with the worst intentions. She tries to put them off by saying she is only sixteen, then runs; the two chase her in their helicopters. Goku arrives just in time and brings them down.
At his base, Blue is struck: a single kid has taken out two of his men. Goku, meanwhile, has an idea for reaching the seabed: borrow a submarine from Master Roshi. At Kame House, the old man is fishing on Turtle's shell when he suddenly sneezes, a sure sign, he says, that a pretty girl is on her way.
Our take
General Blue's entrance is one of the saga's best. In a few minutes Toriyama, and the anime with him, builds a villain unlike any before: not clumsy like Silver nor petty like White, but obsessed with order and hygiene, fixated on his own looks and willing to have a man shot for bad manners. He is comic and chilling at the same time.
Bulma's part, on the other hand, is pure comedy. The "big failure" of the title is the wrong case, and the discovery of her father's magazines is one of the best-remembered gags of this period. More questionable today is the scene of the soldiers harassing her, handled with a lightness very much of the eighties.
The ending sets up the return to Kame House nicely, with Roshi's sneeze heralding Bulma's arrival. The story goes home, literally.
Trivia
- The episode adapts chapter 70 of Akira Toriyama's manga and drew a 26.0% ratings share in Japan.
- In the manga Blue rants and screams at his men from his very first appearance; the anime introduces him more calmly, with the mirror scene.
- In the American DVD releases this is the first episode of the General Blue Saga.
Did you know? In the Japanese version, the soldier Blue sentences for picking his nose begs for mercy, saying he has a wife and children; the English dub dropped the line.
Characters
- Goku
- Bulma
- General Blue
- Commander Red
- Master Roshi