Episode 75 of Dragon Ball, first broadcast in Japan on August 19, 1987 and known in the English dub as The Strong Ones, is the deciding bout of Fortuneteller Baba's challenge and one of the most moving stretches of the original series. Goku finally meets an opponent on his level, a masked man who knows his moves and even his weak spot. When that man fires a Kamehameha, Master Roshi no longer has any doubt about who is hiding behind the mask.
Summary
Outdoors, in front of Baba's palace, Goku and the fifth fighter trade punches, kicks and holds at a speed that leaves everyone breathless. Neither can gain the upper hand. The masked man hurls Goku into the air and sends him crashing into the stage, but the boy gets up and strikes back. An impatient Baba barks at them to stop sizing each other up and get on with it.
Suddenly the stranger brings his hands together and fires a Kamehameha, to the spectators' astonishment. Goku dodges it with an afterimage, and his opponent cannot help praising him. Then it is the boy's turn: his own Kamehameha connects, the man goes down, and Goku follows up with a knee strike. Baba starts the count, Goku's friends cheer, and Goku asks his opponent to give up.
The stranger just laughs, and in a flash he grabs Goku's tail. All of the boy's strength drains away at once, and the man starts slamming him into the ground, back and forth, again and again. His friends are shaken: who could know about his weak spot? Yamcha notes that this fighter seems to know everything about Goku, and Roshi, who has been studying his style, stance and techniques for a while, reaches his conclusion. Bulma begs him to stop the match, but the old master refuses: that man is Son Gohan, Goku's late grandfather, and the fight has to go on.
Our take
This is the episode where the Baba arc stops being a parade of comic monsters and turns into a family story. Grandpa Gohan has been the most important figure in Goku's life since chapter one, the reason he treasures the Four-Star Ball and the name he keeps invoking like a moral compass. Bringing him back as an opponent, without his grandson knowing, is a Toriyama idea as simple as it is powerful.
The duel works because it is built like a mirror. The two move the same way, read each other and answer a Kamehameha with a Kamehameha. That is no coincidence: Gohan was once Master Roshi's pupil, and the technique Goku picked up by copying Roshi belongs to the same school. The clue is so clear that viewers reach the answer almost alongside Roshi, and the final reveal lands more as confirmation than as shock.
The anime adds some padding, such as Baba's count and shots of the birds in the moat, but here the stretching builds tension. The tail scene is deliberately cruel: watching Goku slammed into the ground by the man who raised him puts the audience in the same anguish as his friends, and sets up the next episode perfectly.
Trivia
- The episode adapts chapter 105 from page 12, all of chapter 106 and the first ten pages of chapter 107 of Akira Toriyama's manga.
- It drew a 25.1% ratings share in Japan, the highest of the entire Fortuneteller Baba Saga.
- The fight is far longer than in the manga. The birds swimming in the palace moat, Baba scolding the fighters for stalling and the count after Goku's Kamehameha are anime additions.
- The masked man's praise after Goku's dodge is spoken aloud in both the manga and the Japanese version; in the English dub it becomes an inner thought, probably because the mask hides any lip movement.
Did you know? When Goku blocks one of his kicks, a drop of sweat appears on the stranger's mask, as if it were his real face: a small animation slip.
Characters
- Goku
- The masked man (Grandpa Gohan)
- Fortuneteller Baba
- Master Roshi
- Yamcha, Bulma, Krillin, Puar and Upa