The Fortuneteller Baba Saga is the fourth arc of Dragon Ball: fifteen episodes that aired on Fuji TV between July 8 and October 14, 1987. The first ten adapt chapters 97-112 of Akira Toriyama's manga; the last five are anime-original stories. Goku hunts for the final Dragon Ball so he can bring Bora back to life, takes on a seer's five champions and gets one day with the grandfather who raised him. Then he sets off alone for three years of training.
What the saga is about
At the end of the Red Ribbon Army Saga, Goku holds six Dragon Balls, but the radar cannot pick up the seventh. Bulma checks it and finds nothing wrong: the ball must be somewhere the signal cannot reach. Master Roshi suggests asking his older sister, Fortuneteller Baba, a tiny witch who floats around on a crystal ball and can see anything, for a price.
Baba's five fighters
Goku heads out with Krillin, Yamcha and Puar, picking up little Upa along the way, since the boy wants his father back. At Baba's desert palace they learn that a reading costs a fortune. Those who cannot pay have another option: beat five of her fighters. First up is Dracula Man (Fangs the Vampire in the Funimation dub), who knocks Krillin out by sucking blood from his scalp, then flees in bat form from Upa and Puar's garlic breath. Next comes the Invisible Man, Sukē (See-Through in the dub). Yamcha can only find him thanks to an outrageous plan by Krillin: Master Roshi, summoned along with Bulma, gets a nosebleed so violent that it paints the invisible fighter red.
The contest then moves indoors, onto a bridge over the Devil's Toilet, a pool that dissolves anyone who falls in. The Mummy gets the better of Yamcha, but not of Goku, who beats him and then faces Akkuman (Spike the Devil Man). His Devilmite Beam makes the evil in a person's heart swell until it explodes. On Goku it does nothing at all, because there is no evil in him to swell.
The masked man
The fifth opponent wears a mask and a halo, knows the Kamehameha and seems to understand Goku's fighting style inside out. When he grabs Goku's tail and slams him into the floor again and again, Roshi has already worked out who he is. In the struggle the tail comes off, the masked man surrenders and reveals his face: it is Grandpa Gohan, back from the Other World for a single day through Baba's powers. It is the most moving moment of the saga and one of the best-loved in the series. Gohan chooses to stay in the afterlife, and Baba reveals where the last ball is.
Pilaf and Shenron's return
The ball is in the hands of Emperor Pilaf, who had hidden it from the radar and now shows up with Mai and Shu in three battle robots, sure he knows Goku's weak spot. But the tail is gone, and the plan collapses. With all seven balls, Goku returns to the Holy Land of Korin and summons Shenron: Upa's wish brings Bora back to life. Goku snatches the four-star ball before the set scatters, Yamcha becomes Master Roshi's student, and the old master gives Goku a new assignment: travel the world alone, on foot, until the next World Martial Arts Tournament.
Training on the road
Episodes 79-83 are entirely anime-original. Goku frees a village from the brothers Kinkaku and Ginkaku and their man-eating gourd, stands in for the ailing master Chin Taiken in a royal match against the bully Tenlong, and descends into the demon realm to rescue a princess kidnapped by Shura. In episode 82 he runs into two fighters who pretend to defeat the monster Inoshikacho so that villages will pay them: they are Tien Shinhan and Chiaotzu, debuting here before they ever appear in the manga. In episode 83, three years after leaving, Goku helps a little fox named Konkichi, bumps into Baba again, misses his flight to Papaya Island and decides to swim there.
Characters introduced
- Fortuneteller Baba: Roshi's greedy, fight-loving sister, who will return often in Dragon Ball Z.
- Dracula Man, Sukē, the Mummy and Akkuman: the palace champions, each a riff on a classic monster.
- Grandpa Gohan: finally on screen, after sixty-eight episodes as a memory and a Dragon Ball.
- Tien Shinhan and Chiaotzu: the students of Master Shen, the Crane Hermit, introduced by the anime as con artists.
- Konkichi, Chin Taiken, Tenlong: one-off characters from the journey.
Returning are Goku, Krillin, Yamcha, Bulma, Master Roshi, Puar, Upa, Bora, Pilaf, Mai and Shu.
Main characters in this saga
Episode list
| No. | Title (literal translation) | First aired (Japan) |
|---|---|---|
| 69 | The Possibly Cute Fortuneteller Baba | July 8, 1987 |
| 70 | Attack! We Five Fighters | July 15, 1987 |
| 71 | A Bloody and Desperate Battle! | July 22, 1987 |
| 72 | Meet Son Goku! The Demons' Toilet | July 29, 1987 |
| 73 | What is the Deadly Devil Might Beam!? | August 5, 1987 |
| 74 | The Mysterious Fifth Man | August 12, 1987 |
| 75 | A Clash!! Powerful Adversaries | August 19, 1987 |
| 76 | The Identity of the Masked Man | August 26, 1987 |
| 77 | Pilaf's Great Strategy | September 2, 1987 |
| 78 | Once Again, Shenron | September 9, 1987 |
| 79 | Kinkaku and Ginkaku's Man-Eating Gourd | September 16, 1987 |
| 80 | Imperial Match! Goku vs. Tenlong | September 23, 1987 |
| 81 | Goku Goes to the Demon World | September 30, 1987 |
| 82 | The Ferocious Beast, Inoshikacho | October 7, 1987 |
| 83 | Hurry, Goku! The World Martial Arts Tournament | October 14, 1987 |
Titles are literal translations of the Japanese ones. The Funimation dub used its own, such as Who is Fortuneteller Baba? for episode 69 or Which Way to Papaya Island? for episode 83.
Where the saga ends
Sources disagree on the boundaries. The American DVD releases, English Wikipedia and this site's series page close the Fortuneteller Baba Saga with episode 83, and this guide follows them. Spanish Wikipedia stops at episode 82 and moves 83 into the tournament arc. In Japan, Toei's own distribution groups episodes 79-83 as a short arc of their own, the "training journey" (Shugyō no Tabi). The reason is plain: the manga story wraps up with the wish granted in episode 78, and the tournament begins with chapter 113, adapted in episode 84. Everything in between is anime-only.
Anime vs. manga
In the manga-based stretch, the anime pads almost every scene. The flight to the palace runs into a sandstorm, Baba tries to recruit Goku as one of her fighters, the Mummy steps out of a sarcophagus rather than a statue's mouth, and his bouts with Yamcha and Goku run much longer: in the manga Yamcha simply gives up, while in the anime he nearly has his spine snapped and is disqualified when Goku saves him from the pool. The talk in which Yamcha becomes Roshi's student, only reported in the manga, is shown on screen. Then come the five travel episodes, and with them the anime's smartest idea: letting Goku meet Tien before the tournament.
Our take
This is a bridge saga, and it shows. After forty episodes of war against the Red Ribbon Army, Baba's palace takes the series back to comic fairy tale: monsters straight out of 1930s horror films, gags about Roshi's nosebleeds, a miniature tournament in five rounds. Toriyama is clearly having fun, and so is the viewer.
The heart of it, though, is the fifth bout. For the whole series Grandpa Gohan has been a name, a four-star ball, the very reason Goku set out. Watching him fight, learning that he taught Goku everything and then letting him go a second time gives the first part of Dragon Ball a genuine emotional close. It is also the series' first real look at the afterlife, an idea that will become central in Dragon Ball Z.
The original travel episodes are more uneven: pleasant, but without consequences. The exception is episode 82, which brings Tien and Chiaotzu in early and turns their tournament debut into a meeting between old acquaintances. The whole point of the arc sits in its final image: Goku swimming toward Papaya Island, older, with no cloud and no shortcuts.
Up next: the 22nd World Martial Arts Tournament Saga, episodes 84-101 →
Series guideDragon Ball (1986): complete guide to the original seriesPlot, characters, production and theme songs: the full picture of Dragon Ball, worth reading before or after the episodes.Read the guide →