Episode 16 of Dragon Ball GT, first broadcast in Japan on June 19, 1996 and titled Giru's Checkered Past in Funimation's dub, closes the Black Star Dragon Ball Saga with a betrayal. Giru persuades his companions to stop at M2, the machine planet where he was built, and there he delivers them to General Rilldo's Sigma Force. Goku and Trunks are taken prisoner, and Pan is left on her own.
Summary
The trip rolls on through round after round of a video game that Giru keeps winning while Pan keeps losing her temper. In the middle of one of their squabbles, the robot freezes at the sight of a planet drifting past the window: it is M2, his home, where he has not been in years. The next morning Pan and Giru talk Trunks into landing. Down on the surface, General Rilldo is tracking the ship and is pleased with what he sees: Giru is bringing the enemies, and the Dragon Balls they have gathered, straight to him.
The ship sets down in a forest and the trio reaches a metal city that looks abandoned. Then, all at once, thousands of Giru-like robots appear, recognize him and greet him as a hero. The little robot slips away for a moment and secretly receives Rilldo's praise for winning the trio's trust and leading them all the way here. When he rejoins the others, nobody notices a thing.
Goku is hungry, as usual, but on M2 even the fruit is made of metal. While the group searches for something edible, four robots far more menacing than the rest show up: the Sigma Force. Giru hops onto their platform and takes his place beside them. One of the four breaks apart into pieces and reassembles itself around Goku and Trunks, trapping them inside.
Pan is powerless. As the robots take off with their prisoners, bound for the general, she watches Giru leave with them and screams all her anger at him for the betrayal. The episode ends on her, alone on a hostile world, with her grandfather and her friend to rescue.
Our take
Giru's betrayal lands at exactly the right moment. Just a week earlier, in the desert story, the show went out of its way to make us love him and to reconcile him with Pan; here it flips that bond without warning. It is a calculated low blow, and it works because viewers feel as betrayed as she does. Anyone who knows what comes next will spot that the question mark in the Japanese title is there for a reason, but the episode itself offers no reassurance.
M2 also changes GT's register. After planets of merchants, tinpot tyrants and false idols, the series introduces a cold, organized threat: machines that study their enemies instead of charging at them. It is the doorway into the territory of Dr. Myuu and his Machine Mutants, the road that leads to Baby and the most serious stretch of the series.
The price is an episode with almost no action. Goku and Trunks get captured with suspicious ease, and most of the runtime goes into setup. As a saga finale it is more an open door than an ending, and it is easy to see why ratings in Japan dipped right here.
Trivia
- Written by Aya Matsui, storyboarded and directed by Takahiro Imamura, with Kazuya Hisada as animation director.
- Its 12.6% share is the lowest among the series' first sixteen episodes.
- The Sigma Force members are credited in Japanese as Neji, Nut, Rivet and Vis, names that all point to screws, nuts and rivets. Toei's official site calls the squad Mega Cannon Σ.
- Funimation built its recap "A Grand Problem" around this episode. The intact version did not air on American TV until 2012, when the series ran on Nicktoons.
- It is the last episode of the first saga under the American split this site uses; Toei's own episode list keeps the Black Star Dragon Ball arc going until episode 22.
Characters
- Goku, Pan and Trunks
- Giru
- General Rilldo and Dr. Myuu
- The Sigma Force
- The robot inhabitants of M2