Episode 19 of Dragon Ball GT, first broadcast in Japan on July 17, 1996 and titled A General Uprising in Funimation's dub, finally sends the master of planet M-2 into battle. General Rilldo shows up at the heroes' ship in person, takes Trunks out of the fight in one shot and forces Goku to get serious. By the end of the episode, both fighters have changed form.
Summary
Goku makes it back to the ship just in time. He has sensed a huge power heading their way and warns Pan and Trunks to be ready. Rilldo lands moments later, looking like a man who has come to wrap things up. Pan, though, waits for nobody and floors him with a punch to the face. While she insists that nobody gets to treat her like a little kid anymore, the general gets back up without a scratch: he took that hit on purpose.
A stream of silver energy pours out of Rilldo's mouth, aimed straight at Pan. Trunks shoves her aside and takes the blast himself. In an instant his body hardens into a metal slab, which vanishes before their eyes. Goku and Pan manage to get the general to reveal where he sent it, one of the towers of the base, and Pan races off to bring Trunks back. Rilldo tries to stop her, but Goku reminds him who his opponent is.
Pan smashes through the robot guards and bursts into the right room a few seconds too late: the slab has already been sent on to Dr. Myuu's lab. Left facing Giru, she decides to take it out on him, but the robot hits a button that ejects anything that is not a machine from the building, and Pan finds herself outside again.
Meanwhile Goku and Rilldo trade blows that do not seem to hurt either of them. It is a feeling-out fight, each man taking the other's measure. When the Sigma Force, which everyone thought was finished, pulls itself together and pins Goku, the Saiyan decides the warm-up is over and goes Super Saiyan. Rilldo accepts the challenge: he draws the scattered parts of the Sigma Force into his body and becomes Hyper Meta-Rilldo.
Our take
After two episodes of guards and assembly-line robots, episode 19 shifts gears. Rilldo is the first GT villain who carries himself like a Dragon Ball Z antagonist: confident, sardonic, convinced that in this universe the strong should absorb the weak. His plan to turn living beings into Machine Mutants gives the saga a real threat, a long way from the comic-opera tyrants of the first sixteen episodes.
The way the episode handles Pan works too. Her surprise punch is a small victory for a character too often stuck in the role of the granddaughter who needs protecting, but the script pulls the rug out right away: the general was only playing along, and Trunks pays the price. The image of Trunks frozen in a slab instantly recalls Han Solo in carbonite, and it remains one of the most recognizable frames of the series.
The Goku and Rilldo duel is more cautious than the title promises, though. Much of the running time goes to probing exchanges, and the real fight is held over for next week. It is classic Z structure, with a transformation as the cliffhanger, but here the wait drags a little more.
Trivia
- Written by Atsushi Maekawa and directed by Mitsuo Hashimoto, with Tadayoshi Yamamuro as animation director.
- It drew a 13.0% share in Japan, down from 16.1% for the previous episode.
- Its original American airdate was November 28, 2003.
- It is the third episode of the Baby Saga in the American split, but Toei's own episode list still counts it as part of the series' first arc, which runs through episode 22.
- When the dub first aired on Cartoon Network, the original Japanese title card was mistakenly shown.
Characters
- Goku, Pan and Trunks
- Giru
- General Rilldo (later Hyper Meta-Rilldo)
- The Sigma Force and M-2's robot guards