Episode 21 of Dragon Ball GT, first broadcast in Japan on August 14, 1996 and titled A Secret Revealed in Funimation's dub, is the episode of twists. Rilldo turns Goku and Pan into metal slabs as well, and Dr. Myuu's lab looks like the end of the road. Then Giru switches sides, and it turns out the betrayal was an act from the start.
Summary
As the duel between Goku and Rilldo rages on, Pan comes running onto the battlefield to tell her grandfather she has recovered the Black Star Dragon Balls. The general seizes the moment and lunges at her. Goku rushes to protect her, but Rilldo breathes his metal stream onto the ground, which comes alive, closes around the Saiyan and traps him. An instant later Pan is hit too, and grandfather and granddaughter end up just like Trunks.
The two slabs are delivered to Dr. Myuu's lab, where the scientist gets ready to dissect the Saiyans and turn them into new Machine Mutants. That is when Giru walks in. Myuu welcomes him as a trusted ally, but instead of helping, the robot opens fire on the equipment. In the confusion he uses a special beam to restore Goku and Pan to flesh and blood. The two congratulate him on his performance: his about-face on M-2 was a ruse.
Before Giru can free Trunks, though, Myuu's henchmen grab his slab and run off with it. A chaotic chase follows, with the slab passing from hand to hand between robots and Saiyans, until someone trips and the slab hits the floor and shatters into pieces. Pan bursts into tears, convinced she has lost her friend for good.
It is Trunks himself who interrupts her: he is watching them from the top of a staircase, safe and sound. The smashed slab was a fake, and everything that happened on M-2 was part of a plan he and Giru put together to get to the heart of the base. As Myuu grows paler by the second, Trunks walks over to a secret door in the lab and opens it. Behind it lies the reason for the whole operation.
Our take
Episode 21 is where the saga's pieces fall back into place. Giru's apparent betrayal, which began with the arrival on M-2, had left a sour taste for anyone attached to the little robot; here we learn that he and Trunks were a step ahead the whole time. It is a simple twist, but an effective one, because it makes you rewatch the previous episodes in a new light, including the scene where Myuu gloated over a slab with nobody inside.
The real surprise, though, is Trunks. In Dragon Ball Z we left him as a kid, Goten's partner in mischief and one half of Gotenks; in GT he gets to be the group's strategist, the one who thinks while Goku fights and Pan charges in headfirst. The keep-away scene with the slab, practically slapstick, is the lightest moment of the episode and sets up his entrance on the staircase nicely.
The price is that the fight with Rilldo gets shelved abruptly: the general, so menacing a moment earlier, simply drops out of the picture, and the finale belongs entirely to the secret room.
Trivia
- Written by Aya Matsui and directed by Osamu Kasai, with Toshiyuki Kanno as animation director.
- Its 9.6% share is the lowest of any Dragon Ball GT episode in Japan, according to Kanzenshuu's ratings data (the series average is 14.6%).
- It was scheduled for August 7, 1996, but that evening Fuji TV aired a special in memory of actor Kiyoshi Atsumi, who had just passed away, and the episode was pushed back a week.
- Its original American airdate was December 12, 2003.
- Blue Water's alternate English dub titled it What's Happening? Goku Has Become a Metal Slab!, much closer to the Japanese.
Characters
- Goku, Pan and Trunks
- Giru
- General Rilldo
- Dr. Myuu and his lab robots