Episode 36 of Dragon Ball GT, first broadcast in Japan on February 5, 1997 and titled The Tuffle Gorilla Attacks! in Funimation's dub, pits two transformed Saiyans against each other: Goku as a Super Saiyan 4 and Baby, who has just turned Vegeta's body into a Golden Great Ape. The parasite looks out of his mind, but his madness hides a cruel calculation, and the Earth may be the one to pay for it.
Summary
Freshly transformed, the Golden Great Ape seems to have lost control just as Goku did: he tears through the Tuffle city and tramples his own followers. Goku holds him back and keeps the slaughter from spreading. Then Baby stops roaring and speaks calmly. The parasite's mind is untouched; only Vegeta's body has changed, and he was killing his minions for fun. To make his point, he grabs Goku and tries to crush him in his fist.
When Goku accuses him of fighting dirty, Baby turns on more innocent people, including Chi-Chi and Videl. Goku is faster: he carries them away unconscious and leaves them with Mr. Satan and Pan before returning to the fight. Baby then aims at the sky and fires a Super Galick Gun straight at the Earth. Goku's Kamehameha comes too late to intercept it, and the blast strikes the planet; Krillin, Android 18 and Marron, busy packing for the move to Plant, feel the shock without knowing what happened.
The Earth has held, but a second hit would destroy it. Goku decides to end things: he rises into the air, merges two spheres of energy and unleashes the 10x Kamehameha for the first time. The explosion is enormous, yet the Great Ape steps out of the smoke without a scratch. Baby charges another Super Galick Gun aimed at the Earth, and Goku has only one option: put himself in the way and take it full on.
On the Sacred World of the Kai, Elder Kai points out that destroying the Earth would have taken Plant down with it: however lucid he sounds, Baby is losing his mind. The episode ends with the narrator's voice over shots of Goku, Gohan, Goten and Trunks lying unconscious.
Our take
The Japanese title promises an "immortal beast," and the episode works hard to earn it. Great Ape Baby is a misshapen version of the villain we know: the same intelligence, no brakes at all. The moment he crushes Goku in his hand closely echoes Goku's first fight with Great Ape Vegeta in the Saiyan arc of Dragon Ball Z, with the irony that this time the body is the same and the mind is not.
The heart of the episode is Goku's choice. Super Saiyan 4 has barely been born and the show already puts it on the ropes, not for lack of power but because Baby exploits the one weakness that matters: Goku will never let the Earth die to win a fight. When he takes the second blast, he is the planet's defender again, and the Golden Great Ape becomes a real threat even to a Super Saiyan 4.
Trivia
- Written by Atsushi Maekawa and directed by Takahiro Imamura, with Noboru Koizumi as animation director and Tadayoshi Yamamuro as chief animation director.
- It marks the debut of the 10x Kamehameha, the signature Super Saiyan 4 technique: here Goku charges it by merging two energy spheres, and it is blue rather than the red it takes on later.
- Gohan, Goten and Trunks appear only in the closing shots, unconscious; the Sacred Water will bring them back into play over the next two episodes.
- Funimation's Goku, Sean Schemmel, has said he passed out while recording the 10x Kamehameha in this episode, and GT voice director Christopher Bevins confirmed the story.