Episode 9 of Dragon Ball GT, first broadcast in Japan on April 24, 1996 and titled Lord Luud in Funimation's dub, turns the Dragon Ball hunt into a chase. Goku, Trunks and Pan race after the thief's spaceship and fly straight into a trap: a rocky world riddled with tunnels and crawling with giant worms. Meanwhile, on another planet, the people behind the theft step into the light: Cardinal Mutchy Mutchy and the cult of Luud.
Summary
The pursuit through space reveals who pulled off the heist: three brothers, the Para Para Brothers, are aboard the fleeing ship. To shake off their pursuers, they consult their ship's computer and head for Beehay, a small rocky asteroid honeycombed with caves. They dive into the tunnels with Goku and the others hot on their heels, lure them deeper and deeper, then slip back out, leaving the heroes wandering a maze with no way out.
Free of their pursuers, the brothers reach Planet Luud. In a temple packed with praying worshippers, they hand the six-star ball to Cardinal Mutchy Mutchy, the holy man who runs the cult in the name of Lord Luud. The reward they hoped for never comes. The Cardinal knows the group from Earth has a second ball and berates them for letting it slip away. To show he means business, he turns one of his followers into a doll right in front of them. If they do not come back with the other ball, they will share the same fate.
Terrified, the brothers retrace their route to Beehay. Goku, Trunks and Pan, meanwhile, are still going in circles through the tunnels when the Mouma burst out of the ground: enormous man-eating worms. One is trouble enough, but soon there are four of them, and the group has to fight off attacks from every side.
That is exactly the opening the Para Para Brothers were waiting for. With the trio busy fighting, they creep up to the heroes' unguarded ship and start turning it upside down in search of the ball. The episode ends with the heroes under siege and the thieves already at work behind their backs.
Our take
This is a textbook bridge episode, and you can tell because the real showdown is held over for next time. The first half, all rocky corridors and wrong turns, spins its wheels a bit; the second half, though, broadens GT's world in an interesting way. For the first time the heroes have rivals in the hunt for the Dragon Balls, and behind those rivals stands an organization.
The tone shifts noticeably once the action moves to Luud. The temple, the praying crowd and above all the curse that turns people into dolls bring in something unsettling, almost horror-tinged, that clashes with the comedy of the previous episodes. The Para Para Brothers, on the other hand, sit firmly in the tradition of Pilaf-style comic villains: clever enough to get the heroes into trouble, always one step from disaster.
Goku is left in the background, without a single real moment in the spotlight. It fits the ensemble approach of the first saga, but anyone hoping for action will have to wait.
Trivia
- Written by Aya Matsui and directed (storyboard) by Mitsuo Hashimoto, with Toshiyuki Kanno as animation director and Tsutomu Fujita as art director.
- Its 14.5% share was the series' lowest in Japan up to that point.
- First appearance of Cardinal Mutchy Mutchy, voiced by Takeshi Watabe in Japanese and Justin Cook in Funimation's dub.
- Funimation's title, Lord Luud, names a god who does not actually appear until later.
- The follower Mutchy Mutchy turns into a doll looks a lot like the green-haired boy the group later takes aboard, who turns out to be possessed by Baby.