Episode 128 of Dragon Ball Z, first broadcast in Japan on February 19, 1992 and titled Double Trouble for Goku in Funimation's dub, starts as a triumph and ends as a nightmare. As a Super Saiyan, Goku outclasses Android 19 for most of the fight, until two blows land at once: the android feeds on his energy, and the heart virus Trunks predicted shows up at the worst possible moment. The Japanese title calls it a "double shock," caught between illness and enemy.
Summary
The duel starts out one-sided. Goku blocks every attack from Android 19, elbows him into a mountain that collapses on top of him, and stops a headbutt bare-handed before kicking him away. Tien cheers; Piccolo watches in silence, and Android 20 starts to worry.
At Kame House, meanwhile, Master Roshi and Oolong are leafing through a dirty magazine while Chiaotzu frets about Tien. Out of nowhere Maron, Krillin's ex-girlfriend, turns up looking for him, regretting that she left him. They tell her he has gone to fight the Red Ribbon, and she assumes he went to buy her a red ribbon. So Roshi tells her the whole story: young Goku hunting for the Dragon Balls, his clash with the army, its officers and hired killers, Dr. Gero's escape and the revenge he nursed for years by building androids. At the end, Maron admits she did not understand a word.
Krillin, Yamcha and Gohan can sense Goku's energy but not his opponents', and they join the others at the battlefield. Tien reassures them, but Piccolo sees what the rest miss: Goku is giving everything he has without really hurting the android, and his stamina is visibly draining. To end it, the Saiyan fires a Kamehameha; Android 19 absorbs it with his palm and comes out recharged. Piccolo warns his friend to stop using energy attacks, but Goku keeps going and weakens even further. Then he clutches his chest in pain. Gohan is the first to understand: it is the disease Trunks spoke of. Piccolo notes that it has struck much later than predicted.
Our take
Dragon Ball has trained us to see Goku struggle against stronger foes; here we watch him give way to something punches cannot solve. It is a bold move by Toriyama, who takes his hero off the board at the height of his power to make room for Vegeta, Future Trunks and, later on, Gohan.
The timing matters. In Trunks' future the virus killed Goku six months before the androids arrived; now it strikes on the very day of the battle. It is the first concrete sign that history has already changed and that the boy from the future's prophecy should not be taken literally. That becomes fully clear when it turns out that Androids 19 and 20 are not even the androids he described.
The Maron segment is anime filler, but not pointless: for a 1992 audience that had watched the Red Ribbon Army Saga five years earlier, Roshi's recap ties Dr. Gero back to the army a little boy brought down. The red ribbon gag, after all, is built entirely on the organization's name.
Trivia
- It adapts chapter 341 and the first five pages of chapter 342. Written by Hiroshi Toda and directed by Shigeyasu Yamauchi, with animation supervision by Masayuki Uchiyama, it drew a 24.1% share.
- Maron's visit to Kame House and Roshi's tale are anime additions, illustrated with flashbacks from the original series.
- In the original Japanese broadcast, half of the next-episode preview was given over to a ticket lottery for the film The Return of Cooler, released on March 7, 1992. The Dragon Box release replaced it.
- Funimation recorded Roshi's flashback long before dubbing the original Dragon Ball, so the voices differ from its Red Ribbon arc, and the dub even calls Mercenary Tao "General Tao".
Characters
- Super Saiyan Goku, Piccolo and Tien
- Krillin, Yamcha and Gohan
- Androids 19 and 20
- Master Roshi, Oolong, Chiaotzu and Maron
- Dr. Gero, Mercenary Tao and Staff Officer Black (flashback)