Episode 155 of Dragon Ball Z, first broadcast in Japan on September 2, 1992 and titled Super Vegeta in Funimation's dub, delivers on the opening words of its Japanese title: "suddenly full throttle." Vegeta confronts Cell, transforms into a Super Saiyan stronger than anything seen so far and lands the first blow. Inside the Hyperbolic Time Chamber, meanwhile, Gohan learns how hard this is going to be.
Summary
Semi-Perfect Cell keeps tearing through the islands, and his blasts edge closer to the one where Android 18 is hiding with the wounded Android 16. She goes pale and wants to fight back or flee, but her companion tells her not to move: Cell needs her alive, so one way or another he will have to spare her. It's cold, machine logic, and it is also the only thing that can save them.
In the Chamber, Gohan can barely stand: gravity is ten times Earth's, the air is thin and the white void seems endless. Goku speaks to him with unusual seriousness. He explains that Gohan must become a Super Saiyan and that it will be the hardest thing he has ever done, that he will be proud of him no matter what, and that what he really wants is to see his son surpass him. Gohan worries he'll end up like the future self Trunks described; Goku answers that the future has already changed. Then he warns him that he'll be a stricter teacher than Piccolo.
On the islands, just as Cell is about to strike the androids' hiding place, Vegeta arrives, with Trunks close behind. Cell mocks him: a few days ago Android 18 beat him, and now Cell is far stronger than she is. Hidden nearby, 18 agrees. At the Lookout, Bulma asks Piccolo whether Vegeta can really win on his own.
The answer comes fast. Vegeta transforms: his aura erupts, his muscles swell, his hair grows spikier and brighter. Before Cell understands what's happening, a punch to the gut doubles him over. Android 18 wonders whether Vegeta was holding back in their fight; 16 replies that he isn't the type, and that the difference must come from training none of them can imagine.
Our take
After two episodes of waiting, we finally see what a year in the Chamber has produced. Vegeta's new form is not Super Saiyan 2, which only arrives with Gohan at the Cell Games. It's a Super Saiyan pushed past its limits, bulkier, which Japanese sources call the "Second Grade" and fans often label Ascended Super Saiyan. The audience discovers it along with Cell, and the gut punch works as an exclamation mark.
The best part, though, happens in the Chamber. Goku rarely talks to his son like a father thinking about the future, and here he does: no jokes, just the hope that Gohan will become stronger than him. It's the seed of everything that happens at the Cell Games, when Goku bets it all on Gohan. Watching the boy crushed by the gravity makes the leap he'll take a few episodes later believable.
The pacing is typical of this stretch, cutting back and forth between the islands, the Lookout and the Chamber, with a few added scenes such as Bulma's question to Piccolo. But every thread leads somewhere.
Trivia
- It adapts parts of chapters 376 and 377, reshuffled from the manga's order to alternate between the Chamber and the fight. Written by Sumio Uetake and directed by Jun'ichi Fujise, it drew a 22.0% share, the highest of episodes 151-156.
- Funimation's dub premiered on Cartoon Network on October 25, 2000; in the original edited numbering it was episode 140.
- Goku says he was in the Chamber as a kid, but that stay is never shown in the series.
- Gohan acts amazed by the Chamber's vastness as if seeing it for the first time, even though he had already looked out at it in the previous episode.