With episode 170, Dragon Ball Z returned to Japanese screens on January 13, 1993 after the year-end break: the previous installment had aired on December 16. Known as A Girl Named Lime in Funimation's dub, it is entirely original to the anime, with no manga chapters behind it. Sent out shopping, Gohan ends up in a village where a profiteer is cashing in on the fear of Cell, and runs into an old acquaintance of his father's, Mercenary Tao.
Summary
In a forest, Gohan rescues a young girl named Lime from the rapids. Her thanks consists of calling him a pervert over an accidental touch before running off. The boy is looking for a village where he can buy some seasoning, but the first five he finds have been abandoned out of fear of Cell. The sixth, Chazke, looks like a town from the Old West, with a huge dome on its outskirts: it is the anti-Cell shelter of Bourbon, who forces the villagers to build it and plans to sell entry at a steep price to refugees from the cities.
In the shop Gohan walks into, Bourbon's thugs are throwing their weight around. Lime chases them off by shouting that Cell has arrived: it was a prank. Gohan learns that the girl's parents were killed in one of Cell's attacks, and that the old shopkeeper looking after her, Lao, is her grandfather and a former martial arts master. The villagers believe Cell never strikes the same place twice. Gohan helps the old man chop firewood, while back home Goku dozes and Krillin grows impatient. On Kami's Lookout, Piccolo is struggling with his own limits inside the Hyperbolic Time Chamber: he hallucinates Cell mocking him and creates a double of himself to fight.
Once the dome is ready, hundreds of people crowd its entrance. Lime raises another false alarm, and Bourbon shows his true colors, locking himself inside and leaving paying customers out. Gohan confronts him, Grandpa Lao flattens the thugs, and Bourbon calls in his bodyguard, Mercenary Tao. The assassin gets the better of the old man and prepares a Dodon Ray to finish him, but Gohan steps in and absorbs the blast. On hearing that the boy is Son Goku's son, Tao remembers the defeat he suffered years earlier, quits on the spot and leaves riding a log. Gohan destroys the dome with a single energy blast: if he can knock it down, it would be useless against Cell. Then he promises the crowd that in eight days someone will defeat the monster.
Our take
After a year of space wars and cyborgs, Toei treats itself to a western, complete with a dusty village, a local bully and an old master who can still throw a punch. The idea is simple but has a point: for the first time we see how ordinary people live through the wait for the Cell Games, between fear, superstition and those who exploit both. Bourbon is a cut-rate villain, but he shows something the manga leaves off-screen.
The episode's real value is Gohan. Without his father beside him, the boy displays in miniature the qualities that will make him a lead: kind, shy around girls, but ready to take a stand when he sees an injustice. Lime is a well-drawn character, hiding her grief behind pranks, and the bond between the two has a tenderness that is rare in Z. Tao's return, on the other hand, is pure fan service: watching him flee at the mere mention of Goku is a gag that longtime Dragon Ball fans will enjoy.
Kanzenshuu points out that the timeline does not quite hold up. Cell revealed himself to the world only days earlier, yet the village has already been attacked, built a giant dome and settled on the belief that he never returns to the same place. For a filler episode, it is a forgivable sin.
Trivia
- Written by Katsuyuki Sumisawa and directed by Hiroki Shibata, with Masahiro Shimanuki as animation director, it drew a 19.9% share.
- Tao had not appeared since episode 136 of the original Dragon Ball and keeps his cyborg body. In Japanese he is voiced by Yukimasa Kishino instead of Chikao Ōtsuka. He returns in episode 174.
- Gohan trying to split logs by tossing them in the air echoes Goku in the very first episode of Dragon Ball.
- Funimation's dub calls Tao a general and Bourbon "Borbonne"; it premiered on Cartoon Network on November 16, 2000.
- Counting the movies, this is Piccolo's 150th appearance, which according to Kanzenshuu makes him the eighth character to reach that milestone.