Dragon Ball Z Episode 18: Last Stop on the Serpentine Road!

Episode 18 of Dragon Ball Z, Last Stop on the Serpentine Road! Are You Kaio-sama?, first aired in Japan on September 6, 1989, closes two long chapters. Gohan faces one last threat tied to his Saiyan nature, and Goku, after months of running, finally reaches the end of Snake Way. The full title gives away the mix-up that ends the episode.

Summary

After a hard day of training with Piccolo, Gohan sleeps and dreams of Raditz beating his father. He wakes with a start and sees something impossible in the sky: the full moon, which Piccolo destroyed six months ago. The boy loses control and attacks his teacher, who tries to stop him. Then his tail, which has grown back in the meantime, does the rest: Gohan looks at the moon and turns into a giant Great Ape once again.

Piccolo is in serious danger and tries to destroy the moon, but his blasts cannot reach it: it is not real. Thinking it through, he realizes that the island also holds the old pod in which Goku arrived on Earth as a baby. It is still active, transmitting attack orders and projecting an artificial moon into the sky. Even at Kame House, Bulma notices the strange moon through the window. Piccolo changes targets and destroys the pod: the moon vanishes, Gohan returns to normal and his teacher removes the tail again.

In the afterlife, meanwhile, Goku is exhausted, but Snake Way finally ends. At the tip of the serpent's tail there is nothing, until Goku notices a tiny planet hovering above him, with a little house on it. He jumps for a better look and gets pulled down onto the surface, where gravity is so strong his body feels like lead. Waiting for him is a little monkey. Goku greets it respectfully, convinced it is King Kai, and even starts imitating its sounds and movements, taking them for training.

Our take

The episode adapts a few pages of chapter 210 of Akira Toriyama's manga: Goku's arrival on King Kai's planet and the monkey Bubbles. The whole Gohan storyline, on the other hand, was added for the anime: in the comic the moon stays destroyed and Goku's pod plays no part.

The addition is less gratuitous than it looks. It ties Gohan's storyline to Goku's origins, reminding us that the pod was built to conquer Earth, and it introduces the idea of an artificial moon, which will return at the saga's decisive moment. Director Yoshihiro Ueda builds the night scene with a good sense of unease. Piccolo stunning Gohan with an attack resembling Jackie Chun's in the original series is a small nod for fans.

The second half is pure Toriyama: after all that build-up, the meeting with the North's god begins with Goku bowing to a monkey. It is the perfect way to close the long Snake Way interlude.

Trivia

In Japan the episode drew an 18.2% ratings share. It was written by Katsuyuki Sumisawa.
King Kai's planet has ten times Earth's gravity: it becomes the basis of Goku's first training in the next episode.
Both the 1996 dub and the 2005 redub titled the episode The End of Snake Way.

Did you know? The monkey Goku mistakes for King Kai is called Bubbles, and it is the god's pet. In the manga, Goku really does start hopping about in imitation, convinced it is an exercise.