Episode 236 of Dragon Ball Z, first broadcast in Japan on August 17, 1994 and titled The Warrior's Decision in Funimation's dub, finally puts Vegeta face to face with Majin Buu. Its full Japanese title translates as "A Warrior's Resolution!! I Will Dispose of the Majin". With Babidi's M still on his forehead, the Saiyan prince seems to have the upper hand at first, but he soon learns that this opponent cannot be hurt like any other. By the end of the episode he is bound, on the ground and at the monster's mercy.
Summary
Having knocked Goku out to keep the fight for himself, Vegeta reaches the spot where Buu has just turned Dabura into a cookie and eaten him. He opens with a relentless flurry: as a Super Saiyan 2, he hammers Buu from every angle and sends him tumbling across the rocks. Watching from a distance, Piccolo, Krillin, Goten and Trunks can hardly believe it, and the Namekian notes that Vegeta is now even stronger than Gohan was when he beat Cell. Floating overhead, Babidi starts to sweat.
It does not last. Every dent in Buu's body pops back out and he gets up as if nothing had happened. Vegeta gathers his energy into one hand and blasts a huge hole through the monster's stomach. For a moment Buu lies still and Trunks cheers, then the wound closes in front of everyone. This time, though, Buu gets genuinely angry. He builds up a mass of energy around himself and releases it in an explosion that levels the area and leaves an enormous crater. Babidi survives inside a barrier, the others escape just in time, and Vegeta takes the full force of the blast.
The prince comes out of it bloodied and battered. Buu fires a beam from his mouth that Vegeta barely dodges, then tears off a piece of his own belly, stretches it like taffy and wraps it around his opponent. Unable to move, Vegeta becomes a plaything: Buu dances, kicks him around and rains blows on him. Krillin wonders where Goku and Gohan have gone, while Piccolo warns the boys that stepping in would only get them killed and add to Vegeta's suffering.
Trunks does not listen. He turns Super Saiyan and flies toward his father, and Goten, after a moment's hesitation, follows. The episode ends with the two kids charging at the monster that none of the adults have managed to stop.
Our take
This episode does one simple thing and does it well: it shows, before anyone explains it, why Majin Buu is a different kind of problem from everything that came before. Frieza and Cell could be beaten with more power or a better technique; Buu cannot. The stomach-hole sequence is built to make the viewer believe, along with Trunks, that it is over, and the regeneration that follows knocks the wind out of you. That the victim of this lesson is Vegeta, the character who even accepted Babidi's control just to get stronger, makes it all the more bitter.
The clash of tones works too. Vegeta fights with the grim focus of a man who has bet everything; Buu answers with little dances, giggles and the kicks of a spoiled child. It is an Akira Toriyama idea that the anime respects: the most dangerous opponent seen so far in Dragon Ball Z has no intention of taking the fight seriously, and that is exactly what makes him frightening.
The ending, with Trunks taking off despite Piccolo's warnings, sets up the following episode, one of the most important of the whole saga.
Trivia
- It adapts chapter 465 and the first eight pages of chapter 466 of the manga. Written by Masashi Kubota and directed by Shigeyasu Yamauchi, with Shingo Ishikawa as animation director.
- Its 16.0% share is the lowest of any episode from 216 to 242.
- It aired in Japan two weeks after the previous episode, which was broadcast on August 3.
- The scene in which Goten pops out of the rocks with a lizard on his head and startles Krillin is an anime addition.
- Funimation's remastered dub adds a long off-screen rant by Babidi urging Buu to finish Vegeta off, which is not in the Japanese version or the original English dub.