Episode 41 of Dragon Ball Z, first broadcast in Japan on March 21, 1990 and titled Look Out Below in Funimation's uncut dub, is the only episode of the Frieza storyline without a single manga page behind it. Bulma, Krillin and Gohan land on what they believe is Namek, meet two extremely kind Namekians and start a Dragon Ball hunt that goes almost too smoothly. The Japanese title spells it out: kind aliens, and the Five-Star Ball found right away.
Summary
Bulma orders the landing: Kami's ship drops like a stone, plows through a forest and stops right at the edge of a cliff. Gohan suggests checking the Dragon Radar at once, but before Bulma can do so, the ship tips over and falls.
When she comes to, Bulma finds two figures who look a lot like Kami: a short, stocky old man, Raiti, and his taller companion, Zaacro. They say they rescued the trio at the bottom of the cliff, serve them a meal and wish them luck in their search for the Dragon Balls. The three wonder how their hosts already know why they came; after a little telekinesis show from Zaacro, Krillin reasons that if Kami knew so much about people, it is no surprise his kin can do the same.
The ship, stored in a shed, is only dented. The radar shows several Dragon Balls, three of them nearby. Raiti warns against traveling in a small vehicle with all the local wildlife about and takes them in his own round, very noisy aircraft. The first ball turns up in a riverbed. The second lies down a stairway in some ancient ruins, past wall paintings of Namekians who look very different from today's: it is inside a sarcophagus, and Bulma shrieks when she realizes she took it from a skeleton's mouth.
The third ball is on the move: a giant dinosaur has swallowed it. Bulma wants to chase it, Raiti stops her, and she accuses him of wanting the Dragon Balls for himself. Soon they understand why he intervened: the dinosaur has wandered into an acid swamp that is dissolving it alive. Wearing a diving suit that holds up for about twenty seconds, Gohan drops into the swamp and finds the ball, but the rope wears through and snaps. The boy saves himself by firing a Masenko at the bottom, which launches him out like a rocket.
Meanwhile Vegeta, in his healing tank, relives the fight with Goku in his sleep, and back on Earth Goku throws a punch in his sleep, startling the whole ward until Chi-Chi sets him straight.
Our take
Pure adventure, structured like a treasure hunt: river, tomb, dinosaur, swamp. It recalls the earliest days of Dragon Ball, when the Dragon Balls were found among ruins and monsters rather than cosmic battles, and that gives it a nostalgic charm many later fillers lack.
Suspicion creeps in scene by scene, though. The two Namekians know too much and help too much, and the tomb paintings do not add up. Bulma is the only one who notices, and Keiji Terui's script cleverly makes her look paranoid exactly when she is right. Gohan, for his part, gets the most spectacular moment with that underwater Masenko.
Trivia
- Written by Keiji Terui and directed by Minoru Okazaki, with Minoru Maeda as animation supervisor.
- Kanzenshuu lists it as a full filler episode that adapts no chapter at all. Ratings share: 21.4%.
- In Funimation's dub, Gohan calls the Masenko "Flashing Attack" in the swamp scene.
- In the 1997 Ocean/Saban dub it was merged with Episode 40 into Friends or Foes?.
Did you know? Funimation's remastered DVDs mistakenly showed this episode with the same title card as Episode 39, Friends or Foes?; the Blu-ray release restored the correct one, Look Out Below.