Episode 55 of Dragon Ball Z, first broadcast in Japan on July 18, 1990, splits its time between two worlds. Funimation's uncut dub calls it Piccolo vs. Everyone, after its anime-only half in which the fallen fighters take King Kai's tests and measure themselves against Piccolo; the Ocean/Saban version went with Get Vegeta!. The Japanese title points to the other half: Vegeta, whom everyone believed finished, returning from the brink of death.
Summary
Aboard his ship to Namek, Goku does pull-ups at fifty times Earth's gravity and wonders whether his friends have caught Bubbles yet. They have not: Yamcha, Tien and Chiaotzu keep leaping after the monkey in vain. Piccolo refuses to take part in what he sees as child's play and even grabs King Kai by the collar; the god reminds him of his promise not to fight Frieza and warns that he does not train liars. After a lunch in which the trio devour everything, Yamcha, Tien and Chiaotzu catch Bubbles one after another.
The second test is to hit Gregory the cricket with a ridiculously heavy mallet. Yamcha smashes his own foot and Tien keeps missing, until Chiaotzu senses the bug coming and sends it flying into King Kai's house, in just an hour and five minutes. For the next lesson, grappling, Piccolo offers to take all three on at once. It is tougher than he expected: Chiaotzu pins him with an energy shock, Tien and Yamcha land hits, and Piccolo, surprised at their progress, has to stretch his arm to break free. Just as he throws off his cape and turban to get serious, King Kai calls a lunch break.
On Frieza's ship, Appule watches over Vegeta in the Medical Machine. Zarbon threatens him: the Saiyan must recover no matter what, because Frieza wants him questioned. Left alone, Appule mocks the unconscious prisoner. Bad idea. Vegeta's eyes snap open, he bursts out of the tank and kills him, then blasts a hole through the outer wall. Frieza and Zarbon find the wrecked room and assume he has fled; Zarbon rushes out to find him. But Vegeta never left: the diversion has cleared his path to the throne room, where Frieza's five Dragon Balls sit unguarded.
Our take
Half of this episode is anime-original, and it shows: nothing on King Kai's planet has a counterpart in the manga. Still, it is not wasted time. Yamcha, Tien and Chiaotzu finally get some room after their deaths, and the bout with Piccolo shows that they are growing too. It is a small consolation for three characters the series was about to leave behind.
The heart of the episode, though, is Vegeta. The Saiyan habit of returning stronger after every beating becomes a plot weapon here: Frieza had him healed for interrogation and ends up with the enemy inside his own ship. The diversion is a fine bit of cunning and a reminder that the prince is not just brute force.
Trivia
- Written by Keiji Terui, directed by Tatsuya Orime, with animation supervision by Masayuki Uchiyama. Ratings share: 17.2%.
- It adapts only the final part of chapter 265, from page 12 onward.
- In the manga Zarbon and Appule watch Vegeta together; once Zarbon leaves, the already-awake Vegeta kills Appule with a single blast that tears open the hallway. The anime spreads the scene over three moments across this episode and the previous one.
- In the Japanese version Frieza only threatens Zarbon in the following episode; the English dubs move the threat up.
Did you know? In Japanese, Appule taunts the sleeping prince as "Vegeta-chan" just moments before Vegeta wakes up and kills him.