Episode 68 of Dragon Ball Z, first broadcast in Japan on November 21, 1990 and known in English as Ginyu Assault, settles the score with Burter and finally brings the leader of the Ginyu Force onto the battlefield. It looks like a bridge episode, but it also stages the first real clash of philosophies between Goku and Vegeta over what winning actually means.
Summary
Burter cannot believe it. He has always bragged about being the fastest fighter in the universe, and now a Saiyan who came out of nowhere is running rings around him. Enraged, he charges again alongside Jeice, but Goku slips away at the last moment and the two end up hitting each other. To prove that the gap is about power as well as speed, Goku knocks Burter out with a single blow.
Goku then turns to Jeice and suggests he drop a fight that makes no sense. Jeice does not need telling twice and takes off, though not to surrender: he heads straight for Frieza's ship to summon Captain Ginyu.
The moment Jeice is gone, Vegeta does what Goku refused to do. He finishes off Recoome and Burter, both still unconscious, without a flicker of hesitation. Goku objects, and the prince fires back that with that kind of softness he will never beat Frieza. They also argue about the Dragon Balls: Vegeta fears Frieza has already wished for immortality, but Goku and Krillin point out that the sky never went dark and that summoning the dragon apparently requires a password only the Namekians know.
At the ship, Jeice reports what happened. Ginyu refuses to believe it, then holds an impromptu audition among Frieza's soldiers to fill the empty slots, while those same soldiers bury the Dragon Balls. Anger beats vanity in the end, and the captain flies off with Jeice to avenge his squad. On arrival his scouter reads Goku at a mere 5,000, but Ginyu immediately realizes that is not his true strength.
Our take
The key scene is Vegeta killing two opponents who are already out cold. Toriyama uses it to mark the distance between the two Saiyans: Goku fights for the thrill of the contest and lets the defeated walk away, while Vegeta thinks like a soldier of Frieza's empire, where anyone left alive comes back to stab you. Neither is entirely wrong, and that ambiguity is exactly what makes their rivalry so compelling.
The comedy keeps the tone balanced. Burter and Jeice punching each other is classic cartoon slapstick, and the recruitment drive, with grunts trying out poses, is an anime addition that pushes the Ginyu Force's theatrical streak even further. In the manga the soldiers are nowhere to be seen and Jeice hides the Dragon Balls himself. It is filler, but the kind that says something about a character: for Ginyu, the squad's look matters almost as much as its strength.
The episode also sets up the hunt for the password, the thread that will tie the next stretch together as Frieza, Grand Elder Guru and Dende converge.
Trivia
- Written by Keiji Terui, directed by Jun'ichi Fujise, with animation direction by Masahiro Shimanuki. It adapts chapters 282 and 283, with a 24.5% ratings share.
- It was the first episode Funimation dubbed with its own in-house cast. It premiered on Cartoon Network's Toonami on September 13, 1999, exactly three years after the Ocean dub debuted in syndication on September 13, 1996.
- Ginyu and Jeice's poses in front of the soldiers echo Kamen Rider 1 and 2 from the 1971 tokusatsu series.
- Because Saban's edit had stopped partway through episode 67, the uncut DVD of Ginyu Assault opens with several minutes of leftover footage from the previous episode.
Did you know? In the manga Ginyu simply hands the Dragon Balls to Jeice to hide. The anime gives the job to rank-and-file soldiers caught up in the squad's tryouts.