Episode 91 of Dragon Ball Z, first broadcast in Japan on May 15, 1991 and titled Embodiment of Fire in Funimation's dub, wraps up the body-swap filler and pushes Goku to the absolute limit of his techniques. Overwhelmed by Frieza, the Saiyan raises the Kaio-ken to twenty times and pours everything into a Kamehameha. The result is one of the most frustrating moments of the duel.
Summary
Exposed, Captain Ginyu attacks Krillin using Bulma's body, to no effect: that physique was not built for fighting. He decides to take Piccolo's body instead and launches his Body Change. Gohan is quicker: he grabs the frog holding Bulma and throws it into the path of the beam. The swap happens between Ginyu and the frog: Bulma gets her body back and Ginyu is an amphibian once again. The celebration is short-lived, because a shockwave from the fight blows her far away.
Meanwhile, Goku takes a beating he cannot answer. Frieza splits Namek's surface with monstrous power, slams him back and forth and finally throws him into a lake, holding him under until he blacks out. At the bottom, Goku has a nightmarish vision: Frieza slaughtering his family and friends, then destroying Earth.
The vision snaps him awake. Goku bursts out of the water, swears he will not let the tyrant win and pushes the Kaio-ken to twenty times, far beyond what his body can take. He overwhelms Frieza and fires a Kamehameha with every bit of energy he has. Frieza tries to stop it with one hand and takes it head-on. When the smoke clears, however, the tyrant is still standing: all Goku has managed is a burn on his palm.
Our take
The Japanese title speaks of a "showdown" and of Goku as the "embodiment of flame", and for a moment it really feels like the final blow. It is one of Toriyama's great emotional traps: the Kaio-ken x20 was the most powerful move readers knew, the technique even King Kai considered dangerous, and it fails. From here on Goku has no new techniques left to pull out, except one. Frieza's singed palm is a tiny image that weighs more than any explosion.
The underwater vision is an anime addition, and not one of the worst: it gives Goku an emotional motive for a move that in the manga is mostly desperate, and it sets up his rage in the episodes to come. Launch appears in the sequence too, after being absent since the Saiyan Saga; she will not be seen again until late in Z. In the anime Goku fires the Kaio-ken in midair, while in the manga he stays on the ground.
The Bulma and Ginyu filler wraps up here with a quick, somewhat mechanical solution. Oddly, after she is blown away, nobody goes looking for Bulma, and the whole affair is never mentioned to Goku.
Trivia
- It adapts chapter 313. Written by Aya Matsui and directed by Jun'ichi Fujise from a storyboard by series director Daisuke Nishio.
- Several friends from the original Dragon Ball are missing from Goku's vision, including Upa, Fortuneteller Baba and Grandpa Gohan.
- In Dragon Ball Kai Launch was removed from the vision, even though she still appears in that show's ending theme.
- In Funimation's original dub, Launch and Kami are the only friends who do not laugh in the nightmare; the remastered dub gives them a laugh by their regular actors.
Did you know? Goku's Kamehameha yell recorded for this episode in the English dub was later reused in the video game Dragon Ball Z: The Legacy of Goku.