#lemlia

Hot damn!   It’s time for Terror on Arlia!   This is probably one of the best filler episodes ever.   It’s like, the driver’s ed episode, the Goku vs. Pikkon fight, and this.    I’m not sure how I’d rank them, but maybe I’ll work on that sometime later.

First off, some time has passed once again since the last episode.  Now, Gohan is strong enough that the dinosaur that keeps attacking him is no longer a threat.  

Gohan just calmly runs away from it, then jumps right before he runs into a boulder, and the dinosaur hits it instead.

Then he hacks off a piece of the dinosaur’s tail while it’s stunned.   Again.   Gohan’s apparently been doing this for a while now, and he warns the dinosaur that it’ll run out of tail at the rate they’re going.   The message is simple: Don’t eat Gohan’s friends.

Gohan has also figured out how to make his own ki blasts, which is pretty high-level stuff.   His ki may only be powerful enough to start a fire, but it’s way more than most of the other characters could have done at age four.

Meanwhile, Bulam, Krillin, and Yamcha are looking for Tien and Chiaotzu.   Or maybe they’re just talking about looking for them now that they have Yamcha.   I’m pretty sure the Gohan scenes are taking place over the course of several weeks, while these Z-Warrior scenes are supposed to be playing out over the course of a single day.  Even if it really is taking this long to find Tien, why would Krillin and Yamcha be with her for the whole search?   They’d be better off heading to Kami’s Lookout, so they can start training for the Saiyans.

Speaking of Tien, Launch is on the run from the cops for stealing a bunch of money for Tien.

She eludes the police with a grenade launcher.

So she escapes with the loot.   Most of it anyway, a lot spilled out of the back while she was being chased.

But never mind that, here comes Vegeta.   He and Nappa are on their way to Earth, and they set their space pods to put them in stasis for the year-long journey, but Vegeta programmed it to wake them up at a certain point along the way, so they could get out and stretch their legs. 

Seems he found a planet along their course for Earth, and since the Saiyans conquer planets to sell for profit, he sees this as a way to make some nice profit on the side.  This seems a bit out of character for Vegeta, given what we learn about him later on.   I would think that the Planet Trade business is just something he puts up with until he can find a way to get out of it.    So it’s not that he wouldn’t want to take a pit stop on the way to Earth, but I doubt it would be to score some extra cash.

Anyway, Nappa just wants to get out of the pod and move around a bit, so he’s up for anything.   

And here’s the lucky planet they’re going to.   It’s called Arlia, and it looks really crappy, even from a distance.  There was an episode of Mythbusters where they tested the futility of polishing a turd, and it ended up with them making piles of dung into spheres.    That’s what Arlia looks like. 

The planet actually manages to look even worse up close.   I don’t know if the boys meant to set down in a desolate area like this, but I always got the impression that most of the planet looks like this, so they didn’t have much choice.   Vegeta concedes that they probably won’t find a buyer for Arlia after all.   I figure this is the sort of planet a Space Trillionaire would buy, but only because he wants to feel like a Space Quadrillionaire.

Suddenly these big bug people show up.    I don’t know why they’re so much bigger than Nappa, when the rest of the Arlians we see are not.   There’s a lot we don’t know about the Arlians, and we’ll probably never know.    They threaten to arrest the Saiyans and take them to King Moai.

Nappa’s eager to fight them, but Vegeta orders him to stand down for the moment, since he wants to see this Moai guy for himself.    I guess he figures the planets’ leader would be in a more advance (read: valuable) location, which would give Vegeta a better idea of what Arlia has to offer. 

Notable, this is the first indication of Saiyans using telepathy.   Goku uses it later on, and we’ve already seen Master Roshi, Crane Hermit, Korin, and Kami use it, but it always seemed to be this mystical thing that only wise old martial artists could do.    Oh yeah, and King Piccolo could telepathically communicate with his offspring.  

I guess what I find interesting about this instance is that Vegeta uses it rather casually, when he could just as easily whisper to Nappa, or maybe use some nonverbal gesture to get his point across.    The point here may be to indicate just how scary-powerful Vegeta is, but the thing about Vegeta is that anything we see him do can be applied to every other Saiyan character.   If Master Roshi can read minds, it sort of stops there.   If Vegeta can communicate telepathically, that means Nappa, Raditz, Goku, and Gohan can too, along with every other Saiyan character that hasn’t been introduced yet.   Vegeta might be the only one who knows how at this point, but that’s just a matter of skill.

So here’s Moai’s stronghold, and guess what, it’s also a dump.   I’m not complaining about the artwork, mind you.    This scenery is breathtaking.   The twin suns sort of make this look like a face, with the clouds forming a furrowed brow.   It’s like the Arlians’ god is looking down on the castle, and he’s not happy with what he’s seeing.  

Also, while Moai’s fortress looks moderately impessive, it’s surrounded by absolutely nothing.   What happened on this planet?   My guess is that it was ruined by centuries of war, but it’s also possible that the Arlians prefer it like this. 

Vegeta and Nappa are taken to a dungeon, which looks like something from a Prince Valiant comic.    This is the paradox of Arlia, because it looks like the Arlians are generally familiar with alien visitors, implying that they’ve been exposed to advanced technologies, but their own world is backward and medieval.    They don’t even seem interested in the Saiyans’ ships or their scouters.   And they lock them up behind a wooden gate.    And why do they carry swords when they all seem to have some sort of red mouth laser? 

While they wait, the Saiyans meet Atla, one of the native Arlians who’s been imprisoned by Moai.   Well, “meet” may not be the right word.   Atla just starts introducing himself and explaining the backstory while they stand silently and face in his general direction.  

From Atla’s words, it sounds to me like Moai took over the planet fairly recently, perhaps after a long civil war that killed anyone more qualified to rule.  Unconcerned with actually governing his people, Moai just does whatever he pleases, using his unlimited power to enforce his whims.   So there’s a good chance that the planet looks like a dump because of his indifference. 

I dig this sort of thing, because it reminds me of the decline of the Western Roman Empire, where the emperors eventually became little more than figureheads backed by strong military leaders.   Over time, the Roman armies became supplemented by foreign mercenaries, until eventually the top generals were all foreign mercenaries, and eventually they just dispensed with the figureheads and started ruling Italy outright.    I get the impression that the emperors didn’t particularly care that their domain was being usurped by outsiders, because as long as they were comfortable in their palaces then everything was fine. 

There’s kind of a similar pattern in the Bible, where you see David and Solomon’s descendants slowly letting the Kingdom of Israel decline.    Rehoboam’s arrogance caused the kingdom to split in two, and while there were a few good kings who embraced piety and reform, a lot of wicked kings abandoned the principles that made their reigns possible.   They worshipped idols and did whatever they liked, and then eventually they found themselves surrounded by powerful enemies.   The later kings were reduced to vassals, but they didn’t seem too concerned about that as long they got to sit in their palaces and pretend everything was okay.

Atla laments that now Moai is capturing space aliens on top of oppressing his own people, which suggests that Moai only sees his rule as a right to oppress other people for his own amusement.  

I wrote about this episode some time back, comparing Arlia to Westeros from Game of Thrones, or A Song of Ice and Fire or whatever the hell it’s supposed to be called.   I’ve never read the books because I need that time to liveblog anime, but everything I’ve heard about it suggests that the whole story is about some backwater planet full of medieval fantasy tropes, and all the leaders are corrupt, venal idiots who only stay in charge because they’re protected by bullshit laws and traditions, or because they’re better at the endless palace intrigue that goes on in the story.   There’s one kingdom that was ruled by a Draco Malfoy clone, and another run by a guy who hunts naked women for sport, and I think some character keeps fetuses in jars for no apparent reason.    I get the impression that a lot of the books is just George R.R. Martin trying to use shock value to pad things out.   That and lore.   If Tom Clancy and Howard Stern co-wrote Lord of the Rings, you might have something pretty similar to Game of Thrones. 

What I’m trying to say here is that Moai seems to just sit around all day watching his subjects fight each other for his own amusment.   He forced Atla’s betrothed, Lemlia, to be his queen (she’s the pink bug lady in the back), and he has soldiers just roaming the wastelands in search of new prisoners to mess with.   His men captured real live space aliens and he’s like “Oh goody!   Bring them before me, because I actually believe they’ll respect the idiotic rules that keep me in power.”    I’m pretty sure this is exactly what King Draco Malfoy Clone would do in this situation.

He looks and talks and acts like a complete buffoon, and he’s just begging for some hero to come along and punch him in the mouthparts.    Except Atla’s in the dungeon, and some other, more competent hero must have gotten killed off three books ago (cf. A Sleet of Testicles).

And this is what I love about this episode.    Vegeta (along with Nappa, of course) are sort of being put into this role of traveling heroes who enter a tyrant’s domain and set things right.    They’re certainly powerful enough to do it, but we already know that’s not what they’re here for.  

Vegeta kills all the gladiators and informs Moai that he only let himself be captured just to get this close to the king.    It astonishes me that Moai needs to have this explained to him.    He’s so used to having his own way that it never dawned on him that anyone could use his arrogance against him.

Nappa strikes his classic pose and kills all the guards.

Then Moai summons an even bigger bug creature named Yedi.  Nappa asks permission from Vegeta to handle this one, which I think is a nice touch. 

Nappa rips off Yedi’s finger and licks the monster blood off his face.    Nappa’s awesome.   He’s just havin’ a good old time.

I forget why now, but rocks start falling, probably because Vegeta’s powers cause the ceiling to break apart.    Moai takes cover behind his throne...

...but a rock ends up killing him anyway.  I woudn’t think that’s a vital area, but what do I know about Arlian anatomy?    It’s kind of fitting that Moai should die like this, in his own throne room/gladiator arena, cowering behind his throne.   He thought it would protect him like it always had done in the past, but in the end he met a power that didn’t respect anything he had accomplished.   The Saiyans ignored his royal robes and saw only a fool, and so he died a fool.

Atla shows up and praises the Saiyans or liberating his planet from Moai’s tyranny.   You know, he could have followed them up here and helped out.   They were all in the same cell, and Vegeta and Nappa destroyed the door and killed all the guards, so what took him so long?

The Saiyans just sort of look at him, and then they get back in their spaceships.

I’m not sure why they even bother flying across the surface.   Maybe they’re still surveying the planet, but it’s a crappy planet no matter what angle you view it from.    At last, Vegeta gives up and they head back into space.

But before they leave, he gets out of his ship and decides to leave a going-away present.    How does Vegeta breathe in space?  That’s one way you can tell which ones are filler scenes.   They usually play faster and looser with this sort of thing.   

On the surface, Atla and Lemlia are reunited at last, and it looks like everything’s going to be okay from now on, thanks to those two heroic aliens who...

LOL JK, Vegeta blew up the whole planet.  

What’s so great about this is that Arlia kind of deserved to die.   Not in the strictest narrative sense, but from a metanarrative viewpoint, it was just a really dumb planet.   Any world that could fall under Moai’s rule probably didn’t have much longer to live anyway, and it’s almost like Vegeta put it out of it’s misery.    I’m not suggesting any of this rationalizes Vegeta’s actions.    This is a horrible, horrible crime, and Vegeta did it like it was nothing to him.   He’s done far worse things with even less compunction.

Even so, he’s not Arlia’s villain, he’s Dragon Ball’s villain, so it’s just satisfying to watch him squash some crappy filler planet that had no redeeming value to the story.   It’s like watching your favorite bad guy wrestler clobber your least favorite good guy wrestler.  

And the narrator sums it up very neatly.    This is what’s headed for Earth.    The Saiyans destroyed Arlia like it was nothing, and what can Earth do to avoid a similar fate?    Z stands for The End.