#luud

Luud is at full power, which makes him bright red. Stupidly, Goku and Trunks continue to fight him in base form, despite the fact that they only really made any headway when they briefly turned Super Saiyans and attacked him together.  Now, Luud is stronger, but the good guys are holding back for no obvious reason.  Also, Trunks gets sidelined, so Goku ends up fighting alone for much of this episode.  At least, Goku’s alone on the outside.

Because on the inside, all of the victims Luud absorbed are beginning to wake up, starting with Pan.  I don’t entirely get it. At first she seems to be some sort of sleeping ghost, then a ghostly Doltaki tries to kiss her and when she slaps him he becomes solid.  Then while she smacks the shit out of him everyone else wakes up to see what’s going on. 

Practically everyone in here blames Doltaki for their predicament, so naturally they all want a piece of him, but he claims that he knows how to escape, even though he refuses to talk, since he seems to be more afraid of Mu than of being trapped inside Luud. 

Hey, did you miss the Para Brothers?  No?  Well too bad, because they’re inside Luud and they’re all over this episode.  Pan asks them to use their dance magic to force Doltaki to tell them how to defeat Luud, and it works.

✨ “Good” “Ideas”, Poorly Executed.✨

By this point, GT has introduced enough characters in one place that we’re now just sort of having them mingle together, which only compounds their individual shittyness.  So now we have the Para Brothers using their spell on Doltaki, inside Luud, in order to rescue the Luud cultists and thwart the evil scheme of Dr. Mu.  If any of these characters had been enjoyable, this might have turned out to be somewhat fun, but the Para Brothers are like one of those awful SNL sketches that uses repetition instead of humor, and Doltaki’s a sex offender, and Luud looks like a pile of tomatoes with half the charisma.  Oh, and Dr. Mu looks like a shitty knockoff of Dr. Gero.  I’ll have more to say about Mu down the line, but for now, you can rest assured that he sucks just as much as the rest of this clown show.

Doltaki points out a “cell” in Luud’s body.  When Mu created Luud, he began with that cell, which I guess is the thing he mutated to make Luud a “mutant”.  The term “machine mutant” gets used a lot in this series.  Dr. Mu, Luud, and I’m pretty sure Mutchy all called Machine Mutants, and I don’t think I’ve ever understood just what that is.  Anyway, if you take out that one cell, the rest of Luud will collapse, and everyone trapped inside will be freed. 

The catch is that you can’t just shoot it from the inside.  Pan can hit it easily enough, but that only dazes Luud for a moment.  You need someone to attack it on the outside as well, and those attacks have to happen simultaneously in order to make this work.  I’m just going to point out that this weakness never came up for any of the other Machine Mutant characters we’ll be seeing as the show progresses.

So Pan has to contact Goku on the outside and tell him what to do.  Fortunately, the Para Brothers have telepathic abilities.  Unfortunately, the Para Brothers have telepathic abilities, which means they have to set up another repetitive, unfunny gag where their power only works through song.  Then they stop singing their messages, and Pan calls them out on it, which would be satisfying except this wastes even more time.

But they do relay the message to Goku.  Luud’s weak spot is almost invisible from the outside, but Goku can sense Pan’s ki when she attacks it, so he knows where to shoot.  They tell him to look for a red thing on his body, which is maybe the most unhelpful thing ever. 

So Pan and Goku can both shoot the weak spot, but the problem is that they can’t hit it at the exact same time.  Goku apparently has difficulty with this sort of timed coordination, which is bullshit because he learned and mastered the Fusion Dance without having a partner to practice the steps.

So what’s Luud doing while all of this is going on?  Jack shit, that’s what.  This dumb monster was supposed to be the primary threat of this whole arc.  They devoted six episodes of this show to Luud and his cult, and now he’s finally at full power, but all he does is sort of stand around, occasionally flailing his arms and saying his name while he waits for Goku and Pan to kill him. 

Here’s a stupid question. Why doesn’t Goku just go Super Saiyan 2 and kill Luud by himself?  He was doing pretty well before, and he’s not fighting anywhere close to his full power.  You could argue that Luud can only be killed by attacking his weak spot, but if that were true then Mu wouldn’t have been worried about getting him up to full strength.  You could also argue that Goku might kill Pan and the others if he goes full ham on Luud, but they seem to be trapped inside Luud’s tummy, so I think that means Goku could blow Luud’s head off without hurting anyone. 

Another stupid question.  Dr. Mu waited twenty years for this?   Luud was supposed to be a doomsday weapon, but he can’t even kill one Saiyan.  Mutchy gave Goku a harder time than this, and he could actually talk and stuff. 

While “the god of destruction” swats at Goku and misses him with eye lasers, Goku talks to the Para Brothers and suggests using a chant to get their timing down, as opposed to a count of three.  It works, though I don’t see what the difference is.  Maybe this is just a “Goku likes food” joke.   Well, it works, so I can’t complain.

Man, that Machine Mutant is toast.  

Yeah, more like... burnt toast.

Once Luud falls apart, all of the people trapped inside are teleported back out, including Doltaki, who somehow slips away and takes off in a crappy little spaceship.  You know, that kind of looks like the time machines in the Xenoverse games, but not quite.

Anyway, Doltaki kind of doesn’t matter, since his sole purpose was to run the Luud cult, which is now completely destroyed.  I guess he could still be a menace if he hung onto that fleshlight that turns people into dolls, but I’m pretty sure we never see anyone use that power again from here on out. 

✨Is This Episode Worse than “The Roaming Lake”?✨

It’s got the Para Brothers and Dolltaki, so yes.  Yes, it is much worse.

✨Positivity Page✨

So, I don’t have a lot of good things to say about this episode.  I guess one bright spot is that it mostly managed to stay focused on a singular objective: defeating Luud.  Prior episodes kept getting distracted with nonsense like Giru eating the Dragon Radar, or Pan cosplaying as a bee, or Doltaki just ditching the main plot to hide in his playroom.  The final battle with Luud sucked, but at least we didn’t have to keep switching scenes to check in on some other horseshit happening someplace else.

More importantly, I think we’ve finally passed through the absolute worst of Dragon Ball GT.  I seem to remember Episode 15 being not entirely terrible, and The pre-Baby stuff is bad, but at least it’s not Zoonama-flirting-with-Trunks bad.  The Baby Saga is pretty weak, but I think most fans agree it was the high water mark for GT, so when you watch this series, you start to really look forward to Baby showing up, because the first 14 episodes are such a trash dump. 

On the other hand, it never actually gets good, and that’s sort of the trick GT plays on you.  Every time I’ve watched it, including now, I keep thinking that the episode I’m on right now is terrible, but at least the next one will be a little better.  And I keep watching and keep watching, and then I’m finally on the last episode and I realize that no, it just sort of sucked the whole way through.  That’s one reason I keep comparing each episode to “The Roaming Lake”, because I don’t have the patience to rank GT episodes from best to worst, but I still want to establish which episodes are good enough to stand alongside the original DB and DBZ. 

  ✨The Blade Braxton Memorial Haiku*✨

Search Four Planets

To find just two Dragon Balls?

All right, so The Luud Cult stole the gang’s Dragon Ball, and they’ve come to Planet Luud to get it back, but in a desperate play, Doltaki, the founder of Luudism, has turned all of his followers into dolls and fed them to the big idol of Luud in their temple.  See, Luud’s not a god at all, but a powerful machine, one that runs on the most potent energy source of all: aliens that have been magically turned into dolls.  Doltaki was trying to gather enough victims to awaken Luud at full power, but he’s willing to settle for a sub-optimal launch if it means Luud can kill Goku and Trunks.

The problem with this episode is that it seems to hype a pretty major-league threat, and yet as Luud activates, he transforms from this four-armed bat-winged demon monster....

To this.   Goku openly laughs at how funny this thing looks.  Luud’s name is just “doll” backwards, so it probably shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that he looks like a mutant Kewpie, but I can’t help but feel like there are more bad ass dolls out there that they could have used.  Hell, I’d even take a Barbie over this.  Can you imaging a fifty-foot mint-green Barbie doll stomping around this place, smacking Goku and Trunks around?  The kitsch value alone would make it worth the watch. 

Anyway, Luud is just one more entry in a long chain of disappointing GT villains.   They spent four episodes hyping this guy up, and he’s just another big dumb monster who says his own name and not much else.  

While Luud fights the heroes, Doltaki withdraws to his chambers to continue playing with Pan, who was turned into a doll back in Episode 11.  Doltaki normally tosses doll-ified victims into Luud’s energy supply, but he can’t bear to let Pan go, and he play-talks with her about their new life together.  I fuckin’ can’t stand this guy and this is his second episode of doing this stupid schtick. 

✨Is This Episode Worse than “The Roaming Lake”?✨

 For all that was wrong with Dragon Ball Episode 29, at least Episode 30 was not “The Roaming Lake Part 2.” Toei hit rock bottom with Dragon Ball GT Episode 12 and for Episode 13 they started digging. 

✨Positivity Page✨

Mercifully, Doltaki gets a summons from a mysterious voice, so he has to go into a secret room and take a video call in a room that looks suspiciously like something from out of Star Wars.  And now we meet Doltaki’s boss, the real secret final boss of the Luud Cult.  As long as he distracts Doltaki from his creepy playtime session, then I’m all for it.

✨ “Good” “Ideas”, Poorly Executed.✨

Let’s go over the Goku/Trunks vs. Luud fight: It sucks.  Luud is pretty damn slow, but he’s agile enough to keep Goku and Trunks from chasing after Doltaki.  At first, it looks like Goku has a plan to distract Luud by goading Luud into attacking him.   Except Trunks never head off to go find Pan, so they just end up getting their asses kicked.  Was that not what Goku had in mind?  Because it seems like that would have been a good plan, and yet they never spell it out, and Trunks completely botches it. 

Instead, Luud knocks them around some more, and steps on them for good measure.  Then Goku and Trunks turn Super Saiyan to knock Luud off his feet.

And yet, they immediately change back as soon as Luud has fallen over.  They press their advantage and get in some good hits, but they do it all in normal base mode.

And this is what I want to talk about, because we’re 13 episodes into this show, and we’ve only seen Super Saiyan used on three occasions, and very briefly.  In Episode 5, Goku transformed to quickly overwhelm Ledgic.  In Episode 12, Goku and Trunks transformed to overcome Mutchy’s powers, and now this.  The weird thing here is that the fight is far from over, but they’re only using Super Saiyan long enough to get out of a pinch.

So I think this is a deliberate choice by the GT showrunners.   They wanted to throttle back on Super Saiyan transformations, either to make GT stand out from Z, or maybe because they wanted to make it feel more special.  Or maybe this is all some sort of unintentional thing, and they just didn’t notice that they were using it less.  The story goes that the reason Toriyama made Goku’s Super Saiyan hair yellow was because it would save time inking his hair on every page of the manga.  So maybe he used Super Saiyan more than he needed to just to make the deadlines easier.  But GT has no manga, and coloring Goku’s hair yellow on an animation cel is probably no easier than making it black.  So that might be all it is. 

All I’m saying is that, as a fan of this stuff, it feels cheap to alter the premise with no explanation.  In DBZ, the characters could maintain the Super Saiyan form for several minutes at a time, at least.  It’s hard to get a sense of how long their fights actually last, but we’ve seen characters just stay transformed throughout an entire battle.  Majin Vegeta fought Goku, then went to fight Buu and he never powered down, for example.   So when the characters don’t do stuff like that in GT, it seems odd. 

It’s not that it can’t make sense.  In GT’s continuity, we haven’t seen Trunks or Goku use Super Saiyan since the Kid Buu fight, which was fifteen years before GT began.  So maybe Trunks has gotten rusty and he can’t do it as easily without wearing himself out, and Goku’s kid body can’t handle the strain as long as he could as an adult.  Or maybe they’re much stronger than they were in the Buu arc, and the Super Saiyan form doesn’t provide the same boost as it used to.  Maybe it’s only good in short bursts now.

My point is that there’s plenty of ways to spin this, but GT refuses to explain it at all.  The message here seems to be: “Hey, did you like Super Saiyans? Well, fuck you, because we’re going to make it as unsatisfying as possible.”

Anyway, Dr. Mu is seeing all of this tom-foolery, and he doesn’t like it one bit.  He called Doltaki to ask for a status update on the Dragon Ball hunt, and Doltaki reports that he has two of them, but he had to activate Luud to stop Goku and Trunks from taking them back.  Mu’s like “Oh, did you get enough power to activate him at Level 3?” and Doltaki’s like “No, but Level 2 should be enough to handle them.”  Except it’s not, and Mu is worried that Doltaki has jeopardized the Dragon Balls and Luud.

And you might well argue that GT doesn’t have time to give dull explanations for things like why Super Saiyan is used so sparingly, but you’d be wrong, because GT found plenty of time to have Doltaki indulge in his creepy doll fetish.  And they still had time left over to have Mu explain his entire relationship with Doltaki.  Mu created Luud and considers him one of his finest “mutants”, and he recruited Doltaki because he had the charm necessary to bring unsuspecting victims to fuel Luud’s powers.  So the entire Luudism faith was just a front for Mu’s experiment in making a giant ugly robot that breaks stuff. 

But Mu also tasked the cult with finding the Black Star Dragon Balls, in order to wish for galactic domination, or something like that.  So in other words, this whole stupid cult gimmick they’ve been setting up for the past four episodes has been a waste of time, because it all comes back to this Dr. Mu guy, who’s an evil scientist guy instead of a cult leader guy.

Mu notices the doll that Doltaki is carrying around, and deduces that she must have a lot of power, since she was associated with Goku and Trunks.  So he orders Doltaki to feed her to Luud, since that might give Luud enough of a boost to reach full power and win.  But Doltaki refuses, because Pan is “the girl I’m going to live together with forever.”  Fuuuuuuuuuuuck this. 

Mu decides that if Doltaki won’t cooperate, then he can just be fed to Luud along with Pan.  So wait, Mu has the same turn-you-into-a-doll power as Mutchy, Doltaki, and Luud?  He even has the means to send both dolls into Luud, remotely.   So what the hell did he even need Doltaki for in the first place?  He’s been running this cult for twenty years, but why?  If Mu has the power to do this at a distance, then he could just doll-ify hundreds of people on distant planets and send henchmen to bring the dolls back to Luud. It might take a while, but I bet it wouldn’t take twenty years.

Okay, so Luud absorbs Pan, and now he’s invincible?  Why?  Pan was weaker than Goku or Trunks, but now she has the power to make Luud stronger than both of them combined?  What’s stupid is that this won’t even be the last time GT tries to use this trick.

✨The Blade Braxton Memorial Haiku*✨

Luud is a mutant?

A god? A machine? Who cares?

✨Is This Episode Worse than “The Roaming Lake”?✨

This is the first full appearance of Dolltaki, my pick for the worst Dragon Ball character ever. “The Roaming Lake” has many problems, but one thing going for it is the absence of Dolltaki.  This episode sucks a billion rotten eggs.

✨ “Good” “Ideas”, Poorly Executed✨

The “idea” here is that Pan has been turned into a doll, and she gets scooped up by the secret leader of the Luud Cult, but instead of using her to fuel Luud like the other people who have been turned to dolls, he talks to her and puts her in a little dollhouse he made, and he seems extremely excited about undressing her and putting her in different outfits. 

It sucks and I hate it and I think it’s supposed to be a joke but it’s just really weak and sad.  This feels like when a show like “The Simpsons” uses a character like Chief Wiggum to satirize the police, or the Comic Book Guy to mock nerds, except Dolltaki is a “doll otaku”, which seems pretty niche to me.  Say what you want about Master Roshi, but his pervert act is somewhat more mainstream.   How many people watching GT would see a guy like Doltaki and go “Oh, he’s just like that one guy I know!” 

Also, Dolltaki’s whole color palette is a really great example of the shitty color scheme that makes this show so tedious to watch.  Pus yellow gloves, magenta clothes, teal eyes, it’s all here.

✨Positivity Page✨

I honestly can’t find much to say in favor of this episode, so I’ll go with Trunks turning Super Saiyan for the first time in this series. 

And you, know, the sad thing is that while I enjoy this moment, it just reminds me of how much they botched Trunks, and this episode illustrates it perfectly.  Let me explain.

Okay, so here’s a gif I made of Trunks slashing a bad guy in half with his sword.  It’s in the opening of every episode of GT, and it just might be my favorite bit of animation in the whole of GT.  Look at him go.

Now, this is obviously a callback to Future Trunks, the version of the character who traveled through time to warn Goku about the Androids.  This Trunks is not the same character, as he’s the aged up version of Kid Trunks from the Majin Buu Saga.  That Trunks never had a lot to do with swords, but hey, this is GT, and it’s a perfect chance to redesign the character.  And this opening suggests that maybe the GT version of Trunks will also be swingin’ a cool sword.

Well, fun fact: Trunks never uses a sword in all of Dragon Ball GT.  It’s this brief shot of him in the opening credits, and that’s it.  But you know who does use a sword in GT?

Fucking Goku of all people.  Explain that one.  The bad guy here throws a whole bunch of swords at Goku, and this would have been a perfect chance for Trunks to just take one with him as a souvenier for use in later adventures, but he’s not in the room, so it doesn’t happen.

All right, so let me cover this episode in order, or we’ll be here all day.  Last time, Goku defeated Mutchy Motchy, the leader of the Cult of Luud, and it was surprisingly easy.  As it turns out, Mutchy Motchy was just a servant of the real leader of the Cult of Luud.  This turns out to be the gold whip he was carrying the whole time, and when Mutchy Motchy dies, the whip transforms into a shitty looking Mega Man boss named Mutchy. 

Mutchy has the power to control objects when he touches them with the tips of the tentacles on his wrists.  So he makes a bunch of stone tiles fly around and attack Trunks, and eventually they all stack up on top of him and pin him down.   He has to turn Super Saiyan to muscle out of this predicament.

And, like I mentioned, Mutchy uses his powers to fling swords at Goku.  This shot here is especially annoying, because Goku acts like he’s in some sort of tight spot.  He’s surrounded by four swords, you guys!  What if a fifth one comes at him?  He won’t have room to dodge that!  Goku beat Frieza, but I don’t know how he can hope to survive a monster on the level of Motchy!

I wish I was kidding, but I’m not.  Goku turns Super Saiyan to fight Mutchy, but he gets his ass kicked anyway.  So Trunks shows up and blindsides Mutchy while he’s strangling Goku with his whip arms.  It took TWO Super Saiyans to kill Mutchy. 

So while all of this is going on, this asshole Doltaki is watching the fight on closed-circuit television, but he’s more interested in his shitty doll collection, and he’s mainly interested in creeping on Pan, his new favorite. He rubs her against his face, talks baby talk to her, and tries to remove her doll clothes so he can dress her up in something else. 

During all this, one of the cultists shows up in his room and informs him of the battle taking place in the main hall, and it becomes clear that Doltaki isn’t just some weird pervert who lives here.  No, he runs the whole cult.  Except, no, Mutchy was supposed to be the leader, right?  Well, I’m pretty sure Doltaki is actually in command here, but it’s hard to be sure, since the two of them never have any scenes together.

Anyway, Doltaki orders all of the cultists to assemble in the hall so he can address them. It’s a good thing Goku and Mutchy moved out to another part of the building, or that would have been awkward.

The cultists are pretty hyped for this, especially the older ones, because “Father Doltaki” hasn’t made a public appearance in 20 years.  They think he’s a miracle worker, and many of them hope that he’ll deign to heal their ailments.  So it seems pretty clear that Mutchy was the day-to-day leader of the congregation, and Doltaki is a bigger deal. 

But when Doltaki addresses them, he just zaps them with his Fleshlight and turns them all into dolls to fuel Luud.  The cultists learn, much too late, that Luud was never a god, but a sophisticated machine, one which Doltaki plans to activate in order to stop Goku and Trunks.  It’s weird how he takes his sweet time about this, though.  The fight with Mutchy is happening right now, and it doesn’t last all that long.  You’d think he’d be a little more desperate to get Luud in the game.

One (other) thing I don’t get is why Doltaki has been working on this project for twenty (!) years.  The cult is clearly just a front, and they’ve been gathering victims to turn into dolls, which somehow increases Luud’s power, I get that.  The thing is, they had a lot of followers in this episode, and that’s almost enough to bring Luud to full power.  Not quite all the way, but Doltaki thinks it’ll be enough to beat Goku and Trunks.  The point is, he’s made more progress in the past week than he has in the last two decades, so what the hell?

Also, this puts to lie the notion that Mutchy learned the location of the Black Star Dragon Balls from Luud.  If Luud were really a god, then he could plausibly hand down divine revelations about the Dragon Balls’ locations, but that’s out the window.  So was Doltaki the one supplying that information?  How would he know where the Dragon Balls are?  And why would he want the Dragon Balls?  He seems to already have everything he wants.

Anyway, Luud starts to activate just as Goku and Trunks find out that Doltaki has Pan.

This episode is a garbage fire from start to finish, let’s just get out of here.

✨The Blade Braxton Memorial Haiku*✨

Subs or dubs? Who cares?

Doltaki ruins this show

Ugh... it’s time for the Para Brothers.

So last time, an alien stole the Six-Star Black Star Dragon Ball before our heroes could get it.  This alien turns out to be Bon Para, one third of a trio with his siblings Son and Don.  Goku, Trunks, and Pan chase after them in their own spaceship, which doesn’t matter, because they have the Dragon Radar, which means that it doesn’t matter if the Para Bros. get away.  They can track the Six-Star Ball down at their leisure, knowing that the bad guys can’t do anything with it while they have the Four-Star Ball. 

But Trunks keeps chasing them anyway, so Bon asks his ship’s computer what to do, and the computer suggests they head for a planetoid riddled with a maze of tunnels.   The tunnels are infested with giant killer catepillars, so it’s a safe bet that they can lose their pursuers.  In fact, the computer calculates the GT gang’s chances of survival at 0.00000000112%.

I want to pause a moment to stress this, because the computer reads off that whole number, and then the Para Brothers repeat it back, and this is the sort of thing that pisses me off about this show.  It takes every possible opportunity to pad out the runtime. 

So the Para Bros. lose their pursuers in the planetoid and head back to their base on Planet Luud, home of the Luud Cult.  They worship a giant statue-looking thing called Luud, and their leader is a guy named Mutchy Motchi, who carries a whip.  As the Para Bros. show up to report their success, he’s punishing another cultist who was also sent to find Dragon Balls, but came up empty handed.

So Mutchy snags him with his whip and the guy magically turns into a doll.  Mutchy then tosses the doll into a giant pot that’s part of the Luud idol.  This makes the Para Bros. nervous, but they actually found a Dragon Ball, so they figure they’ll be okay.

But Mutchy scolds them for failing to secure a second Dragon Ball, the one Goku’s group had already collected in Episode 6. 

✨ “Good” “Ideas”, Poorly Executed✨ 

Okay, so the cult could have been an interesting angle.  A lot of this whole thing reminds me of the Red Ribbon Army and the Frieza Force, but the religious aspect provides an interesting twist.  You could really get some mileage out this, if you properly established what the cult is and what their connection is to the Dragon Balls. 

And guess what? This series doesn’t explain either of those things.   The fundamental problem here is that the Black Star Dragon Balls were on Earth until about a month ago, and they almost no one knew of their existence.  Yet Mutchy has learned of their existence, and their power to grant wishes.

So he’s sent his followers to find the Dragon Balls, but they don’t know where to look.  Seriously, the one dude even said that he couldn’t find any, because the universe is so vast and they have no idea where to look.  But Mutchy turns him into a doll anyway, because he doesn’t want to hear excuses.

And yet, somehow the Para Bros. knew exactly where to go, because Bon was right where he needed to be in Episode 8.  If anything, you have to wonder why he waited to grab the Six-Star Ball, since it was hanging from the end of Leine’s hair, plainly in view.  

And yet, somehow, despite knowing where to find the Six-Star Ball, they had no idea that the Four-Star Ball was on the same planet, inside Goku’s ship.

But Mutchy does know, somehow?  He says he learned this from “the revelations of Luud-sama”, so I guess he has some sort of way to locate the Dragon Balls, but then why did he wait until the Para Bros. got back before telling them about this?  And why does he blame them for not already knowing about this? 

This episode can’t make up its mind about whether the cult has a Dragon Radar or not.  I think the idea here is kind of like the Red Ribbon Army, where they have a device for detecting Dragon Balls, but it’s not nearly as precise or as portable as Bulma’s design.  So maybe Mutchy couldn’t find out about the Four-Star Ball until it was too late to tell the Paras, but he expected them to know anyway, because I guess he’s a huge dick. 

Also, how does he even know about the Earthling ship, but he doesn’t know about the planetoid they’re currently lost in?

Wait, maybe Giru is feeding information to the cult.  I mean, he can’t do it from inside the planetoid because he can’t send a clear transmission from inside the tunnels.   Well, maybe there’s something to this, but I’m doubting it.

Anyway, the GT crew can’t find the Para Brothers’ ship, so they decide to head out of the planetoid, but then they get attacked by the giant caterpillars, so they get out of the ship to stand and fight.   But the caterpillars are pretty tough, and they no-sell ki blasts and such.  Why don’t Goku and Trunks go Super Saiyan, then?  Because GT Logic, that’s why.

This gives the Para Brothers a chance.  Mutchy sent them back to retrieve the Four-Star Ball, but they were afraid that the GT ship would be hopelessly lost or destroyed by the time they found them.  Instead, Bon realizes that the fight gives them a clear shot to search the ship for the Dragon Ball, except they can’t find the thing.

✨Positivity Page✨

Okay, so at least this episode offers a better balance of power than the last... all of them.  Up to now, I keep getting irritated that Goku doesn’t just beat up the villains or monsters preventing them from reaching their goals.  This time, he actually starts fighting right away, and it just happens that the monsters are strong enough and numerous enough that he can’t just win immediately. 

And this compliments the Para Brothers’ tactics.  They can’t win a direct confrontation, but they can use sneaky tricks and misdirection.  And so, Goku choosing to stand and fight actually seems to play into the Para Brother’s hands.  So right off the bat, this is a better conflict than the one with Don Kee and Ledgic.  Self high five, I guess.

✨Is This Episode Worse than “The Roaming Lake”?✨

Oh fuck, this is much worse.  The padding and stalling in “The Roaming Lake” was egregious, but in this episode it’s downright insulting.   The chase scene is pointless, the worm monsters attacking the GT ship was too long, and I’m pretty sure some of the footage was reused a few times.  The Luud Cult probably needed some time to properly set the stage for their debut, but they still made sure to put plenty of cultists’ chanting in that scene, just to grab those extra seconds of filler.

Also, no matter what else “The Roaming Lake” might be guilty of, it does have that insert song during the part where Goku and Nam traced the riverbed back to Giran’s dam.  And I didn’t have to ask how they found Giran’s dam, the way I have to ask how the cult found out about the Dragon Balls.

Also, and this is a minor nitpick in the grand scheme of things, but it really irritates me how Trunks claims he can use “technique” to catch up to the Paras’ ship despite its superior speed.  Pan even calls this out by asking how Trunks can outfly the Paras when he’s never piloted a spaceship before, but more importantly, it’s outer space.  You just pick a direction and go fast.   There’s no inside track or shortcuts.  If you’re faster than the other guy then it doesn’t matter how fancy they fly.  And yes, they had a whole leg of the chase in an asteroid field, but that just means the Para Bros. are idiots for flying into it. And Trunks is kind of a dope for following them.

✨The Blade Braxton Memorial Haiku* ✨

“Find the Dragon Balls!”

Mutchy’s wish? To be in a