DBZ Double Feature Part 2 - Damn This Show is Ridiculous

I realized yesterday when I wrote a piece called the DBZ double feature, that there would have to be a second part, hence the name "double feature." What the problem is, however, is that I know not what to write the second part about, specifically. After much thought as to exactly why I should write 2 articles in a row about the same thing, however, I have determined exactly why DBZ warrants 2 articles. It is not because of the action. It isn't because of character development, or wonderful storylines. It's mainly just because the show is hilarious, both intentionally and unintentionally.

What exactly is so damn funny about this show? Well, there are just too many to list, but I will make as many known to you by the end of this article as possible. First off, I will start with the characters, most of whose names I will spell incorrectly, and who I will list in a completely random order.

Gokou: Gokou is the hero of Dragon Ball Z. He is not technically a human but he's actually an ape-like alien from another planet who just looks remarkably like a human, called a Saiyin. He eats constantly, like I'm talking Shaggy from Scooby Doo constantly, but never gains any weight. He trains constantly, in the most bizzarre/extreme situations possible, for example, in hundreds of times the Earth's normal gravitational field. Also, every few dozen episodes or so he discovers what becomes the new standard for "ultimate power," which is only ultimate until Gokou discovers a new ultimate power.

Vegeta tells us how he really feels.

Vegeta: My favorite character (Mr Satan is a close second). Vegeta is the man. He's an asshole and he hates everyone. After reading that I bet you're all saying "Well then why would YOU like him Scuba?" Well, rest assured I don't appreciate your sarcasm, and I think its pretty obvious. Also, he manages to really make his opponents look stupid when he beats the shit out of them. Plus, just check out the picture above, if that's not a great reason to love Vegeta, I don't know what is. Also, he used to be the villian, you know, when he tried to destroy the Earth, but he gave that up after a while.

Goten: Gokou's secondborn son. I don't know much about him, because he's like 5, but I'm pretty sure that if I did he'd annoy me. Gokou's family is very uninteresting. The other characters are really the spice of the show.

Chi-Chi: Gokou's wife. Sh's the most annoying mean bitch on the show. Constantly yells at Gohan, who is one of the most powerful beings ont eh planet, to study his schoolwork more. Bosses all the other characters around, and they damn well better listen.

Kuillin: Gokou's friend since childhood, Kuillin also happens to be a bald midget. Also, women hate him. He's so unlucky with women that he eventually went on to marry an android. He somehow has no nose whatsoever, and he is a total waste of animators time. Kuillin has been proven mathematically to never have ever done anything important int eh history of the series. Also, did I mention that hes a useless bald midget with no cool special powers who is a total failure?

Tien: Tien, like Kuillin, is bald. He is also mainly useless, I think, but he has a huge redeeming feature. Tien has a third eye square in the middle of his forehead. That alone makes him a good character. So few cartoons blatanly flaunt inhumanity nowadays, that Tiens third eyeball is just a total redeeming factor to his otherwise unremarkable personality and lackluster fighting skills.

Yajirobi: Fat guy who likes to take all the credit for stuff. Also, pretty decent with a sword, but much better at running away and talking shit about people. Usually just hangs out and watches while other characters kick ass.

Korin: Cat who walks on his hind legs and carries a stick. Hands out Senzu beans, which mystically heal all of whoever eats them's wounds. Usually found in his tower, chilling with his homies Yajirobi and Oolong.

Chou-Tsu: Chou-Tsu hangs around with Tien a lot, though I've never been clear on exactly why. He is even shorter than Kuillin, but his skin is pure white with red painted cheeks like a mime. Also, for some reason, people refer to him as a prince, though it is beyond me exactly why they call him that. Chou-Tsu is a mystery to me, in fact. But he does have some nifty attacks, like one where he forces his opponent to give him an incredibly painful piggyback ride.

Oolong: Half pig half man who basically just hangs out. He was important on the original series, but now he just plays poker with Yajirobi and Korin a lot. Hates the word Bacon.

Yomcha: Yomcha's been around since Gokou was the only annoying little kid in his family and Kuillin was the right size for his age. For quite some time he and Bulma had a little action going on romantically, until she dropped his lame ass and married a real man, Vegeta. It's for the better that they stopped making him important, though, because in later episodes he was basically becoming a weaker Gokou with less hair and no special attacks.

Piccolo: Piccolo is a namek, and he's green. Also, hes got quite a bit of history and information that I could tell you right now, but its so incredibly complicated that I doubt I could coherently write it. Basically, originally he and a guy named Kami were one namek, but then they split into two, Kami and Piccolo. Then Gokou killed Piccolo, but Piccolo was survived by his son that he gave birth to the moment he died, who was also named Piccolo and looked exactly the same. This is important, because if Piccolo ever dies, so does Kami, and vice versa, but Piccolo's son Piccolo got this bond when Piccolo died. Anyway, eventually because of a crisis on earth, Piccolo merged with Kami, so now they are both oen being, also named Piccolo. Understand? Hah, that was the short version. Also, Piccolo absorbed another namek at some point whose name was Nails or something. And he wears really heavy clothes, to purposely restrict his movement, so he becomes stronger.


MR SATAN IS THE GREATEST FIGHTER IN THE HISTORY OF FIGHTING. All those other guys are just using "cheap tricks."

Mr Satan: Called Hercule in the Americanized version of the show, Mr Satan is like a pro wrestler guy who constantly convinces the media that he is far far stronger than Gokou and the numerous other good fighters on the show. He has no special powers, but convinced the media that he saved the world numerous times. He's not very powerful, but he is an idiot, and for that I must give him credit.

Master Roshi: Master Roshi is the person responsible for training Gokou and Kuillin, and a number of other characters, but now that theyve all become more powerful than him and hes become incredibly old, he just hangs out. He's basically a horny old man who hits on any and every female character in the show, with teh exception of Chi-Chi, because she would beat him senseless if he did. Also, once he posed as a Jackie Chan ripoff so he could beat his own students in a martial arts tournament.

Bulma: Bulma is the total slut of the show. She's the one, if rumors are correct, that they used her scantily-if-that clad body to distract people so Gokou could more easily kick the shit out of them in the very early episodes. Bulma used to go out with Yomcha but then ditched him when she met Vegeta. Also, her name in Japanese means "Underwear" or something crazy like that.

Trunks: The son of Vegeta and Bulma. He's really strong, and travels through time a lot. Also, has pink hair, which is funny as hell to me for some reason. If you wonder why he's named "Trunks," it's because everyone in Bulma's family is named after an article of underwear, for example, her father who I will probably not mention again, is named Dr Bra.




When he doesn't want his high school friends to know who it is that is using superpowers to beat up criminals, teenage Gohan disguises himself as his alterego, the Great Saiyaman!

Gohan: Gokou's firstborn son. Much like his dad, he eats a lot, trains constantly and reaches new levels of power for fun. ALso, in my incredibly humble opinion, he's really really annoying. Of course, I think that about all of Gokou's family, but that doesn't stop me from watching the show.

There are other characters and more information about them, but I think that is enough information about them. Let's see, what's the next thing that could be construed as funny.... Oh, how about this: Many of the characters names are part of a subset, meaning you can pretty much tell who a character is by their name. Examples:

Saiyans: All named after vegetables, to an extent. Gokou's real name is Cacarot, which is Carrot. Vegeta is vegetable. Raditz, who was a villian that was also a Saiyan, was named after Radish.

Bulma's Family: As I mentioned earlier, they are all named after underwear, with teh exception of Bulma's mom, whose name is just "Bulma's mom." Examples include Bulma, which means underwear, Trunks, which is self explanatory, and the forementioned and hilariously named Dr. Bra.

Spice Boys: There was this villian who named all his minions after spices, and called them the "Spice Boys." I think their names were something along the lines of Salt, Pepper, Curry, Ginger, and Baby Spice.

There are other name subsets, but they're either not important enough, not funny enough, or unmemorable to me, probably the latter. But the next funny thing about this show is the best: Wacky Premises. Examples:

Dragon Balls: Basically, the main premise of the show is that there are 7 "Dragon Balls," which are about the size of baseballs, scattered across the world, and once you get them all together, they summon the eternal dragon, who will grant you one wish. One remarkable wish was from the original Dragonball series, where a villian was trying to wish for ultimate power or something, but instead, because of Oolong, got the worlds most comfortable pair of silky briefs.

Slow motion rematch: I saw this on the original Dragonball, which is DBZ before they added the letter Z, and it was quite entertaining. Kuillin and Master Roshi (who was disguised as his alterego, named Jackie Chun, which is a wacky premis in itself) were in a tournament, and they had a round of fighting that occurred so quickly that the members of the audience could not see what happened. They decided that the people paid their money to get in, so they deserved to see what happened. Therefore, the decision was that they re-did every movement from their earlier round of fighting, in super slow motion, narrating as they went along. It turns out the fight included spitting on each other and a very fast game of paper, rock, scissors.

Captain Ginyu: During one season of the show, there was a bad guy named Captain Ginyu. His name was Captain Ginyu, because he was the captain of the Ginyu Force, who were basically a bunch of pushovers considering Gokou could beat them two at a time, but they posed well before they fought, and thats whats important when you're in the Ginyu Force. Anyway, Captain Ginyu was powerful because whenever he fought someone more powerful than he was he would use his special attack to switch bodies with them, and then destroy his original body with teh mind of hte person who was his enemy inside. Gokou eventually tricks (How dumb must you be to be tricked by Gokou?) him into using his special attack on a frog, which Vegeta comes very close to stomping onto the ground. Anyway, the story follows Captain Ginyu every once in a while, in his frog form, just wandering around the planet.

Garlic Jr: Son of Garlic Senior, obviously. Using the Dragonballs, he wishes for immortality or ultimate power or something, and actually gets it. Unfortunately, as soon as he does, he is trapped within a "dead zone" which he cannot escape from. Anyway, he eventually escapes, with the help of his minions, the Spice Boys, and goes on a rampage, since hes completely unbeatable. But then what does he do when he can't kill Gohan? Summons a dead zone, the one thing he's weak against, and is sucked into it. Intelligent villians are not common on this program. But then neither are intelligent heroes.

Gokou and Piccolo learn to drive episode: Yeah, you read that correctly, there is an episode where Gokou and Piccolo go to the city and try to get their drivers liscences. No one seems to care that Piccolo is 8 feet tall and green at this point. Anyway, neither of them can drive, and numerous automobile accidents ensue.

Saiyans/moon: All Saiyans have tails, like monkey tails. This is because as long as they have tails, the light of the full moon makes them transform into giant King Kong style gorillas, and wreak havok. Eventually, to get around this, when he was a bad guy Piccolo destroyed the moon so Gokou couldn't use his giant ape form against him. This didn't alarm people, though, because he just replaced it with a holographic moon of some sort.

So there you have it. Watch DBZ, because its funny. Cartoon Network, weekdays at 12 AM and 6 PM. And the original Dragonball is on the same network at 5:30 PM. So watch them and laugh, or I'll come to your house. The end.

--Scuba Steve, October 17, 2001