Manga/Dragon Ball

Anime/Manga: We open with Gohan, Goku, and Piccolo en route to the rendezvous point. In that order. Piccolo is dressed in his typical attire. Goku is wearing a Kame-senryu dogi, but no longer has any insignia on it whatsoever; For some reason, he isn't even wearing his own 'Go' kanji anymore. Gohan is, of course, dressed in his Mazoku clothes.

Goku calls ahead to Gohan, urging him to slow down; At the pace he's going, he's going to drain his ki reserves before the fight even starts. Gohan apologizes and backs off.

Piccolo asks Goku for an estimation of their chances, but Goku has no idea. He hasn't even seen the Jinzoningen yet. Piccolo admits that he has a foreboding feeling about this upcoming fight. Goku suggests he should pull out if things go south; The Dragon Balls are linked to his survival, after all, so he needs to survive more than anyone.

Funimation cuts the part about Piccolo needing to leave if things go south. Instead, Funi Piccolo despair-spirals. He laments that there wasn't more time. He wishes he could have trained harder, gotten stronger, gotten faster.... Goku snaps him out of his panic attack by assuring him that he did as much as he possibly could have.

The group comes up on Krillin, also in transit towards the rendezvous. Krillin is dressed in his typical Kame-senryu dogi and is not in a good mood - Though he does take a moment to compliment Gohan for how big he's gotten. When pressed by Goku, he explains the obvious: He's feeling dismal because they're about to fight for their lives against murderous cyborgs, you goddamn Saiyan fight junkie.

The group reaches the island. To their surprise, it's a fairly large island with two major landmarks: A gigantic mountain along one side with a forest creeping out from its base and a sprawling city taking up a significant chunk of the island's center.

That's bad. Nobody anticipated a city. Gohan expresses to the others the importance of protecting these people. They need to lure the Jinzoningen away so that nobody gets hurt.

Krillin spots a pair of substantial ki signatures on the island's giant mountain. Figuring that's probably Yamcha and Tenshinhan, the group heads that way. As they come in for a landing, the group sees the two insignificant ki signatures that Krillin missed: Bulma and the infant son in her arms. Her plane is parked nearby.

Funi instead has Krillin respond to Gohan's suggestion of luring away the Androids. He points out that they need to find the Androids first. The group agrees to begin the search immediately, and then flies over to the mountain to meet Yamcha and the others.

Like Krillin, Yamcha is wearing his usual Kame-senryu dogi. Ten has upgraded from pants and a white undershirt he sheds to fight, to pants with a single fabric strap that reaches up and hooks over his left shoulder. (I have no idea what that's supposed to be.) Bulma's wearing white jeans and a red top cut short enough to bare her midriff, along with a tiny orange jacket too small to close, cut even shorter than the shirt. She's also updated her hairstyle: Straight with a neck-length cut.

Nobody cares about that, though. Why is she here?! Goku calls her an idiot and demands answers. He's the only one that takes issue with this, but that's because he wasn't there when she explained her motives with Mecha-Frieza. Bulma explains again for Goku's benefit: She wants to see the Jinzoningen. She'll leave once she's had a good look.

Next question: BABY. What?! Gohan optimistically assumes this means Bulma and Yamcha got married because he's a precious innocent child, but Yamcha disavows any involvement in this. He and Bulma broke up a long time ago.

Goku instantly pegs Trunks's father as Vegeta, astonishing Bulma who hasn't told a soul. Goku swears that he can see a resemblance, but Bulma presses him about the name. Stuck for an explanation, Goku wildly speculates that he might be psychic.

This is meant to be a joke. "LOL Goku's such a terrible liar." But he did read Krillin's mind on Namek so it's actually a plausible explanation.

Piccolo interrupts the socializing to rerail the conversation towards the task at hand: Where the hell is Vegeta? Bulma doesn't have an answer for that; They aren't living together, so she doesn't keep track of his whereabouts. However, she assures everyone that he'll be here. He's been training relentlessly for this day. He wouldn't miss it for the world.

Ten lets everyone know that Chiaotzu won't be coming. They trained together, but Chiaotzu wouldn't be able to keep up so Ten asked him to stay behind.

Now that all that's settled, Gohan asks Bulma for a time check, since she's wearing a watch. It's 9:30. Half an hour remains until the Jinzoningen arrive. Goku again tells Bulma to go home, but she reiterates that she isn't leaving until she gets to see them.

Anime Only: Meanwhile, in West City, Dr. Briefs enters Trunks's baby room with a new toy he's made. Unfortunately, Trunks is nowhere to be found. Briefs assumes that she's showing him off around the city. Oh, well. He'll be surprised when he comes home and sees this little gadget.

Dr. Briefs sits down to play with the gadget he built. It's a chunk of plastic with buttons on it. He presses a button on it to demonstrate, causing a giant inflatable pink balloon person to burst out in a puff of Capsule smoke. While he laughs at his own ingenuity, we zoom in on a clock sitting on the dresser: It's 10:15.

Anime/Manga: We cut back to the Dragon Team on the mountain overlooking this unexpected city. Krillin asks what became of Trunks's tail but gets no answer. Toei cuts Krillin's unanswered question and replaces it with Krillin trying to make a funny face to get a laugh out of the baby. Trunks laughs at his stupid face before he even does anything. (Krillin Owned Count +1)

Piccolo senses an inbound ki signature, but assures everyone it's not the Jinzoningen. He can feel no malicious intent in this person's ki. Gohan suggests it might be Vegeta, but Krillin shoots that down: Vegeta's full of malicious intent.

Yajirobe pulls up in a hover car and pops out. He's added a red scarf to his typical outfit. Goku asks if he's here to fight, but he doesn't even dignify that with a response. Instead, Bean Daddy pulls out a satchel of Senzu and passes it over. Gift from Karin-sama.

With that, Yajirobe gets back in his car. Goku asks again if he's fighting, but Yajirobe answers with a Hell No. Unlike these idiots, he has no desire to die today. He does not physically flip them off as he flies away, but the middle finger is implied.

After Yajirobe leaves, Ten raises a sticking point that's been growing on his mind. Something is wrong here. 10:00 AM came and went, and none of them has sensed any inkling of the Jinzoningen.

Yamcha suggests that Future Kid was full of shit. It was all a prank or something. They've been standing around here like morons hoping to sense something, but if the Jinzoningen are so powerful, they'd be towering beacons of ki that could be sensed anywhere on the planet. There are no colossal ki signatures anywhere, so this whole thing must be fake.

As if on cue, an explosion rocks Yajirobe's car and sends the smoldering wreck hurtling down towards the island below. Piccolo spots two tiny figures in the sky where the blast occured. They're so far away that they're nearly imperceptible, but they're there. The figures descend into the city, at which point everyone loses sight of them.

So. New problem. Nobody sensed even the slightest inkling of ki coming from those two. What's going on here? It's well-educated Gohan who figures out the answer: It's because they're Jinzoningen. A machine doesn't have ki, so there is no ki signature to detect. Chapter 143 ends here.

New plan: Since the Jinzoningen don't have detectable ki signatures, the team will have to search for them visually. They'll spread out, search the city, but avoid any direct confrontation without the rest of the group as backup. Except Gohan; Goku assigns him to go check on Yajirobe. He's alive but he could need help.

Due to a continuity error, the Senzu bag vanished from Goku's hands after Yajirobe's car exploded. No one else took it; It simply stopped existing. A couple chapters from here, Toriyama will realize that he accidentally erased the Senzu when Yamcha needs one. To fix that, Goku will say that he left the Senzu up on the mountain and ask Krillin to fly Yamcha up there.

So. Apparently Goku dropped the bag out of surprise and then forgot it existed until Yamcha was impaled. Stupid Super Goku.

Toei patches this here by having Goku toss it to Bulma, asking her to hold onto it while they go down to find the Jinzoningen. Which is an awful plan, but at least it provides a better explanation for what happened to the bag than "Goku dropped it and then forgot it was there because he's dumb." Sometimes, you have to work around the plot holes.

Everyone but Gohan and Bulma flies down into the city. Gohan flies the opposite direction to find Yajirobe, even though Yajirobe's car exploded above the city. (This is why nobody ever trusts you with solo responsibilities, Gohan.)

Goku lands on a rooftop and looks down at the people wandering around below. He complains that they should have asked Trunks for a photo of the guys they're after. (Would have solved more problems than one, in fact.)

Krillin lands directly in front of some guy with a hoverboard, freaking out the rando with his power of Bukujutsu. He asks the man if he's seen anybody suspicious. The man responds by pointing at Krillin and saying he's suspicious.

Ten and Piccolo search the city wordlessly. Gohan pulls Yajirobe out of the ocean. Yamcha complains that the Jinzoningen might not even still be in the city.

We cut to an old man and a chinese doll walking the streets of the city, each with a Red Ribbon insignia on their headwear clearly identifying them as the Jinzoningen. A middle-aged man calls out to them, asking if they saw the skycar explode earlier. 19 approaches the man and kills him with a headbutt. Another man standing next to him watches this happen, but before he can do anything, 19 kills him with a punch.

20 remains standing in the street, watching the brutality until he hears a honking noise in front of him. He's blocking the road, drawing ire from a salaryman who honks his horn and yells at him to move. 20 punches through the hood of the car and destroys its engine. Then he walks around to the driver's side window and pulls the man out by his throat.

The two panels of this man's death are gruesome. His eyes bulge out of his sockets due to 20's vice grip. In the second panel, 20 crushes his entire neck like a sheet of paper, tearing it from its bloody root between his shoulders. It's easily one of the goriest things Toriyama's ever drawn.

Toei did not animate this gruesome death. Their 20 merely chokes the life out of him.

A nearby woman screams, alerting Yamcha to the Jinzoningen. He races over to investigate. 20 and 19 detect his approach immediately; Their scanners indicate a being whose energy far exceeds all conceivable human parameters. 20 considers that his scanners may be malfunctioning, but 19 confirms it. A reading like this can only be Son Goku.

Yamcha arrives and finds the three bodies that the Jinzoningen left behind. He asks the nearby witnesses what happened here and they inform him of the two strange men. Unfortunately, the men vanished. Yamcha decides it would be best to call in the rest of the group.

Above him, 19 and 20 validate 19's suspicions. Toei treats us to a datasheet as 19 scans him:

• Name: Yamucha
• Address: NBI 8250012B
• Height: 183 cm (~6'00")
• Weight: 068 kg (~149.9 lbs)
• Special Ability: Rouga Whowhoken (A.K.A. Rogafufuken, known in the dub as Wolf Fang Fist)
• Opinion: Stratos no Plamodel saihansare te ureshii. ("I'm happy Stratos plastic models are back on sale." It's certainly an opinion!)

19 declares a 96% probability that this is Yamcha. Not the target, but 20 figures that they can drain some energy from him. They descend behind Yamcha. He turns around, spotting them, and asks if they saw where the killers got off to. But then his eyes fall on the Red Ribbon insignias. 20 confirms that they are, in fact, the killers.

Yamcha leaps back from them and moves into his fighting stance. He calls out for the rest of the group, but 20 clasps his left hand over Yamcha's mouth. 20 hoists him into the air.

Anime Only: An oil tanker drives up. Spotting 20 and Yamcha in the road, the driver swerves and crashes into a gas station. Both the gas station and tanker explode, revealing the Jinzoningen's location to everyone else.

Anime/Manga: Yamcha wriggles in 20's grip, but can do nothing to free himself. He feels his energy fading. Then 20 stabs his hand through Yamcha's chest. Toriyama depicts this as a sudden motion. Yamcha's eyes shoot open and we hear the sound of flesh torn, then zoom out to see 20's hand sticking out of his back.

Toei goes for a more horrific version. 20 forces his hand through Yamcha slowly, pushing through his innards and out the back over the course of several seconds. Either way, Yamcha is gruesomely impaled. So long, old friend. Chapter 144 ends here.