Dragon Ball Z Abridged

Lingering questions from DBZA:

• Why are dinosaurs still a thing?
• When did Oolong get arrested for that panty raid? Did the gang even care? How was he caught he can be literally anybody.
• Why was Bulma's answer to 16's question about birds wrong? What's his favorite type of bird?
• Why did Goku name a bird "Toriyama" and tell it to "go teach a dinosaur to ride a ball?"
• How does eating sick aliens give you one of their genetic traits? Eating sick cows just gives you a life-threatening disease most of the time.
• How did Goku find a muffin button on the spaceship? Why did Bulma's dad even build one? If he didn't then who did?
• So who got that lifetime supply of HETAP?
• What did Goku mean by "high-fiver dinner" when he went to talk to Cell the first time?
• How much time actually passed between the androids wrecking everybody, and Krillin realizing he and the gang were asleep? There seemed to be a recurring joke about timezones that episode - was that based on the episode providing conflicting descriptions of time passing, or was the joke meant to be taken at face value?
• Roshi said "two of us are thirsty" in response to Bulma pointing out that she's still breastfeeding - I assume he was talking about himself and the baby, but...
• Why did Vegeta and Krillin try to keep Yamcha out of Team Three Star?
• Does Cell count as "bug meat" or "man meat?"

Edited by Soble on Mar 1st 2020 at 6:10:54 AM

That time joke is because the in the android saga it's never shown to be night even though time is clearly passing.

It's never dark out at all until the 10 days to the Cell games...

Specifically Trunks and Veggie spend their entire first day and it's never shown to be night time by the time they come out.

Edited by randomness4 on Mar 1st 2020 at 1:22:23 AM

To be fair if 24 hours pass, it would be daytime when they went in and came out.

There is even a panel showing that almost a full day has passed between them going inside the chamber, and the androids showing up on the island.

Edited by Medigo03 on Mar 1st 2020 at 9:27:05 AM

IIRC the semi-official answer is that it's a Star Trek-style fabricator that Goku figured out how to make muffins come out of.

Adding to that, because Brief's reverse engineered Goku's ship, he somehow added a muffin button if we were to assume they all come standard on any Freeza tech.

It's not clear in the anime...

There's no sense of time passing in the anime, so the only indicator that it's been a day is when they exit the room and that's including all the events that happen during Piccoro fighting 17, then Cell showing up, fighting 16, absorbing 17, then Ten blasting Cell, Kakarrot saving his friends from Cell...just all of that is done without any clear indicator of how much time passed.

Vegeta and Trunks's 24-hour training in the RoSaT kinda has the inverse issue of Frieza's infamous "Five Minutes". What transpires during that 24-hour period is that the Androids find Kame House, Piccolo fights 17, Cell shows up and absorbs 17, and then Tenshinhan does his thing.

That's it. That is literally all that goes down in the outside world while Vegeta and Trunks are training in the RoSaT.

Given that the entirety of action between Piccolo starting his fight with 17 and Vegeta emerging from the RoSaT would logically be like an hour, maybe two, this means that over 20 hours passed offscreen between "Vegeta enters RoSaT" and "Piccolo watching news at Kame House and screaming obscenities at Cell".

That's not unthinkable, mind you. But it's a bit jarring, given that the series does little to indicate the passage of such a significant amount of time. Which is how the Abridged wound up giving us lines like Krillin's, "JESUS, how long did we sleep?!"

Edited by TobiasDrake on Mar 2nd 2020 at 8:18:54 AM

Could have sworn even the anime had some narration to explain the timeskip.

Really the only time oddity is that it takes the androids so long to get to the Island (since they abandoned their car hijinx at that point)

At least in the Abridged series, there is a passage of time - Goku picks up Gohan while he's on the plane (And Krillin & Piccolo are there too), teleports to go get Vegeta and Trunks, they all go to the lookout, Vegeta and Trunks enter the chamber.

Next shot of Krillin he's at Kamehouse asleep. Which means Krillin and Co flew there (at plane speeds) and then had enough time to sleep. So it's perfectly possible that yeah, Krillin slept like 20 hours. Heck assume a 12 hour plane ride and it makes perfect sense (Except why they'd put up with a 12 hour plane ride when they can all do the distance in a few minutes).

It IS a jarring cut because yeah, a whole day vanished.

Edited by Ghilz on Mar 2nd 2020 at 10:41:57 AM

IIRC the manga also said almost a day had passed.

x10

Toriyama(obviously) refers to Toriyama Akira.

Dinosaur riding a ball comes from lyrics of Cha-La-Head-Cha-La:

恐竜がいたら 玉乗り仕込みたいね, Kyōryū ga itara tamanori shikomitai ne(If there’s a dinosaur, I want to train it to balance on a ball)

It's weird they were even flying the plane at all since they weren't transporting Kakarrot anymore...

They were too busy doing this...◊

Also, the "tori" in Toriyama means "bird". Toriyama opened Bird Studios as a play on this.

Thus, the bird Toriyama who teaches a dinosaur to ride a ball. It's a complicated joke.

I want to say that knowing that it's referencing the lyrics to "Cha-La Head Cha-La" offers clarity but... it's still one of the most inexplicable lines in DBZA to me.

Even though I understand the reference fully doesn't mean I understand why the reference was made.

Shouldn't be too hard, I know a horse that rides a ball.

Genius Bonus, I suppose.

The actual scene itself works just fine without context, I thought. I didn't understand its meaning when I first saw it either, but the overall gag still worked for me.

In the Frieza arc, Goku transforms into a Super Saiyan because Frieza murdered his best friend Krillin. It's an inspirational scene of Goku summoning up the heroic strength needed to finally end Frieza's reign of terror.

In the Cooler movie, Goku transforms into a Super Saiyan because a random bird died for some reason. And then he Jesus Christs the bird back to life in the process.

This scene is gibberish, framed in an inspirational manner. And so Goku delivers words that are pure gibberish, but voiced in an inspirational way. He speaks utter nonsense as though he's saying something that has some sort of deep, significant meaning, because that's what the scene is.

Goku also proceeds to straight up rip off his own candy reference from the Frieza fight afterwards, when showing off his power.

When fighting Frieza, Goku grabbed and crushed his hands while telling him, "I'm going to break you. Like a Kit Kat Bar."

When fighting Cooler, Goku No Sells Cooler's attack with the exchange,

• Goku: Not going anywhere?
• Cooler: (punch)
• Goku: Grab a Snickers.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Mar 2nd 2020 at 12:40:44 PM

Cooler Karrot has a spiritual connection with all the animals in that movie.

They love him.

Watsonian thought: Energy absorption androids 19 and Gero are entirely mechanical, save Gero’s brain, while infinite energy engines 17 & 18 are cyborgs. And young as well, maybe that’s telling.

So is there an actual thought there, or just stating facts...?

16 was Infinite Energy and he was completely mechanical.

Huh, was he? I got the impression he was a lesser model to 17 & 18.

Just reminiscing the discussion about why didn’t Gero give himself infinite energy if it was superior. The Doylist reason was laid out clearly, I was wondering about the Watsonian reason by finding the common thread. throws that out completely.

17 and 18 were cyborgs so Cell could absorb them.

Gero was absorption because he's an asshole who wanted to be able to grab Goku's face and energy vampire him to death while looking him in the eyes.

I mean, energy absorption is probably better for fighting the Z Fighters.

Sure it won't have the raw power, but the Androids were already insane levels of overkill as far as Gero was concerned. The big issue in the past is that people have specialized ki attacks that let them hit above their weight. Imagine if Raditz could have absorbed the Special Beam Cannon... or if the Spirit Bomb or Goku's Kaioken Kamehameha actually made Vegeta stronger.

A reduction in power (to only "way the fuck stronger than we have any need to be) for the sake of nullifying the heroes best attacks seems worth it.

Edited by Larkmarn on Mar 3rd 2020 at 9:14:06 AM

It's only worth it if that reduction in power doesn't push them below the "totally f*cked" threshold.

Fans love the idea behind the energy absorption models, but Vegeta aptly demonstrates the flaw in the concept. Android 19 gets a nice surprise absorption in during his fight with Goku, but the element of surprise only lasts so long. After that, 19 is forced to get into grappling range with someone powerful enough to tear off his arms by sheer brute force. And that doesn't go so well for him.

The absorption models run afoul of the fundamental flaw in building your entire strategy around a trap. Once you've revealed your hand, you can't put the trap back in the box. "If you use a Kamehameha, you will make me far more powerful than I am now." Cool, good to know. Then I just won't do that, and will instead beat you to death with my bare hands.

The Androids don't have an answer for the obvious response to their one cool trick. And that pretty much doomed them from the outset.

Against a Super Saiyan that is prepared for it, the absorption models are demonstrably ineffectual. Against a Super Saiyan unprepared for it, it's inconclusive; Goku's sudden onset heart illness makes it difficult to discern how that fight would have played out.

But the best case scenario is still that 19 kills Goku and then still gets trashed by Vegeta. It's a neat trick that only works one time and then afterwards you're completely f*cked.

By contrast, Android 18 didn't have a cool trick at all. Despite this, she successfully managed to brutalize Vegeta and leave him a broken waste on the ground.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Mar 3rd 2020 at 8:47:25 AM

Yeah, but that's where we get into the "what the f*ck is Namek" thing, where Gero's absorption bots were already way more powerful than anything in the known universe that could exist. These things were more powerful than Freeza for some reason.

You can't really fault the guy for not having foreseen the whole Super Saiyan bit, and sacrificing raw power for more strategic utility.