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Mitsudomoe: Episodes 9-14 (Complete)

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What a fun show. Episode 9 might have been the high point, the unvoiced musical sections go to show how capable Mitsudomoe's visual humour is even without any dialogue. The segment with the barrel in particular was a wonderful (if exaggerated for comic effect) illustration of an older/younger sibling dynamic as Mitsuba tries to do something nice for Futaba for once (or perhaps to show off her own cleverness, probably a bit of both) only to find that she's opened herself up to a whole lot more responsibility, frustration and pain. The late (and entirely unnecessary) introduction of Sugisaki's masochist mother was a bit of a low point however, she didn't really add anything to proceedings and her segments were pretty dire and one-note, thankfully she only shows up a couple of times but none would have been preferable. It's unfortunate Mitsudomoe felt like it needed a perverse and exaggerated adult character like that because it really didn't, the comedy of errors with the other adults like Yabecchi and the triplets' father was much more entertaining and helped seperate the kids' crazy world from the more mundane adult one.

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Speaking of Mr. Marui, I can't believe I forgot to mention him before. Beloved of Futaba, scorned by Mitsuba, largely ignored by Hitoha and fiercely but quietly (until he isn't) loving and protective of his daughters, he might actually be one of the real best dads in anime. The fact people are constantly getting the wrong idea about him from his scruffy and intimidating appearance is quite cannily observed. Mitsudomoe might be the antithesis of a CGDCT show but there are some genuinely sweet moments towards the end here as we see that Mitsuba and Sugisaki are perhaps not completely awful, or really all that different. I'm quite surprised (and a little disappointed) it wasn't more popular, having only got a short eight episode second season which I guess I'll get straight into next.

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BrokenPhoenix said:
Dragon Ball Z [Re-watch] - Episodes 1 to 6

I love the start of Dragon Ball Z. Some anime can take a several episodes to get going, but the DB universe is immediately expanded within the first few minutes of the first episode - with the arrival of Raditz.

By the end of only the second episode, we have learned the true origins of Goku (or Kakarot/Kakarroto) and how he ended up on Earth. It really is quite a fast start.

Dragon Ball Z Movie 1: Dead Zone [Re-watch]

The highlight of this one for me was
Gohan becoming intoxicated and then proceeding to urinate in Kuririn's mouth 😂

And yes, I'm using spoiler tags for a 35 year old anime 😂

Up next:

Dragon Ball Z - Episodes 7 to 35
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Dragon Ball Z - Episode 7 through 35 [Japanese][Re-watch][Major spoilers blurred]

I've started to keep some notes as I go through my Dragon Ball re-watch; simply things that stand out to me or certain thoughts that I had when re-watching.

What kept going through my mind as I progressed a bit further into the show is how much of the original Japanese soundtrack I adore. In the UK, we grew up with the Ocean dub and Ron Wasserman's score, before we transitioned to the Funimation dub and Bruce Faulconer's score, and then to the Westwood dub and score. While these soundtracks are nostalgic and have their moments, none get close to the original Japanese score by Shunsuke Kikuchi in my opinion. Kikuchi is Dragon Ball, and I feel he manages to bring out Toriyama's artistic intentions the best with his music.

Now, after the Raditz saga there are a handful of filler episodes. One which stood out to me on this re-watch is episode 9, where Gohan falls into a cave and meets the robot known as "C-6", who has been trapped in the cave for 80 years. Gohan attempts to free C-6, which I think is quite poignant despite the episode not being canon; Gohan shows deep empathy for something that is 'only' a robot, so much so he continues to try and save C-6 as the cave begins to collapse on them. I think this is really good filler as it relates to Gohan's character in the canon. For instance, much later, in the Cell saga, we see the death (or termination) of Android #16 by Cell as the catalyst for Gohan to tap into his locked potential and ascend beyond the level of a Super Saiyan. Gohan isn't addicted to fighting like his father, his character is much different (likely due to being half-Earthling), he greatly sympathises with all creatures, including those who might be mere robots or androids.

1729468928432.pngWhile Toriyama did not sit down and approve every single character design or plot-point within these episodes, it has been noted Toriyama did contribute in some ways to the TV filler as well as the movies, such as designing Paikūhan or giving the anime production staff background information on the Saibamen. I think it's clear that those who worked on these filler episodes understood and appreciated Toriyama's characters and world.

Watching this set of episodes in Japanese, we are spared the infamous "it's over 9000!" line. In the original Japanese, the line is "It's higher than 8000!". This was changed in the original English dub as "9000" apparently matched the lip flaps better in English. DB Kai's English dub uses the original Japanese number though.

There's also something about watching the show again as a fully-fledged adult (I'm 30 now 😟), which I think is the case with a lot of media you go back to at a later stage of life. Some of the scenes definitely hit differently. As you grow, gain more life experience, and come to understand your own and other's mortality, you notice and comprehend things in the show you perhaps missed or did not quite fully understand when you were younger.

I sympathised with Chichi more when she learns of her husband's death and her son being "kidnapped" by Piccolo to go away and train. It's easy to see Chichi as simply a hot-headed, overbearing, crazy wife and mother. However, I now of course see, she is motivated by wanting to keep her family safe in the wake of a global threat. The deaths of Yamcha, Chiaotzu, Tienshinhan, and Piccolo weighed a lot more on me also. Piccolo's death especially, as it meant the Dragon Balls on Earth were gone; this filled me with an eerie sense of dread. For those surviving characters at that time, it meant they had no way of bringing their friends back to life. As far as they knew, they would not be seeing their friends alive again.

Perhaps the greatest scene in this stretch of episodes is when Piccolo sacrifices himself to save Gohan. As Piccolo says, Gohan is the only one who spoke kindly of him, which contributes towards Piccolo's actions to protect Gohan in that moment. Despite Son Goku being Piccolo's sworn enemy at this point, Piccolo sacrifices his own life to save his rival's son - which is a significant event in Piccolo's character development. Vegeta and Nappa also reveal to Piccolo that he is in fact not of this Earth and is actually from a planet called Namek. Much like Son Goku, Piccolo had no knowledge of his heritage or his true origins. It has been written on quite a bit, but this is seemingly a key factor as to why Dragon Ball Z, especially, took off within the Black-African American population when it came to the US. Being mixed-race myself and from a broken home, I can somewhat understand; being not quite sure of where you belong or where you are really from. Son Goku and Piccolo experience this on a inter-galactic scale, but it only serves to give them strength and more determination in their pursuits

The final scene in episode 35 is where we see an interesting diverge between how Son Goku is portrayed in the Japanese dub compared to the original English dub by Funimation. After being defeated and on the verge of death, Kuririn goes to finish off Vegeta with Yajirobē's sword. However, Kuririn is stopped by Son Goku. In the original Japanese version, Son Goku states that when he saw Vegeta almost dead he thought "what a waste...". We learn that Son Goku was excited to find there was fighter out there as strong as Vegeta. He essentially states he wants Vegeta to survive so that he can fight him again. Despite Vegeta and Nappa murdering his close friends, he asks Kuririn to grant him this "selfish request" to let Vegeta escape. Here, Son Goku's Saiyan heritage is showing - he wants to fight strong fighters and test his limits - even if by doing so he is putting the Earth and his friends at risk.

However, I also listened to the same scene with Funimation's original English dub. In this version, Goku's justification for allowing Vegeta to escape is that he wants to show Vegeta compassion and that the people of Earth are merciful; in the hope that Vegeta may one day turn good. To me, this was a straight up character assassination of the Japanese Goku on Funimation's part. We lose a big bit of Goku's original personality in this scene, as Funimation originally attempted to portray Goku as a merciful superman-type character. Son Goku's true character is about fighting strong fighters and training to his limits, more so than it is about wanting to be a principled superhero. This isn't the first and it will, unfortunately, not be the last time where there is a divergence like this between Japanese Son Goku and the original English Goku. Thankfully, however, DB Kai's revised English dub is a lot more faithful to the original Japanese translation.

The end of episode 35 brings us to the end of the Saiyan arc.

Up next, we have a bit of a break from the regular TV series:

Dragon Ball Z Movie 2: The World's Strongest (1990)
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Trillion Game ep1

Considering that I don’t think we’ve had an anime adaptation of any manga Ikegami has worked on since the Crying Freeman OVAs ended, I was curious to see what a modern take on his art style might look like. And honestly? Bit derpy. The show isn’t unappealing to look at, but the attempt to render his crisp, high contrast crime manga visuals using the typical soft focus, brightly coloured production approach you might expect from an upmarket romcom just looks a bit… squidgy somehow. It’s certainly distinctive.

Slightly odd art design notwithstanding, the unusual idea of a lighthearted (?) show about two mismatched business bros trying to claw their way up the corporate ladder intrigued me enough that I’ll give this a couple of episodes at least.
 
Mitsudomoe Zōryōchū!: Episodes 1-8 (Complete)

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Well. Brave move to have the main characters barely appear in the first episode and instead making it an episode of the in-universe sentai show Gachi Rangers, not a gamble I'm sure paid off. I wouldn't be surprised if what killed off the show was people waiting for a second season of anarchic fun with the Marui triplets, only to find themselves watching a very run-of-the-mill sentai parody for 20 minutes and not bothering to tune in again. Thankfully Zōryōchū does improve from there, but it feels more hit-and-miss than the first season. Also weirdly disjointed. Between episodes two and seven we get Christmas, summer, Valentine's Day, New Years, Valentine's Day again, then winter, April Fools' Day and Christmas again, then summer again in that order. I struggle to believe those thematic segments weren't originally intended to air together and I can't imagine why they didn't, it breaks up the flow of the individual episodes quite badly.

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One of Zōryōchū's good points is that it makes much greater use of the extended cast with the triplets now more often being joined by some of their classmates, which I think is a good thing for opening up the potential for comedy situations. Sugisaki as a foil for Mitsuba in particular (in their new, more frienemies like relationship than the outright mutal scorn of the first season) provides some of the funniest moments this time around. At the same time it feels like Hitoha has been left behind a bit as though they've run out of things to do with her, she does get a couple of good segments but largely the jokes surrounding her are just re-treads of things we've already seen and start to lose their lustre quite quickly. You could probably level accusations of repetitiveness at Mitsudomoe in general, but I think for the most part the situations were varied and funny enough that it didn't matter, it's not too different from a sketch show in that regard.

It's also kind of a pleasant surprise to see characters grow a bit (and I'm not talking about Mitsuba's belly) with Yabecchi now almost completely unfazed by the madness of his class and callbacks to previous events in a way I wasn't really expecting from a show like this. It's no Azumanga Daioh or anything in that regard, but I still felt like I had gotten to know the characters quite well by the end and despite Mitsudomoe's flaws, that end came much too quickly. I am going to miss these little terrors, just watching them march along to the beat of their very different drums in the riotous OP was enough to put a smile on my face.

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ayase said:
Mitsudomoe Zōryōchū!: Episodes 1-8 (Complete)

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Well. Brave move to have the main characters barely appear in the first episode and instead making it an episode of the in-universe sentai show Gachi Rangers, not a gamble I'm sure paid off. I wouldn't be surprised if what killed off the show was people waiting for a second season of anarchic fun with the Marui triplets, only to find themselves watching a very run-of-the-mill sentai parody for 20 minutes and not bothering to tune in again. Thankfully Zōryōchū does improve from there, but it feels more hit-and-miss than the first season. Also weirdly disjointed. Between episodes two and seven we get Christmas, summer, Valentine's Day, New Years, Valentine's Day again, then winter, April Fools' Day and Christmas again, then summer again in that order. I struggle to believe those thematic segments weren't originally intended to air together and I can't imagine why they didn't, it breaks up the flow of the individual episodes quite badly.

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One of Zōryōchū's good points is that it makes much greater use of the extended cast with the triplets now more often being joined by some of their classmates, which I think is a good thing for opening up the potential for comedy situations. Sugisaki as a foil for Mitsuba in particular (in their new, more frienemies like relationship than the outright mutal scorn of the first season) provides some of the funniest moments this time around. At the same time it feels like Hitoha has been left behind a bit as though they've run out of things to do with her, she does get a couple of good segments but largely the jokes surrounding her are just re-treads of things we've already seen and start to lose their lustre quite quickly. You could probably level accusations of repetitiveness at Mitsudomoe in general, but I think for the most part the situations were varied and funny enough that it didn't matter, it's not too different from a sketch show in that regard.

It's also kind of a pleasant surprise to see characters grow a bit (and I'm not talking about Mitsuba's belly) with Yabecchi now almost completely unfazed by the madness of his class and callbacks to previous events in a way I wasn't really expecting from a show like this. It's no Azumanga Daioh or anything in that regard, but I still felt like I had gotten to know the characters quite well by the end and despite Mitsudomoe's flaws, that end came much too quickly. I am going to miss these little terrors, just watching them march along to the beat of their very different drums in the riotous OP was enough to put a smile on my face.

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Nice one.
I hadn't even realised there is more.
The first season made me laugh so much.

The Gachi Rangers belt.
The Teachers visit to the nurse on sample day.
The silent montage taking the barrel home.
 
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