Dragon Ball ~ Episode 012

Dragon Ball ~ Episode 012

Original Title: “Shenron e no Negai” (神龍への願い)   (“The Wish to Shen Long”)

FUNi Title: “A Wish to the Eternal Dragon”

Original Air Date: 1986/05/14

English Air Date: 2001/09/04

Runtime: 24 minutes.

Review: With Shenron now summoned, Pilaf can already envision his wish coming true; he has the world in the palm of his hand – literally. Oolong and Puar are frozin in fear, while Goku, Bulma and Yamcha can do nothing but watch from the hole in their cell.
Goku tries to blast a bigger hole in their prison with the Kamehameha. The first blast fails, and as he charges his second attmept and blasts half the wall away, Oolong takes advantage of Pilaf’s nervous hesitation in making his wish and overcuts him, shouting out to the Dragon for a pair of underwear (Girl’s panties, in Japanese).
Sure enough while everyone looks on in shock, a pair of white, girl’s underwear falls from the sky and lands on Oolong’s face. The dragon disappears, and the Dragon Balls are sent flying in every direction. Goku lements the loss of his grandpa’s four-star ball, but Pilaf, on the other hand, is absolutely livid, sending Mai and Shu forward to attack the group.
Everyone but Goku runs for cover, only stopping when they realise the boy isn’t with them. Goku says he’s too hungry to run (tired from using the Kamehameha), so Yamcha snatches him up and carries him away. Shu and Mai see their escape and whistle for the castle’s gurad dogs to attack… Oolong and Puar trail behind the other three (bickering all the way) while up ahead the trio are face to face with a pack of dogs. Yamcha launches Goku head-first into the pack, the hungry boy imagines that the dogs are roasted (chickens?) and bashes the lot.
Puar and Oolong struggle catch up, with more dogs hunting after them, and instead transform into birds to fly out of the way. Goky uses the Nyoibou’s ability to extend to hoist himself, Bulma and Yamcha out of the dog’s reach, but they’re too far away from the window they were trying to get to, and they fall back to the ground, catching Oolong and Puar on the way and landing on them. More dogs arrive, and Yamcha jums to their defence, but Shu and Mai charge in with guns in hand, and with Goku out of it in a blur of starvation, no one can defend Bulma, who quickly has a gun pointed at her head. Yamcha surrenders.
Later, the five are locked up in a metal enclosure. Goku exclaims that he can just jump out of the cage, which apparently doesn’t have a ceiling, but Bulma explains to him that the roof is probably made of glass; it just looks like there’s nothing there. Goku tries to escape anyway, and smashes his head against solid glass.
Yamcha is fuming, saying that they’ll get out of there and find the Dragon Balls again, but Bulma tells them all sadly that there won’t be any Dragon Balls for a year; after a wish is made they become stone until their power is reccuperated. She and Yamcha complain about having to wait another year to get their wishes…
Pilaf pipes-in with an announcement; that he specifically designed the pen the group is being kept in, and though it may seem comfortable at night, it turns into an oven during the day; the glass ceiling allowing sunlight into the cage, and the steel walls reflecting the heat inside it. He intends to kill them all. Yamcha and Goku try in vain to break out again, but it does them no good; Pilaf laughs at their efforts.
Later, with a full moon in the sky, Pilaf, Shu and Mai are relaxing after their falied mission, Pilaf mentions how much he’s looking forward to seeing his thwarters fry.
Bulma and Oolong are bickering again, but Puar is ignoring them, looking up at them moon and trying to forget their imminent death. Goku remember’s a tale about a fearsome monster appearing on the night of the full moon, it’s a ledgend his Grandpa told him, and it was that monster that killed old Gohan. Yamcha can’t believe it. Goku goes on to tell them that then thing destroyed his old house, but he doesn;t know what it looks like, because he slept through the entire event. The only thing his Grandpa told him was that Goku should never go outside on nights of the full moon, and he should never look at the moon either.
The rest of the group backs into a corner, leaving Goku on his own, while Bulma asks if, on the night that Gohan was killed, Goku looked at the full moon. He did.
Yamcha, Bulma and the others are all thinking the same thing, that Goku isn’t a normal kid, but they can’t be sure… and they decide they don’t want to find out first hand, so Bulma tells Goku not to look at the moon; which he does, instantly, but nothing happens…
Then suddenly, Goku tenses and he bursts out of his clothes, growing taller and taller, while the others hide in their corner of the cell screaming. Goku becomes so big tht he breaks out the cell; now in the form of a giant, red-eyed monkey.

Characters Intoduced: None~ Unless you want to count Oozaru.

Returning Characters: Goku, Bulma, Oolong, Yamcha, Puar, Pilaf, Shu, Mai, Shenron.

Favourite Moment: Goku’s first on-screen transformation. Can’t get much more nostalgic than this, really.

Score: 5/7

Final Thoughts: The Dragon Balls are gone for now, and Goku’s transformation has been revealed. I like this episode very much; it’s filled with humour, a bit of action, and some actually very important plot revelations.