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duhragonball · 1 year

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Jaco the Galactic Patrolman Ch. 6-11

Lets see if we can wrap this up.

Chapter 6. So last time, Jaco and Omori were shopping in East City, when Jaco rescued a girl from some hooligans. In the process, he ended up assaulting a couple of cops, which created a big enough commotion that he couldn’t just go back to acting inconspicuous. Fortunately, the girl, Tights, leads them away from the police. Unfortunately, Jaco does a bunch of dramatic poses while introducing himself, which gives away his position. So he grabs Omori and Tights and flies them back to the pier. They ask why he didn’t just do that in the first place, and he explains that he can only do it “once”. Like, once a week, or once ever?

Chapter 7: So Tights returns with them to Omori’s island, and she offers to head back to East City to fetch the groceries they missed out on in the incident. The East City authorities know Jaco and Omori’s faces, and they’ve even distributed a police sketch, which Jaco finds deeply offensive. So Tights heads out by herself, as she already knows how to pilot Omori’s boat.

Five hours later she finally returns, along with all her stuff, because she’s decided to move in. Omori informs her that she can’t live on the island, because even he can’t live on the island anymore. The government is kicking him out in a few days. Nonetheless, she crashes with him for a while.

As a token of her gratitude, Tights also gifts a bit of Sky Gold to Jaco, since he told her that he needs it to power his spaceship. They need 19 million yen worth of the stuff, and her gift is only 3 million, but she figures it’s still enough to power the communications equipment. Oh, okay, I thought the radio was damaged in the crash, but it turns out it just uses the same power source as the engines.

And it works. Jaco can’t fly all the way home, but he can still fly the ship, and he can use the radio. Unfortunately, he’s so excited to fly the thing that he wrecks the carport it’s parked under, and that damages the antenna, so he can’t send or receive transmissions. And unlike the power supply, Omori has no idea how to repair it.

Chapter 8: Tights makes plans to take the boat to Kiwi Island, and Omori thinks she’s going to watch the launch of Twinkle 8, the publicity stunt arranged for pop idol An Azuki. But no, Tights plans to board the rocket, because An’s people hired Tights to be An’s double. This way, if something happens to Twinkle 8 (RIP Twinkles 1, 2, and 5), the real An Azuki will still be alive, and they can just make up some gonzo story about her miraculous survival.

But Tights would be dead, which troubles Omori a great deal. And now we finally see the payoff to this Twinkle 8 business. All day, I’ve been looking forward to coming home and reading the second half of this story, and finding out how all this stuff ties together. I mean, Tights is one-third of the main cast, and Toriyama didn’t even introduce her to the others until halfway in. This manga has progressed a rather leisurely pace. It’s been good, but you’d expect things to get moving by chapter 5 of a ten-part series.

And the thought occurred to me: What if it doesn’t all tie in together at the end? What if Twinkle 8 has nothing to do with anything, and the whole story falls flat? What if Jaco the Galactic Patrolman sucks?

But here in Chapter 8, my fears are laid to rest. Omori cared very little about the Twinkle 8 launch, because he had no stake in the matter. He despised humanity, and decided to live in seclusion to avoid other people and their problems. But now he’s connected. He helped Jaco, who helped Tights, and now he’s finding out that it’s not just some stranger who’s risking her neck on a dangerous spaceflight.

And that’s why she spent all her money on that bit of Sky Gold. That was her payment for posing as An Azuki, and Tights knew it wouldn’t be of any use if she died before she could spend it, so she used it to help Jaco and Omori instead. Omori tries to talk her out of going, but her mind is made up. Tights dreams of being a science fiction author, and a chance to fly in outer space was too good to pass up.

So she leaves the island, and soon after, the same guy from Chapter 2 shows up. This is Tamagoro Katayude, the Chief of the Government Sea Police. He noticed Jaco on the island the first time he visited, and then he saw the reports of “Mask Man” in East Ctiy, and realized they were the same guy. So he organizes a squad to track down Jaco and arrest him. There four other guys on this team, and they got character profiles in the collected edition of this manga, but I see now that they were never important. They just got used because they wanted to have a character profile at the end of each chapter, and there were four extra slots.

Chapter 9: Omori tries to play dumb while Jaco stays out of sight, but Katayude calls out for “Mask Man” to show himself, and Jaco’s ego is too big to let that slide. He responds, giving away his presence on the island just to make sure everyone knows that his name isn’t “Mask Man”, and that he looks nothing like that ugly police sketch. Katayude says that he must be arrested, while Jaco demands that the police revise their sketch of him.

Then Jaco notices that the Twinkle 8 launch has failed, and the rocket has begun to fall. Omori calculates that it will crash in just two minutes. Jaco gets in his spaceship to save her, but he needs Omori’s assistance for that. And yet, Katayude doesn’t believe any of this, and he refuses to simply allow them to leave.

So Jaco defeats Katayude’s entire team in one panel. Unfortunately, that still took too long, so they won’t have enough time to rescue Tights. Then Jaco remembers Omori’s time machine.

Omori has been trying to build a working time machine ever since his wife’s tragic death, but the best he could manage after all these years was to simply slow time down to a virtual standstill. And even that effect only lasts for fifty seconds, but that should still be just enough time for them to get to Tights before Twinkle 8 crashes.

Chapter 10: From there, Jaco’s plan is pretty straightforward. He flies the ship alongside Twinkle 8... wait, how did they operate the ship while time was frozen? Well... never mind. Anyway, he has Omori take the controls and keep the ship flying parallel to Twinkle 8 while he goes inside to evacuate the crew.

Omori isn’t eager to take the wheel, but Jaco reassures him that he’s already shown him how to operate the controls of his ship. Wait, maybe that’s what they did with those fifty seconds.

The point is that it gives Omori a hefty share of the credit for this rescue. Jaco has the powers and technology to pull this off, but without Omori’s time machine and his willingness to pilot the ship, this never would have worked.

But even after getting the crew to safety, there’s still the matter of Twinkle 8 crashing into East City. Jaco doesn’t see the problem, since the city isn’t that impressive anyway, but Omori says “You’re Super Elite, aren’t you?!” So he jumps out of his own ship, bounces off a building, dropkicks the rocket to knock it away from the city, then destroys it with his sidearm. Not bad at all.

When they return to the island, they find Katayude and his crew saluting them. Katayude congratulates Omori and Jaco for their heroism and apologizes for trying to interfere. He also promises to arrange with the government to let Omori stay on the island. Oh, and Katayude also promises never to reveal the truth about Jaco being a robot. Yes, if such an amazing technology ever fell into the wrong hands, it could lead to disaster. Jaco is outraged, but Omori and Tights keep him quiet.

Also, Katayude asks to come visit the island some time, because I guess he likes the place too.

So all’s well that ends well, but all Jaco cares about is Katayude’s promise to have the police sketch corrected. He watches the news with great eagerness, but when they show the new sketch, he isn’t pleased.

Chapter 11: So that’s all, right? Wrong! Jaco still has a mission to complete, even if he can’t return home or call for help with his spaceship. He came to Earth to intercept a dangerously powerful alien invader. As he watches the skies, Tights asks about the alien, and Jaco admits that he can only hope to defeat it if it’s a juvenile. If it’s an adult, the Earth is doomed. Z stands for the end. Wait.

While they talk, Tights compliments Jaco’s bodysuit, but he reveals that he isn’t wearing a bodysuit. That’s his skin, and he’s been strutting around nude this whole time. Well, I guess the gloves, boots, and those ear things are clothes. And that vest he wears. Tights asks how he pees, since his crotch is smooth like a Ken doll, and Jaco squirts urine out of two holes in his forehead. Tights then shoves him off the cliff they’ve been standing on, and in all the commotion, Jaco misses the alien spacecraft as it passes through the atmosphere.

Anyway, Tights asks for a lift to Kiwi Island to pick up the rest of her stuff, and on the way, Jaco tells them more about the alien he was sent to stop. Some whackamaroo species of warriors that you’ve probably never heard of. Get this, they’re called... Saiyans, and they’re from the Planet Vegeta.

DUN DUN DUNNNNNNNH!

Fortunately, the Saiyan who slipped past Jaco was a child after all, and the guy who found him just happened to be a martial arts expert, so he managed to tame the Saiyan boy with the power of karate. I love how banged up both of these guys are. Toei usually animates their first encounter with Son Gohan holding up a cute, cuddly baby, but Toriyama knows what’s up. Baby Kakarot came out of that ship ready to throw hands, and Gohan was like “Oh, you wanna go? You wanna go? Come on you adorable little jerk, let’s dance!” And then they became family.

Gohan names the boy “Goku” because “ku” sounds like the Japanese word for “sky”. Awwww.

Meanwhile, Tights finally decides that the best way to help Jaco is to put Omori in touch with Dr. Briefs the famous head of the Capsule Corporation. He could reverse-engineer the anti-gravity technology from Jaco’s ship, and pay well enough to afford the Sky Gold Jaco needs, and Dr. Briefs can be trusted not to reveal where the technology came from. Omori points out that no one can be trusted absolutely, to which Tights reveals that Dr. Briefs is her father.

So why did she take the job to ride Twinkle 8, and stay on the island with Omori, and so on? Because she needs experience to become a sci-fi novelist, and she’d never get it just living at home in luxury.

See, this was what I was talking about when I was complaining about the plot holes and general sloppiness of Dragon Ball GT. It’s not just the fact that GT often refused to explain a lot of its twists and turns. The bigger issue is that a major key to Toriyama’s talent as a storyteller is his ability to use the characters to ask questions and answer them. He uses it to provide information to the reader, but he also uses it to develop characters and advance the plot.

So when a series like GT tries to emulate Toriyama’s style, but without bothering to ask and answer questions, it leaves a lot of awkward gaps in the story. I’m not just talking about GT failing to explain stuff to the audience. I mean GT never adequately explored how Goku felt about being stuck in a child body, or how Gero and Mu built a replica of 17 in Hell. You can skip stuff like that, sure, but that’s kind of the meat of your story. If you skip that, what have you got left?

But Toriyama gets it, and I’m pretty sure that’s why Dragon Ball Super was over twice the length of GT, and why the last four Dragon Ball movies were bigger successes than Dragon Ball Evolution. It’s not enough to just say Tights wants to be a science fiction novelist. She chooses to go out into the world and experience different things to broaden her horizons. That’s how she plans to become a sci-fi novelist, and it also informs all the decisions she’s made in this story. At first glance, she seems to act on impulse, but there’s a purpose behind it all. In GT, Pan expresses a desire to be taken more seriously, but we never see her do anything to achieve that goal. In DBE, Bulma says she wants to become famous, but we never learn why that version of Bulma wants fame, or how she expects to get it.

Anyway, the Brief family comes to visit, and while they’re here, Jaco turns on the evening news. While Tights was moving her stuff from Kiwi Island, Jaco went to the news station and posed for them just so they would put it on TV, so everyone would know what he actually looks like. Because Jaco is one petty dude.

Meanwhile, Tights’ little sister Bulma has already repaired the antenna on Jaco’s ship. She noticed that the wrecked carport and deduced that Jaco’s ship had crashed into it, so she found the missing pieces of the antenna there, and managed to reassemble it.

Bulma also points out that the ship never actually needed Sky Gold at all. The component Omori found in the ship was made of Sky Gold, sure, but it wasn’t the power source. Bulma believes it was simply a containment device for storing the energy. A different metal with similar physical properties would work just as well, such as copper.

Okay, that’s a satisfying way to pay that off. I’m something of a scientist myself, and I was kind of irritated at the idea of “Sky Gold” being something you shoot with a laser to make a ship fly. It’s more like wiring than electricity, which is a lot easier for me to swallow. So it’s gratifying to see that I’m somewhere between Professor Omori and 5-year-old Bulma, at least in terms of metallurgy.

So they don’t even need the money now, but Jaco still goes ahead and gives Dr. Brief the anti-gravity tech. All he asks for in exchange is some money for Omori and Tights, since they helped him so much. Also, he radios HQ, and they agree to just give Dr. Brief the whole spaceship for free, since it’s an outdated model.

Wait, so how does this work? Jaco needs the ship to return home, so does he have to tow the thing back in a different spaceship to bring it to Dr. Briefs?

So I guess that wraps things up pretty well. Also Bulma’s ray gun actually works. Dr. Briefs asks Tights how college is going, even though Tights already graduated last year. And Bulma’s mom wants to get wasted.

With the money Dr. Briefs gives him, Omori buys the entire island, and he continues to live there, along with Katayude, who’s a much better cook than Tights. I dont’ want to read too much into this, but did Katayude and Omori hook up after he moved to the island?

I think Tights lives on the same island too? She had Jaco take her around some different planets, which helped her career in science fiction writing. Though highly successful, she had one dud novel, which was based on Jaco.

Anyway, Jaco comes by to visit sometimes, and he got a girlfriend at some point, although no one can tell them apart in the photos.

And about eleven years after Jaco’s first visit to Earth, Bulma drops by the island for a visit while on a journey to investigate a set of magic wishing balls, which she suspects may have originated in outer space.

... Which you can read about in Akira Toriyama’s other manga, which he plugs on the last page of this chapter. Well, I’m sold. I think I might just give this Dragon Ball thing a try.

And that’s it. Well, this was a treat to read. I’m not sure if Jaco being a prequel to Dragon Ball was much of surprise to the readers in 2013, but even though I knew about it going in, I found it enjoyable to watch everything build to the reveal.

There is one final chapter in the Jaco collection, but I’ll cover that in another post.

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