#while I was making these I just realized my DBZ DVDs might come in tomorrow :))))))))

[duhragonball]

Dragon Ball Z 269

All right, finally it’s time for some muthafuggin’ Vegito.

The Fusion Saga is one of my favorites, but it is a bit uneven.    The whole arc is basically a long gauntlet match featuring Super Buu, but everything leading up to Vegito is really just a warmup.    As we’ve seen, Buu only toyed with Gotenks while he waited for Gohan to show up, and Gohan never had a chance, because he didn’t know about Buu’s absorption ability.    I’ve often tried to imagine alternate scenarios for the fight against Majin Buu, but really, everything ends up leading back to the same outcome: Goku and Vegeta would have to work together to stop him.  Every alternative was just a stopgap measure.

But now, that’s all over.   Now it’s Vegito Time, baybay.

For openers, Vegito just tosses some air at Buu, or something like that, and it’s so forceful that it slices open his cheek.  Just a tiny sample of what this guy’s in for.

As for the name, “Vegito” or “Vegetto” is supposed to be a portmanteau of “Vegeta” and “Kakarott”.    The “o” on the end comes from the way Goku’s Saiyan name is pronounced in Japanese, “Kak-a-ro-to”.   There aren’t a lot of Japanese words that end with a consonant, and I think the only ones that do always end with an “n” sound, so a loan word like “carrot” ends up sounding like “carrot-o”.   At least, that’s my understanding of it.   

Viz tried to do an end run around this isn the translation of the manga by naming him “Vegerot”, which is probably more sensible, but it also sounds really dumb.  I like Vegito, even if “Gogeta” or “Veku” or “Vegeku” or “Kakarita”  would have been more appropriate.

Buu spends most of this episode acting like this is no big deal, although we’ve seen signs that he’s more afraid than he lets on.    He was genuinely upset with Gotenks for being so close to him in terms of power, and he hated Gohan for surpassing him in strength, and even when he had the upper hand after absorbing Gotenks and Piccolo, he was still very anxious about Goku’s Potara strategy.   

Initially, Buu seems to have an advantage, but Vegito claims he was warming up during this exchange, since he’s not accustomed to this new body yet.

Then he punches the crap out of Buu and blows off the lower half of his body.  This isn’t exactly new for the Fusion Saga.    People have been blowing up Buu like this for a while now.    The difference is that Vegito did it so quickly and effortlessly.    Unlike Gotenks, this wasn’t the result of some tremendous effort or a flashy ultimate move.   This was just Vegito taking Buu’s measure.  

From here, Buu admits--begrudgingly, that Vegito is stronger than Goku and Vegeta put together, so he decides to finish him off instead of playing around.   Only he can’t.  Vegito can take everything he dishes out with no trouble at all.  

Up on the Supreme Kai Planet, Kibitoshin is amazed to see someone hold their own against Majin Buu like this, but the Elder Kai tells him to look again, because Vegito is actually overpowering him.   This is a dream come true for Kibitoshin, but the Elder Kai isn’t entirely certain that this fight is a foregone conclusion.

Still, it’s very satisfying to watch.

Meanwhile in... well, we’ve never seen this planet before, but this is “Heaven” in Otherworld.   I don’t know if this counts as a “planet” exactly, but it sure looks like one.

It looks pretty idyllic, although everyone’s a ghost from the waist-down.   No sex in heaven, I guess.  

The point of this scene is that Chi-Chi, Bulma, and Videl are dead, so they figure they can at least find Gohan, who they think died way back in Episode 234.    But they can’t find him in Heaven, because he’s not dead and he never was.  Currently, he’s been absorbed into Majin Buu’s body.  

But Heaven’s a big place and the girls just got here, so they figure that they just need to look harder for him.   Chi-Chi’s a little worried that he got sent to hell, but that’s pretty hard to imagine.

Anyway, you might have noticed Dabura here with these three.   That’s because King Yemma sent him to Heaven after Majin Buu killed him, because Yemma figured Dabura would enjoy Hell a little too much.   Ironically, just being in heaven seems to have completely altered Dabura’s whole outlook on life, and now he’s this total sweetie-pie who admires Gohan’s character and has pledged to help the others find him.

As he puts it, being here has allowed him to “learn the importance of mind and life.”   Well, good for him but he’s only been here for like two or three days.   If Heaven has this much of a rehabilitation effect, it kind of makes you wonder why Yemma doesn’t just send all the bad guys here.   Bulma finds Dabura’s reformation a little hard to swallow, but she never even heard of the guy before she got here, so I don’t know why.  

From what I understand, Xenoverse 2 has a bunch of DLC content with Dabura revived as a lead villain, and he pops up in Dragon Ball Heroes and other video games, which sort of makes sense, because he was kind of a big deal, but he got overshadowed and killed off before he could ever do any real bad guy stuff.   But I wonder how they squared his resurrection with these scenes of him as a sappy babyface.

Back on Earth, Buu makes a huge ki ball and threatens to throw it down at the Earth.    Vegito can either dodge it and let the world be destroyed, or risk his life to block it.   

Meanwhile, Dende flies Mr. Satan to the battlefield, but he drops him, and Satan crotches himself on a rock.

But Dende quickly figures out that Goku and Vegeta have fused, and this means the world might have a chance after all, so I guess that salves Mr. Satan’s nuts a little.  

Anyway, Vegito catches this giant energy ball and kicks it up into space, where it explodes harmlessly.   I suppose you could say this was Buu’s biggest attack so far, and Vegito deflected it with ease.

Buu seems more amused than impressed. He acts like this was no big deal, even though he assumed earlier that Vegito would run away because he couldn’t deal with something that big.

Does... does Buu just not realize how strong Vegito is?   Maybe that’s what’s going on here.    He was pretty frank about Gohan when he first showed up, and he admitted that Gohan was stronger than himself.    But with Vegito, he seems to be in denial, or maybe he genuinely has no way to gauge the power of someone this far beyond him.

So Vegito decides to demonstrate his true power.

It, Mr. Satan.   He’s bout to do it.  

This is the last time we see a new character in DBZ turn Super Saiyan, and in this case it’s kind of a formality, since it only makes sense that a fusion of two Super Saiyans should have this ability.   It’s such a formality that Toriyama didn’t even bother building up to it in the manga.   There, Goku and Vegeta fuse, and Vegito transforms into a Super Saiyan immediately.   So maybe the novelty of Super Saiyan has worn off  at this point.  

But this is still one of my favorite scenes in the series.    Buu’s been unstoppable this whole time, and now he’s finally met his match in Vegito, and this time it’s Vegito who turns out to be even stronger than he was letting on.  Buu was screwed before, but now he’s extra-double screwed now, and if he doesn’t realize it yet, he soon will.

And I think this is the first episode I watched in Japanese, because I remember buying the DVD back in 2004 just to see Vegito in action again, and I decided to watch the subs just to get more out of it.   This was the first time I heard the closing minutes of the track “Believe in Tomorrow”, which plays when Vegito transforms.   It’s awesome and inspirational, and I kind of get annoyed when it’s used for the close of so many other episodes in this arc.   But it’s still less awesome here.   

Things were bad before.   Very bad.    We’re not out of the woods yet, but it wasn’t a waste of time and effort to hang in there.    The world endured Majin Buu, and now the tide has finally turned.    Super Vegeto is here.    Z stands for the end, but not yet.   Believe in tomorrow.

#dragon ball #2019dbliveblog #fusion saga #vegito #majin buu #dende #mr satan #bee #chi chi #bulma #videl #dabura #kibitoshin #elder kai