"Dragonball Z" The Show That Never Ends
 

Do you realize that it's been over ten years since Dragonball Z first aired on American TV? That it's been almost twenty since it premiered in Japan? And yet, it lives on. Dozens of single DVDs, lots of movies, a successful video game franchise, a live-action movie that is kind-of/sort-of being made. And now we finally have slim-line season boxsets, the latest being devoted to Season Three.

ImagePreviously, Goku, after receiving his training from King Kai, had finally defeated Vegeta and saved the Earth. But several of their friends died in the attack, so Gohan, Krillin, and Bulma traveled to Namek, Piccolo's homeworld, to use their Dragonballs to wish their friends back to life. However, the three Earthlings ran into trouble immediately. Vegeta, stronger than ever, reappeared along with a new villain with monstrous power: Freeza. Goku eventually healed and headed out to Namek, training in 100 times Earth's gravity, but Gohan and Krillin couldn't celebrate for too long as Freeza called in the Ginyu Force, his special elite squadron. They were simply too much for Vegeta, Gohan, and Krillin, but luckily, Goku arrived in the nick of time. Things got a bit hairy when Ginyu and Goku switched bodies, but eventually Ginyu was defeated. However, the price was heavy, as it left Goku's body battered and broken. As he recuperated in one of Freeza's healing chambers, Krillin attempted to find Dende to get the password for the Dragonballs while Nail, the most powerful Namek warrior, stalled Freeza so the Earthlings can summon the dragon.

See, now, there was a healthy chunk of story going on in between all those fights in the first half of the Freeza Saga, and it made things better. Situations, fight conditions, and opponents all changed up. Of the 33 episodes on this volume, though, all but four have one of the Z-Fighters battling Freeza, and about twenty of them are taken up solely with the Goku vs. Freeza fight. Seriously, it gets to be a pain marathoning this fight because it just never ends. Even before Goku arrives at the battlefield, the story takes its sweet time moving from plot point to plot point and not even doing that effectively either. Many episodes consist solely of the characters gawking at what's going on, then making about ten minutes of inane comments before continuing to gawk as Freeza and the Z-Fighter trade blows.

ImageAnd when Goku enters things come to a screeching halt. The fight starts out well with a well-paced death by Vegeta and then some initial blows by Goku (in one of the few well-animated scenes this season), but that doesn't last very long. In fact, it doesn't even last until the next episode, as the next three episodes are all about Goku and Freeza testing each other. Seriously, it takes them three freaking episodes before the fight even gets serious. And don't forget the annoying anime-only filler like "Bulma gets taken over by Ginyu" and "Dead Z-Fighters fight dead Ginyu Force" that occur around this time, stalling the story even more. Then there's two straight episodes where Goku needs to get inspired by visions, one episode literally stalling for time, and one that has Goku turning into a Super Saiyan.

Once that happens, the most idiotic decision in the series is made: Use ten episodes to cover five minutes. Namek is set to explode in roughly that time, but since the fight takes five minutes, it just becomes ridiculous. Even if you say that it took longer than five minutes because Freeza was just estimating, it couldn't have taken much longer, which doesn't help any. To make things worse, several episodes then occur where nothing actually happens, prior a four-episode stretch where Freeza is defeated and Namek explodes. Yes, there's a four-episode gap that occurs during the final "minute" of Namek exploding between Freeza's defeat and Namek's explosion. Oy.

But is the content itself any good? Well, parts of it are. Probably the most memorable parts of the early fighting are when Krillin tries to stall Form 2 Freeza and when Piccolo arrives soon afterward, but even those moments do