Dragon Ball Z: Dragon Ball Z #2

The second season of Dragon Ball Z follows the adventures of Gohan, Bulma, and Krillin, who departed from Earth after Goku’s victory over Vegeta in search of planet Namek and its Dragon Balls in an attempt to resurrect their friends who died in the battle against the Saibamen, Nappa, and Vegeta.

Stop reading here if you don’t want to see Spoilers

Gohan and co. take a couple of accidental detours where they board the spaceship of a group of infant/juvenile refugees as well as being fooled by a pair of aliens attempting to steal their spaceship into believing they were already on Namek. But they manage to overcome both challenges and continue their journey to Namek.

Once arriving at Namek, our heroes find out that Frieza was the chief space pirate and that having heard all about the Dragon Balls, now wants them to himself to wish for eternal youth. Meanwhile, Vegeta already fully recovered, finds out about Frieza’s plans and rushes to Namek in order to beat Frieza to the Dragon Balls.

In his search, Frieza has been ruthlessly murdering all the Namekians, forcing them to hand over their Dragon Balls. During one of Frieza’s raids on a Namekian village, Gohan and Krillin, who are nearby watching, can’t take it anymore and try to save help the Namekians. Unfortunately they can only rescue one child from Frieza’s men: Dende.

Their actions gain the trust of Dende, who then leads the heroes to the Great Elder, the creator of the Dragon Balls. The Great Elder not only gives Gohan and Krillin the Dragon Ball, he also helps them release all their inner hidden potential as fighters.

Meanwhile, Goku – already fully recovered after receiving a pack of Senzu beans from Master Karin – takes off on a spaceship created by Bulma’s father. But Frieza has not been idle during this time. Upon learning of Vegeta’s plan, he orders the Ginyu Special Corps to come to Namek and help in the search of the Dragon Balls.

Vegeta finds Gohan and Krillin and demands that they hand the Dragon Balls to him, but when he suddenly senses the Ginyu Corps approaching, he tells Gohan and Krillin that if they want any hope of stopping Frieza, they must join forces. Soon after that, the Ginyu Corps finds them.

Gohan and Krillin start to fight the weakest of the Ginyu Special Corps, Gourd, whose special ability is to freeze time while he holds his breath. During a moment of distraction from Gourd, Vegeta finishes him off. However, the next fighter from the Ginyu Corps is Racoome who soon has Vegeta at a disadvantage. Krillin steps into the fight to stop Racoome killing Vegeta, but he is easily defeated.

On the other side of the planet, Captain Ginyu has already used his radar to find all the Dragon Balls and delivers them to Frieza, who tries to use them right away, only to find out that he needs a password to call Shen Long out and make his wish.

Back to our heroes! Now Gohan has to fight, but he is also no match for Racoome. Just as Racoome is about to finish him, he is saved by Goku. Now the main fight is about to begin….

Like the previous boxset, this release comes on 6 discs with 35 episodes which cover the Namek and Ginyu story arcs. The set also has the following extras:
Dragon Ball Z Rebirth featurette
A New Look featurette
Textless Opening & Closing
Trailers

On my review of the First Season, I forgot to mention the widescreen conversion, which instead of stretching the video, cropped a little from the top and bottom of it. While that may be a no-no for some fans, it was mostly ignorable on my part and only on rare occasions, slightly annoying, but not at all detrimental to the enjoyment of the show.

On the usual technical aspects the show still has the same standards, great action scenes, and good voice-acting. Animation hasn’t improved, but that’s only to be expected from an anime TV show that’s over 20 years old. The only trouble I have with this release is the fact that Frieza is voiced by an actress in the English dub. Also, from time to time, he is referred as a female, which causes great confusion for the character’s identity.