Dragon Ball Z Volume 5

Dragon Ball Z – Season 5 covers the Imperfect Cell and Perfect Cell sagas. It starts at episode 140 and ends at episode 165.

The Season 5 box-set comes with English 5.1 surround audio, U.S. English broadcast stereo audio and Japanese mono with subtitles. Again, the menu option to have surround audio with the Japanese songs doesn’t work, having the English opening song instead. Other than textless opening and ending songs, there are no other extras on the discs, the remastered conversion to widescreen cuts the bottom and top off the video. The marathon option is back, which plays the opening, then all the episodes and then the ending, which saves over an hour of time if you’re watching them all together in one go.

So the fifth season is possibly the one lightest on Goku’s presence, with Krillin, Trunks, Vegeta and Piccolo having a much bigger role in this set than our hero himself.

It opens with Gohan and Trunks investigating the time capsule with Bulma. They realise that the time capsule is none other than Trunks’s, except that it has been on that same spot for a few years. In the meantime, in a town nearby, the population is disappearing. After witnessing this, Kami decides to merge with Piccolo and flies to encounters the new threat. Once he gets there, he confronts the monster and tricks it into telling him that it’s called Cell and how Dr Gero built him from the cells of the strongest fighters. Piccolo also witnesses Cell’s feeding from the life of bystander and hears from Cell how he feeds on others’ powers and that he wants to absorb Androids 17 and 18 in order to reach his perfect form. Piccolo, with his new powers gained after merging with Kami, easily overpowers Cell, who only escapes from Piccolo by using Tien’s Solar Flare.

As imperfect Cell avoids Piccolo, he continues to terrorise another city and absorbs more regular people to strengthen himself. Krillin and Trunks find Dr Gero’s secret lab and destroy present Cell, and also find the plans of Android 17. By this point Goku has recovered and decides to train in the Hyperbolic Time Chamber, where one year inside is the equivalent to one day outside. Goku invites Trunks and Vegeta to train in the Chamber as well, so they can all surpass the Super Sayan level and beat the Androids.

To avoid Cell reaching his perfect form, a new plan is devised to shut Androids 17 and 18 down before Cell has the chance to absorb them. To do this, Bulma starts working with Android 17’s plans to build a remote control to deactivate the Androids. At this point, the Androids manage to reach Master Roshi’s island and start fighting Piccolo, who proves to be a match for Android 17’s powers, until he starts to feel tired. Cell, noticing Piccolo’s power levels, concludes that Piccolo must be fighting the Androids and heads to the location of the fight. Once he gets there, he easily takes on 17 and Piccolo, due to the strength he has gained by absorbing other humans.

With Piccolo beaten, Cell focuses on absorbing the androids, but Android 16 steps in and proves that he is slightly more powerful than Cell. 16 asks 17 and 18 to escape, but they, believing Cell is dead, stay to watch the results of the fight. Cell suddenly sneaks behind 17 and absorbs him. At this point Cell transforms and 16 is no longer a match for him….

The fifth season is the build-up for the saga that, in this reviewer’s opinion, is the best part of Dragon Ball Z: the Cell games. It is also the point at which the power-ups become more and more over the top. The Super Sayan was supposedly the legendary ultimate warrior, strongest of all, but more powerful enemies keep on showing up…. Does it make Dragon Ball Z a bad show? By no means, but it is one of those shows that you can’t be very critical about (or even pay much attention to details) while watching it. This season is slightly better than the previous one, but still not back to the usual greatness of Dragon Ball. But I’m definitely looking forward to the next one.