81 "Piccolo no Jishin! Freeza o Taosu no wa Ore da"
(Piccolo's Self-Confidence! I Will Bring Freeza Down)
91-3-6
66 "Deja Vu" 99-9-28

Piccolo and Freeza begin to fight, and the Namek warrior declines the Earthlings' offers for help. Vegeta and Kuririn are skeptical of Piccolo's chances, but Gohan has faith in his mentor's abilities. The battle continues to rage, with no clear indication of who has the upper hand.

Wow, not much to report on in this ep. No particularly bad dialogue, nor are there any cuts or censors. One thing I WILL mention, though, is the "ooh ooh uhh ooh" problem, which is particularly bad in this one. Piccolo and Freeza are both just grunting up a storm as they fight, and it sounds pretty lame when every single punch they throw is vocalized. Not only that but the "onlooker" sounds kind of get on my nerves too. I don't know why FUNimation seems to think that every time somebody has their mouth open, some noise has to come out, but whenever we see Gohan, Kuririn and Vegeta, they're always standing there going "huuh aaah huh eh!"

If FUNi would just listen to the Japanese version, they'd see how this stuff can be handled and actually sound good. When the characters are fighting, they'll throw in an occasional grunt now and then, but they know how to pace themselves. Most of the time you just hear punching sounds. As for the "horrified onlooker" reaction shots, the Japanese cast usually just goes for soft breathing. It's a whole lot more convincing, less annoying and less... noisy.


This is kind of funny. The "last time" segment shows the bit with Freeza crushing Gohan's head, a scene that FUNi CUT from the previous episode! That must have left quite a few people saying to themselves, "hey wait a minute... I don't remember that..."

Also, some of you may be wondering why the "next episode" preview is particularly short in this one and in 80. Well... you need a little background. When the series was running in Japan, a new DBZ movie would come out in theatres every six months, and for a couple of weeks they'd advertise it just after the "next episode" preview during DBZ. Anyway, on the weeks that they'd run the promos, they cut down the preview a bit to compensate for time. In this particular case, they were running the ad for Movie 4. Hmm... guess that means FUNimation is running late, since they've only released three so far...