The Summary

     Well, before I begin I would like to thank the fellow DBZN Staff in somewhat changing our Summary format. We will no longer be giving the super-detailed summaries of yore, we want you to watch the episodes. These shorter summaries will help us focus more on the review, than on simply rewriting the entire episode script.

     Today's episode featured the highly anticipated battle (by me) of Piccolo and Android 17. In it some vicious action is exchanged back and forth. With Piccolo gaining an early upper hand (but we know what THAT means in DBZ…) and beating 17 in the first volley. However, 17 avoids Piccolo's death blast that left a lot of smoke (remember, in DBZ smoke means life, thanks again Kaervak for making that absolutely brilliant observation), and continuing with the second volley of DBZ trademarked speed, blows and blasts.

     Meanwhile, Goku and Gohan wait for Vegeta and Trunks to emerge from their training so that they might begin theirs. Goku is aware of Piccolo's battle, and has to stop Gohan from trying to help.

     In round 1-3, Piccolo seems to try the same tactic by blasting all over the place and hoping to hit 17,…or was he? It turns out Piccolo laid a very clever trap of a guided scatter blast and it looks like 17 is finished. The blast turns the screen completely white, and the SMOKE lingers for quite some time, but you guessed it, 17 is still alive and is ready to begin Round 2 on a nearby island.

     Cell, off doing his thing, picks up on Piccolo's signature and heads off the absorb the androids. And that was todays episode.

The Review

     WOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOO! I was waiting for this episode for quite some time. Almost 25 minutes of pure, unadulterated ACTION, ACTION, ACTION! This episode was chalk full of why I love DBZ more than just about any other anime series out there.

     So now to the review. I will break this down a little bit like I will on my new Cinematic Anime reviews:

ANIMATION - The animation was pretty top-notch for a DBZ episode. Very fluid and dynamic, with little gaps or scaling mistakes. Very nice. I was also pleased to see a minimum of recycled animation in today's episode.                                 4.5/5

CAMERAWORK / CHOREOGRAPHY - Also very good for this episode. There was one shot of Android seventeen flicking his earring after the first volley of attacks. This may mean something, it may not, but a very good shot to pay attention to. There were also some very good pan shots. I'm also very glad that the facial close-ups of "ahh-ing" that was so overused in the Frieza Saga was barely present in this episode.                                                                                                    5/5

MUSIC / SOUND - One of the better episodes in my opinion, but generally anytime we have an action packed episode the music becomes a non-issue because of the punching flying and crashing sound effects. The punched and kicks sounded crisp and the blasts sound effects didn't seem to artificial.                                  4/5

VOICE ACTING - The voices in this episode were pretty good, but they really didn't have a chance to screw things up. 17's voice was almost back to its deeper incarnation today, the androids as a whole sounded pretty good.                      4/5

DIALOGUE - Again, not too much dialogue compared to some of the other episodes, however, the dialogue that did occur between 17 and Piccolo in the fight was believable, and wasn't some of the dribble FUNimation has put out before. I could really see some of the things being said in a similar one-on-one confrontation between rival spots figures (without the obscene language, course).                 4.5/5

PLOT - Well, when we get a lot of action, with some surprise developments in the end, I would consider that a good day. Though there are DBZ episode where A LOT happens in terms of plot information, this still was a very good episode overall.                                                                                                                       4/5

OVERALL - OH YEAH!!! You know an action junkie like myself loves episodes like this. I just wish I could do some of that stuff in real life!!! A great action episode, and because of it FUNimation was not able to screw things up,… so they did a good job. A must watch episode, and if you can't watch them I suggest you program your VCR from now on, we're going to be due up for some more epic action in the future episodes.

The Celestrian gives today's episode an overall score of: 4.75/5

- The Celestrian DBZN Staff

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