Thread by @Herms98

Age 761, let’s say November: Goku is dead, but in this series that’s only a temporary inconvenience at most. Word goes down the pipeline not to resurrect him before he can get some solid training in. #HistoryofEver

Meanwhile on Earth, the band gets back together again to climb up to Kami’s for training of their own. Down on the ground, Lunch is the same as ever…but Upa looks a bit different.

(The shortchanged ghost is a reference to the famous Japanese ghost story Banchō Sarayashiki, the joke being that in Japanese both plates and paper money are counted with the measure word 枚/mai. One Piece and Yu Yu Hakusho also riff on this tale. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banchō_Sa…)

Long story short: the narrator says Goku takes six months to reach Kaio’s, at which point Kaio says the Saiyans arrive in 158 days. So the total time between Raditz and Vegeta/Nappa is more like 11 months 8 days rather than a full year, a gap the characters comment on.

(For some dangblasted reason Viz leaves out the “6 months” bit from the two Goku panels, but does keep it for the narration on Tenshinhan and co right before that)

In the DBZ anime, the narrator keeps a running countdown, starting at 1 year (technically inaccurate, as noted above), then 11 months by ep.10-11, 9 months by ep.12-13, 8 months by ep.14, and 6 months for ep.15-18, which goes straight into Goku reaching the end of Snake Way.

In ep.19 the narrator switches to 5 months, matching Kaio’s 158 days comment but a sudden shift from ep.18 (where Goku reaches Kaio’s), which still used 6 months. So again, it seems the narrator’s month countdown is technically off by one until ep.19.

(Still, the time gaps between episodes should still hold good, so I’ll be relying on those for the rest of this thread)

If we take the Daizenshuu date of November 3rd, 762 for Vegeta and Nappa’s arrival and backtrack from there, Raditz should arrive on November 28th, 761 (the Daizenshuu says October 12th, but as noted last week this seems to be a clear mistake).

Gohan goes Oozaru in the night, and next day (November 29th) wakes up to find his new Piccolo-provided clothes. At this point, per Nozawa favorite DBZ ep.9, he runs into the trapped robot in the ruins of Nemuria.

On this same day, Bulma finishes converting Raditz’s scouter into displaying Earth numbers, Yajirobe announces Kami’s training program, and Chi Chi and Ox King stop by. The hunt begins to round up the whole gang.

In the manga, there’s no indication that it takes especially long to locate everyone, but in the anime it’s quite an odyssey. First, a month apparently passes before Kuririn finds Yamcha playing baseball. Meanwhile, Gohan befriends a dinosaur and Vegeta/Nappa take a pitstop.

So that would be December 761. Two months later in February 762, Lunch tracks down Tenshinhan, who gives her the slip and climbs Karin Tower, while Goku falls into Hell and has to restart his Snake Way run (thankfully with boosted speed). All in the anime only, of course.

A month later in March, Goku reaches the Snake Way midpoint and has an enchanting time. On Earth, everyone is *finally* at the lookout. While they begin training, Kami himself won’t teach ‘em nothing.

Two months later in May, Gohan makes a break for it and has a run-in with Pigero’s orphans. Meanwhile, Kami *still* hasn’t taught Yamcha and co anything. He decides to mentally project them into the past to play with some Saiyans.

(Seriously, Yamcha and co’s “year of training” is rubbish in the anime. First they take four months to get there, and then Kami doesn’t teach them anything for two months more. No wonder they get slaughtered)

Still in May, Bulma and Roshi celebrate finally collecting the dragon balls to revive Goku, by the light of an artificial moon. Yes, Piccolo learns two can play the “illusion” game as a projection from Goku’s old spaceship turns Gohan Great Ape again.

And so, after six months of filler, on May 29th Goku finally reaches the end of the road and meets Kaio, with (once more, with feeling) 158 days left until the Saiyans reach Earth. His first training challenge: grab the monkey.

So yes, the DBZ anime expands considerably on everyone’s year of training, which the manga mostly skips over, but much of this material was based on ideas which Toriyama provided the anime staff: kanzenshuu.com/animation-prod…

Tomorrow: Gregory the Great!