The thing is, this episode is REALLY GOOD about demonstrating the largely overlooked/unaddressed issue of "How does these people/events fit into the rest of their quasi-contemporary world?" ANSWER: "Poorly! That's why everything happens out in the wilderness" 👍
The thing is, this episode is REALLY GOOD about demonstrating the largely overlooked/unaddressed issue of "How does these people/events fit into the rest of their quasi-contemporary world?" ANSWER: "Poorly! That's why everything happens out in the wilderness" 👍
Like A LOT of what works in DragonBall is making stuff that serves the aesthetic ("I'm tired of coloring the hair in") serve the narrative, and the consistent instinct of the good guys to pull the fighting away from everything else ends up making multilevel sense.
There's a distinctly early Hisei / Lost Years Japan middle-class sensibility of "big fish re-learning to share an increasingly small pond" as a core human value that permeats the Anime version of Z especially in the "light" between moments, and it really pokes out here.
Post-Namek/Freeza, the narrative repeatedly returns to "I already know I can do X" or "I think you can attain Y" but buttressed by "It's not the right time/place/moment/etc;" themes present but not always central in the first series. To me, it feels in tune with the milieu...
...it was emerging into, where an audience of (mainly) kids and teenagers were going to be told by their parents, schools, whole society: "It's going to be HARD for a long time, because we made a whole culture built on limitless growth and pride and now you have to do that...
...with ceilings and walls EVERYWHERE and omnipresent evidence that you can 'go too hard' and break everything; and do it working in busy, cramped, highly-congested spaces. So... GOOD LUCK WITH THAT!"