Tankōbon Title Page
Kanzenban Title Page
Full Color Title Page

Chapter Information

Chapter Synopsis

Bulma asks about God taking Son-kun’s body, and Kame-Sen’nin thinks it’s a relief that it was God. Kuririn looks at Gohan’s Four Star-Ball hat, and says they must gather the other six to return Goku to life. Then Bulma gets pissed and wonders where Yamcha and everyone else are, and then wonders how Goku’s older brother knew their location. Piccolo tells them about the strange device he wears on his face that seems to detect an enemy’s strength and location. Bulma creeps over to Raditz and tells Kuririn to get it. Bulma then puts it on, and thinks it’s broken or something. She thinks if she takes it home and fools around with it, they can use it to find Yamcha and Tenshinhan. Kame-Sen’nin says they should first go back to Kame House, and Kuririn says he’ll go search for the Dragon Balls right afterwards.

Kame-Sen’nin asks Piccolo what he plans to do, and Piccolo answers him by re-growing his missing arm, and everyone freaks out. Piccolo tells them to search for the Dragon Balls while God does whatever with Goku. And he’ll take in Son Goku’s son. Kuririn thinks he plans to eat the kid, and Piccolo freaks out. He explains that this Gohan brat has a lot of fighting potential, and he wants to bring it out before the other two Saiyans get here. Kame-Sen’nin is worried about his parents not knowing, but Piccolo insists there’s no time for that, and threatens to kill them. He’ll bring the brat back to their house after a year. He thinks it’ll be fun for Son Goku to hear about this and have to wait for his kid after they revive him. Kuririn is scared of how mad Goku and Chi-Chi will be.

Meanwhile, in the afterlife… There’s a grand station with a bunch of houses sitting in the clouds, and a long, thin path leading into the first building with a “WELL COME” sign on it. A bunch of souls are going down the path into the first building, and a little oni with a megaphone is directing them. Inside, God is at the front desk with Goku (whose clothes are no longer tattered, and he has a halo over his head). The desk is huge, with a giant with a beard and horns on his hat sitting at it.

The giant is Enma-daiō, and God is explaining to him that he wishes for Goku to receive training from someone named Kaiō. Enma-daiō looks through his record book, and says that Goku has accomplished quite a lot. Then he asks if he really wants to brave the perils of Serpent Road to meet up with Kaiō instead of just going to Heaven, and God affirms it. Goku asks if everyone comes here when they’re dead, even aliens, and God explains that everyone in the universe comes here to be judged.

Goku asks if someone named Raditz came by before him, and God yells at him for not speaking politely. Enma-daiō says he sent him to Hell. Raditz struggled, but he took him down. Goku’s impressed, and tells God he wants to receive training from this guy instead. God says not to be so loud, and then whispers that Kaiō is actually stronger than Enma-daiō. Enma-daiō hears this, and wonders if he shouldn’t send God to Hell when his time comes. God tries to cover his tracks with some joke about Hell ears, and then Enma-daiō finally gives Goku the okay to go train with Kaiō.

Enma-daiō points Goku in the right direction, and so he heads out to the Serpent Road, and says thanks. Then God begins solemnly thinking about the approaching danger, until Enma-daiō yells at him to shut up and hurry and go home. Meanwhile, an oni drives Goku out of the big checkout station, until they come to a serpent’s head. The oni asks Goku if he’s healthy, and Goku says he’s not because he’s dead. Goku asks about this Kaiō, and the oni explains that he’s a god who stands atop the whole universe. But now they’ve arrived at the serpent’s head, and Goku needs to climb up and walk all the way down the serpent’s back, Serpent Road, to reach Kaiō. Goku thinks it looks really long, and the oni tells him it’s a million kilometers.

Goku can’t believe this, and the oni warns him not to fall through the clouds surrounding the road — below them is Hell. Goku wishes he’d brought a bentō, and the oni explains that he doesn’t need food, since he’s dead. Goku then asks the oni if he knows Uranai Baba, and he does. So, Goku says to tell her next time she comes by to tell Kame-Sen’nin Grandpa not to wish him back until a year from now. The oni makes a note of this, and then Goku takes off with Bukūjutsu. Elsewhere, in a capsule plane, Kame-Sen’nin says they can’t keep this quiet from Chi-Chi, and tells Kuririn to go tell her. Bulma says that she seems like an educational mama, so she’ll probably kill him. Meanwhile, Goku has decided that Bukūjutsu takes too much energy and is now running along Serpent Road.

Chapter Notes

General

• This chapter is one out of only two in the entire series (the other being chapter 81) to be drawn entirely in full-color.

Vehicles

• The car used by the glasses-wearing oni to transport Goku to the start of the Serpent Road is a Messerschmitt KR200, a three-wheeled “microcar” produced from 1955 to 1964 in West Germany. Toriyama would later go on to depict Gohan and Videl in a heavily-customized KR201 roadster in a calendar illustration for Weekly Shōnen Jump 1993 #31.

Errata

• In the initial serialization and subsequent tankōbon release, the sign over the gates to the afterlife reads “WELL COME”. This is fixed for the kanzenban (and the colorized version based on it), although an obvious gap remains where the extraneous letter was removed.
• Despite occurring during the same day as Chapter 196, the colors of Kame-Sen’nin’s and Bulma’s outfits have changed. Bulma, originally wearing a blue top with white shorts, blue socks, and white shoes, is now in a green top with red shorts, black socks, and red and green shoes; Kame-Sen’nin, who originally was wearing a green t-shirt, is now wearing a black one. Raditz’s scouter has also changed from blue (as seen on the title page to Chapter 196) to green.

  Piccolo, meanwhile, has a black outfit with a purple sash and wrists, as he did in Chapter 178, but not in Chapter 187, where he instead wore a dark purple outfit with a blue sash and red wrists. (Piccolo will have returned to the purple outfit the next time he appears in color.) All this is, of course, because the author is known not to refer back to material he has previously written, instead preferring to do his illustrations with whatever colors he feels are appropriate at that moment.

Author’s Comment

• Each issue of Weekly Shōnen Jump features short comments from the various series’ authors, giving fans a brief insight into their current thoughts, ranging from series-related announcements to trivial happenings in their personal lives. Akira Toriyama’s comments from this issue were:
  ボクはマンガ家のくせに、あまりマンガを読まないんですが、たまにマンガ本をみたりすると、なかなか新鮮で面白く、勉強になったりもします。いやいやプロというのはさすがだな！と、時どき自分を反省したりします。＜明＞

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  Even though I draw manga, I don’t read them very much, but when I look at a comic book, it’s quite fresh and interesting, and I can even learn something new. Ah, just as you’d expect of a pro! I sometimes think, prompting some self-reflection. <Akira>

Page Breakdown

The majority of the Dragon Ball series was drawn in black and white, but chapters were occasionally published with color pages. This breakdown notes how many full-color, limited-color, and black-and-white pages appeared in this chapter. As the tankōbon volumes were not released with these colors intact, any color pages shown are taken from the kanzenban release.