Tankōbon Title Page
Kanzenban Title Page
Full Color Title Page

Chapter Information

Chapter Synopsis

‘Ginyu’ (clearly speaking like Goku) asks, “How come I’m over there…?!” ‘Goku’ says because they’ve switched bodies, and ‘Ginyu’ wonders about this as Jheese gives ‘Goku’ back his scouter. ‘Goku’ says they’ll return to the spaceship now, and loves how fast this body can fly. ‘Ginyu’ says he can’t move, and figures this must be why he injured himself. “Oh no…!! As things are, what if I, no, they meet up with Kuririn and Gohan…!!” ‘Ginyu’ weakly tries to fly off, but he can’t move much, and worries that with a face like this he’ll scare Chi-Chi when he gets home to Earth.

Kuririn and Gohan reach Bulma’s hideout, wake her up, and ask her for the Dragon Radar. But first she yells at them about running off with Vegeta and leaving a girl here all by herself. Kuririn weakly asks to hurry and give them the Dragon Ball so they can make a wish. She can’t believe they still haven’t made a wish, and yells how the radar says they’ve got all seven together. Then Gohan gets the radar and says they’re in that direction, and they prepare to leave. Bulma yells at them to tell her what’s going on first, but Gohan says they’ll explain later, they have to hurry now. “Oh yeah! Father has made it here!” Bulma gets excited to here that, and Kuririn says they need to hurry, and the two fly off. Bulma thinks of how wonderful Goku has gotten, and how much she argues with Yamcha, and thinks she had picked wrongly.

Vegeta arrives at Freeza’s ship, and notices Freeza isn’t there, so he goes inside. He doesn’t see the Dragon Balls anywhere, and wonders where they’re hidden, or if Freeza took them with him. But he figures those Earthlings can use their weird device to find the Dragon Balls anyway. He decides to change into some new battle armor in the meantime, while wondering about the strange medicine Kakarrot gave him that healed his wounds and restored his strength. The only type of battle jacket in his size is an old type, but then he notices the Earthlings have made it there. Gohan and Kuririn stop outside the ship, notice no one’s here, and that the Dragon Balls aren’t in the ship. Gohan finds the spot where they’re buried, and so they start to dig them up. Vegeta watches on, thinking of how he’ll get rid of them once they summon this Shenlong. They finally have all the Dragon Balls and Kuririn yells, “Come out, Shenlong!!!! And grant me my wish!!!!” But…nothing happens. Kuririn wonders why Shenlong isn’t coming out, and Gohan thinks maybe the words are a bit different here. Then they all notice someone’s coming. There are two evil ki, so it must be Ginyu, and they worry about what happened to Goku. Kuririn and Gohan both hide and lower their ki as ‘Goku’ and Jheese land near the ship.

Chapter Notes

Title Page

• Goku is shown just barely hanging on to the passenger-seat backrest as Kame-Sen’nin, wearing a backwards baseball cap, makes a hard left in a Honda S600 convertible.

Weekly Shōnen Jump Notes (1990 #37)

• Dragon Ball was featured on the cover of this issue, with a now-iconic illustration of Goku about to fire a kamehameha towards the reader.
• This issue of Weekly Jump also featured a JIS B4-size foldout poster with an illustration of Goku and Gohan riding on a “motorcycle with legs”. Toriyama famously described this illustration as “the only one [I] could say I’m pleased with” in the “Akira Toriyama Super Interview” from Daizenshuu 1: Complete Illustrations. However, in his talk with One Piece author Ei’ichirō Oda for the artbook Color Walk 1, he expressed his disbelief at having said this, confessing that he did not know why he had thought so.
• The reverse side of the above-mentioned poster featured an explanation of the situation on Namek thus far and explored the story elements introduced there, ostensibly in order to prepare readers for the coming “climax” of the story arc. However, the current arc would end up continuing for some ten months after this issue was published.

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:
  イラスト集とアニメムックのカバーが重なって，とってもハードです。期待しててね。＜明＞

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  My schedule is hard, with the covers of an illustration collection and an anime mook piled on top. Look forward to them, OK? <Akira>

  These are the Akira Toriyama: The World SPECIAL and Akira Toriyama: The World Anime Special, both of which came out in September 1990 (the former on the 19th, and the latter on the 26th). With the release date of both books a little over a month away, Toriyama would have been working to finish up both cover illustrations around this time.

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.