I’m sorry, I thought this was Planet 4032-877!
Just a year before South Park first premiered on Comedy Central in 1997, another soon-to-be-iconic animated series made its American debut and changed TV forever. Dragon Ball Z, the over-the-top, action-fantasy-adventure anime that captured the imaginations of millions of American kids, opened the floodgates for localizations of classic Japanese series, thus becoming one of the most influential TV shows of all time. But, somehow, over the last 27 seasons of South Park, the show has yet to satirize, parody or homage the cultural phenomenon that is the Dragon Ball universe, unless you count the general martial arts send-up in the 2004 South Park episode “Good Times with Weapons.”
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As such, one especially creative South Park and DBZ fan recently took it upon themselves to make their dream crossover come true by combining the two most important animated shows of the late 1990s into one unmissable melee:
As South Park fans know well, the above scene comes from the South Park episode “The Losing Edge,” in which Randy Marsh becomes a formidable bleacher brawler by fighting other dads at his son’s miserable Little League baseball games. Later in that same episode, Randy squares up with the dreaded, hulking, caped and shirtless Bat Dad in what’s inarguably the most iconic fight scene in South Park history, featuring another classic Randy-ism, “I didn’t hear no bell!”
Hopefully, animator DeDeDuck continues their South Park x Dragon Ball project with a reimagining of Randy’s epic showdown with Bat Dad, given that the brawl is basically already an anime fight, except for the fact that it wrapped up in one episode instead of one season.
Sure, there are other over-the-top South Park fights that could befit a Dragon Ball Z makeover — the ManBearPig vs. Satan fight from “Nobody Got Cereal?” stands out as anime-esque, given its potentially world-destroying stakes — but the sheer drama and triumph of Randy’s ascension to the top of the baseball brawlers in “The Losing Edge” is unmatched in the South Park canon.
At the same time, and considering how much effort must go into giving action-packed South Park scenes this hand-drawn look, the extended battle of Randy vs. Bat Dad may simply be too much for DeDeDuck, and they may move on to other projects instead of revisiting “The Losing Edge.” Still, we’ll be watching if and when DeDeDuck returns to South Park and Dragon Ball Z, so I just need to ask them: What do you wanna do, huh?
