Okay, so let’s talk about Piccolo’s flight?

I guess?

If you’re like me, it’s always been ingrained in your mind that he doesn’t use bukūjutsu, which all the other characters do. That seems to stem mainly from the way DBZ subtitle author Steve Simmons handled this one line: https://twitter.com/harrisonrfox/status/1301473893740425217

Here’s the line in the original manga.

ふざけるな。オレさまの(舞空術)はきさまのようななさけない舞空術とはちがうんだ

Overly literal translation to show what’s going on:

“Don’t be ridiculous! My (bukūjutsu) isn’t like that half-fledged (lit. “pathetic”) version of yours.”

The way it’s worded, it’s a bit of a stretch to assume Piccolo means anything other than that his bukūjutsu isn’t as half-baked as Goku’s. I.e., yes, of course he can keep up with Kinto’un.

The first の in Japanese is kind of a hanging possessive pronoun, filled in by the presence of 舞空術/bukūjutsu in the back half. Because of the ambiguity, you could read it as implying bukūjutsu itself is pathetic, meaning he has some other technique. But it’s a big stretch.

Stretching a reading of that exact line isn’t what Simmons did, though, because he was going off of the anime version, which is slightly different.

ふざけるな。オレさまのはきさまのようななさけない舞空術とは|ちっと|ちがうんだ

ちっと = a little; a bit

“Mine is a *little* different from that half-fledged bukūjutsu of yours.”

I’m pretty confident that the intent of the line is the same—just making it a bit more cooly backhanded than outright arrogant—but faced with the subtly different wording, Simmons apparently went with the other reading and assumed the item covered by の was his flight in general.

He may very well not have had he been checking the manga at the same time, which I think makes it much more clear.

I want to be clear that I’m not attacking Simmons’ credence as a translator here. The Z anime’s subtitles are, on the whole, nothing if not exceptionally accurate.

Mistakes are bound to creep in over the course of nearly 300 episodes, and this is a particularly understandable one. I only bring it up because there’s a long-standing fandom misunderstanding connected to it—which I had fallen into until a recent reread as well.

There’s also plenty of evidence to point toward Piccolo’s flight indeed being bukūjutsu. In Chapter 153, Piccolo Daimaō takes note of Tenshinhan using bukujūtsu to descend from his plane, calling it by name and gathering that Tenshinhan is a skilled martial artist from it.

It would certainly seem odd for the senior Piccolo to be familiar with the technique, and praise its use, if both he and his reincarnation were always supposed to be employing something else. There’s also just ... no reason to assume they’re not using it, given the original line.

Finally, for completeness’ sake, here’s Viz’s version of the line. Early Viz’s infamous Shakespearean Piccolo is still out in full force, but the line is true to the intent of the original in that he’s merely boasting about his speed.

Hey, Pic! That’s the thread.