May 12, 2026

Dragon Ball Z - Episode 245: "Super Saiyan 3?!"

10/10Watch

There is a version of this episode where a dead man shows up, powers up for a few seconds, reveals a new form, and the plot moves on. Clean. Economical. Totally fine.
Toei Animation looked at that version and said no.
What we got instead is three minutes and thirty-five seconds of Goku screaming while the planet files a noise complaint. Animation supervisor Ichio Hayashi and the episode's key team didn't just produce a transformation sequence. They produced a weather event. The line-weights go dense and frantic. Heavy black shadow floods the close-ups. The animators drew individual pulsing veins on Goku's forehead and micro-reflections inside his contracting irises to sell the physical strain of what he's doing to his own body. The background plates of the rocky wasteland don't just shift. They violently jerk behind him while hand-painted lightning bolts snap across the frame on two-frame intervals. The entire sequence is animated like the earth itself is trying to get away from what's happening.

And then the hair drops. That impossible, gravity-defying, golden mane that cascades halfway down his back. The eyebrows disappear. The brow ridge comes forward. The character designers clearly made the executive decision to figure out how to animate him turning around later and just committed to the design. It works. It absolutely works. The form looks like a primal force wearing a man's face and that is exactly correct.
Here's the context: Goku is technically dead. He has a hard time limit on his visit to the living world. Every second he spends in this form is burning through what's left of his clock. He knows this. He does it anyway. Because Majin Buu is standing in front of him and Goku's brain simply cannot process a reason not to show off the new form to a giant pink toddler. This is peak Saiyan logic and we love him unconditionally for it.
Speaking of Majin Buu. His response to watching the earth split open and the sky shatter and a man's eyebrows literally disappear from his face due to sheer power output is: "Buu not scared. Big hair make you big funny." I have spent twenty years thinking about this line.

Fat Buu is a valid critic.

Babidi does not share Buu's zen. Babidi, who opened this arc as a galactic mastermind, spends the transformation sequence clinging to a rock screaming about the atmospheric pressure. He went from Bond villain to disaster tourist in thirty seconds flat. There's a lesson in there about the gap between having powerful allies and actually understanding power.

Meanwhile, across town, Krillin and Roshi are watching the horizon shake and doing the mental math of survivors. These men have been through the Saiyans, Frieza, and Cell. They look tired. The collective "what is Goku doing now" energy radiating from Capsule Corp is the most relatable reaction in the entire Buu Saga.

One more thing the Kanzenshuu crew documented and I cannot stop thinking about: Toriyama himself, at the time, had trouble telling SSJ3 apart from SSJ2. The man who designed it. Which means the animators built something so visually defined and kinetically overwhelming that it ended up more iconic than even its creator had intended.

That happens sometimes. This episode is proof.

Originally aired: November 9, 1994 (JP) — Toei Animation / Fuji TV