Searching for the Dragon Balls, Goku comes to a desert region where he hears the legend of the moving lake. There, Goku rescues Namu as he is attacked by monsters. Namu has gone upstream to investigate why the river has dried up! After discovering that Giran and his tribe had damned up the river, Goku breaks the dam with a Kamehameha, but this time a sandstorm buries the river!! The villagers despair, but after the sandstorm leaves, it leaves behind the legendary lake.

After the Dragon Radar is stolen by a thief, Goku spots it in a secondhand goods store. A Dragon Ball signal shows up there! However, the Dragon Ball that Pilaf and co. buy from the store owner is a complete fake! The store owner also tries to sell a fake to a mysterious army who are searching for the Dragon Balls, but they see through this and shoot him. The real Dragon Ball turns out to be in a bird’s nest on the roof of the shop!! Startled by the sound of gunfire, the bird flies off with the Dragon Ball.

The army that was searching for the Dragon Ball was in fact Captain Silver’s Red Ribbon Army unit. Silver and Pilaf go after the Dragon Ball. The Dragon Ball turns out to be inside the stomach of a monster that Gyumao defeats. Hearing that Goku is coming, they prepare a reception for him. Pilaf makes Shuu into a fake Goku, and enters the village, but the Silver Corp. attacks! Taking advantage of the confusion, Pilaf gets the Dragon Ball and flees to his moving base. Having reunited with Chichi, Goku perceives that something is amiss, and hurries to the village!!

Giving his parting words to Gyumao and Chichi, Goku goes after Pilaf and co. Meanwhile, following the signal on the Dragon Radar, Silver discovers Pilaf’s secret base. Calling for reinforcements, Silver commences a general offensive! Having infiltrated the base, Goku also hurries to where the Dragon Ball is!! Pilaf is forced to flee, but the moving base he is riding in is hit by the combined attacks of the Red Ribbon Army, and Goku is caught in the explosion!! The Dragon Ball finally falls into Silver’s hands.

After returning to Red Ribbon Army Headquarters, Silver receives his orders from the commander, and sallies forth to once again search for the Dragon Balls. Meanwhile, having been rescued by Kinto'un from the moving base’s explosion, Goku also reopens his search for the Four-Star Ball. Silver realizes that a baby monkey Goku saved on a mountain has a Dragon Ball, and shoots fire at the mountain! The monkeys are pursued by the fire. As Silver aims a rifle at the baby monkey, it is saved by Goku!! However, the Dragon Ball floats down the stream.

Using the Dragon Radar that Bulma made, Goku easily spots the Dragon Ball that drifted down the river. However, Kinto'un is blown away by Captain Silver’s bazooka! After defeating Silver with a single swipe of his tail, Goku heads north in a plane flown by a robot who came out of a capsule. Goku shudders from the extreme cold. The robot is frozen solid as well, and the plane crashes!! Having been frozen solid, Goku is saved by a girl named Sno.

Goku wakes up in Sno’s house, and receives gentle care from her and her mother. Sno is frightened when she hears that Goku is searching for the Dragon Balls. In this village, General White of the Red Ribbon Army has taken the mayor hostage, and is using the townspeople to search for a Dragon Ball! After regaining his health, Goku defeats the soldiers who came in pursuit of him, and heads for General White’s base, Muscle Tower, in order to rescue the mayor! After defeating the soldiers outside, Goku immediately thrusts himself up to the second floor!!

General White’s voice resounds throughout Muscle Tower. He provokes Goku as he ascends to the uppermost floor, where the mayor is. Goku defeats the soldiers on the second floor, and advances on to the third. The third floor was protected by the immortal giant, Sergeant Metallic! Goku has a hard battle against Metallic, who rises up again no matter how many times Goku knocks him down. He won’t stop, even after having his head blown off with a Kamehameha! It turns out he is a robot!! However, Metallic stops just as Goku is in a pinch. His battery had run out.

After infiltrating the pitch black fourth floor, Goku is hit by Master Sergeant Murasaki’s ninja attacks. He has a difficult battle against these relentless attacks! But Goku reads Murasaki’s movement, and his attacks turn the situation around. Goku breaks through Murasaki’s ninjutsu, one after the other. Finally, Murasaki’s sword breaks! Murasaki challenges Goku to an unarmed match, and Goku puts away the Nyoi-Bo. Murasaki takes advantage of this opening to throw a boomerang shuriken. Goku is caught off guard, and is hit directly in the back of the head!! Goku is in grave danger!!

Unable to finish Goku off with the boomerang shuriken, Murasaki uses his final ninjutsu, Bunshin no Jutsu (Split-Image Technique). Having somehow increased to five people, the Murasakis each take out their different weapons! Unable to tell which of them is the real one, Goku has no choice but to run! However, it turns out the Mursakis are merely a set of quintuplets. Now aware that they are all real, Goku uses Zanzouken to defeat four of them in the blink of an eye. With no other card to play, Mursaki calls forth Artificial Human No. 8!!

Artificial Human No. 8, who Murasaki summoned, turns out to have a gentle personality, and doesn’t like conflict. As Murasaki is about to destroy No. 8, who won’t listen to his orders, Goku blows Murasaki away with a single blow! Now Goku’s friend, No. 8 (Ha-chan) leads him to the uppermost level, floor six. Ha-chan tries to persuade White to stop doing bad things. But Goku and Ha-chan fall through a trap door to the fifth floor. Down there is the lair of the monster Buyon!!

Imprisoned on the fifth floor, Buyon is a monster who is completely unaffected by Goku’s techniques! His body can absorb any attack. Goku is in an absolutely desperate pinch!! But Goku destroys the wall, having remembered the time when he was frozen!! Buyon is frozen solid by the frigidly cold air!! After enduring the frigid air by huddling close to Ha-chan, who is immune to the cold, Goku manages to shatter Buyon with a single blow!! Returning to the sixth floor, Goku attacks White.

After being beaten up by Goku, White guides the two of them to the mayor’s room. The second Goku and Ha-chan let their guard down, he takes the mayor hostage! Ha-chan doesn’t know what to do. Goku is downed after being hit with a single shot from the powered gun!! The second shot will finish him off. However, Ha-chan acts as a human shield and protects Goku!! With White in a panic, Ha-chan’s punch explodes!! Having saved Goku and the mayor, Ha-chan destroys Muscle Tower.

It turns out that Ha-chan had the Dragon Ball. He had hidden it, knowing that the villagers would be killed once they found it. The mayor recommends that Ha-chan stay in the village, but Ha-chan says it is dangerous, because of his self-destruct mechanism. In order to get Ha-chan’s self-destruct mechanism removed, they visit his creator, Dr. Flappe. But Murasaki has gone there ahead of them! He steals Goku’s luggage, in an attempt to find the Dragon Balls. However, it only contained Goku’s bento (single-portion meal)?! The self-destruct mechanism is safely removed.

In order to fix his malfunctioning Dragon Radar, Goku heads to West City, where Bulma lives. Kinto'un is also revived, and the trip goes well. However, Goku doesn’t know Bulma’s address! While having trouble with hoodlums, Goku goes around asking for Bulma, but there’s no way for him to find her in such a big city. Goku is taken to Bulma’s house by a policeman. It turns out that Bulma is the sole daughter of Capsule Corporation, a large company famous even in this metropolis!!

Goku finally reunites with Bulma. However, Bulma and Yamcha are right in the middle of an argument! Riding on Kinto'un with Bulma, who has become small using the micro-band, Goku reunites with Yamcha and the others. But Yamcha, unaware of the shrunken Bulma, talks bad about her right to her face!! Goku and the others set off for the floating amusement park, with Bulma in a completely bad mood. Husky is there, an entrepreneur hired by the Red Ribbon Army, and is aiming for Goku’s Dragon Balls.

Drawing closer to Goku and the others as they play in the floating amusement park, Husky tries to seduce Yamcha, who was carrying a Dragon Ball. Figuring out his opponent’s true identity, Yamcha corners her but is taken out by Bulma, who mistakes this for a love scene!! Husky leaves a bomb and runs away. Goku breaks the bomb’s controls just in the nick of time, and retakes the Dragon Balls. But it’s a completely angry Bulma who sets out with Goku to search for the Dragon Balls.

Bulma and Goku arrived at the middle of the sea. This was General Blue’s territory, where he’s searching for the Dragon Balls! Dropped into the sea by Bulma from a nearby island, Goku dives, but it is very deep and he can’t hold his breath! Left on her own, Bulma wanders around the island trying to buy capsules, but it turned out there was a Red Ribbon Army base there!! Goku comes running and defeats the soldiers who are assaulting Bulma!! Goku suggests that they borrow a submarine from the Turtle Hermit.

Goku arrives at Kame House, but Kuririn and Lunch are using the submarine to go shopping. The Turtle Hermit asks for the micro-band in exchange for letting them borrow the submarine. He plans on making himself small and peeking in on her in the toilet and bath! However, when the Turtle Hermit goes to peak on Bulma when she uses the toilet, he’s flushed down the toilet!! When Kuririn comes back, Goku and Bulma set off with him. Meanwhile, having used the dragon radar to follow Goku’s Dragon Balls, General Blue discovers Kame House.

In addition to his group pursuing Goku and the others, General Blue launches a detached group to attack Kame House. They believe that the Turtle Hermit is the scientist who created the Dragon Radar. Going after the Dragon Ball which fell into the sea-bottom chasm, Goku and the others enter the cavity in the chasm from the other side, and discover a cave. General Blue’s submarine then suddenly attacks! Bulma and Kuririn panic when they learn that the ones attacking them are the Red Ribbon Army!! Blue’s submarine pursues Goku and the others as they flee into the cave!!

General Blue’s detached group arrives at Kame House. The commander threatens the Turtle Hermit, but is instead easily defeated! The commander takes Lunch hostage, but he is completely cornered after Lunch sneezes and becomes violent. Meanwhile, after fleeing into the cave, Goku and the others’ submarine has entered a waterless cave. They run off, leaving the submarine behind. For some reason, the cave is equipped with electric lights… This was the pirates’ secret base!!

Treasure is supposedly hidden in the pirate’s cave. And to protect that treasure, naturally traps were set! Goku and the others somehow manage to pass through these traps, such as a wall that shoots spears, or a trap door that opens above lava. The Red Ribbon troops are completely wiped out, except for Blue!! Goku and the others come to the end of the path, and come out into the pirate’s sea-bottom dock. Goku can sense that something is moving. A skeleton-type battle robot appears, and immediately starts attacking them!!

Goku and Kuririn challenge the skeleton robot to a battle. However, the robot is strong! Goku is buried in rubble, and Bulma and Kuririn are cornered inside a building. Just as the two are in a hopeless situation, Goku emerges from the rubble and saves them! After Bulma and Kuririn run off, Goku performs a dive-bomb attack from the roof!! This makes even the powerful robot explode, and Goku follows after the two. However, Blue alters the sign left by Bulma and Kuririn!!

Goku takes the wrong path due to Blue’s trick. The robot’s explosion makes the cave begin to collapse! Bulma and Kuririn arrive at the pirate’s hiding place, but Blue follows them there. An even fight unfolds between Blue and Kuririn! However, Kuririn becomes unable to move when he looks into Blue’s shining eyes. It turns out that Blue has psychic powers!! Goku comes running in as Blue is about to finish Kuririn off!!

Goku overwhelmingly dominates in his battle against Blue! Beaten about, Blue uses his psychic powers to paralyze Goku, and pulls out a rifle! Goku is in a pinch!! But Blue is surprised by a mouse that passes by, and his psychic powers are undone! Counterattacking, Goku KO’s Blue!! Bulma and Kuririn try to escape in a pirate submarine, and Goku follows after them once he’s found the Dragon Ball. The cave is about to collapse.

Just as the cave is about to collapse, Goku appears at the sea-bottom dock!! He has with him the mouse he owes his life to. Bulma launches the submarine, but it runs out of gas and stops. The sea-bottom canal is collapsing! Goku’s Kamehameha pushes the submarine to safety!! They return to Kame House with a pirate diamond. However, Blue has tenaciously survived, and follows them!! What’s more, Lunch takes the diamond and leaves after changing into her violent form.

Blue uses his psychic powers to manipulate ropes to attack Goku and the others, who are relaxing after having returned from the sea-bottom cave! Everyone is tied up, and Goku has his tail grabbed and cannot put out his full power!! Blue steals the Dragon Balls and plants a bomb, then flees. Goku is saved by Lunch, who returns after reverting to her original personality, and he chases after Blue’s rocket!! After an intense chase, the two of them at last arrive in Penguin Village, home to Arale Norimaki!!

Arale, the girl Goku meets in Penguin Village, is a mysterious young girl who can run at super speed, and even ride the Kinto'un. The village’s police force, consisting of Taro and the others, attempt to capture Blue of the Red Ribbon Army, but they can’t scratch him! The Dragon Radar is malfunctioning, and Goku cannot pinpoint the position of the Dragon Balls. At a loss, Goku takes Arale’s advice and visits Dr. Senbe, who just might be able to fix the Dragon Radar!!

Dr. Senbe’s eldest son Turbo-kun fixes the Dragon Radar. Blue then appears, takes Arale as a hostage, and steals the Dragon Radar, using his physic powers to immobilize Goku!! At this time, Arale uses amazing power to send Blue flying!! However, even though the Dragon Balls are returned, the Dragon Radar was sent flying along with Blue. Goku receives a newly made Dragon Radar from Turbo, and leaves Penguin Village behind.

A volcanic eruption sends the Four-Star Ball flying into the Karin Holy Land, a place protected by Bora and his son Upa. Bora uses his tremendous power to drive back Captain Yellow’s Red Ribbon Army troop, who came in pursuit of the Dragon Ball! However, Yellow takes Upa hostage and demands the Dragon Ball. But Goku happens to pass by, defeats Yellow in a single blow, and saves Upa!! Meanwhile at Red Ribbon Army Headquarters, the world’s greatest assassin Tao Pai-pai shows up, having been summoned by Commander Red!!

After finally managing to return to Red Ribbon Army Headquarters, Blue is killed by a single blow from Tao Pai-pai’s tongue. Tao Pai-pai then sets off for the Karin Holy Land to eliminate Goku! Meanwhile, Goku obtains his heart’s desire, the Four-Star Ball. He also hears the legend of the Super Holy Water, water received from a sage who lives at the top of Karin Tower, and that if drunk will multiply one’s power many times over. Tao Pai-pai then shows up. Bora stands to face him, but before Tao Pai-pai’s fearsome power he is killed in the blink of an eye!! Goku challenges Tao Pai-pai, but?!

Goku is completely helpless before the might of Tao Pai-pai, who is unaffected by even the Kamehameha. Goku is felled after taking a direct hit from Tao Pai-pai’s sure-to-kill Dodonpa! Tao Pai-pai steals the Dragon Balls, and heads to a town to get new clothes to replace his tattered ones. However, Goku survived!! The Four-Star Ball that he had on his breast protected him!! After resolving to use the Dragon Balls to restore Bora to life, Goku climbs Karin Tower in order to become stronger than Tao Pai-pai. However, no matter how far he climbs, he is still unable to see the top.

Goku struggles his way to the top of the tower, and there he meets the cat sage Karin, who has the appearance of a cat. In order to drink the Super Sacred Water that will multiple his power many times over, Goku must actually steal the jar that contains the Super Sacred Water from Karin-sama! Goku pursues Karin-sama with all his might, but is unable to even touch the jar!! Karin-sama says that the only one to have ever drunk the Super Sacred Water was Muten Roshi, 300 years ago. Yet Karin-sama says it took him three years to manage to drink the water!!

After going to retrieve the Four-Star Ball that Karin-sama dropped, Goku makes the round trip up Karin Tower in three hours, even though it took him an entire day when he first climbed up! Furthermore, Goku copies the sleeping Karin-sama‘s breathing and movement during the night, and is then able to read Karin-sama‘s movements and finally obtain the jar of Super Sacred Water. But it contains ordinary water?! It turns out that the act of obtaining the jar was itself training that increased his power many times over!! At that time, having obtained brand new clothes, Tao Pai-pai sets out for the holy land once again.

Arriving in the holy land, Tao Pai-pai attacks Upa in order to learn the location of the Four-Star Ball. Tao Pai-pai loses patience with Upa, who won’t say anything, and tries to kill him, but that’s when Goku comes running in! Goku and Tao Pai-pai confront each other once again! This time, the powered up Goku has a firm advantage!! After realizing that Goku has obtained more power through the legendary Super Sacred Water, Tao Pai-pai climbs the tower in order to drink the water himself. However, Goku doesn’t try to follow him.

Having climbed Karin Tower, Tao Pai-pai tries to get the Super Sacred Water by threatening Karin-sama. However, Karin-sama successfully tricks Tao Pai-pai, and sends him back to the surface! After descending back to the holy land, Tao Pai-pai unleashes a violent attack, but Goku is unharmed!! Tao Pai-pai turns pale and uses a bomb, but Goku kicks it back and Tao Pai-pai ends up blowing himself away. After gathering the four Dragon Balls, Goku flies off to the Red Ribbon Army Headquarters to gather the remaining ones!!

Using the Dragon Radar that was stolen from Goku, Captain Violet returns to Red Ribbon Army Headquarters with a second Dragon Ball. Commander Red is not aware of Tao Pai-pai’s defeat, and looks on in good humor as the signal from the four Dragon Balls Goku is carrying approach on the radar. Meanwhile, Goku’s friends at Kame House use Bulma’s reconnaissance mecha to learn that Goku’s target is the Red Ribbon Army’s stronghold! In order to rescue Goku, Bulma and the others hurry to the Red Ribbon Army Headquarters in Yamcha’s plane!

Goku’s friends pick up Kuririn, who was out shopping, and head on after Goku. They are all prepared to die. Meanwhile, the Red Ribbon Army realizes that the approaching signal isn’t Tao Pai-pai, and begins a general offensive against Goku! Knocking around missiles and fighter planes, Goku charges into the base, and in the blink of an eye defeats nearly half the soldiers! Commander Red is horrified at Goku’s power, which far surpasses his imagination!!

The Red Ribbon Army is on the brink of annihilation because of Goku. Captain Violet steals the money in the vault and flees! The cornered Commander Red attempts to kill Goku as well as Black. It turns out that Red’s objective was merely to use the Dragon Balls to make himself taller. Having survived, Black kills Red and confronts Goku in the Battle Jacket! Goku is KO’d by the Jacket’s formidable power, and cannot move! A sure-to-kill beam aims for Goku!!

After Goku dodges the beam, Black attempts to use a missile to blow Goku up together with the entire base, but Goku repels this missile! As Black realizes he has no chance to win and tries to run away, Goku settles things with a single blow, and the Battle Jacket explodes! Goku reunites with his friends, who were hiding in the forest preparing their strategy, and even they are amazed at his strength. Only one Dragon Ball remains. However, for some reason the Dragon Radar isn’t picking up its signal.