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In Dragon Ball Z, during Goku's fight with Frieza, Frieza decides to destroy the planet Namek. However he fails to do so, but he claims that the planet will blow up in 5 minutes, at the most, but several episodes later, the two are still seen fighting.

Exactly how much broadcast time (real time) elapsed before the planet actually blew up?

I am looking for the total broadcast time (NOT the time passed in-universe) it took for planet Namek to explode.

Excluding:

  • OP and ED theme time
  • Commercials
  • Events happening concurrently with the Frieza battle

But including:

  • Fillers (the concurrent event rule applies here as well)

Starting from:

  • When Frieza says that it will take five minutes

Ending when:

  • The planet actually blows up
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  • I haven't seen the scene, but I know that sometimes simultaneous scenes are shown (i.e. fighting in place A will be shown and then talking that happened at the same time will be shown). Do you want all the simultaneous scenes included separately?
    – kuwaly
    May 7, 2013 at 2:34
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    5 Namekian minutes could be a way more then 5 earth minutes.
    – SirDuckduck
    May 7, 2013 at 10:03
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    If it would help someone find the answer, this video on youtube which merges multiple episodes of Dragon Ball Z in order to get the full fight between Goku and Frieza into a single video has the 5 minute counter start at 2:38:50. The total time for the video is 4:13:45. So the total elapsed time to that point where Frieza is dead is 1 hour 24 minutes and 55 seconds. However, this is not the actual destruction of Namek.
    – Nil
    May 7, 2013 at 19:13
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    The fights are actually happening a lot faster than they appear to be, and also, Talking is a free action
    – Sam I am says Reinstate Monica
    May 7, 2013 at 20:12

1 Answer 1

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19

Interestingly enough, the TVTropes link I linked in the comments had the answer

Taken to insanity during Goku's fight with Freeza. Freeza destroys the core and gives the planet five minutes until implosion. Ten episodes (approximately three hours of screentime for each of the scenes that are playing out simultaneously) and over three hundred lines of dialog for the two fighters later the planet finally collapses.

So there you go.

  • 10 episodes
  • 3 hours (roughly)
  • 100 lines of dialog

although, apparently it was

Lampshaded snarkily in the dub. With ten episodes to go, Frieza has a line to the effect that the planet is "a tough one... it'll probably last another two minutes."

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  • +1 for actually finding an article that cites the approximate time. Far larger than most estimates though.
    – Nil
    May 7, 2013 at 20:42
  • I checked the episode lists and the events should happen between episode 97 to 107, a 10 episode span. So the 3 hour approximation seems reasonable given 20 minutes per episode. The counter should begin towards the end of episode 97 and end around the beginning of episode 107, but I don't have access to the episodes to confirm this.
    – Nil
    May 7, 2013 at 20:46
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    it was the longest 5 minutes in all of the history
    – Memor-X
    Oct 31, 2013 at 3:53
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    +1 Other then the fact that the quote you posted says three hundred lines of dialog though, instead of just 100...
    – Peter Raeves
    May 30, 2015 at 7:45

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