#fuck the zamasu saga forever
Text
Dragon Ball Super Manga ch. 21-26
Phew! We’re almost done with the Zamasu Saga.
Last time, we left off with Trunks holding off Goku Black and Zamasu so that Goku and Vegeta could escape in the Time Machine. This is somewhat similar to what Trunks did to save them in Episode 62 of the DBS anime. Except they never bothered to explain how Trunks survived against such hopeless odds. Instead, in Episode 63, he just wakes up in a Resistance Bunker. No one explains how he got away from Black and Zamasu. It’s bullshit.
In the manga version, he gets rescued by the Shin and Gowasu of the “main” timeline. In Trunks’ timeline, all of the Supreme Kais are dead, but the “main” timeline versions can still travel to this world using their Time Rings. They can also teleport to any planet they wish, including this reality’s version of the Sacred World of the Kais in Universe 7. It’s deserted now, but they still know where it is, and it provides refuge for the good guys while they wait for Goku and Vegeta to return.
But why do they even need to wait for Goku and Vegeta? They used the Time Machine, so why don’t they just set the return coordinates for a few seconds after they left? Goku asks this very question, and Bulma tells him that it can’t work that way. I won’t get into the details because later it turns out Bulma was mistaken about this, but in this scene, she tells them that they have to “sync up” with the other timeline. Spending one day here means that they have to return one day later in the other timeline as well.
Tell you what, let’s just jump ahead to the ending, where Emperor Pilaf of all people figures out Bulma’s error. Presumably Future Bulma, the one who actually invented the time machine, understood this, but Present Bulma is still learning as she goes.
Oh, before I get too far ahead of myself, check out this goofy rendition of Trunks’ sword. It looks too wide in a lot of scenes, but in this one it’s like Toyotaro is trying to make it looks stupid on purpose. Aren’t swords easy to draw? Also, why is Mai wrapping her fingers around the blade like that?
One more thing, I appreciate Goku Black in this scene declaring that he doesn’t want to destroy the entire planet. He could wipe out all mortals very efficiently if he just blew up the planets they were standing on, but he wants to keep all the planets in tact. This was heavily implied in the anime, but they never came out and said so, which always frustrated me.
Here’s a scene of Black and Zamasu’s hideout, and it works a lot better than it did in the anime, because this scene shows them discussing their plans instead of just sipping tea and congratulating themselves. Because of Gowasu and Shin’s little rescue earlier, they’re concerned that their plans have been exposed to the gods of the other timelines. They’re worried that Grand Zeno might even catch wind of this, so their best bet is to leave this Earth and move on to a new base of operations. But they still want to finish off the remaining Earthlings before they leave.
See, this is excellent storytelling. The way the information is presented, we learn additional things about their plan. They could have wiped out the Earthlings some time ago. It’s not even hard for them, which is why they’re gonna knock it out in one afternoon before they leave. But like I mentioned in the last post, they’ve been using this Earth as a training ground to get Goku Black powered up and to practice for the more difficult work of invading the other timelines.
It’s also important to show that they’re actually concerned about something going wrong. Their Zero Mortals Plan isn’t foolproof. The only reason they were able to kill all the gods in this reality is because they had the element of surprise on their side, and because of that business where killing a Supreme Kai kills the Destroyer God and deactivates his Angel for free. But now that Gowasu and Shin are onto them, it’ll be a lot harder to get the drop on the other gods from here on out. Black and Zamasu are still confident about their plan, but they’re clearly troubled by this development.
This was something that was sorely lacking in the anime version, where Black and Zamasu were constantly making those smug little grins the entire time. They never worried about anything until Zamasu nearly got trapped by the Mafuba near the end of the arc. And if the villain is never inconvenienced, it makes the story kind of dull. Think about how troubled King Piccolo was when his children were killed, or how frightened he got when he thought Goku’s Kamehameha stance might be a Mafuba. Or how annoyed Frieza would get when he lost the Dragon Balls. Anime Zamasu never gives you any of that.
Anyway, their final push to kill the remaining Earthlings forces Trunks’ group to take action. Gowasu refuses to stand by and wait for Goku and Vegeta. Instead, he goes alone to appeal to Goku Black’s better nature, except Black has already murdered two other versions of Gowasu, so he has no problem doing it again. And there’s a scene like this in the anime, but this time Black actually gets to stab him, and Gowasu falls off a building. It’s pretty cool because:
1) It actually looks like he’s dead, because Black’s attack seriously hurt him, unlike all the times he stabs people in the anime and they’re fine.
2) It gives some karmic payback to Gowasu for failing to recognize the problem with Zamasu before it got this bad.
Gowasu isn’t a bad person, but he made a very grave mistake, and it’s unsatisfying how he never suffers any direct consquences for it. I mean, two other versions of Gowasu get murdered, but that’s a little too clean for my tastes. Those dead Gowasu’s don’t have to live with it. This Gowasu, who gets stabbed but survives, has something painful to remember this by. It’s much more satisfying this way.
So when Gowasu gets hurt, Trunks, Shin, and Mai return to Earth to save him, and not long after that, Goku and Vegeta return to pick up where they left off. This time, Goku has learned the Mafuba Technique to deal with Zamasu, while Vegeta trained in the Hyperbolic Time Chamber to counter Goku Black.
Vegeta’s strategy this time is to fight in the Super Saiyan God form, which is weaker than Blue, so Goku Black doesn’t understand the point. But as Goku explains, Vegeta has learned to control his powers more precisely, switching from SSG to Blue at the very instant he attacks. This way he gets the best of both worlds. Super Saiyan God is easier to maintain and a little more agile, so Vegeta can defend himself in that form, and then he only uses Blue in very small doses, getting all the raw power while minimizing the strain on his body.
This is similar to something Goku did against Hit in the previous arc, but he only managed to do it once, at the very end of their fight. Vegeta’s mastered the trick to the point where he can do it repeatedly. Again, this is way better than the anime, where Vegeta didn’t do anything differently after training in the Chamber. It was understood that he would be stronger than before, but there was nothing more to it than that. One fight he lost to Black, and now he’s winning. I hate to sound like a broken record, but the manga is just styling all over the anime here.
I’m not even saying this “Switching Between God and Blue” trick is a cool idea. I seem to remember fans disliking this when these chapters were published. But the point here is that it is an idea. It’s something new Vegeta does that he couldn’t do before, and that’s the in-story reason why he’s winning this time. He doesn’t have to invent a new transformation every time he trains, but he has to come up with something to explain his improvement, and this works.
Meanwhile, Goku actually gets to do the Mafuba, so that’s another win for the manga. Also, the gag with the talisman works a lot better in this version. In the anime, Goku forgot the talisman altogether. Here, he remembered to bring it, but he picked up the wrong piece of paper. The joke is less about Goku screwing up and more about him looking at the talisman and seeing a coupon for “Club Tight & Scanty”.
So this leads up to the Zamasu/Goku Black fusion, which works a lot better here, because Vegeta is handily kicking Black’s ass. Goku may not be able to seal Zamasu away like he planned, but he can definitely keep Zamasu contained long enough for Vegeta to kill Goku Black, and Zamasu won’t be able to carry out his plan alone. The anime borked that up by having Goku Black still have the upper hand, so they really only fused because Zamasu was rattled about the Mafuba.
So Goku and Vegeta fuse, right? Well, not right away. They have the Potara at their disposal, but they don’t want to go through with it. Goku asks Vegeta, but as soon as Vegeta refuses, Goku’s more relieved than anything else. Then while Goku fights alone, Vegeta hears Gowasu explain that Merged Zamasu should unfuse within an hour. See, in the anime he said Potara fusion is permanent only when a Kai is involved. But in the manga, it’s only permanent when a Supreme Kai is involved, and Zamasu never officially achieved that rank. He’s just a usurper, so his fusion has a time limit too. That gets Vegeta’s attention, and so does Trunks when he says he wants to join in the fight because he doesn’t want Vegeta getting hurt over this, because his mom really wanted to go back in time and see him again before she died.
So all of that changes Vegeta’s mind about the fusion, and that’s how we get Vegito in this version. I like that, because Goku and Vegeta have shown a reluctance to fuse in the past, and it’s a lot cooler to have Vegeta motivated by sentimental reasons than just “The bad guy is really strong, so we just gotta.” I like fusion, don’t get me wrong, but they need to sell me on it a little first.
So Vegito starts off by blowing off Zamasu’s right arm, which sets up a nice little homage to Cell getting Final Flashed. I think this is one of those scenes where fans whine about Toyotaro “tracing”, which is dumb as hell, because it’s clearly a callback. Of course he’s gonna do stuff like this. He’s a Dragon Ball fan working on a Dragon Ball comic. Comic book artists do this all the time. There’s probably a few thousand different tributes to the cover of Action Comics #1.
Vegito comes apart pretty quickly, and Zamasu works the boys over with Kachin metal blocks and that portals trick Janemba does. I get the Katchin thing, because Toyotaro probably played Budokai 2 where the Supreme Kai would throw blocks at people, and he wanted to use that move here. The portals thing... I don’t know. He definitely needed to do a new power just to show off Merged Zamasu’s on a different level, and this works for that, but it feels a little out of left field. I’m not sure what he should have used instead though, so I won’t complain too much.
So from the sidelines, Gowasu and Shin watch Goku and Vegeta getting clobbered, and they wish that they could help. Once, when they were apprentice Supreme Kais like Zamasu, they had healing powers of their own, but they had to give that ability up once they assumed the role of Supreme Kai. Then Trunks remembers that he was an Assistant Supreme Kai in a manner of speaking. Back when his own Supreme Kai was training him to fight Babidi and Dabura, there was a ritual Shin did for him, one that he didn’t understand at the time. As it turns out, that ritual was to give him the powers of an Assistant Kai, which included healing powers. Trunks just didn’t know about it until now, which is... kind of goofy, but okay.
So he can heal the others, but it turns out he only has enough power to heal one or the other, so he’ll have to choose. At first, Trunks goes with Vegeta, but Vegeta refuses. While he was fused with Goku, he realized that Goku has the power to win this fight, so that’s who he wants Trunks to heal up.
This part isn’t exactly brilliant, but it sure beats what they did in the anime after Vegito came apart, which was just having Trunks chop Zamasu in half using ki from a handful of ordinary civilians. I mean, if we’re choosing between two different asspulls, I’ll take the asspull that makes a little more sense.
So Goku gets healed and fights alone, and Vegeta explains how Goku managed to perfect the Super Saiyan Blue form, allowing himself to use Blue for sustained periods of time. And that works because this is the first time we’ve really gotten to see Goku fight at this level, but if he had this mastered already, why was he so impressed with Vegeta’s deal where he switched between God and Blue? Because that sounds like a workaround that Goku had already made obsolete.
Goku even manages to use Hakai against Zamasu, but he pulls Mai in the path of the attack so Goku has to back off. Again, a little goofy, but I can like with it.
The main thing here is that Goku didn’t get to do much in the first two-thirds of the arc, and that’s by design. You bring him out at the end so he can show off all his cool powers and everyone talks about how strong he is. Which means you have to do a lot of scenes where Goku is on the sidelines, or absent altogether. And this is nothing new. We’ve seen it in a lot of classic Dragon Ball arcs in the past, but Toei wants to go against that idea and put Goku all over the place. Well, they got their way in GT and they got their way in the anime version of the Zamasu arc, and both of those things sucked. This manga Zamasu arc has some problems, but it’s a lot more sound from a structural standpoint.
Does it make sense for Goku to be able to fight Merged Zamasu alone? Not really, but he doesn’t have to beat him, he just has to hold out long enough for the fusion to wear off, and it does. But it’s all weird because it was two Zamasus.
And that’s when Trunks chops them in half. See, this works so much better because Merged Zamasu was already starting to come apart anyway, so this is just Trunks delivering a final blow instead of inventing some new power from nothing.
But it’s not the end just yet, because each half grows back, and then the Goku Black half gets up from being impaled. How did he become immortal?
Then both of them regenerate into their Merged Zamasu forms, so now we have two Merged Zamasus. Vegeta does a Final Flash variation called “Gamma Burst Flash”, and that rips them both apart, but then the pieces grow into even more Zamasus, so we have this Sorcerer’s Apprentice thing going on.
Retreat isn’t an option either, because the Zamasus reveal that they have their own time machine. Remember that ancient civilization in Universe 12 who invented a time machine? Well, the Destroyer God from U12 kept it, and Zamasu found it . So he can use that device to invade the other timelines. Wait, how would Zamasu know how to operate an alien time machine? I mean, he’s not stupid, but still. For all he knows, it’s not even functional anymore, and there’s no tech support in Universe 12 because he killed everyone in it.
So Goku and Vegeta try to hold off this Zamasu army while the others escape. They have no idea what good it’ll do, but it’s better than nothing. I like Vegeta’s like here when Goku asks him if he has a plan. “Go wild until you die. That’s all.”
I also like how Goku’s only regret is that if he has to go out in a hopeless battle like this, he’d rather do it in Super Saiyan mode. Luffa would be touched.
But then he remembers his button that he got from Grand Zeno, and things pretty much play out like they did in Episode 67 of the anime. The entire timeline is erased, and in the manga, we see the Time Ring that represents this timeline vanish along with it. That kind of bugged me in the anime version, where Gowasu looks at his box of rings one last time at the end of the arc and all the rings are still there.
On the other hand, should the Time Ring vanish? Zeno didn’t erase the timeline, just the multiverse it contained. Is that the same thing? The history of that reality still exists, right? Then again, maybe it doesn’t matter, since the Time Rings can’t go back to the past, and now this timeline only has a past. So even if the history of that timeline remains, the Time Ring that goes with it is useless, so it might as well self-destruct.
Except Whis still has that plan to go back to the timeline before Grand Zeno destroyed everything in it, nip Zamasu in the bud, and drop off Trunks and Mai to live out their lives. This will create a new alternate timeline, but the fact that Whis can do this at all suggests that the Time Ring for that reality still needed to exist. Ah well, this whole business is pretty dumb anyway.
My head canon for all of this is that Whis dropped off this version of Trunks and Mai in the timeline where Xeno Trunks lives, and sometimes he’ll come home from Time Patrol duty and say hello to his blue-haired duplicate, an older, more traumatized version of himself who lives with his wife in some cabin out in the middle of nowhere. Blunks sees his mom now and again, but he and Mai keep to themselves for the most part, as they can’t quite feel like they truly belong in this world. But they have each other, and that’s enough.
But I can never figure out the timeline logistics to make that provable. It probably isn’t worth the trouble.
Anyway, Pilaf keeps asking Future Mai what happened to the Pilaf and Shu of that timeline, and she seems to know the answer, but she can’t bring herself to tell him the truth. I was sort of hoping Future Mai wouldn’t even know who Pilaf was, since the anime never bothered to establish this, but the manga makes it clear that this is the same Mai who we saw in the first DB arc in 1984. So whatever.
The thing is, Pilaf’s all worried because he doesn’t know what unspeakable fate awaits him, but for all we know, Mai just doesn’t want to tell him he died. I mean, everyone died in that timeline. It’s just a question of who killed Pilaf and when it happened. Maybe something else happened to him before he got killed, and that’s what Mai doesn’t want to talk about, but even if he lived right up to the end, he still would have died in that one shed Goku Black blew up.
Like I said, this arc is pretty damn morbid, and it bothers me how casually Toriyama brought back this alternate timeline just to eradicate it completely. He could have just... not brought it back, and that would have been the same as destroying it, but instead it’s like he went out of his way to do this arc just to burn the whole thing to the ground and piss on the ashes.
And we never really know for sure that Whis succeeds in his plan to relocate Trunks and Mai. This feels very much like when someone says they took your pet dog to a farm where they can run and play all day long. Maybe Whis just killed them in secret to wrap up the last loose ends. Or maybe he made a good faith effort and it just didnt’t work the way he expected. Or maybe it worked just fine, but Trunks couldn’t handle it and flipped out. It’s not fun to think about.
But it’s over now, and I’m pleased to say the manga version is a lot better than the anime, although I guess that’s not saying a whole lot. Good night, and fuck the Zamasu Saga forever.
#dragon ball#dragon ball super manga#2023dbapocryphaliveblog#goku#vegeta#trunks#mai#emperor pilaf#shu#gowasu#zamasu#goku black#beerus#whis#supreme kai#kibito#master roshi#fuck the zamasu saga forever
59 notes
·
View notes
Photo
It blows my mind how much work people put into Dragon Ball power scaling. Power scaling stopped making sense in Dragon Ball right around the time Dr Gero somehow managed to build cyborgs that were casually stronger than the strongest being in the known universe at the time, Frieza -- who was himself so absurdly powerful that his very existence ruined power-levels as a meaningful plot device forever.
But by far the biggest problem with power scaling in DB is no matter how stupendous the internal consistency of your head canon is, nothing you come up with will ever be predictive of future events in DB. Power scaling is forever damned to the realm of descriptive-only claims on past events, because Toei doesn’t give a flying fuck about what makes sense given the established lore, they just care about creating visually iconic moments, no matter how contrived they have to be to happen.
This is why Kefla is able to compete with SSB Goku, even though Kale shouldn’t be any stronger than Buu-saga SSJ2 Vegito, while SSB Goku should be able to obliterate whole universes. This is also why Future Trunks, who only ever made it to SSJ2 in all the time he’s been off in his own timeline, was somehow able to “rage” himself into defeating Zamasu, who ROFLstomped two SSB level fighters.
You can tell me some bullshit head cannon theory explaining how these fights actually make super-duper perfect sense and I’m a filthy casual or w/e for not already seeing the clear logical sense in it, but that would just be post-hoc gobbledygook, and you know it. Any honest power scaling would predict these events to be impossible, and yet they happened. At least with DBZ the power scaling issues were confined to suspension-of-disbelief problems; the relative strength of characters never really defied the internal consistency of the plot, it’s just that you had to make peace with frequent deus ex-machina power-ups closing strength-gaps at ludicrously auspicious times.
With Dragon Ball Super, you have pre-established ex-machinas suddenly becoming more ex-machina than they’ve already been established to be because it’s convenient for the plot. There’s no organic growth of characters anymore. The characters are exactly as strong as the writers needs them to be at that time, subject to change without notice. It’s kind of abusive towards these characters if you think about it. I mean, every time a character is buffed or nerfed disproportionately to what they’ve actually gone through in the story, it robs that character of, well... character.
#dragon ball super#Dragon Ball Z#power scaling#power levels#goku#kefla#trunks#super saiyan#ssb#super saiyan god
2 notes
·
View notes
Text
Dragon Ball Super 052
For fuck’s sake, Trunks...
There’s too many characters in this thing. Bulma is refurbishing the time machine for the assault on Goku Black, but she’s also got the Pilaf gang doing gofer work in the lab. Also, her dad is helping, and Kid Trunks is around too. Well, maybe the problem isn’t that there’s too many characters. It’s that this montage of working on the time machine could have just been edited down to a few seconds, or cut altogether.
Seriously, the way they keep cramming Pilaf scenes into this arc, you’d think Emperor Pilaf’s agent negotiated some sort of amazing contract with Toei. He doesn’t have any technical skills, and seems to leave all the manual labor to Mai and Shu, but he still hangs around anyway, making insipid comments about everything. He’s kind of like the Zamasu Saga’s answer to Giru from GT.
And I guess that makes Kid Trunks like GT Pan, because he has zero impact on the plot, and he keeps hanging around anyway in a desperate bid to be taken seriously. He goes with Mai to fetch some doohickey in “Lab 2″, which is an empty storage room with a pile of stuff in one corner, and he just pulls out random objects hoping she’ll be impressed with how he found what they needed. Then he finds a hacksaw and some cable and ties it around his chest like Future Trunks’ sword. That just looks dangerous.
Meanwhile, Future Trunks doesn’t have much to do while he’s waiting for Bulma to finish his ride. She tells him it’s going well, but it’ll take a full day to manufacture enough fuel for the trip. Trunks is amazed because it took Future Bulma a year to make the same fuel, but this Bulma has the advantage of working with the full resources of Capsule Corp. Trunks is just fortunate that this version of Bulma recently discovered how to make this fuel. It was the stuff she had Monaka help her with in Episode 44.
So Trunks goes outside, where Piccolo and Krillin have been tasked with repairing the grounds after the fight with Goku Black. He asks about Gohan and they tell him he’s left the world of fighting behind. That... doesn’t make sense, because Gohan begged Piccolo to whip him into shape after the whole Golden Frieza thing. They were training together in the Universe 6 arc, and the only reason they stopped was so Piccolo could participate in the tournament.
Anyway, Trunks tells Krillin and Piccolo the story of how the Gohan in his world trained him before he died, which is weird because you would think they’d know all of this. Well, maybe not Kirllin, but Piccolo should definitely know, because he overheard Trunks telling Goku about it when they first met. The point is that Trunks regrets not thanking Gohan when he last saw him after the Cell Games, and Krillin suggests that he go visit Gohan at the university where he... works? Studies? Interns? I have no idea what Gohan’s status is in this. Is he a student or part of the faculty?
Anyway, Trunks eats soft-serve ice cream with Gohan and he can’t believe it.
He meets Gohan’s family and can’t believe it.
Pan mugs him and he can’t believe it.
And as they sit down for dinner, Trunks realizes that this could have been his life in his own timeline. He had saved the world from the androids and Cell, and they were rebuilding. If Goku Black hadn’t shown up, then he could have been having this idyllic life with Bulma and Mai and that cat from episode 47.
Note to self, I need to commission some art of a scene like this, but with Xeno Trunks instead of Blunks, and Luffa in Mai’s seat, kind of slouching all badass, maybe eating a lobster in one hand like it’s a burger.
I say this because this is the sort of thing I envision for Future Trunks and Future Bulma in the Time Patrol continuity. I’ve been writing a fic about that for a while now, and they don’t get featured as much as I’d like, but I enjoy writing scenes where Bulma comes to Toki Toki City to check on the equipment, and she gets to spend time with her son and meet his rowdy ancestor. Maybe this is why I hate the Zamasu Saga so much. It’s precisely because Goku Black ruined this sort of happy life for these characters, and a story where that happens is the exact opposite of the sort of thing I wanted to see.
So Trunks thanks them for the meal and heads home, feeling refreshed. Seeing Gohan living the dream has reminded him of what he’s fighting for, and it proves that he can succeed. The thing Trunks needs to understand is that all this peaceful stuff he finds in this world is thanks to him. Beerus and Whis can scold him for meddling with history, but fuck ‘em. In this world, Gohan got to live! He has a wife and baby daughter! And two arms! Even if Trunks rolls snake-eyes for the rest of his life, no one can take away what he’s done for this world.
When he gets back to Capsule Corp, he asks where Goku is, and they tell him he went with Beerus and Whis to Universe 10. Wait what? Yeah, when Goku Black fought the real Goku, Whis thought Black’s energy seemed familiar, and it reminded him of a guy he knows in Universe 10, so they’re going to check it out.
And then we get a glimpse at this shithead. I’m pretty sure this is the first and last time we get to see Zamasu keeping his mouth shut, so enjoy it while you can.
#dragon ball#dragon ball super#2023dbapocryphaliveblog#goku#trunks#gohan#videl#pan#son pan#mr satan#piccolo#krillin#mai#shu#emperor pilaf#beerus#whis#dr brief#zamasu#fuck the zamasu saga forever
36 notes
·
View notes
Text
Dragon Ball Super 061
“Who are you?”
“I’m you, but stronger. Furthermore, I’m substantially more verbose, though you may find this difficult to accept.”
“Indeed, for I have amazed even myself on occasion with my propensity to ramble endlessly on a given topic. Though my diction flows like clear waters across a mountain stream, woe be to any who seek to quench their thirst for meaningful conversation, for I provide only minimal insight in the magnitude of verbiage I employ.”
“Yes, I quite agree! I have often noticed how my own thoughts and feelings seem quite trivial when diluted beneath the deluge of my interminable speech. Though I begin with a point I wish to make, I continue to belabor it, adding word after word, clause after clause, like a builder stacking bricks upon a great tower reaching up into the heavens. And yet, though the great temple is unmatched in splendor, the thought which it houses is so minuscule as to require only a tiny fraction of the space.”
“It is a remarkable similarity we share. Perhaps, it is a good omen. Yes, for if you are another iteration of myself, and we truly are of one mind in fact rather than spirit, then we both share the same dream of perfect justice for the entire universe. A world finally freed from the shackles of evil, released from the fuzzy handcuffs of corruption, and loosed from the kinky chastity belt of mortals, who stain the cosmos with a taint so profound it disgusts me to speak of it. And if our dream is to be fully realized, then what other outcome can there possibly be, save for a universe where only we two remain as its population? In such a divinely pristine creation, a creation restored to its rightful essence, our tendency to prattle endlessly will not be abnormal at all. For such holy voices as ours will be the only speech heard throughout the cosmos.”
“This is nice. I feel like we’re really vibing here. Do you want to go somewhere and get a coffee?”
“Oh, fuck yeah. All Gowasu ever let me drink in this stupid place is tea.”
Okay, so we’re fifteen episodes into this stupid saga, and we’re finally going to get the origin story of Goku Black. I probably need to write a separate thing where I compare the Zamasu Saga to GT, and I think what I need to do is like a side-by-side with the Baby Saga and the Shadow Dragons Saga, because those two arcs are the most similar to Zamasu’s whole storyline. I couldn’t decide which one would be more appropriate, so maybe a three-way thing to decide which is the worst. The point I’m getting at here is that no matter how bad and dumb the Omega Shenron fight got, at least he didn’t have a stupid secret identity on top of the rest of it.
Okay, so let me set the stage here. In Episode 59, Beerus destroyed Zamasu for attempting to assassinate the Supreme Kai of Universe 10. This action would have led to Zamasu securing Gowasu’s Time Ring, the Super Dragon Balls, and Goku Black. So Beerus believed that by destroying Zamasu before he could do all of that, then Trunks’ future world would be at peace.
That hope was shattered in Episode 59, because the next episode preview clearly showed that nothing had changed in Trunks’ world. And yet we still had to wade through Episode 60 to find out the long way. Lots of debate over how time travel works, and now we’re in Episode 61, and we’re still going over this shit. And the good guys will have to go back to tell Beerus he’s wrong, so we’re spending a lot of episodes on this one plot point.
So up until now, the good guys had believed that Zamasu had used the Super Dragon Balls to create Goku Black as a henchman, but that’s not it at all. Goku Black is Zamasu, having wished to swap bodies with the real Goku.
So who’s this green asshole who’s been helping him this whole time? Well, he’s Zamasu too. Specifically, he’s the Zamasu native to this timeline, just like Future Trunks and Future Mai and Future Yajirobe. When the “main” Zamasu successfully switched bodies with Goku, he used the Time Ring to travel to this alternate timeline, where he found his counterpart and recruited him for his plan.
Goku Black knew that this other Zamasu would share his frustrations with mortals, so he found him, killed his version of Gowasu, and explained what he wanted to do. Overcome with fulfillment, the other Zamasu embraced his alternate self.
All right, but that only explains how Future Zamasu got in on this bit. How can Goku Black be the same Zamasu that Beerus destroyed in Episode 59? Simple, it’s because of the Time Ring. At least, that’s what Goku Black says. The way he remembers it, no one was there to stop him the day he killed Gowasu. So he took the Time Ring, became Goku Black, recruited Future Zamasu, and made him indestructible.
I pulled up the subtitles for this, just to make sure there was no confusion, because this part has always irritated me. Beerus spent like an episode and a half insisting that his way would work, and that his divine status overruled the empirical evidence Trunks had witnessed over the years. So was Beerus just talking out his ass, or did he just overlook a detail?
The dub implies that the Time Ring protected him from the causality effects of getting destroyed in the past, but that doesn’t add up, because Zamasu wasn’t wearing it when Beerus destroyed him. But Goku Black is wearing the Ring now, and he has been for the past seventeen years.
I think that’s what the idea is supposed to be. Beerus’s whole argument was that he went to the Zamasu of a particular timeline, the only timeline where he met Goku and developed his obsession with Goku, and destroyed that Zamasu. In theory, this should have a “Marty McFly Effect”, erasing Goku Black from existence, no matter what he does in the future or which timeline he goes to. And because Beerus is a Hakaishin, this doesn’t create any new timelines, like when mortals change the past like Trunks has done.
Episode 61 seems to be suggesting that Beerus’ plan could have worked, except he didn’t know that the Time Ring protects the wielder from changes in his own history. I guess that property would make sense, because the Supreme Kai who uses the Time Ring would need a way to be able to observe and interact with future events without potentially creating new timelines. For example, Zamasu killed that Barbari warrior 1000 years from now. I’m pretty sure that change in future events isn’t “locked in” or anything, and if someone were to destroy Planet Barbari in the next thousand years, that wouldn’t create a second timeline where Barbari survived so that the one poor dope could get murdered by Zamasu on schedule.
And I guess it makes sense that Beerus failed to take the Time Ring’s powers into account, since only the Supreme Kai of each universe is authorized to own and use them. Zamasu never even heard of the Time Rings until recently, and he was supposed to be training to eventually assume the office of Supreme Kai. It figures that Beerus, a Destroyer, wouldn’t know everything about how the Time Rings work and what they do.
In short: If Beerus had any influence over the rules of time, it was canceled out by the Time Ring. And since Beerus only knew to destroy Zamasu because he saw Goku Black wearing a Time Ring, he can’t unring that bell. There must have been a version of Zamasu who successfully obtained the Ring and became Goku Black. Beerus cannot undo this. All he accomplished was to branch the timeline so that in one branch, Zamasu no longer exists.
In the other branch, Goku Black continued with his plan, as seen in this flashback. He used the Time Ring to jump ahead one year, gathered the Super Dragon Balls in Age 780, and wished to swap bodies with Goku.
This left Goku trapped in Zamasu’s body, and in this timeline, Goku has never met Zamasu, or even heard of the guy.
Then Goku Black teleported to Earth and killed the Goku of that timeline.
And he killed Chi-Chi and Goten too. No surprise there. After that, he went to the Universe 10 of Future Trunks’ alternate timeline, recruited the Zamasu native to that world, jumped ahead one more year with the Time Ring, and used the Super Dragon Balls a second time to give that Zamasu the indestructible body.
Then they went to the Future Trunks timeline and started carrying out their Project Zero Mortals thing. First they destroyed the Super Dragon Balls, then they started hunting down all the other gods in the twelve universes. This would ensure that there would be no one to stop them as they destroyed all other life in the universes. Wait, how the hell did they kill Jiren? And Broly?
Finally, the duo saved Earth for last, and they invaded one year before the events seen in Episode 47. Black says they’ve specifically reserved Earth for the grand finale, because they wanted to make the people there suffer the most out of everyone.
See, they thought about all this and decided that Earth is the root of all of this. Specifically, Trunks and his time machine, since his tinkering with history led to the creation of alternate timelines, which is what led to Zamasu being introduced to Goku in Episode 53, which resulted in Zamasu becoming Goku Black and kicking off Project Zero Mortals. So when you think about it that way, Trunks is responsible for all of this. If he had left well enough alone, Goku would have died of a heart virus and Zamasu would have never met him.
Actually, that doesn’t quite add up, but this post is running longer than I wanted, so I’ll try to explain what I mean later.
So I think I’ve covered all of the backstory stuff. Now let’s talk about the fighting in this episode. It sucks. Goku, Vegeta, and Trunks got their asses beat the last time they came here, and the only thing that’s changed is that they remembered to bring some senzu beans. Not that it matters, because the baddies quickly overwhelm Vegeta and Trunks, and corner Goku. They tell him the bit about how Goku Black killed Chi-Chi and Goten in his origin story, and Black stabs his hand-energy sword through Zamasu and into Goku while they talk about this.
And that gets Goku all fired up, so he raises his power and starts going on a tear. Okay, so there’s a difference of opinion on this scene.
On the one hand, you could say: Hey, cool, Goku’s had all he can stands, and he can’t stands no more, and he’s gonna kick some ass because he loves his wife and kids. I can’t dispute that. This is a factually accurate statement.
However, on the other hand, this scene is dumb as hell, because Goku’s powering up while he’s got an energy beam sticking through his liver. Remember when Vegeta got stabbed this way and it didn’t kill him, but it kind of took him out of the fight for several minutes? Then he got up, went Blue, and fired a Final Flash anyway? Then he passed out until he got a senzu bean later? Yeah, well, that was really fucking stupid, and now we have Goku doing the same bullshit, only faster. He doesn’t even wait around for Black to pull out the beam.
Also, what exactly did Goku do to turn the tables here? He was already in his strongest form, so what has he powered up to? He’s just Super Saiyan Blue Goku With a Hole In His Liver, and somehow that makes him stronger than he was before, when he didn’t have a hole there.
Like, he’s a house of fire in this scene, and it looks cool, I won’t dispute that. It’s kind of nice watching him dominate Black and Zamasu like this... except...
Black just suddenly decides it’s time to start winning again, and he turns the tables on Goku without even trying hard.
So why is this hurting Goku when the gaping hole in his torso didn’t? Also, is one of those beams going in his dick? Why doesn’t Goku just power out of this like he did before? He’s still mad about Chi-Chi and Goten, isn’t he?
See, this is why this saga sucks. They tried to do this “Power Awakened by Rage” thing like they used to do in DBZ. Toddler Gohan vs. Raditz, Goku turning Super Saiyan for the first time on Namek, Gohan turning Super Saiyan 2 against Cell. These are all classic moments, and this episode tries to borrow some of that magic.
Except it’s all wrong. Toddler Gohan ran out of gas pretty quickly, but he still hurt Raditz enough for the others to finish him. They didn’t just have Raditz instantly recover from all the damage that headbutt did to him. And Super Saiyan 2 Gohan didn’t just start getting his ass kicked when it was convenient to the plot. He never stopped being angry at Cell, and his power never wavered. Cell got stronger, but not strong enough to prevent him from getting his just desserts.
Here, I think the idea is that Goku Black provoked Goku on purpose, then allowed Goku to pummel him a while, because somehow that helps Goku Black get stronger, like he claimed back in Episode 49. So I guess he was just toying with Goku? Which kind of makes Goku look like a total geek here.
But the rotten cherry on top of this moldy sundae is Goku screaming at them before he attacks. “’Cause now I’m mad! I’m really really mad!”
Seriously? That’s what they came up with? “I’m really really mad!”?
I mean, why stop there? Why not have Goku shout “I’m really really really mad!”? It’s pathetic. I forgot what he said in the subtitles, but I’m pretty sure it was equally unimpressive.
Okay, so after they take out Goku, they move on to Vegeta and Trunks, and that’s when they try to make this out to be all Trunks’ fault. And this makes Trunks mad. In fact, it might make him--dare I say it-- really really mad.
In fact, the way everyone’s reacting, it’s like Trunks has never been this mad before. He may have surpassed a level of anger beyond really really mad. Can it be?
Trunks has ascended to becoming really really really really mad! Like, these guys killed his mom and destroyed his whole world. They also attacked his girlfriend several times. But when they said a bunch of dumb stuff about time travel, that’s what pushed Trunks over the edge.
So the episode ends on this new power-up, so I guess this is the one we’re expected to take seriously, but it’s a little difficult to care when we just saw Goku do the exact same thing and get his ass kicked. I mean, Trunks’ form looks like something new, sort of? But even if it were legit, they completely undermined this story beat with the whole Goku thing they did.
Okay, enough of Episode 61. Let’s try to push forward.
#dragon ball#dragon ball super#2023dbapocryphaliveblog#goku#vegeta#trunks#zamasu#goku black#yajirobe#chi chi#goten#beerus#frieza#fuck the zamasu saga forever
34 notes
·
View notes
Text
Dragon Ball Super Manga ch.14-20
Okay, let’s look at the manga version of the Zamasu Saga.
For openers, I like this establishing scene in the deserted West City. The old newspaper celebrating the anniversary of 17 and 18′s death is a great way to clue in the reader that we’re in a different world, and just how different things are.
Toyotaro skips the part where Future Bulma dies, and I like this version better. Trunks just tells Mai that she’s dead and how it happened. We don’t even know for sure that Trunks was there to see it. He may have gotten the news from someone else, or he discovered footage on a security camera at her lab.
Back in the main timeline, there’s this weird bit where Trunks’ teacher tries to explain alternate timelines by using Trunks’ own family as an example. In this scenario, Trunks goes back in time and accidentally kills his own mother, resulting in an alternate timeline where he was never born, but his own native timeline is unchanged. Then she realizes she was reading the wrong lesson plan and she was supposed to cover arithmetic today. Okay, but why this example, though?
Meanwhile Bulma asks if Whis’ temporal do-over ability created an alternate timeline, but Whis says it doesn’t, because he just “resets” time. I’m not sure what the difference is, unless he means like the three minutes where Frieza destroyed the Earth in Resurrection F simply never took place. He didn’t take Goku back in time so much as he rewound time so that three minutes ago becomes the present.
Anyway, Whis says this is why it’s only a three-minute ability, and why he can only do it once in a great while. Otherwise, the temporal do-over would “upset the time axis”. I think this is the manga’s way of saying that it’s not enough for a time traveler to just arrive in the past. They have to actually get out of the time machine and make some noticeable changes before an alternate timeline would be produced.
I think this is what trips up a lot of fans (myself included) when we try to figure out all the timelines in Dragon Ball. It’s not hard to end up with a larger count than what the official sources seem to recognize. When Gowasu shows off his Time Rings, there’s supposed to be one for each alternate timeline, and he doesn’t have very many.
I think Toriyama’s theory with all of this in the Dragon Ball lore is that the “Butterfly Effect” isn’t strong enough on its own to create alternate timelines. Stepping on a butterfly is a big deal in “A Sound of Thunder,” by Ray Bradbury. In Dragon Ball, I’m not even sure that Trunks killing Frieza and King Cold was enough to create an alternate timeline, since that was something Goku would have done anyway. But Trunks giving Goku the heart medicine and warning him about the Androids certainly created an alternate timeline, because by that point he had “upset the time axis” enough to do what Whis does not.
Anyway, he’s some Super Saiyan 2. I’m putting this in because in the anime version, Goku is supposed to be SSJ2, but they drew him as SSJ1, which ticks me off. Toyotaro knows what’s up, though. Seriously, why do people hate this guy so much? I’m 26 chapters into this manga, and the artwork consistently rocks.
The sparring scene with Goku and Trunks ends with Trunks powering up his SSJ2 form, which somehow surpasses Goku’s SSJ3 form. That still sounds janky in my head, but Toriyama crossed that Rubicon when he had Vegeta surpass SSJ3 Goku in Battle of Gods. The important thing is that the manga version gives Trunks some more credibility going into this arc. He’s still weaker than Goku and Vegeta in this thing, but he’s not as useless as he was in the anime version, and so it’s less stupid when he rises to the occasion in the manga.
This is an important distinction between Toyotaro’s storytelling and Toei’s. There’s a genuine effort by Toyotaro to use the different transformations to explain how a character has improved or “caught up” to an opponent. The point of this scene was for Goku to get an idea of how strong Goku Black is by finding out how strong Trunks is now. And the manga gives us a general idea by having Goku use Super Saiyan God very briefly to get the better of Trunks. The message is that Trunks has gotten a lot stronger since we last saw him, and that means Goku Black is stronger still, but Goku still seems to have the advantage, at least for now.
In the anime version, it felt more like the point was just to work one more Goku fight scene into the arc. He used SSJ3 to overpower Trunks, then didn’t even bother using it when Goku Black showed up. It reminds me a lot of GT, where Goku will just... do stuff during a fight, without any sense of a strategy or purpose. The only true plan is to save the strongest transformations until the end, whether that makes sense or not.
Volume 2 of the manga ends with a bonus comic showing how things played out in the Future Trunks Timeline when they tried to use the Dragon Balls. Gohan was trying to make a wish before 17 and 18 could kill Piccolo, but the Pilaf Gang had already beaten him to the punch, and made themselves babies. Presumably, the Pilaf Gang made the same wish in the “main” timeline, which is why they’re kids throughout Dragon Ball Super.
I guess the main thing to note here is that this removes all doubt about Mai’s true age. Her adult self in the Zamasu arc is so different from the one we saw in early Dragon Ball that I often wonder if they’re even the same person, but this comic establishes that they are. I don’t think the Pilaf Gang should look quite this decrepit in this year. I think Toyotaro used their character models from GT, which is set 22 years after this moment. But then again, working for Emperor Pilaf is a rough life, which is probably why Pilaf made the wish for youth in the first place.
Moving on, we get a much better depiction of Future Trunks’ version of the battle with Babidi and Dabura. The problem I always had with the anime and the Kakarot video game is that they go out of their way to establish that Trunks has the Z-Sword for this fight, and it gets turned into stone by Dabura’s spit. The implication is that the Elder Kai can never be freed now, because the Z-Sword is lost, except Trunks kills Dabura a little later on. Killing Dabura should reverse the spell, restoring the Z-Sword to normal. Yeah, it broke while it was made of stone, but that’s a good thing, since the sword had to be broken to release the Elder Kai.
Well, Toyotaro took that into account, which is why he not only draws the petrified sword in pieces, but he also adds a panel where it bursts into flames! Not sure why that happened, but it looks cool as hell, and now we know for sure that the Elder Kai is not coming out of that thing. There’s a gag panel at the end of the chapter showing the Elder Kai with a halo just in case there was any doubt.
Speaking of Kibito, he’s the one who fights Zamasu in his introduction to the story. I have a strong suspicion that this was Toriyama’s original idea, and Toei took one look at it and said “A fight without Goku? But what about the ratings?!” so they rewrote things to have Goku fight Zamasu and defeat him, which starts him down the path to cartoonish supervillainy. And that’s fine, except it leads to some continuity headaches later.
The manga is careful to avoid having Goku and Zamasu meet until they fight in Trunks’ world. This is important for time travelly stuff I don’t want to get into right now.
Zamasu also learns of the Time Rings independently of the good guys preparing to fight Goku Black. This Zamasu/Gowasu is just presented as a side plot in the manga. At this point, no one suspects Zamasu of any wrongdoing, and there’s no indication that he has anything to do with Goku Black. In fact, there’s a point where everyone suspects Kibito instead, because he said some not-so-nice things about mortals in the Buu saga, and that’s about as suspicious as any Kai has ever been.
Anyway, Gowasu explains the Time Rings, and tells a tale about an ancient civilization in Universe 12 who invented a time machine. So one of the spare Time Rings represents and alternate timeline created by that time machine. So that’s why there was one more in the box what I had expected. The anime never bothered to explain this, so I’m glad the manga did.
Zamasu also learns of Goku and the Super Dragon Balls on his own, when he finds an illegal upload of the Destroyer Invitational Tournament on GodTube. Then he goes off to quiz Zuno about both of these things, and asks if the Super Dragon Balls could switch a god’s body with a mortal’s. Zuno relays this information to Kibito, who informs the good guys, and that’s when they figure out that Goku Black is a future version of Zamasu.
See, this is important because this arc depicts Zamasu/Goku Black’s origin story. And the anime tried to get cute by introducing a predestination paradox to it. They had Goku Black follow Trunks into the past, where Beerus and Whis noticed his Time Ring and familiar ki. Then they went to Universe 10 to ask some questions, and that’s how Zamasu learned about Goku and the Time Rings, which eventually inspired his plan to become Goku Black.
And I like the poetry of that cycle. Beerus investigates Goku Black, which inadvertantly leads Zamasu to become Goku Black, who then goes back in time and motivates Beerus to investigate. Except there’s no starting point for any of this. Dragon Ball doesn’t deal in predestination paradoxes, since they’re all about alternate timelines. So there would need to be a timeline where Zamasu became Goku Black without Beerus’ involvement, except there’s no scenario in the anime where that could happen.
What else have we got? There’s this scene of everyone hanging out and playing video games, which is cute but not too important.
And the #kisscourse is in the manga, front and center, which pretty much proves that this stupid idea of Goku never kissing his sexy wife came directly from the brain of Akira Toriyama. There’s no way this dumb bullshit made it into the manga, anime, and the dub without it being in Tori’s notes for this story.
It’s still stupid as fuck. Real talk, I think Akira Toriyama is a storytelling genius, but that doesn’t mean this was a good idea. Even Babe Ruth struck out once in a while.
Let’s talk about the fighting. One of the many dumb things about the anime version is that Goku and Vegeta go to Trunks’ future world three times, which is just incredibly tedious. Throw in the bit where Goku Black followed Trunks into the past, and Goku’s little sparring session with Zamasu, and Goku fights the main villains on five separate occasions. Remember how Goku fought King Piccolo twice, and that was it? Rememer how Goku went to Namek and fought Frieza once? Remember how those arcs were really fucking good and this...?
Anyway, Toyotaro clears away a lot of dead wood by just having two trips to Trunks’ world: One where they lose, and one where they win. And much of the fighting is handled by Vegeta, which is nice because it justifies Vegeta’s presence in this mission, and it saves Goku for when it counts. In this version, he works over Goku Black, and challenges him to use Super Saiyan Blue, but Goku Black doesn’t know how to do that yet, so it’s mostly Vegeta whoopin’ Black’s ass, which is great. This is where he does the speech about only a Saiyan being able to make full use of a Saiyan body. The anime has this too, except they stuck it near the end of the arc, when Goku Black had already beaten Goku and Vegeta twice before, so he had pretty much figured out how to use a Saiyan body by that point.
Here, Goku Black takes his licks, then discovers from fighting Vegeta how to become Super Saiyan Rosé, and then he turns the tables. The anime completely screwed all that up, and I think I see why. I’ve been comparing the Zamasu arc to GT a lot, and I’m realizing that it’s because Episodes 47-67 of DBS were made with the same production sensibilities as GT. The story took a back seat to the ratings. They wanted Goku doing things in as many episodes as possible, and they probably wanted Goku Black to transform early on, both to show off his new form, and to job out Vegeta as quickly as possible so that Goku could take the lead and get more screen time.
Because when you read the manga version, you find a lot of scenes where Goku’s either a spectator, or not present at all. While he watches Vegeta fight Black in the future, Beerus is questioning Zamasu about his fact-finding trip to Zuno. There was a similar scene in the anime, except it was rewritten so Goku could be part of it. But in the manga, they do this without Goku, and they don’t bother waiting for Zamasu to assassinate Gowasu to prove his guilt. Instead, the Supreme Kai simply uses his own Time Ring to see for himself, and he shows up to tell Beerus and Gowasu about Zamasu’s future crimes.
And this sets up a cool thing in the manga version. While the Supreme Kai reports on what he witness with his Time Ring, he reveals that Goku Black has an ally, the alternate timeline Zamasu. So while he’s explaining this in the present, Goku and Vegeta are finding out about it the hard way in the future. It’s pretty cool storytelling, especially for comics, but it’s diametrically opposed to the core values at Toei, which is “Goku = Ratingz”. The idea of having two plot threads in a story-- one with Goku on the sidelines and one without Goku at all-- is anatheme to Toei. Kozo Morishita still runs that place, you know.
So that’s why the anime version had three time-trips instead of two. They needed Goku to meet Future Zamasu, and then come back so he could join Beerus in the scene where he destroys Zamasu in the present, and then sit in on the discussion of how that all works, and then go back so he could resume the mission. It was all carefully constructed to get Goku in as many scenes as possible. The fact that it ruins the pacing and makes the story more convoluted doesn’t matter. “Goku = Ratingz”.
So let’s talk about my favorite part of the manga version. Why did this plan require two Zamasus, and why aren’t they both bodyswapped and immortal? It’s actually very simple, and it explains a lot of about this arc, which is why I’m so mad at the anime version for never touching on it at all.
Okay, so Zamasu wanted Goku’s body because of the raw power it possessed. That’s simple enough to understand. But when he got Goku’s body, he couldn’t utilize its full power. That’s why he couldn’t transform right away. And this is a major part of why Goku Black kept fighting Trunks all the time in the year before Trunks went back in time for help. It wasn’t because Black sucks at killing Trunks. Far from it. There’s a flashback in this story where Black defeats Trunks and lets him go, so that he can fight him later. He’s not just toying with Trunks; he’s using Trunks to train himself.
Throughout this arc, it’s made clear that the bad guys’ aren’t just settling for Future Trunks’ reality. They fully intend to attack the other timelines as well, so they’ll need Goku Black as strong as he can get. So they’re using this world for practice, working out all the details and giving Goku Black a chance to beef up before they move on.
That’s why Goku Black didn’t make himself immortal. He needs a vulnerable body in order to get the same benefits Saiyans get from fighting powerful opponents. If he was immortal, he’d just stagnate at whatever power level he’s at, just like his counterpart.
So what’s the Immortal Zamasu’s role in the plan? He heals Goku Black whenever he gets hurt. Remember how Kibito would heal people in the Buu Saga? Zamasu has the same ability, because he was Gowasu’s attendant, just as Kibito is Shin’s attendant. Goku Black had the same power, but he lost it when he switched bodies with Goku. So he needed a second Zamasu on his team, one who still had his Kai body and all the powers that came with it. And to protect his healer, Goku Black used the Super Dragon Balls to make him immortal and indestructible.
It drives me nuts, because Toyotaro presents it all so elegantly, and the anime didn’t even try. All you get are Black and Zamasu rambling about how one of them is the sword and one is the shield, but they never discuss healing powers or why they can’t combine Kai powers and Saiyan powers in the same body.
Okay, so like I said, this manga has two stages of the battle. After the Goku Black/Immortal Zamasu alliance is revealed, the good guys get clobbered and have to retreat. Trunks uses the Solar Flare (cool!) which is a lot more believable than a bunch of Resistance bullshit. In fact, you really don’t see much of the Resistance guys in this version, which doesn’t bother me at all.
Black tries to locate their enemies, but he knows the Saiyans can suppress their ki, so he tries a different tack and searches for an absence of ki. He locates Mai, then finds her leaving a sewer with some figures with no life signs. So they attack, only to discover they were actually dummies under sheets. Then Trunks ambushes them to cover Goku and Vegeta’s escape. Awesome!
So Trunks has to hold them both off while Goku and Vegeta retreat to the past. This is a lot like when Trunks powered up to... whatever he was in Episode 62. Except this version doesn’t bother giving Trunks a new transformation that ends up not working anyway. This version also doesn’t just skip ahead without explaining how he got out of this sticky situation. Look! He’s in a lot of danger here, and it’s a cliffhanger! The next chapter will show how he gets out of this mess. This is storytelling 101, and it astonishes me how Toei botched this so badly in the anime version.
I don’t want to oversell the manga version of the Zamasu arc. It’s got problems, but the anime version has the same problems, plus a lot of unforced errors that make it unwatchable in places. So when you read the manga version right after the anime version, like I just did, it’s like night and day. If you’re only going to do one or the other, make sure you pick the manga. But if you insist on checking out both, you might want to do manga second, if only for the palette cleanser.
#dragon ball#dragon ball super manga#2023dbapocryphaliveblog#goku#vegeta#trunks#beerus#whis#mai#gowasu#zamasu#goku black#bulma#kibito#emperor pilaf#shu#fuck the zamasu saga forever
47 notes
·
View notes
Text
Dragon Ball Super 067
“Fuck the Zamasu Saga forever...”
Last time, Vegito attacked Zamasu with everything he had and still couldn’t beat him, but that’s okay because Trunks... cut him in half. And it totally makes how that worked! Honest.
Anyway, I was going to complain about how Zamasu kept talking even as he was being cut in half, but that pales in comparison to this episode, where he continues to talk after he’s been cut in half. It’s called “dignity”, Zamasu, look it up some time.
Finally, Zamasu vanishes in a bright light and everyone congratulates Trunks for securing the win. “I never heart of a Spirit Bomb coming from a sword before!” Goku says. “Yeah, neither have I,” Trunks says. “I don’t even know how that happened. It’s like someone was making all of this up and they ran out of time and just slapped something together. But at least we won.”
But they didn’t win, because over where Zamasu vanished, a big column of red and black energy shoots up into the sky...
... And a dark haze spreads out over the whole world. Also there’s thousands of Zamasu faces, all cackling with insane laughter.
Everybody’s out of power from all the fighting from earlier, but they still shoot their biggest energy blasts at the problem, and it does nothing. Gowasu speculates that the Super Dragon Balls that made Zamasu immortal have allowed him to survive having his body destroyed, and now his indestructible essence has dispersed throughout the universe.
Earlier, Gowasu was contemplating Zamasu’s fused body breaking down, and he noted the irony of Zamasu being obsessed with divine, perfect beauty, and how he had become everything he despised. Could Zamasu truly find satisfaction in his goal, if all it meant was becoming a broken god overseeing a vacant cosmos? Now we see that idea apparently being made manifest. Zamasu no longer has a body, and he seems to have been driven insane by his defeat at the hands of a mortal, so he’s just sort of going with it.
Some of the faces shoot energy blasts down at the Earth below.
And while... someone... the Supreme Kai maybe?... manages to protect this small group and the time machine, anything else that gets hit is destroyed.
Android 8 dies, the Turtle dies, and all of the survivors in West City we’ve seen have died.
Oh, and whatever Zamasu is doing to the multiverse in Trunks’ reality, it’s also bleeding into all the other timelines as well. So that’s a thing.
Even Beerus and Whis can sense it, although Whis doesn’t quite seem to understand what it is. Beerus knows, though. Or maybe he just has a good guess.
Back to this world, when Zamasu is done, only the group with Goku are left. Trunks confirms that he can’t sense any other survivors anywhere on Earth. All the people who helped him defeat Zamasu in the last episode are 100% dead. Mai shoots her gun into the air, but there’s nothing anyone can do. Refreshingly, Zamasu has nothing to say here. I’m not even sure he’s aware of Goku’s group still living on the surface.
Goku still wants to try to fight Zamasu, but he’s lost too much power, and he’s out of senzu beans. While he fishes around in his sash to find more, he discovers that button Grand Zeno gave him. So he pushes it...
And the Grand Zeno of this timeline appears. He doesn’t know Goku, since they never met in this timeline, but he’s still pretty chill about the whole thing. He takes one look at the universe and finds it unpleasant. There’s nothing here but Zamasu making that annoying laugh.
Goku explains that Zamasu is responsible and suggests that Zeno do something about it, and Zeno agrees. he levitates to the sky and prepares to destroy “everything.”
I don’t think Goku was expecting such an extreme or rapid response, so he tells everyone to hustle those buns and clear out. The Kais use their Time Rings, and everyone else hops in the Time Machine. Goku and Vegeta ride on the landing struts. I feel like that’s a bad idea, but so is staying here, so sure.
And as Grand Zeno does his work, all the Zamasu faces twist with confused terror and vanish.
Gowasu apologizes to Beerus for all the trouble caused by his shitty apprentice-selection skills, but there’s really nothing more to be said here. Goku and the others return in their Time Machine, but Goku’s not done yet because he wants to take one more trip. I’m pretty sure Bulma has to make more fuel for that, so I assume the next scene takes place some twelve hours later.
See, Goku wants to go back to pick up Grand Zeno, who’s now just floating in the void by himself. Trunks handles the controls for this trip, and he reports that he has taken the machine back to the same coordinates they left. I don’t know, it’s pretty ballsy of Goku to assume that they could even go back like this. I mean, would there even be a “here” for them to arrive at? Would the time machine simply blip out of existence as soon as it arrived? Or maybe this space Zeno floats in is only here because the time machine arrived here.
Anyway, Goku offers this Zeno a lift, promising to take him to another universe with lots of cool stuff. Zeno’s like “Yeah, I’m in.”
Then Goku asks the Supreme Kai to take him to the palace of the Grand Zeno in this timeline, and Goku introduces them. He promised the local Grand Zeno a friend, and he’s delivered. Promises made, promises kept.
The Grand Minister is impressed, and asks if Whis had something to do with this, but Whis says this was all Goku’s idea. The G.M. says he’s starting to like Universe 7, and Whis invites him to visit anytime. Also, in this scene they refer to each other as father and son.
So that wraps up most of it, right? Well, there’s still the matter of Trunks and Mai, who are now the only survivors of the alternate timeline’s multiverse. Zamasu killed everyone and Zeno erased what was left. Whis suggests taking them to a time just before that all happened. Basically, he would drop them off in the same timeline, before the crisis began. Then he would contact the Beerus of that timeline, and convince him to destroy Zamasu before he could have the chance to cause trouble. Beerus doesn’t approve, since that would mean Whis would create another alternate timeline.
But Whis points out that Beerus has already violated the same taboo himself, when he destroyed Zamasu in Episode 59. Beerus didn’t travel through time to do that, but he did act on information provided to him from the future, i.e., the similarity of Goku Black’s ki to Zamasu’s. Therefore, he created a divergenge in the timeline, one path where Beerus destroyed Zamasu, and one where he did not.
Vegeta has a more practical objection. No one knows exactly when Zamasu obtained his indestructible body, so if Whis’ plan is going to work, he’d need to do this before Zamasu makes that wish. Otherwise, Beerus destroying Zamasu would just produce the same ruined universe that Zeno had to erase. Whis says he has some means of dealing with such a problem, more effective than their Mafuba technique. But he doesn’t elaborate.
Of course, that problem doesn’t actually matter, since Whis’ plan requires the Beerus of that timeline to still be alive, and he would have died when Dabura killed the Supreme Kai, years before Goku Black or Zamasu got started. The real catch to all of this is that Whis can drop Trunks and Mai off in a “safe” version of the world they knew, a world recovering from the Androids, but still thriving. However, that world will have a Trunks and Mai already living there, which would be kind of awkward. Can they handle such a thing?
They agree to give it a shot. I mean, where else can they go? I guess they can stay here, but there’s a Trunks and Mai in this world too, so it’s the same problem. Anyway, before he leaves, Beerus tells Trunks that he’s going to absolve him of his temporal crimes, but only because Whis likes him. Translation: Beerus had a soft spot for Trunks now.
In Universe 10, Gowasu checks out his box of Time rings, and there’s a sixth one now. I think that would be the one created by Beerus’s actions in Episode 59, but I’m still a little fuzzy on the Time Rings. I’ll definitely have to try to sort this out in another post. All that matters is that we now have a Timeline E and F in addition to the A,B,C&D timelines from the original manga. And this suits me fine, because I like the idea of this shitty Zamasu saga involving a Timeline F.
Back on Earth, everyone says their goodbyes to Trunks and Mai, and Vegeta punches him, and he smiles when Trunks blocks it. They’re both satisfied that he can handle whatever they run into next in their new home.
Also, Piccolo and Gohan fly over to see them off, and Gohan offers words of support, which makes Trunks cry. Wait, I thought Whis escorted the time machine in this scene. Maybe he just told them he was going to arrange all that stuff, and he secretly planted a bomb on the Time Machine to clean up the last loose end.
Anyway, they’re gone, and apparently once and for all, so that’s the end of the Zamasu Saga. Good riddance.
It’s been said before, but the ending to this arc is incredibly nihilistic. The original goal here was for Trunks to save his world from Goku Black, and in the end, he failed completely. His Earth is destroyed, his people are destroyed, Goku Black and Zamasu are destroyed, and the entire multiverse of that timeline is destroyed as well. Trunks and Mai get to live, but they have to blend in on an exact copy of the world they knew (give or take a few years), and there’s already a Trunks and Mai living in it, which is kind of an existentialist horror when you think about it.
I think the creators were sort of hoping you won’t think about it too much after this episode. After all, the Trunks and Mai of this story are gone for good, so we don’t have any way to check in on them to see how they’re doing in their new home, or even if they made it there at all. As for the other characters, they can move on with their lives. Most of the events of this arc didn’t affect them at all, since the bulk of the action took place in a separate world that no longer exists.
The thing is, I still think about this, because I’ve been writing a Trunks fanfic as a hobby. Well, it’s not a Trunks fanfic. He’s in it, but he’s not the lead. The point is, I do try to keep abreast of Future Trunks continuity, and I swiftly came to the conclusion that this stupid saga should be ignored entirely. I hate the idea of Trunks’ whole future world dying in another conflict, a conflict so asinine that the only way to resolve it was a literal deus ex machina to destroy his entire reality.
And ignoring the Zamasu Saga is pretty easy to do, since the only lasting legacy seems to be the fact that there’s two Grand Zenos after this, when there was only one before. So if you follow my Dragon Ball Super Machete Cut, which skips Epsides 3-14, 19-31, and the Zamasu arc, you won’t be all that confused. I mean, sure, you’ll see two Zeno’s at the Tournament of Power, but they look and act exactly the same, so it doesn’t really matter how many of them there are. It’s a small price to pay for skipping this dumb stretch of episodes.
So we’re done. No more Zamasu Saga. Things can only get better from here, and now I...
Wait, I forgot I still have to do the manga version. Damn. It.
I’ll see you next time...
#dragon ball#dragon ball super#2023dbapocryphaliveblog#goku#vegeta#mai#trunks#gowasu#zamasu#supreme kai#whis#beerus#grand zeno#fuck the zamasu saga forever
48 notes
·
View notes
Text
Dragon Ball Super 064
Yeah, so this is the one where they kind of stopped giving a shit.
Last time, Goku and Vegeta came back for a third attack on the bad guys, and this time they do a little better. Vegeta actually overpowers Black, and he concludes that this was because Vegeta was so angry over seeing him stab Trunks earlier.
Uh, no, it was because Vegeta trained for like five months in the Hyperbolic Time Chamber. Oh, he’s not listening to me, so he’s just gonna stab his own hand.
So this... somehow... allows Black to create a big energy scythe, as opposed to that energy dagger he was using before. And when he swings it he makes... something. Somehow. Even Black doesn’t know what it is, and I’m pretty sure the writers don’t know either, but they continue to use it as a plot device for half of this episode.
What is especially infuriating about all this is that Vegeta just floats there like a dumbass while all of this is going on. He was beating the absolute shit out of Black before, and then he just... stops? This isn’t an unusual thing for this show. Sometimes characters like to play with their food, so to speak. And sometimes they’re genuinely curious to see what their opponent will try next. But Vegeta’s already lost to this guy twice, so it’s frustrating to see him taking such a passive role this close to the end.
Meanwhile, Goku’s doing well against Zamasu, which kind of goes to my point. They’ve basically worked out a plan where Goku keeps Zamasu busy so Vegeta can have a clear shot at Black. Zamasu’s indestructible, which means Goku can never truly defeat him this way, but if Vegeta can kill Black, they can double-team Zamasu and at least contain his punk ass until they figure out what to do with him. But if Vegeta’s just going to float around and watch Black invent new tricks, this puts the whole plan at risk.
And sure enough, that’s what happens. Black’s rasberry jam space rift has somehow created duplicates of himself, which corner Vegeta and draw Goku into the fight. This whole business is never explained or resolved, so I’m not going to waste any more time on it. Goku Black can make infinite copies of himself, and then he just stops doing that and it never gets brought up again.
This frees up Zamasu to attack Trunks, Mai, and Bulma, who are repairing the Time Machine, and the pot that Goku brought along for using the Evil Containment Wave. The pot is fixed, but only Goku learned the technique, and there’s no time to get him. So Bulma decides that Trunks will have to learn the move himself.
Wait, can’t Goku just teleport to intercept Zamasu? No, because the raspberry jam thing is interfering with his ability to locate ki signals. This hastily conceived macguffin thought of everything.
So let me try to explain this debacle. Bulma doesn’t know how to do the Mafuba herself, obviously, but she did see Piccolo demonstrate it the night before, so she at least knows the pose you use to do it. Except, no, she doesn’t. She has Trunks do a bunch of different poses, and none of them are even close to the right stance.
Then she remembers she recorded the whole thing on her phone, which seems like a weird thing to forget, but I’ve never invented a time machine, so maybe Bulma’s just Built Different.
So Piccolo does it and it kicks ass, great video, Piccolo, you’re doing amazing sweetie, and Trunks thinks he has the general idea, but he’s still not sure if he can pull it off. Remember, Goku learned this move last night and it took him hours to get it down.
He needs time to practice, so Bulma goes out to meet Zamasu and distract him with a fake seduction thing. I mean, this would work on me, because the dingy labcoat and chonky work boots is one of my favorite Bulma looks. Damn, I can smell the fish sausage juice from here.
But Zamasu? Well, he’s a different kind of cat. The not-attracted-to-women kind. I mean, I don’t know what the term is, but everyone just understands there’s some sort of Onceler self-cest bit going on between Zamasu and Goku Black, right?
So Trunks comes out and thinks Bulma is dead, so he gets mad. Really really mad! And as well all know, the madder you get, the less practice you need to execute the Mafuba, so he gets it right on the first try! Hooray.
Wait, no, that’s not how this works at all! This whole episode is bullshit!
Also, Bulma was okay, because it turns out Black and Zamasu are really lousy at killing people. I know Goku Black killed Future Bulma at the start of this story, but I’m starting to think she survived somehow. Or, if she did die, maybe it was an accident. Black grabbed her and a stray spark ignited the flammable solvents that had soaked into her clothes.
Now, this could be satisfying in spite of all the idiot comedy they worked into this, except there’s one more “hilarious” punch line: Goku forgot to bring the magic seal needed to complete the technique. So Zamasu just breaks out of the pot, no worse for wear.
That spooks Black enough to come running to Zamasu’s side, and he finds Zamasu visibly shaken by the experience. And then Goku and Vegeta show up soon after, since they don’t have to deal with that raspberry jam thing anymore.
So the Zammies decide to stop fooling around and use their ultimate weapon: Fusion. One of them switches his earring to the opposite ear, and they combine together just like Vegito in Dragon Ball Z.
And now they’re this guy, which is at least convenient, because it means no more bullshit double-teams, and fewer speeches.
So the thing is, I get that they couldn’t have the Mafuba be the final play of the arc. They were clearly setting up fusion from the start. Everyone noticed Goku Black’s single Potara earring from the start, and this episode is the payoff to that idea. So I don’t have a problem with Zamasu breaking out of the pot.
The problem is that they set up the Mafuba as a legitimate strategy, and then turned it into a complete joke. We wasted a big chunk of an episode watching Goku learn the technique, and he never even got to use it! Then the jar got broken, then Trunks had to learn it on the fly, and then Zamasu had to get slower and dumber in order to make that process even slightly believable. Seriously, did it take him twenty minutes to fly over to where Bulma and Trunks were?
And then it turns out the Mafuba was never going to work because they didn’t bring along a seal. Which... could be a good joke. I don’t object to the construction of all these gags. Trunks doing silly poses, Bulma doing a fake seduction in her late 40′s, the Mafuba failing because of the issues with the pot and seal, those can all be very funny.
Except that this arc is trying to be all grimdark, at least for the parts in this dystopian future world. Look at History of Trunks, for goodness sakes. Imagine if they put a fart joke in that. The Saiyans Saga was pretty intense, but it still had a lot of gags. King Kai is a literal comedian. But they didn’t do jokes in the middle of the fighting. They didn’t have Goku handing off the Spirit Bomb energy to Krillin, and then he goes “Uh... wait, how did this work again? I forgot!”
A big, big part of what makes the humor work in Dragon Ball is the timing. What’s awful about the Zamasu arc is that it sort of understood this concept, and then kept screwing it up anyway. There’s a grimdark world (Trunks’ timeline) and a lighter world (the main Earth). And they do all the Pilaf gags and Beerus rants and fart jokes in the lighter setting. Most of the jokes suck in this arc, but at least they put them in the right places. And then suddenly we get Episode 64, where they’ve got some decent jokes for the first time, and they completely kill the mood.
It would have been much more palatable to have Zamasu escape the pot in some other way. Maybe Goku Black breaks him out, but that seems a bit too obvious. Maybe Zamasu could just escape on his own, demonstrating that the technique doesn’t work on someone like him. (”Did you really expect an ‘Evil Containment Wave’ to trap a god?!”)
But a joke reason to set Zamasu loose is just really dumb. It makes it sound like they don’t take the threat seriously, and that could work in a different story, like one of the tournament arcs where the antagonists are just opposing fighters instead of genocidal monsters. But the Zamasu arc keeps trying to raise the stakes with anger. Black and Zamasu are motivated by their anger at mortals and injustice. Goku is motivated by his anger over the murder of Chi-Chi an Goten in an alternate timeline. Vegeta is motivated by his anger over Bulma’s death in an alternate timeline, and Trunks’ life being in danger. The plotline is trying to flow in the direction of making the characters angrier and angrier until the angriest one wins, I guess. So putting a dumb joke in the middle is stupid. It’s a good way to relieve the tension, but the objective here is to build tension, not relieve it!
I’ve said enough. Let’s just get on to the one where they make Vegito to counter Merged Zamasu... wait, that’s in Episode 66. Then what the hell do they do in Episode 65?
Fuck.
#dragon ball#dragon ball super#2023dbapocryphaliveblog#goku#vegeta#goku black#zamasu#bulma#mai#trunks#master roshi#piccolo#fuck the zamasu saga forever
25 notes
·
View notes
Text
Dragon Ball Super 057
“My own clone! Now neither of us will be virgins!”
Last time, Vegeta tried to fight that Goku Black jerk who’s been bullying his son, and he got stabbed through the chest. Remember when Frieza shot a Death Beam through Vegeta’s chest and he died? Yeah, well, that doesn’t happen here.
Also Zamasu shows up to help Black, so now Goku has to fight them both all by himself. He beat Zamasu a few episodes back using SSJ2, but now he’s in Blue mode and Zamasu is turning out to be a lot harder.
Black and Zamasu agree to kill the Saiyans together, since they both enjoy killing so much. They try to gang up on Goku, but then Trunks jumps in and seems to do surprisingly well, even though he’s nowhere near as strong as Goku.
Trunks even manages to stab Zamasu with his sword...
But he just shrugs it off and the wound heals over instantly. His clothes heal too. Huh.
So Trunks presses on, and unloads with the Final Flash. There’s a lot of fanservice-y moments in this arc, where Trunks uses Vegeta’s signature moves. It doesn’t improve this shitty story.
But Zamasu survives unscathed, and he reveals that he has an “invincible body” now. Trunks begins to despair, and then Goku Black charges up a Kamehameha. Goku and Trunks try to get out of the way, but Zamasu grabs them both and holds them in place so they have to get hit by the blast. That’s smart, because Zamasu’s invincible body won’t even be hurt. So how do Goku and Trunks get out of this one?
Uh... they don’t. They end up taking the full force of Goku Black’s Kamehameha. So... they’re dead, then?
Of course not. They’re not even unconscious. What was the point of forcing them to take a Kamehameha at pointblank range if it couldn’t even kill them?
How does this even make sense? Trunks is a lot less powerful than Goku, so you’d think that if Goku was worn down by that attack, Trunks should be in much worse shape.
And now Zamasu and Black charge up a follow-up attack to finish Goku and Trunks off. Why would we expect this one to do any more damage than the last thing they tried? Well, fortunately, it doesn’t come to that, because their big purple power ball gets knocked away by...
Vegeta? The guy Goku Black stabbed through the chest?
I mean, okay, let’s just say that Vegeta’s a tough bastard, and he can somehow not only survive a stab wound through the chest, but he can get back up and help the others. But he’s using Final Flash here, and that’s like his biggest, most powerful move. And he’s in Super Saiyan Blue.
Sure, he collapses right after he does this, but what the hell? Like I said last time, this isn’t even a matter of power scaling. This is me asking whether offensive moves even hurt anybody now. Goku Black has attacked Mai, Vegeta, Trunks and Goku, and none of them seem to be too bad off for it. It reminds me a lot of Omega Shenron, who kept beating up characters far weaker than himself, and they kept surviving and showing no sign of injury or fatigue.
So while Vegeta makes his big play, Yajirobe runs over and drags Goku and Trunks to safety. He couldn’t get Vegeta, so he’s on his own. Or he would be, except for...
Smoke bombs! How did they guess Goku Black’s one weakness?
Yeah the Resistance throws smoke bombs all over the place and the bad guys are too busy coughing to kill Vegeta or notice anyone else rushing in to save him.
So almost as soon as Yajirobe says he couldn’t save Vegeta, Mai rolls up on her scooter with Vegeta. She goes over to Trunks and she’s like “Yo, I just saved your dad, nbd.”
This shot is a complete mess. Vegeta looks ridiculous, and Mai’s upper body is completely disproportional to her lower body.
Mai reaches into Trunks’ pants to get.......... the capsule containing the Time Machine, and she programs it to launch with the three Saiyans lying helplessly inside. Trunks begs her to stop the launch and go back with them, but she just stands there and watches them go. Who showed her how to operate the time machine?
Goku Black finds them just before the time machine vanishes, so he missed his shot once again. Well, it’s not like he would have killed them even if they hadn’t escaped.
For some reason, the time machine falls on its side when it lands, and the good guys all spill out like a bunch of losers falling out of a box of losers.
Meanwhile, in Universe 10, Zamasu serves Gowasu tea... again. This time he’s watching TV indoors, so it’s totally different. Zamasu calls this “GodTube”, and the video is footage of the Destroyer Tournament, so I guess one of the Kais at the arena must have filmed this. Gowasu suggests that this footage of Goku fighting Hit might change his tune about mortals, except Zamasu despises Goku, and this is how he learns about Goku’s ability to use divine ki, which makes him hate Goku even more. Also, I just watched the Universe 6 Saga myself, and I can’t say it restored my faith in humanity or anything.
What really catches Zamasu’s interest are the Super Dragon Balls seen floating in the sky above the tournament. He’s never heard of them, so Gowasu explains how they grant wishes and such. And that gives Zamasu a li’l idea...
Next thing we know, he’s on Zuno’s planet, demanding to know everything there is to know about the Super Dragon Balls. Ruh-roh.
#dragon ball#dragon ball super#2023dbapocryphaliveblog#goku#vegeta#trunks#zamasu#goku black#gowasu#mai#yajirobe#zuno#fuck the zamasu saga forever
22 notes
·
View notes
Text
Dragon Ball Super 066
“Sorry, folks, not even I can save this story.”
Last time, Goku tried to hit Zamasu with a Kamehameha, and he couldn’t win the beam struggle, and that made Goku mad! I mean really really mad! So he tried harder and it ended up going through Zamasu’s Holy Wrath Bomb or whatever it’s called.
And Zamasu survives the blast, but half his body turns into purple glop. Goku capitalizes by kicking him in the purple part. See, that’s smart. Hurt the guy and then work the injured body part.
Unfortunately, Goku’s arms have gone limp, I guess from the effort he put into the Kamehameha? So he’s gotta do this with just his feet now.
Then Zamasu twists his ankle, and that seems pretty bad. I mean, Goku still has one foot left, but what good could that do him--?
Oh. Well then.
I totally forgot that Goku used the Kaio-ken in this arc. I was beginning to wonder why he never used it, but now that he’s using it here, it seems more appropriate that he held off until now. The last time he tried stacking Kaio-ken on Super Saiyan Blue, it fucked him up pretty badly, so I can understand why he’d be reluctant to try again. But now, he’s down to one foot, and Zamasu is finally showing signs of vulnerability. Goku smells blood in the water, and he’s much more willing to take the risk now that he’s got an opening.
And this seems to fuck up Zamasu pretty badly. It doesn’t take the fight out of him, but he convulses and his body distorts, and then he screams for Divine Lighting to strike him, so I think he’s attacking his own body now.
This gives the good guys time to regroup, and Gowasu suggests that the fusion might have worked against Zamasu’s immortality. Remember, only one of the two Zamasu’s had an indestructible body, so when they combined together, that introduced a destructible, mortal body into the equation. I hadn’t considered it before, but this may be why Goku Black recruited another Zamasu to his cause in the first place. His plan depended on switching bodies with Goku, but while that made him more powerful, it also left him trapped in a body with a much shorter lifespan. Maybe fusing with the other Zamasu was always part of the plan, since their combined body would have the normal Kai longevity, like how the Elder Kai was after he fused with that old witch.
So Zamasu is still indestructible, but he isn’t recovering from injuries as quickly or as perfectly as he was before. And this might explain the last few offensive moves used against him. Trunks and Vegeta did that Father-Son Gallick Gun on him, and it seemed to have no effect, but then Goku followed through with a Kamehameha. So I think the Gallick Gun kind of softened him up for Goku’s attack, and then that softened him up even further for the Kaio-ken attack, and now the dam has burst. Zamasu is far from beaten, but his body is beginning to deterioriate from all this punishment he’s taking. If he was all-immortal, this would be no problem at all, and if he were all-mortal then he might be dead by now, but if he were all-mortal, then he would have been smart enough to avoid these hits instead of taking them head-on.
Wait, I just realized, this is why the dub keeps calling it an “invincible body” instead of an “immortal body”. Zamasu keeps railing against “mortals”, meaning non-deities. His body is “immortal” in the sense that he can’t die. This could be sort of confusing, because the gods in Dragon Ball all seem to have finite lifespans, so they can die, which means they are mortal, but they’re not mortal in the other sense of the term. This wasn’t an issue in Japanese, since they have two words for this, but Funimation had to swap out “immortality” for something else, and they ran with “invincibility”. Fair play.
So Gowasu speculates that it might be possible to defeat Zamasu in this half-immortal state, but only if they hit him with a lot of power all at once. And by that, Gowasu means more power than they’ve been able to muster so far. So Goku proposes fusion. Vegeta hates that idea, but he can’t argue with the reasoning. I like this shot of Trunks handing him a Potara earring and a senzu bean. It’d be funny if he screwed up and swallowed the earring while trying to put the bean on his ear. “Rassum frassum... gulp! Oh, dammit.”
While Vegeta gets ready, Goku takes this moment to ask Gowasu why their previous Potara fusion in the Buu Saga wore off. Back then, the Elder Kai claimed that Potara fusion was permanent, and we have empirical evidence of this. The Elder Kai himself is a fusion of a Kai and an old witch, and they’ve been bound together for thousands of years, maybe longer. And Kibitoshin stayed fused for a long time as well, only coming unglued when they used the Namekian Dragon Balls.
But Gowasu explains that this is because those fusions involved at least one Kai. When anyone else does it, the Potara only maintain the fusion for one hour. That still doesn’t track with what we see in the Buu Saga, since Vegito didn’t seem to be around that long, but we’ll come back to that.
So Vegito’s back in the game and he goes Super Saiyan Blue right off the bat. He lays into Zamasu and for the most part it’s quite satisfying. It’s just nice to see any version of Zamasu getting pressured at all.
The animation is a step up from recent episodes, which earned this one a lot of praise, although I’ve never been too impressed about it. I mean, it’s good animation, I’m not disputing this. It’s just that I’m much more concerned with good storytelling, and it feels like this entire arc was written in order to produce this Vegito Blue vs. Fused Zamasu fight, and I don’t feel like it was worth it. The previous 18 episodes that set up this moment were pretty bad, and I’m not sure they actually set any of this up.
Like, okay, in the Buu Saga, Goku introduced the idea of fusion as a way to stop Majin Buu, but he couldn’t do it himself, so it ended up being Gotenks’ job to win. Then Gotenks lost, and Gohan was able to step in, and then that fell through, so now there’s no choice, Goku has to fuse with Vegeta, but there’s still a lot of bad blood between them from before. But there’s no other way, and they do it, and then Vegito wrecks Buu’s shit for four glorious episodes.
Here, it really just comes down to “Hey, the bad guys used Potara fusion, so we should do it too.” You don’t need a long story arc to set that up, because the Potara are common knowledge now. In the Buu Saga, they were a plot device, a clever twist to reveal that there was a way for Goku and Vegeta to fuse after all. Also, Vegeta’s not nearly as bitter about the idea as he was in the Buu Saga. He and Goku are friends now, even if he doesn’t want to admit it, and he’s practical enough to see fusion as a sensible play here. It also helps that Goku never brings it up unless there’s no other alternative.
That’s the problem with bringing back old ideas and techniques. They’re still popular, sure. I love me some fusion. But the novelty has worn off, and the spontaneity you had in the Buu Saga is gone now. Fans knew fusion was coming the moment they saw Goku Blake’s earring, and they knew Emperor Pilaf rambling about nothing in particular wasn’t going to make it happen any sooner. So most of these 18 episodes had nothing to do with setting up this one.
Also, while I’m a big Vegito fan, maybe it was a mistake to have Goku and Vegeta be the ones to use fusion here. At least if it had been Vegeta and Trunks this time, we would have gotten a fresh take on an old classic. And it might have played better with the theme of this arc, where Trunks couldn’t beat the bad guys on his own, but in the end he finds that he has to do it without his father’s help. Just throwing that out there.
Because that’s kind of how this episode plays out. Trunks helps evacuate the survivors to that garage Bulma brought with her, and then Mai gives him the broken sword from the last episode. The kids picked it up and they wanted Mai to make sure she returned it. And this convinces Trunks that he has to handle this himself. He can’t rely on Goku and Vegeta any longer.
So he channels his power into the sword and makes an energy blade with it, I guess, and then he flies off to rejoin the fight.
Meanwhile, Vegito seems to be doing just fine. He blows away Zamasu with a Final Kamehameha, which is probably the attack Gowasu had in mind when they started this part of the fight...
... But Zamasu is still breathing, so he goes to attack again, but the fusion dissolves before Vegito can follow through. It hasn’t been anywhere close to an hour, but Gowasu suggests that this may be due to the intense energy Vegito was putting out. Oh, also that Kaio-ken stunt Goku pulled might have worked against them here. Just a thought.
Then Trunks jumps in and starts hitting him with his new energy sword deal, and this seems to hurt Zamasu a lot. More than anything Vegito did to him, actually.
And as he fights, the survivors who cheer for Trunks begin to glow white.
Not just them, but the other survivors around the world, including people who may not have even met Trunks. Okay, now I can see those people in the back more clearly. I guess Android 8 is standing guard over their shelter.
And Trunks sees the ki coming from all over the world and powering him up. It’s all the people giving him their power, like Goku’s Spirit Bomb, but no one consciously tried to make this happen. Trunks just rolls with it, and his aura turns blue, and his sword blade gets huge. He manages to stab Zamasu...
... And starts cutting him in half! Dick-first! Brutal!
KONO DIO DA! KONO DIO DAAAAAAAA!
So yeah, this is stupid as hell. Vegito shot this dipshit with a Final Kamehameha, and nothing happened. Then Trunks improvises this attack with a broken sword and vanilla Super Saiyan, and that does the trick? What the hell is going on here?
The idea seems to be that Trunks is doing a Spirit Bomb style attack. That’s fine, except for a couple of things. First, Trunks never learned the Spirit Bomb. I mean, maybe it’s not that hard for him to accomplish at this level. I mean, he figured out the Mafuba pretty quickly, so how much harder could a Spirit Bomb be? The bigger gripe here is that he wasn’t even trying to do this. It just sort of worked out on its own. And maybe that’s how the Spirit Bomb has always worked. Maybe it’s actually really easy to do, as long as everyone who donates energy is already aware of your cause. Goku’s problem was that hardly anyone knows who he is or what he’s up to. But in this world, literally everyone is rooting for Trunks.
But that brings me to my second objection. How many people are left in this world to donate energy for this? I mean, Black killed most of the population, which probably still hadn’t recovered from the Androids and Cell. We never get an estimate on that, and Zamasu seemed to be purposely taking his time about killing everyone, so maybe there’s several million people left, and I just don’t get it.
All I’m saying here is that it took the entire population of Earth to make a Spirit Bomb strong enough to kill Kid Buu. Trunks must be working with a much smaller pool of ki here, and yet he seems to have destroyed a much stronger opponent with it. This has always bugged me.
However, it could be that the only reason this worked at all was because of the damage Zamasu took earlier. The Gallick Gun, the Kamehameha, the Kaio-ken Blue kick, the Spirit Sword to the chest, the Final Kamehameha, all of those moves may have set up Zamasu so Trunks big move here could chop him in half. That’s the best explanation I can come up with, anyway.
And I could accept this, except that they spent so many episodes before this where big flashy moves never seemed to bother the fighters at all. Then again, that was when Black and Zamasu were still using two bodies, and they kept using double-team tactics to protect each other. So maybe it’s works after all. Still, it would be nice if they could have explained any of that during this episode. I mean, Gowasu’s just standing there with nothing to do. Have him comment on Zamasu’s power level as the fight progresses.
Anyway, we’ve just got on more episode to go before we’re done with this mess. Gimme strength.
#dragon ball#dragon ball super#2023dbapocryphaliveblog#goku#vegeta#trunks#mai#bulma#zamasu#yajirobe#android 8#fuck the zamasu saga forever
21 notes
·
View notes
Text
Dragon Ball Super 063
It almost... almost feels like a proper Dragon Ball arc. Too bad they didn’t start to get their shit together until there were only four episodes to go.
Last time, Vegeta went to train in the Hyperbolic Time Chamber while he waited for the Time Machine to refuel. Apparently now Vegeta can just blow up the entire building where the HTC entrance is located, so I guess that settles the question of how he manages to avoid getting trapped inside.
Also, Goku spent the last night learning the Mafuba, a technique which should be able to contain Zamasu, even if they can’t find a way to kill him.
As for Trunks, he stayed behind in his own world to hold off Zamasu and Black so the others could escape. And now we find him... waking up in the resistance base? Okay, this is starting to really piss me off.
First of all, this saga has featured no fewer than three round trips in the Time Machine, and each time, characters make the point that they can literally arrive a few moments after they left. And yet, when it actually comes time for them to go back to Trunks’ world, it seems like hours have passed for no good reason.
The first time Trunks left, Mai was lying on the ground, presumed dead. By the time he returned, she had not only recovered, but had engaged in two more fights with Black in the meantime.
The second time, Mai programmed the time machine to go back on automatic pilot, and Trunks was worried about her staying behind. By they time they return, she had gotten into another battle with Black, and was lying unconscious in a resistance base, barely hanging on to life.
This is the third time, and Goku, Vegeta, and Bulma left while Trunks was in the middle of a losing battle with Black and Zamasu. They still haven’t returned yet, and somehow Trunks has not only finished that battle, survived somehow, but he was also taken to the base and he’s been recuperating ever since. Oh, and Mai left the base to take on Black by herself again.
Apparently some scouts located the bad guys’ cabin in the middle of nowhere, and Mai’s gonna try to take out Goku Black with a special bullet that Bulma designed before Black killed her. I feel like that weapon could be put to better use while Trunks is on the field to provide a diversion. But the point I’m making here is that this must have taken a few hours to arrange.
I’m getting the impression that someone involved with the scriptwriting believes that you can’t set the time machine to return to a few seconds after the moment you left. Like, it’s permanently fixed on seventeen years forward or backward. Essentially, when a day passes on Goku’s world, a day passes on Trunks’ world. Which would be fine. The time machine didn’t used to work that way, but you could easily say Bulma had to make some modifications to compensate for her lack of familiarity with the technology. But they never spell that out in the dialogue. Instead, they keep acting like they can return to the same minute they left, but they just don’t do it for some reason.
Second, it’s really, really cheap to leave Trunks in the middle of a desperate battle, and then just skip ahead to the part where he escaped by the skin of his teeth. This is the same show that insists on showing us minute after minute of Beerus and Whis eating, or Emperor Pilaf’s matchmaking nonsense, or Gowasu slurping down gallons of tea one cup at a time. But now we’re gonna leave things up to the viewer’s imagination? Fuck this saga, fuck this saga, fuck this saga.
So guess how this plays out? She misses the shot, and Trunks shows up in the nick of time to save her. Then he makes a second heroic last stand...
And Black stabs him in the torso. I’d ask why it’s taken a full year for Black to do this to Trunks, but that’s a silly question. Black probably has done this to Trunks before. He’s probably done it a dozen times. It’s just that it doesn’t actually hurt anybody for very long.
Then Goku and Vegeta show up before they can finish Trunks off. They square off, and Black zaps the time machine to cut off their escape route this time. Finally. They make another speech, but the boys don’t bother listening. Instead, Vegeta asks where Goku put that jar he was going to use, and it turns out he left it on the time machine. Whoops.
Also, Gowasu and Shin are here. They have Time Rings of their own, and since Beerus couldn’t intervene, they’re the next best thing. Black tries to kill Gowasu a third time, but Goku and Vegeta block the shot. They warn the Kais to leave, but Gowasu is adamant about trying to resolve this situation. This guy is even dumber than I thought. What the fuck is he going do about this? Does he think he can appeal to Zamasu’s better nature? Zamasu hates Gowasu. He’s the second guy he ever murdered, and he liked it so much he went to a different reality do he could do it again!
Oh, in this scene, Goku asks why the Whis of this universe isn’t getting involved, since Black killed all the gods in this reality. Shin explains that if you kill a Destroyer, the Angel who serves as his attendant sort of deactivates, and doesn’t return until a new Destroyer is set up for him to serve. So Whis, Vados, and the others are Angels. Also the real question is why the Grand Zeno of this timeline hasn’t noticed all the people getting Zamasu’d to death.
Anyway, they finally start fighting, and lo and behold, things go a lot smoother now that they have a game plan. Vegeta now overwhelms Goku Black, while Goku keeps Zamasu busy so they can’t get a double-team going.
As for Bulma, she’s here too, and she was expecting the time machine to get wrecked, so she came prepared. She brought a capsule containing a repair bay, and some super-glue for fixing the broken pot for Goku’s Mafuba. Trunks is tasked with putting it together. I... think he could put his talents to better use.
Anyway, Vegeta gives Black a whole speech about why he’s getting his ass kicked right now, which would probably sound more convincing if this weren’t the third attempt to defeat him. Vegeta says that Black is nothing but a cheap copy. He viewed Goku’s body as a weapon, but it was forged in battle, and a non-Saiyan like Zamasu can never operate it to its fullest. This rings hollow to me, since Goku Black is stronger than just about every Saiyan who has ever lived. I mean, sure Goku and Vegeta might be on top at the moment, but Vegeta talks like Nappa or Tarble could take this guy out, which, no, that’s bullshit.
But at least the good guys are ending the episode on a high note. This is something the arc has been missing for a while now. Most of it has just been characters asking stupid questions and griping about their own mistakes. Now they’re finally taking things seriously and thinking ahead, and it’s a lot more satisfying to see. It won’t last.
#dragon ball#dragon ball super#2023dbapocryphaliveblog#goku#vegeta#bulma#trunks#goku black#zamasu#mai#gowasu#supreme kai#master roshi#turtle#fuck the zamasu saga forever
20 notes
·
View notes
Text
Dragon Ball Super 049
Who wants fish sausages?
Last time, Trunks arrived in the present, and his reunion with Dragon Team turns out to be very awkward. He mistakes Goku for his nemesis, Goku Black, and Bulma has to smack him to snap him out of it. Then Trunks sees Bulma and breaks down crying because in his native timeline, she just got killed by Goku Black. Also, Kid Trunks is here, and he’s confused by the way his parents call the new guy “Trunks” and he calls them “mom” and “dad”.
Also, the Pilaf gang won’t shut the hell up, and also Beerus and Whis are intrigued by all of this, and quickly deduce that this is some sort of time travel business.
Back in the alternate timeline, Goku Black is still trying to figure out where Trunks went, when his Time Ring starts reacting to something. Yeah, Time Rings are a thing now, and Goku Black has one, so this is another mysterious trinket of his.
Back in the present, Whis explains that meddling with time is a serious offense. Only certain divine beings are allowed to mess with time travel at all. To be fair, no one imagined a mortal would ever invent a time machine. Also, it was Future Bulma who actually built the thing, and she’s dead now, so who’s left to punish?
Beerus considers meting out some divine justice, but Trunks begs for his forgiveness, and Goku points out that no one told him it was wrong. Beerus offers to let this go with a stern warning if they can give him some tasty snacks, and Bulma produces fish sausages.
And that seems to do the trick. Beerus continues to voice disapproval of the time machine, but he doesn’t destroy it or punish Trunks. I guess that’s appropriate, since he knows of the rule, but enforcing it isn’t his department. Let me pause here to discuss the Supreme Kai of Time.
So when this arc was first announced, I was very interested to see if Dragon Ball Super would acknowledge the lore established in Dragon Ball Online, where Trunks went on to join the Time Patrol, a group of warriors assembled by the Supeme Kai of Time. The Xenoverse games and Dragon Ball Heroes manga explored that idea further. It was the Supreme Kai of Time who first confronted Trunks about his temporal crimes, and he agreed to serve in the Time Patrol as “penance”. She also agreed to allow his changes to history stand, and to preserve his own timeline, which is how both worlds continue to exist.
But DBS appears to ignore all of that, since it’s Beerus and Whis who confront Trunks. Also, in the recap segment of this episode, the narrator specified that Trunks has traveled 17 years to reach the present-day in Dragon Ball Super. So for this version of Trunks, it’s been several years since he defeated Imperfect Cell in DBZ Episode 194. I thought maybe his Time Patrol career could have begun and ended before this Goku Black business, but that doesn’t work if Trunks has no idea who Beerus is, or what Goku and the others have been up to since he left them.
And that isn’t too surprising, since it wouldn’t make a lot of sense for DBS to suddenly reference a bunch of side characters from video games. Except I do find it curious, because Akira Toriyama had a lot of creative control over the story elements in Dragon Ball Online, where the Time Patrol was first introduced. So it seemed weird to me that Akira Toriyama would retcon himself like this.
Then again, now that I know how this arc turns out, maybe the discontinuity was the whole point, and the reason Chronoa and the Time Patrol don’t get involved in this arc is because the arc itself is the sort of time anomaly they would have to correct. They just haven’t intervened yet.
“So yeah, I just need you to go to the middle of Dragon Ball Super and just beat the crap out of it.”
“Sure! Wait, beat up who, exactly?”
“No, the entire saga. Go and kick its ass! No survivors! <3”
“You're the boss!”
Well, enough horsing around. We’re stuck with this shitty arc, with it’s lack of Chronoa goodness and Xeno Trunks trenchcoatitude. Bulma takes a look at the time machine, but it’s infested with annoying comic relief characters.
The Time Machine is out of fuel, and Bulma doesn’t know how to recharge it or carry out other repairs. Fortunately, her future self put a notebook in the glove compartment, and it contains all the information she needs to get the time machine up and running.
Meanwhile, Goku and Vegeta ask Trunks what was so bad that he had to come to the past for help. Vegeta suggests it might be Majin Buu, but Trunks says he already dealt with that crisis some time ago. The Supreme Kai of his world prepared him for Babidi and Dabura, and he was able to defeat them, preventing Buu’s resurrection.
No, the real problem began about a year ago, when a man claiming to be Goku showed up and declared his intention to eradicate all intelligent life on Earth in the name of justice. He also claimed to have already done the same on other planets. It would be kind of odd that Trunks would have gotten this much backstory about his mysterious enemy, but we all know Goku Black never shuts the hell up, and Trunks has been fighting this guy for like a year straight.
Vegeta accuses Trunks of using the time machine to flee, but Bulma insists that Trunks planned to return with reinforcements. The notebook in the time machine proves it, because Future Bulma left a note to her younger self, explaining that it would be up to her to prepare the time machine for the return trip. The notes don’t address her right eye drifting off to the side of her face, however.
Beerus finds the whole thing kind of dumb, but he’s off in Flavor Town so he doesn’t care.
Goku asks Trunks to spar with him to get an idea of how powerful this Goku Black guy is. The script says he and Trunks have powered up to Super Saiyan 2, but the bangs don’t lie. They drew Goku in Super Saiyan 1. Trunks looks pretty much the same whether he’s SSJ1 or SSJ2, which is kind of a shame, but they can’t even draw Bulma on-model most of the time, so no use crying about it.
Goku turns it up to Super Saiyan 3, and I think this is the second time in the whole series he uses this form. I mean, it’s kind of obsolete at this point, but they show it in the opening credits, which implies it gets a lot of use.
Anyway, Trunks is amazed to see this new form, since he thought SSJ2 was the limit of Saiyan power.... sort of like how he never considered ascending beyond SSJ1 until Vegeta brought up the possibility. Trunks is a little too modest for his own good.
Then a temporal rift appears in the sky and Goku Black emerges. Well, I guess we can settle this right now and save some trouble, right? Right?
“All right, losers, pack it up. By order of the Supreme Kai of Time, I’m shutting this little shitshow down, permanently.”
“Awww, do we have to? Wait, what if we give you some instant ramen and a fish sausage? Huh? Huh?”
“Instant ramen? Don’t insult me.”
“Forget it, Kakarot, she’s one of those damn food snobs. I know what she really wants. Listen. They can draw you as tall as you want.”
“Yeah...?”
“Think about it. They don’t even bother with reference sheets on this show. They can’t even remember what fingers look like most of the time. I’ve grown eight inches since this turkey started.”
“Is that why your face looks so messed up?”
“Look, everything comes with a price.”
#dragon ball#dragon ball super#2023dbapocryphaliveblog#goku#vegeta#trunks#beerus#whis#bulma#goku black#emperor pilaf#mai#shu#dabura#fuck the zamasu saga forever
20 notes
·
View notes
Text
Dragon Ball Super 059
Yeah, I don’t know what’s going on. Sorry.
Having deduced that Zamasu is probably planning to kill his master, the Supreme Kai of Universe 10, Beerus and Whis have returned for a second visit to Gowasu’s palace-temple thingy. They ask him if there’s been anything concerning about Zamasu’s behavior, and Gowasu seems mildly bothered by the question, but he insists that there’s nothing to worry about.
Then Zamasu enters the courtyard to serve tea, and he acts much more innocent than he did the last time these U7 guys came to see him. He kind of overplays his hand, though, since he acts much more polite to Goku, and even pretends to have trouble recalling his name.
Beerus isn’t fooled, but he pretends to be. He makes up a few excuses to get out of this place, saying that he only returned because Goku kept bugging him for a rematch with Zamasu. Goku doesn’t play along, because he’s such a himbo, but Beerus beats him up until he cooperates.
Gowasu might find all of this rather strange, but Whis distracts him with a gift of Earth tea and mochi rice cakes. And Gowasu’s blood is 95% tea at this point, so he’s too focused on the gift to wonder why they were asking questions about Zamasu’s recent behavior if all they came for was a pointless request for a rematch with Goku.
Here’s your latest pic of Gowasu sipping tea. This guy absolutely sucks. I wish he were evil, just because that’d be more interesting than his oblivious indifference.
In... space... I guess, the boys discuss their observations of Zamasu, and Beerus says he could sense malicious intent in Zamasu. Goku and Shin could not however, because Destroyer Gods are uniquely attuned to that sort of thing. And if Shin didn’t notice, then Gowasu certainly wouldn’t be expecting treachery. So why did they leave? Because Beerus can’t destroy a Kai like Zamasu without solid proof of wrongdoing. So they spy on Gowasu and Zamasu and wait to see what happens.
Meanwhile, in Future Trunks’ world, we find Zamasu and Goku Black sipping tea and congratulating each other on their awesome Kill Everybody Plan.
They live here, of all places, which... I don’t know what I expected, but this seems kind of dumb. They’ve been at this for seventeen years.
Back on the regular Earth, Pilaf tries to give Kid Mai romantic advice, but she isn’t interested. I haven’t been interested in anything the Pilaf Gang have said or done since 2014, but no one seems to care how I feel about it.
Meanwhile, Kid Trunks confronts his older future self, because he’s been down in the dumps over losing so badly. I just want to point out that this shot of Kid Trunks looks a lot like they drew Adult Trunks’s head on Kid Trunks’ body, and it’s creeping me out.
See? Once he turns Super Saiyan it’s like his head de-ages into what it should be.
Anyway, Kid Trunks starts attacking Future Trunks to try to shake him out of it, and it works, I guess.
Wait, hold on, I just received an important bulletin! Gowasu... is drinking... more tea!
Zamasu gets up from the table and walks behind him as he apologizes for his recent attitude lately. He claims to understand what Gowasu tried to teach him before. Sometimes evil is necessary to show beings the path to good. And so, evil can be required to bring about justice. Translation: It’s okay to murder Gowasu because that’s the only way to kick off Zamasu’s plan to murder everyone else.
So he fires up his energy hand thing, and you would think Gowasu could sense that, at least. As he strikes and kills Gowasu, Goku freaks out, but then Whis uses his power to reverse time by three minutes, undoing the murder and giving them a chance to intervene.
And this time, when Zamasu lowers the boom, he finds an oven mitt on his hand, which I assume Whis put on him in order to foil his strike. Maybe the oven mitt has special powers? Wait, yeah, this oven mitt could be like those centipede creatures in Star Wars that can cancel out the Force. Imagine if you stuffed Goku in a bigger version of one of these oven mitts. He’d be powerless!
So the good guys barge in and Gowasu’s like “What’s the meaning of this?” and they pull off the oven mitt to reveal Zamasu was weilding hand energy the whole time. Couldn’t Zamasu just... turn it off before he got caught?
So Zamasu tries to fight his way out of this, but Beerus calmly destroys him before he can do anything.
Yeah, this is pretty nice. Too bad it’s not going to be that easy.
So as far as Beerus is concerned, the case is closed. By destroying Zamasu today, before he could kill Gowasu and steal the Time Ring, there’s no way for Zamasu to create Goku Black, or terrorize the Earth in Trunks’ timeline.
But Trunks isn’t convinced. We saw this play out in the Androids Saga, where he warned Goku about the heart virus so he could survive and fight the androids, but Trunks’ own world wasn’t affected by those changes. If that principle holds, then Beerus’ actions in this timeline won’t have any bearing on the events unfolding in Trunks’ world.
Beerus insists that it’s not the same at all, because he’s a god, and when he destroys someone they’re gone, no matter what alternate timelines they might be in. Trunks wants to believe this, but he can’t be sure. Well, more importantly, he lives in that world, so he’d need to go back anyway just to go home. But also, he still needs to check.
Here’s what sucks. We already know how this is going to go. If Beerus had actually eliminated the threat in this episode, then the story is over and it ended in the most anticlimactic way possible. That would suck, so it’s a safe bet that Trunks will go back and find nothing has changed. That would also suck, because it means nothing that happened in this episode made much of a difference. I mean, they saved Gowasu, but Gowasu sucks, so that doesn’t matter to me.
So the cliffhanger of this episode is basically “The next episode is going to suck, but which way is it going to suck? Find out next time on Dragon Ball Super!”
And that would be bad enough, except we don’t even get to wonder, because the next-episode preview gives the whole thing away. It shows the gang going back to the future and finding Black and Zamasu there waiting for them.
The Zamasu Saga is awful.
#dragon ball#dragon ball super#2023dbapocryphaliveblog#goku#beerus#whis#supreme kai#gowasu#zamasu#goku black#bulma#trunks#mai#emperor pilaf#fuck the zamasu saga forever
16 notes
·
View notes
Text
Dragon Ball Super 060
“You see, Kid Trunks, travel is a lot like a sword. It cuts one way, but it also can cut the other way. And if you’re not careful, you’ll drop your sword polish while you’re cleaning it, and ruin your best jacket. Well, my best jacket. You might have one in your own timeline, but it probably hasn’t been manufactured yet.”
“Um... all I wanted to know was why your hair is blue instead of lavender.”
So in this episode, Bulma has the time machine refueled and ready for the next trip to Future Trunks’ world. Beerus, however, doesn’t see the point, since he believes that he already defeated Goku Black and Zamasu by destroying Zamasu in Episode 59.
The current working theory is that the Zamasu of Age 779 was planning to kill Gowasu, steal his Time Ring, and use it to make two wishes on the Super Dragon Balls. One wish would be for an indestructible body, while the other would be for Goku Black, the ultimate enforcer for his plan. Then Zamasu would eventually make his way to the alternate timeline Earth where Future Trunks lives.
But since Beerus destroyed Zamasu before he could do any of that, then the crisis should no longer exist, right? Well, if that’s true, then Trunks should even be standing here, because if the crisis never occurred, he never would have traveled back in time to seek help in the first place. And in that case, Beerus would have never had any reason to destroy Zamasu.
We went through all of this in the Androids Saga in DBZ. Trunks went back in time and made changes to history, but when he returned home, nothing had changed. The changes only applied to the past world that he visited, which followed a different timeline than his own. Beerus seems to grasp the logic of this, but he also seems to think that it works differently when he does it. So he gets all fussy and angry, and Whis is about to take him home for a nap when Goku suggests that they get a good dinner before heading back to Trunks’ world. Oh no, don’t show them eating again--
Fuuuuuuck. You know, DBZ used to do like dozens of episodes without showing the entire main cast sitting down for a full-course meal. It was like, they had more important things to do with the show’s runtime, like... I don’t know... advancing the plot. Or... what was that other thing? Oh, right. Building atmosphere and tension.
Not Dragon Ball Super, though. No, if the characters don’t eat a meal together every two or three episodes, the audience might start to worry. We don’t want Goku to get malnourished, do we? I mean, they could just say he ate alone, off-screen, but how would we know for sure?
I’m not sure what to make of this trend, but I suspect it had something to do with that One-Piece/Toriko crossover that DBZ was included in. From what I gather, all Toriko does is storylines about food and cooking and eating, and that seems close enough to the scope of One-Piece that it wouldn’t be awkward to just have them eat for a whole episode. But Dragon Ball never really did this a whole lot. There was a big party at the end of the Majin Buu Saga, and Mr. Satan held that party at his hotel in the Yo! Son Goku special from 2008, and Bulma’s birthday party in Battle of Gods, but those were clearly special occasions. The last two were obviously meant to serve as big reunions for the characters long after their show ended.
And yet, Dragon Ball Super seems determined to throw a big party or picnic every chance it gets. According to the Dragon Ball Wiki, Res F, the Destroyer Invitational Tournament, and this saga all take place in the same year, Age 779. You’d think some of these characters would be partied out by now.
My theory right now is that this was something that happens a lot in One-Piece, or Toriko, or some other very popular shonen anime, and it became so ingrained in pop culture that it became a trope, and every other shonen anime started doing it too. And then when Dragon Ball Super started, it was just second nature to slap a mealtime scene into as many episodes as possible.
I’m not saying it’s bad. If you write the stories with this in mind, you could use these scenes very effectively. But Dragon Ball Super tends to use them for padding. There’s exactly one plot point in this episode, and it’s Trunks going back to his own future to see if Goku Black is still there. The trip takes like two seconds, but they filled out the other 21:58 by having them eat first and argue over what will happen on the time trip that Trunks has already decided to take.
Also, they throw in some off-model Beerus, for your viewing displeasure. For a dude who hates time travel, he sure looks like he went back to the 90′s for a double-wide DBZ-style neck.
Finally, Kid Trunks gets frustrated with this arguing in circles and he shouts “What are we doing?!” So Future Trunks has to explain the multiverse concept to him.
He uses 18 as a handy illustration, since Kid Trunks already knows her. In the “main” timeline, 18 married Krillin and had a daughter with him, Marron. In Future Trunks’ world, 18 terrorized the Earth for about twenty years. Trunks went back in time to warn the Z-Figthers about her, and those changes eventually led to 18 turning good and marrying Krillin. But none of that affected Trunks’ world, and he ultimately had to kill 18 to stop her.
Of course, the more classic example is Goku, who died of the heart virus in one timeline, but Trunks gave him the medicine to save his life. So in the “main” timeline, Goku’s still alive, but in Future Trunks’ world, Goku is still dead. Each time someone goes back in time and changes things, it creates a new timeline.
Future Trunks’ argument, then is that the same thing probably happened when Beerus destroyed the Zamasu of Age 779. He only knew to do that because of information he gained from when Goku Black followed Trunks from the future. When that happened, the main timeline changed from what it had been, and a new timeline was created, one where the change had not occurred.
I think what’s got Beerus flustered here is that he is right, but not entirely. By destroying Zamasu, he ensured that this main timeline is safe from Zamasu, and he also ensured that there is a version of Future Trunks’ timeline that was spared the horrors of Goku Black.
However, there should also be an additional timeline where he did not destroy Zamasu, and another additional Future Trunks’ timeline where Goku Black does all the stuff we saw in Episode 47, etc.
Anyway, this entire conversation is pointless, because Trunks still has to go home, whether Beerus is right or not. So after a billion years, he finally gets back in the time machine, along with Goku and Vegeta, who want to be there in case the bad guys are somehow still in play. Also, Bulma wants to tag along because she’s always wanted to visit Trunks’ world, and if all goes well, Goku and Vegeta might need someone to help them fly the time machine back home.
Unfortunately, it’s a one-seater, so Bulma has to sit on Trunks’ shoulders. Also, Goku gets motion sickness when he rides this thing.
Aaaaand it’s time for the #kisscourse. So, from Mai’s perspective, this whole Saga probably hasn’t even lasted a full 24 hours, right? Yet somehow she keeps getting attacked and nearly killed while Trunks is away. In Episode 47 he thought she had died, and then he returns and she’s totally fine. Then she sends him back in the time machine, and she’s fine in that episode, but now he returns and she took some sort of hit while doing something or other. I’m pretty sure she was fine in the previous episode, though.
This time, Goku has the senzu beans with him, and he gives one to Trunks, who chews it up and spits it in her mouth with a kiss. This is supposed to be romantic, but it’s actually really, really dumb. I’m not a big fan of Future Mai, but I hate how they keep using her as a damsel for Trunks to worry about while he’s away from her. She was fine before this, and now suddenly she’s so badly hurt that she can’t even swallow a senzu bean, but not so badly hurt that she bled out or anything. Maybe Goku Black stabbed her with that energy blade of his. You know, the one that doesn’t kill people?
Also, if anyone did manage to find something romantic in this scene, Goku spoils the moment by revealing he has no idea what kissing is, or why Vegeta would expect a married man to know what it is.
This caused a lot of drama in the fandom in 2016, mostly because it added fuel to the fire of the ongoing argument about whether Goku has anything resembling human emotions. Like, does he actually love his wife, the way a man loves a woman, or is he just a clueless dope who only lives with her because he doesn’t know what any of it means? It’s not a Saiyan thing, since Vegeta seems to understand the societal norms, but for some reason Akira Toriyama will sometimes do interviews about shit like this, and fans will try to use it as ammo to tear down Goku. A lot of fans held out hope that the subtitles were wrong somehow, and that the dub version or the manga version would clarify this bit, but instead they basically repeated the line, almost word-for-word.
Now, I already went through all of this nonsense when it happened, but this was the episode where I realized once and for all that this show just sort of throws shit at the wall, and it’s not worth taking it too seriously. There’s some bitter fuck out there who despises Gochi shippers and desperately wants everyone to think Goku is a manchild ignorant of even the most basic romantic gestures, so that those mean old fans will stop drawing pictures of Goku loving his wife, or Vegeta, or OC’s, or whoever, really. Goku’s kind of a slut in fanart land.
Anyway, some bitter fuck out there thinks that if they make an official anime episode that proves their point, everyone will just magically stop enjoying the thing this person hates, because anime episodes are legally binding contracts, and that’s a totally reasonable thing to believe. Hey, here’s a scene from another anime episode:
So at best, the #kisscourse boils down to arguing over which animation cels are more true than others. And since the Androids Saga rules ass and the Zamasu Saga sucks ass, I know which one I want in my personal canon. Hint: It’s the one where Goku makes out with his wife so hard that Master Roshi is stunned into silence.
Anyway, the bad guys show up, and clearly nothing has changed about the timeline, so we’re basically right back where we were before. The only difference is that Goku thinks he understands who and what Goku Black is, but Goku Black denies his theory. He isn’t a copy created by the Super Dragon Balls. Not at all. His body is the real thing, inhabited by the mind of Zamasu. How? He used the Super Dragon Balls to wish for this, but the wish was to switch bodies with Goku.
But how did he do all of that if Beerus destroyed him? We’ll get to that next time, and I can promise it won’t be interesting at all.
#dragon ball#dragon ball super#2023dbapocryphaliveblog#goku black#goku#vegeta#trunks#bulma#mai#beerus#whis#zamasu#emperor pilaf#shu#krillin#android 18#marron#chi chi#master roshi#fuck the zamasu saga forever
19 notes
·
View notes
Text
Dragon Ball Super 055
Zeno!
You sonovabitch!
As hot as Bulma looks fixing the time machine in her grimy labcoat, this episode has nothing at all to do with that. In fact, she finishes the repairs in this very scene, but she wants to let Trunks rest up before telling him it’s ready to go.
Okay so years ago, people were griping about the state of Yamcha’s apartment in an upcoming episode of this show. I guess they thought it looked too run down or something. Re-watching this series over a period of a few weeks, it’s clear to me now that the background artists just suck at interior design. Yamcha’s apartment looked a lot like the fancy restaurant that Gohan and Videl were at in Episode 43. So is Yamcha’s apartment fancy, or was the restaurant a dump?
Trunks’ bedroom in this episode informs our answer. This is supposed to be a futuristic mansion, but this room looks like a prison cell. I’m not even sure it looks like the room Trunks slept in a few episodes back. And sure, there’s probably a lot of empty guest rooms in this building, and the Brief family are eccentric enough that they might not bother decorating half of them. Still, the prompt for this scene was “A guest room in a futuristic mansion” and the artists were like “Well, I guess Venetian blinds? Oh! How about a couple of empty shelves!”
Meanwhile, Grand Zeno has contacted Beerus to arrange for Goku to come to his palace. So Beerus summons Goku, but it takes like two days for Whis to make the trip, and Goku doesn’t want to be away from Earth for four days. So Whis suggests they ask the Supreme Kai for help, since Supreme Kais can teleport to Grand Zeno’s palace instantaneously.
So this is just a not-so-clever way to repeat the same scene twice in one episode. First we have Beerus freaking out and warning Goku not to do anything stupid, and then we get the Supreme Kai contingent doing the same bit all over again.
One tidbit we learn from all of this is that if the Supreme Kai dies, the God of Destruction dies with him, so Beerus orders Whis to make sure the Supreme Kai doesn’t get on the wrong end of Zeno’s wrath.
Apparently Shin has to grab your ass to teleport you to Grand Zeno’s palace. I mean, they don’t spell that out, and maybe this is just the usual Kai Kai power he uses to teleport to other planets, but I prefer to believe my grab-ass theory, because it would mean that this show can just do a thing without having five characters explain it to death.
Upon arrival, they’re greeted by this guy, called the “Grand Minister” in the dub. I like that name better than “Great Priest”, which is what the subtitles kept calling him. This dude is basically the attendant for Zeno, just as Whis is the attendant of Beerus, so he’s clearly not a priest. Minister makes more sense, as it implies a more practical role, like a secretary or a minister in a head of state’s cabinet. And the religious aspect is still there, but not quite so blatant.
Also, he has a Dorito on his shirt, which is a bold fashion choice.
Everyone worries about Goku’s clothes being unsuitable for this meeting, so Whis makes an excuse about them being too busy to get him changed, but the Grand Minister doesn’t see the problem, because he can tell that Goku’s outfit is the most important clothing he has. Perceptive. And Goku’s like, “well, yeah.”
And this informs the whole relationship between Zeno and Goku. Zeno wanted to meet Goku again because he liked him from before, and he wants them to be friends and play together. Everyone else around Zeno is terrified of getting erased from existence, so Goku is the only being he’s ever met who’s totally at ease with him. The gods accuse Goku of being foolish or rude, but that’s not it at all. Goku is at ease with himself, and with the universe around him. He’s very zen, if you will, and that’s something Zeno can appreciate.
Zeno wants Goku to play with him, but Goku says he has something very important to do. He doesn’t mention that it’s this stupid mission to fight Goku Black, because everyone warned him not to bring up the time travel stuff. Still, he promises to return when he’s finished, and he’ll even bring another friend who’ll be more fun to play with. Zeno agrees, and he gives Goku a magic button. When he’s ready, he can push the button, and Zeno will instantly appear before him.
Goku pushes it, and Zeno’s like “I’m already here, though.” Maybe Goku was hoping a muffin would appear somewhere.
Anyway, Goku is permitted to leave, so that takes care of that business. So what’s the rest of the episode about? Well, we haven’t checked in on Zamasu lately so let’s see what they’re doing in Universe 10.
Fuck, we’re still here? Gowasu was using the Time Ring to try to teach Zamasu about mortals, but all Zamasu seems to be getting from this is that the mortals they’re observing are doomed to be nothing more than violent savages. They watch a bunch of Barbari kill each other in a battle, and then one Barbari attacks the Kais. So Zamasu steps in and kills the poor dope.
He chops the dude in half, and it’s treated like this insane thing, like he used a cool new technique instead of the energy blade thing Salza used in the first Cooler Movie.
Gowasu is SHOCKED and OUTRAGED that his apprentice, the one who never shuts up about how they should kill all the mortals, would kill a mortal. He wants Zamasu to explain himself, but instead he just makes this goofy face. I’d joke that Zamasu just had his first orgasm, but he wasn’t giving a speech while he killed that guy, so the conditions weren’t quite right.
So what happens when a Supreme Kai-in-training murders a mortal in cold blood? Does he get stripped of his rank? Is he sent to the Phantom Zone for 500 years? No, they go right back to what they were doing before they left. Zamasu makes more tea for Gowasu to drink, and they rehash the same dead-end conversation they had before and during their little Time Ring trip.
Let me try to summarize this brilliant rhetoric for you.
Gowasu: Zamasu, it’s important that you appreciate the mortals.
Zamasu: Nah, fuck ‘em. Mortals suck.
Gowasu: Perhaps with time, you will come to realize that mortals have the capacity to change and grow, and this potential to evolve is part of the complexity of the universe we watch over.
Zamasu: No, you’re 100% wrong. Mortals are all evil, and anyone who tolerates their existence is also evil.
I mean, Zamasu uses pretty words to make his points, but the message is always the same. He despises mortals, and he really isn’t shy about expressing this opinion. He was visibly outraged by Goku’s visit, and the only logical conclusion to his points is that mortals should all be eradicated. Like, there’s no subtly to any of this. The only restraint he shows is out of deference to Gowasu, and he continues to argue with him even after Gowasu tells him he needs to adjust his attitude. Hell, he killed a mortal right in front of Gowasu.
Like, the concept here is that Zamasu eventually becomes the big villain of this arc, but that’s the Zamasu of the future. The Zamasu of the present hasn’t gone down that road yet, so we’re watching his origin story unfold in real time. This is supposed to be like Anakin Skywalker in the Star Wars prequels, except, no it’s not. This is like if Anakin Skywalker married Padme right in front of Obi-Wan, and showed off his cool red lightsaber while he killed all the Sand People, and then Anakin’s tailor shows up to fit him for a new black helmet. And every conversation between Anakin and Obi-Wan would be like “Jedi shouldn’t kill people Anakin” and “No way, killing is the best. I fucking love evil.”
This scene is supposed to be all profound or something, which is why they put glowing cherry blossoms in it, just in case you couldn’t tell how profound and meaningful it’s supposed to be. He’s becoming a bad guy, and his mentor can’t even tell! How tragic! No, Zamasu was a villain from the moment we first saw him. All these scenes do is have him repeat his motivation over and over. They aren’t developing his character, they’re just reinforcing the same information. The only thing truly profound here is how blind Gowasu is to Zamasu’s shittiness. It’s like Gowasu doesn’t even care.
I mean, let’s set aside good and evil for a moment. Who’s to say if it’s right or wrong to kill a few zillion mortals? Even if Gowasu were that detached from the question, he should still be deeply troubled that his apprentice, the guy he’s training to take his place some day, holds the office of Supreme Kai in such contempt. The job is literally to care for and watch over the universe and everything living in it. Even if wiping out mortals were the right thing to do, that’s the job of the Destroyer Gods, so if nothing else, Zamasu has demonstrated a complete failure to understand what the Supreme Kai is supposed to do.
So you would think Gowasu would at least stop and say “You know, I don’t think you’re cut out for this work.” But it’s like he doesn’t even see the problem. It’s like he doesn’t want to see it. There’s glowing cherry blossoms in this scene, but all this asshole wants to do is ignore it and drink his thirty-sixth cup of tea.
Meanwhile, Goku, Vegeta, and Trunks head to Trunks’ world to take on Goku Black, but a bunch of guys start shooting at Goku, so that’s a thing.
#dragon ball#dragon ball super#2023dbapocryphaliveblog#goku#vegeta#trunks#bulma#emperor pilaf#grand zeno#grand minister#whis#beerus#supreme kai#elder kai#kibito#gowasu#zamasu#fuck the zamasu saga forever
16 notes
·
View notes
Text
Dragon Ball Super 054
“Father! I have to fight Goku Black, but I’m dummy thicc, and the clap of my asschecks keeps telegraphing my move!”
Mai and Shu see Trunks image training to prepare for his showdown with Goku Black. Shu has to explain the concept to her, and then Mai starts trying to do the same idea, except she imagines herself getting kissed by Trunks. I’m pretty sure that’s just daydreaming.
In the lab, Pilaf starts screwing around with a computer program Bulma left open, and she gets all mad at him for messing with her stuff, but then she reads his code and decides it’s actually an improvement. So Pilaf is good at coding, fine, but the punch line here is that Pilaf actually managed to make himself useful, which sort of underscores how pointless he’s been in every other episode of this arc.
Beerus, Goku, and Whis return from Universe 10, and share their findings with Trunks over breakfast. Trunks is frustrated, because it sounds like they didn’t learn anything conclusive, but Beerus points out that Zamasu might become involved with Goku Black in the future. While Beerus and Goku squabble over a plate of sausage and eggs, Trunks reflects on the fact that Goku has fought the gods themselves and lived to tell about it. So maybe it doesn’t matter how strong Trunks gets. If Goku and Vegeta go with him to fight Goku Black, then they’re sure to win.
But there’s one grumpy gus who seems to know exactly what Trunks is thinking...
Back in U10, Gowasu is observing a primitive species on Planet Barbari, and Zamasu sees this as further evidence that mortals are self-destructive brutes who don’t deserve to exist. Gowasu insists that they can grow and change, but Zamasu doesn’t think it’s worth waiting around to find out. So Gowasu goes and fetches his Time Ring to take a peek.
To Zamasu’s point, it seems like all the Barbari do is beat the shit out of each other, but Gowasu wants to see what they’re like after a thousand years, and that’s what the Time Ring is for. Only Supreme Kais are allowed to use them, and they can only take the wearer into the future, and back again. They cannot take someone into the past, since this is forbidden, even for Kaioshin.
But Gowasu wants Zamasu to see this too, which means he has to give him one of his special Potara earrings, so the Time Ring will accept him as an authorized user. In effect, he’s temporarily promoting him to co-Supreme Kai, which is... a horrible mistake, actually.
So they go to the future, and it turns out that after 1000 years, the Barbari have learned to build fires and shelters, and they even have primitive tools. Not bad at all.
They also... still beat the crap out of each other for no good reason, which proves Zamasu’s point. The technology may change, but the fundamental problem he sees with mortals remains the same.
While explaining the Time Rings to Zamasu, Gowasu mentions that the four green rings in the case were created when someone caused an alternate timeline to be formed. He is deeply dismayed to see four of these in the box, although he shows no interest in finding how how this happened or doing anything about it.
For trivia’s sake, I think we can assign three of those green rings to the timelines shown or implied in Dragon Ball Z. One is the future shown in “History of Trunks”, one is the world Cell came from, and one is an alternate history which Trunks saved from the androids, but there was no Cell involved. I wrote a thing about this last year, if you’re interested. That fourth green ring might represent the second trip Trunks made into the past, when he showed up during the Piccolo/Android 20 fight, but I’m not so sure of that. Anyway, we’ll follow up on this later.
Meanwhile, Vegeta challenges Trunks to a fight, and shows him Super Saiyan Blue for the first time. Trunks quickly realizes that this must represent Goku’s full power as well, and if both of them are this strong, then they can defeat Goku Black without any trouble. But this upsets Vegeta, who demands that Trunks get stronger for his own sake. Is defeating Black his only goal? What about he next threat? And if nothing else, Trunks ought to strive for greater strength to satisfy his Saiyan pride. So Vegeta tells him he’ll call Trunks the winner if he can land a single blow on him.
Trunks almost pulls it off by using his old bulky form, the one he used to fight Cell and it didn’t work at all. Vegeta mocks him for this, but it turns out it’s just a diversion to get Vegeta to lower his guard.
Vegeta gives him some credit for resourcefulness, but it won’t get the job done.
Goku senses their battle and brings Bulma out to watch. He seems very excited about her getting to see this, even though she doesn’t understand it. It’s like a big sentimental moment among their family, and Goku wants her to be part of it, even if she’s confused.
See, this is why I can’t buy into the idea that Goku doesn’t love his own wife and children the way Earthlings do. He understands Vegeta’s family just fine here, so how could he not view his own family the same way?
Anyway, Vegeta gets distracted by the spectators, and Trunks siezes the opportunity to headbutt Vegeta while he’s not looking. Trunks declares that a win.
Vegeta doesn’t take Trunks’ hand, but he does seem satisfied that Trunks has gotten the message. Trunks assures him that he’ll keep training to surpass himself, Goku Black, and Vegeta. Basically it’s the Super Saiyan Cabba episode all over again, except Trunks gets it.
Meanwhile, Beerus and Whis have returned to Beerus’ planet, when they get a call from Grand Zeno. Zeno wants to speak with Goku.
Yeah, I’d be upset too if I found out this saga was about to take another detour.
#dragon ball#dragon ball super#2023dbapocryphaliveblog#goku#vegeta#trunks#beerus#whis#grand zeno#mai#shu#emperor pilaf#bulma#gowasu#zamasu#fuck the zamasu saga forever
16 notes
·
View notes
Text
Dragon Ball Super 053
...
....
....
...
“Sir, why don’t we just kill all the mortals?”
So this is Universe 10′s Sacred World of the Kais. When Goku Black showed up in Episode 49, Whis noticed something familiar about his power, and thinks it might have something to do with a Kai named Zamasu. Also, Goku Black was wearing a Time Ring and one Potara Earring, which are supposed to be things only Kaioshin are allowed to have. So Whis, Beerus, and Goku travel to Universe 10 to see what they can turn up.
Goku’s mostly excited to meet Zamasu so he can fight him. On the way over, Whis explained that Zamasu was once a Kai of the same rank as King Kai. You know, the one who tells all the jokes. But Zamasu’s aptitude for martial arts earned him some promotions, and now he’s an apprentice under the Supreme Kai of Universe 10, Gowasu.
I’m a little unclear on how this works. Like, I don’t think Zamasu is like the Assistant Supreme Kai or anything, although he does appear to be the logical successor if Gowasu suddenly died. Still, he seems more like the Assistant to the Supreme Kai, sort of like how Kibito attends to Shin, the Supreme Kai of Universe 7.
Let’s talk about Gowasu a bit. He’s the older, yellow guy in the middle. While he’s perplexed by Beerus and Goku’s presence here, he’s not sweating bullets like most of the characters who meet Beerus. Nor is he outraged by Goku’s irreverent enthusiasm, the way Zamasu is. He just sort of rolls with all of this. Which might explain why he still hasn’t figured out Zamasu’s true nature after all this time.
So Beerus and Whis explain the whole Goku Black situation to Gowasu and Zamasu, but they’re careful not to mention their suspicions about Zamasu in particular. They just claim to be visiting every universe and checking to make sure their Time Rings are accounted for. But Zamasu has never heard of Time Rings, and he’s clearly never met Goku either.
So after showing Beerus and Whis all his Time Rings, Gowasu notices Goku still pestering Zamasu for a match, and he commands Zamasu to spar with the big lug already.
See, before the U7 guys showed up, Zamasu had been saying some disturbing things about the futility of mortals in the universe. They live, they fight, they die, and nothing ever changes, so in his view, it’s kind of cruel to allow them to go on in this way. Wouldn’t it be better if we just... I don’t know... scoured them from the face of creation? Gowasu hears this kind of rhetoric and tells Zamasu to spend more time watching mortals so he can develop a greater appreciation for them. And this encounter with Goku seems like the perfect place to start.
Meanwhile, back home, Trunks meets Krillin’s wife and daughter, and learns that Krillin married 18. She teases him about killing her counterpart in his timeline, but apparently she doesn’t care about that very much.
So Trunks goes outside to brood, and Mai watches him from a distance, and Pilaf and Shu watch her watching him. They try some dumb bit to get Trunks to notice Mai, and I’m not going to go into it because it sucks and it takes like eight minutes to get through. Future Trunks doesn’t get it, and Kid Trunks tries to play into it, which isn’t what Pilaf had in mind, but then again, fixing up Kid Trunks with Mai seems to be the same outcome, right?
This whole Kid Trunks/Future Trunks/Kid Mai love triangle sucks ass, and not just because of the age differences between the characters. They just keep shoving this down our throats in every episode and it’s dumb as hell because Future Trunks seems completely oblivious to romance as a concept.
Hey, let’s focus on the one cool thing about this arc, and that’s Super Saiyan 2 Goku. Mmm-hmm. Just look at him. I don’t know why they were so obsessed with SSJ2 when they made this story, but I’ll take it.
Seriously, the Zamasu Saga is a bag of moldy dicks, but at least there’s one bright spot to it.
Gowasu is stunned to see a mortal with such incredible power. Not only is Goku fighting on Zamasu’s level, but he’s actually surpassed him. Then Beerus says Goku fought him recentl, and that blows Gowasu’s mind.
Zamasu loses, and he has to swallow his pride and be sporting about it, mostly because Gowasu would be displeased with him otherwise. Satisfied, Beerus takes his leave. Once they’re on their way back, they agree that they’re on the right track, even if there are still some unanswered questions. Zamasu’s ki is very similar to Goku Black’s, but it’s not identical. And Zamasu seemed to know nothing of Time Rings or Goku, so how could he possibly be involved in any of this?
As for Gowasu, he’s pleased that Zamasu’s scuffle with Goku has taught him some humility. Zamasu agrees that he has learned a great deal from all of this.
Well, to be specific, he’s concluded that mortals are even more dangerous than he ever thought possible. Before, he just found them pitiful and revolting, but now that he knows that there are mortals powerful enough to fight gods, he sees mortals as an existential threat.
It’s a little surreal how Zamasu keeps this thought to himself. I mean, he has to, or Gowasu will chastise him again, but I’ve just gotten so used to Zamasu making a boring speech in every scene. It must have taken every ounce of self-control not to blab this whole manifesto out loud. Then again, I’m not sure Gowasu would do anything about it even if he did.
#dragon ball#dragon ball super#2023dbapocryphaliveblog#zamasu#gowasu#goku#beerus#whis#trunks#emperor pilaf#mai#shu#krillin#android 18#marron#fuck the zamasu saga forever
19 notes
·
View notes
Last Seen Blogs
amocreosum
my god, this art is gay! good for it.
klevefc
Untitled
violetsumirekakei
Asahi ✖ Megumi
kakoytobashmak
🎃kakoy_to bashmak🎃
theraiapen
R A I A