English Dub Review: Dragon Ball Super “Combat Matches Are a Go! The Captain is Someone Stronger Than Goku!”

Oh, Hi Tights. Where in left field did you come from that even your brother-in-law did know you existed?

Spoilers Below

Courtesy: Funimation

The tournament between Universe Six and Seven has been set. It will be five days from now, and they have already set the rules. First off, each contestant must have enough of a brain to understand the rules. Written test. Second, the rules will match those of the Tenkaichi Budokai. Surrender, knock out or ring out, but no killing or weapons. The prize: ownership of the Universe Six Earth and all six of the Super Dragon Balls that Champa collected. However, those Super Dragon Balls are useless unless they have a seventh. Whis asks Bulma to construct a Super Dragon Radar, but she has a faster way to track them down, given they’re scattered across space. She thinks that they can ask Shenron with the Earth Dragon Balls. While Vegeta runs to collect them all, Champa and Vados head off to the Nameless Planet to construct the stadium for the tournament.

Courtesy: Funimation

The Prince of All Sayajins arrives in no time flat with all seven of the Earth Dragon Balls, and they ask Shenron about the Super Balls. Unfortunately, he can’t even locate the Universe Six Super Balls, spread across the universe, much less the seventh Universe Seven Ball. It’s still up to Bulma to build a Super Radar. While she hops to it, Beerus and Whis leave to pick up the leader of their team, Monaka, who is even stronger than Goku! Something in Beerus’ goodbye is ominous to Bulma. She doesn’t trust the destroyer’s motivations, and suspects he wants to destroy everything in the universe using the Super Balls. She is determined to track down the Super Dragon Balls first and prevent him from making any wishes. She completes the Super Radar but needs help in actually making it work. The signal isn’t strong enough to track the Super Balls from their remote corner of the universe and needs a ship fast enough to get her to the center of the universe before the tournament. She calls her sister, Tights Brief, who has a close relationship with Jaco. She’ll use his ship while the boys start training for the tournament.

This episode was surprisingly funny. As an episode focused entirely around Bulma, we get a bit of a glimpse into the relationship between her and Vegeta, which has always been a bit spotty in the past. Normally, we see that Bulma loves Vegeta, but the two rarely show a relationship. However, we see him in a rare quirky moment, as Bulma praises and kisses him on the cheek for work well done. He gets embarrassed and tells her how much he hates it when she “sneaks attacks” him. That suggests this happens frequently. Perhaps he’s the type that hates PDA, and this is the only way she can sate her own need for affection. It’s not that their love is one sided. We’ve already seen how pissed he gets if someone as much as touches her. He’s just not touchy feely. In general, his actions in this episode was pretty hilarious. When he has a master, like Beerus, he’s the type that asks how high before he’s even told to jump! He’s leaping at the chance to keep Beerus happy whenever he can. It’s funny compared to his usual calm, prideful exterior. In contrast, there was barely any point in giving Goku any screen time in this episode. Most of the lines he had were just goofy laughter. When there isn’t fighting to do, Goku seems to be downgraded to pointlessness.

Seeing as this was more of a story and comedy episode, it doesn’t really need much in the way of animation. However, they seemed to actually give a care here. I didn’t spot much in the way of errors, and Vegeta was really funny to watch. Voice acting wasn’t bad. Jason Douglas as Beerus has always been a cagey beast, but this episode, he feels like he has, even more, up his non-existent sleeves. Bulma (Monica Rial) was actually bearable this episode, where most of my memories of her was an annoying, screechy scream. So, I wasn’t expecting it, but I rather liked this offering. It wasn’t exciting, and Goku was an unparalleled doofus, but we see solid (but not amazing) technicals and a storyline that held deceptive depth into the characters. I give it eight Super Dragon Radars out of ten.

SCORE
7.0/10