English Dub Review: Dragon Ball Super “Don’t Forget Your Saiyan Pride! Vegeta Vs the 6th Universe’s Saiyan”

Vegeta is just a big softie sometimes.

Overview (Spoilers)

After a quick bit of repairing the arena (and expanding it, because these Saiyans be cray), the next round is ready to begin. Vegeta now faces off against Cabba, a Saiyan of Universe 6. In their base forms, the two are equally matched. After all, Cabba is a hero of justice. He and his entire race in their universe are heroes for hire, instead of the planet-purging murder hobos of Universe 7. Vegeta is interested in this kid, as he seems to be a younger, nicer version of the Prince of all Saiyans. He even uses the Galick Gun technique! Vegeta decides he’d like to see the boy get serious, and asks him to go Super Saiyan. No can do, widow’s peak. These Saiyans don’t know how. Cabba begs Vegeta to teach him the golden mantle of their race. Vegeta responds by pounding the kid and juggling him like a hacky-sack. Cabba is about to give up until Vegeta tells him that a surrender will not only get him killed but will get his homeworld of Sadala wiped off the face of their universe. Cabba becomes enraged and transforms into a Super Saiyan, much to Vegeta’s satisfaction. It was all an act to unlock the boy’s power, and he is again on nearly equal footing with the prince. That is until Vegeta inspires him with the Super Saiyan Blue form, and KO’s the kid in one fierce punch. Cabba vows to become as strong as Vegeta one day, but that isn’t good enough. Vegeta demands that Cabba get stronger than him! Not that he’ll just let him, of course. Next up, the assassin Hit!

This was a great episode for the Saiyan race. Not only do we discover that the U6 Saiyans can go Super, and just haven’t learned how, but we get to watch as Vegeta trains Cabba to don the golden mantle. Even though Yamcha mentions that Cabba reminds him of young Goku, he reminds me more of our first introduction to Vegeta. Way back at the beginning of DBZ, the prince was a tiny guy, especially compared to his buddy Nappa. He’s grown a bit since then and has gotten a bit wirier. Cabba is even smaller than Vegeta, due to his own youth, but has definitely gained the wiry strength of the more powerful Saiyans. However, Cabba is not the U6 equivalent to Vegeta. We find that there is a king on Sadala, and Vegeta evokes a similar image to Cabba. Perhaps Vegeta is a king in that world? It was funny seeing how Bulma and Chichi reacted to hearing about the U6 Saiyans. Since those aliens work as heroes for hire, they actually make a living off of fighting. The U7 Saiyans are from a race turned mercenary, then nearly wiped out. As a result, they lack any structure that would allow them to take jobs like that, so they are effectively slackers.

This also marks the first time we see the transformation to Super Saiyan Blue indoors. Normally, we see it outside, and the aura released just vanishes. Here, it actually strikes the edge of the environmental barrier, demonstrating why it is nearly impossible to sense anyone using Super Saiyan God forms: Their energy is everywhere!

Our Take

The tournament got a bit more impressive during this fight. The combatants were throwing out punches that released shockwaves out to several feet through the victim. Ouch. I’m actually rather glad to see that Cabba isn’t a nothing like the previous fighters. His base form is on par with Vegeta, but the latter trained far more to optimize his Super form and wins out in a battle of the SSJs. This makes me hopeful for the fight with Hit, who is supposedly even more powerful. This fight had great action, which was thoughtfully directed so as to take you along for the ride. Even though we don’t know what’s going on in his head, Vegeta is our viewpoint for the episode. When he is winning, things move quickly. But when he is at a disadvantage, things start to slow down a little bit, as he tries to re-center and re-focus. The episode is punctuated with humor from Beerus, Champa, and the peanut gallery. I like the touch of them wondering if Vegeta has gone evil again. Remember, it’s only been five years to them since Vegeta murdered an entire stadium of people.

The animation in this episode was some of the best I’ve seen from Dragon Ball Super. The characters really went everywhere on that expanded arena and used a wide variety of attacks. The only problem was that the episode was riddled with errors in the small details, such as faces during battle. I’m almost willing to forgive that though since there were such dramatic shots interspersed throughout. There are some nifty effects that make the two Saiyans feel a bit more powerful. There was a heat lensing effect in Cabba’s SSJ aura, and the outpouring of Vegeta’s SSJ Blue aura was imposing. More dramatic scenes showed play with line thickness that gave added strength to those shots. The episode had visual gravitas, and it is thoroughly enjoyable. However, it would get a better score if they tightened up those facial details a bit.

The voice acting from Christopher Sabat in this episode was spot on. He really captured what Vegeta was doing, and portrayed it accordingly. He drew upon Vegeta’s time as Majin Vegeta, and let his villain flag fly in a deeper, more intimidating voice. It sounded angry, but mocking at the same time. Clifford Chapin didn’t do bad as Cabba, but he wasn’t interesting until his transformation. Normally, the referee character, whose information is difficult to find, is one note. He’s a radio voice with blinking eyes and antenna. However, there is one line where this breaks up. He muses with astonishment when he discovers Cabba knocked out, and drops the radio voice during the line. I think he maintained that voice in the Japanese. It was a good choice to drop it for that line because it amplified the feeling of amazement from the character.