English Dub Review: Dragon Ball Super “Turn Your Anger into Strength! Vegeta’s Full-Bore Battle”

Where Whis throws more shade than Beerus can handle.

Overview (Spoilers)

Vegeta is out for revenge. He just can’t stand how Frost cheated, so he’s doing a special match. Him versus Frost, no rules, no disqualification. Over in one hit. As a Super Saiyan, he just launches Frost out of the ring, knocking him out despite pulling his punch. Afterwards, Beerus finds the wound of the needle that Frost used on Goku, and got him inserted into the lineup again, this time in between Vegeta and Monaka. Goku is disappointed because he wants to see Monaka fight, but Beerus vetoes it. To be honest, Monaka has been unconscious since the first match. Beerus is desperate to reserve Monaka. Time for the next fight, Vegeta versus the metalman Magetta. This time with a new rule: there is a barrier around the area, and touching it is a ring-out. While the Destroyers argue over this change, Frost scampers off to try and steal a bunch of treasure and Champa’s travel cube. He gets stopped by his purple teammate, Hit, who is apparently some sort of hitman. That thread wrapped up, Magetta attacks Vegeta, who is far too fast for the giant metal man. Magetta is also capable of shooting out blasts of magma, which works differently than chi blasts. Now, as he charges up, he releases volcanic fumes and heat into the contained area. Vegeta, despite being a Super Saiyan, is starting to sweat this heat!

So, let’s just take a moment to talk about how Hit stopped Frost. The area around Hit seemed to shatter into shards of light, then points on Frost’s body exploded into beams of streaming light without Hit ever moving. Could it be that he is somehow manipulating spacetime? Like, rather than moving along the typical four dimensions, he moves along some other dimensions that are only theoretical. Or perhaps he is able to jump into a parallel reality? I don’t know the specifics of this attack, but it does make me want to know, which only makes his upcoming fight all the more interesting.

I have to say, I kinda dig Frost as a villain. I actually like him more than Freiza. Imagine Frost instead of Freiza in the Namek Saga. That would have made a compelling story, as the “space pirates” ransack Namek for the Dragon Balls. When things get really bad for the heroes, Frost and the Ginyu Force show up, under the guise of quelling the pirates. But, when the heroes try to take the Balls, the Ginyu Force starts acting weird, trying to keep control of the Balls until they can get it to Frost. Frost claims he wants to use the wish to wish for things that will end the conflict, but one of his cronies breaks character, and everything goes to hell in a handbasket until Goku arrives and goes Super after Krillin dies from the poison needle. See? That’s a much more interesting villain.

On the other hand, I don’t feel like this Magetta is interesting at all. He’s far too gimmicky. Sure, he has a couple of surprising moves, but he’s relatively straightforward. You can see why the cage match was important for this fight. It functions not only to limit Vegeta’s ability to get out of the way of Magetta’s magma saliva… which is weird… it also turns the arena into a pressure cooker. With nowhere for the heat to escape to, it’s only going to build up until Vegeta can’t stand anymore. Also, consider the amount of heat Vegeta is already feeling with his super Saiyan aura ionizing the air around him. JuSaiyanyan.

Our Take

I did enjoy this episode. Not only for the catharsis of seeing Frost get one-punched into the outer dome, but for a bunch of different little things. One, the English version of Whis’ lines were absolutely great. The snark is real with this one. The Japanese version has him making side commentary, but it feels like the English altered what he was saying to amp up what his intentions were. Two, this episode had some incredible direction. One of the shots was from over Frost’s shoulder, which used a slight fish eye effect to distort him while also allowing you to see Vegeta across the ring. This created some dramatic shapes out of Frost’s pose, and made him look leaner and slightly scarier. In the same scene, we had a shot that looked into Frost’s eyes, where you could see Vegeta in the reflection. The shot zoomed in on that reflection until you were now looking in on Vegeta. who had a reflection of Frost in his eye, allowing the cycle to repeat. It was a cool effect. Now, if only the battle with Magetta had the same level of intense direction. That fight was tame, and (like Magetta) straightforward.

So, animation was an interesting bit here. There was a large amount of shortcuts made because of direction, effectively allowing the characters to be mostly still while moving their art around to mimic animation. It’s an old trick, but they used it well for Frost’s curb stomping and the discussion between Goku and Beerus. It looks like the animation errors have been nearly eliminated for good, because this has been the second episode in a row I haven’t noticed any.

When we get into the voice acting, I do have to shout out to Greg Ayres. He’s given Frost a good feel. Even though the alter-world tyrant has been outed as a baddie, his voice can still play as a good guy. This same trait also makes him pathetic when he’s getting whupped by Hit later. Jason Douglas also brings out a bunch of expression with Beerus, and that drove up the comedy.

So, despite a tame and straightforward second half, this episode had some great direction. The localization and voice actors truly added to the quality of the show. I want to see more. Give me more.