English Dub Review: Dragon Ball Super “Master and Pupil Reunited! Gohan and Future Trunks”

Has the student truly surpassed the teacher?

Overview (Spoilers Below)

The episode kicks off when Bulma is hard at work repairing the time machine, with the Pilaf Gang helping to bring her parts. We do get random & comedic moments of Kid Trunks attempting to look like his future self to impress Mai but hilariously isn’t impressed. it’s funny scenes like this that help bring levity juxtaposed to scenes of Vegeta intensely training in the gravity room, who is strongly motivated by thoughts of Black ruining his family’s lives in the future. As Goku overhears Vegeta training, Whis is hard at work using his magic staff to re-watch Goku and Black’s first fight for clues. Elsewhere, Future Trunks has a hard time sleeping and asks Bulma about the progress, but her response is that it’ll take a while, yet she can at least make the Time Machine’s fuel source a lot faster compared to her future self who was limited in resources. But when Trunks later meets up with Piccolo and Krillin and asks what Gohan’s been up to is what becomes the real meat of this episode, as anyone who’s seen the DBZ one-shot movie “History of Trunks” knows that the Adult Gohan from his dystopian future was his mentor & martial arts master, who later died fighting the androids.

 

While Krillin & Piccolo do encourage Trunks to visit him, they also warn him that he isn’t the same Gohan who killed Perfect Cell long ago, as he doesn’t fight as much now and has excelled in academic studies. Upon visiting Gohan, Trunks almost doesn’t recognize him at first but doesn’t pass up the invitation when Gohan offers to introduce Trunks to his family for dinner. The Dinner scene itself is fun and lighthearted but balanced with a small touch of drama when Future Trunks has a moment of reflection on how happy & peaceful his future could’ve been if weren’t for Goku Black’s reign of terror which leads to an image in his head of what could’ve been. Long after the dinner, Trunks bids farewell to Gohan’s family. As he flies away, Trunks thinks to himself that Gohan has shown him what’s worth fighting for which harden’s his resolve to defeat Black once and for all.

After returning to Capsule Corp. Future Trunks shows up with a new change of clothes but notices Goku is missing. Krillin explains that Goku left with Beerus and Whis to “Universe 10”, where they may have a lead as there’s supposedly an individual with the same energy signature as Black, While it cuts to Beerus being annoyed by Goku’s excitement to meet the individual, The episode ends on a cryptic note when a green-skinned Kai pushes a tea tray in the middle of a forest temple.

Our Take

Much like the previous episode, while this one also had very little action, it compensated with great character moments but excelled the most with some of the best call-backs to the “History of Trunks” DBZ film and Cell Saga. As for the funny moment with Gohan after Trunks left, you’d think what Videl pointed out would’ve been the first thing he should’ve asked Trunks first, which is usually something anyone within Goku’s circle would immediately ask, because Trunk’s wouldn’t just travel back in time unless he had a legit reason.

As for the cryptic ending, the Green-Skinned Kai looking character has been seen in promotional material, and randomly appears in the current Intro which indicates a level of importance he supposedly has in this storyline. But let’s hope we get some answers on who he is next episode.