English Dub Review: Dragon Ball Super “A Mysterious Beauty Appears! The Enigma of the Tien-Shin Style Dojo!?”

And with that, the team of ten is finally assembled.

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Goku flies off in search of Master Roshi, wanting to add his old teacher to the roster of fighters he’ll be fighting within the tournament of power. Once he arrives at Kame House, however, he finds out that Master Roshi has gone to train with Tien at his dojo. Following a brief trip to China, Goku finds Tien’s dojo and the enigmatic Master Roshi there with him. Once he arrives, a mysterious young woman with some kind of bone to pick with Tien arrives as well named Yurin.

Goku tries to convince Tien to join him in the tournament, but Tien is hesitant, having responsibilities to his students. But as it looks like Tien has made his decision, panic breaks out in town, because Yurin has used some kind of witchcraft to turn Tien’s students into rampaging zombies destroying the town. Yurin explains that she was a student alongside Tien at the Crane school of kung fu, and wishes to defeat her former comrade. Master Roshi tries to stop Yurin in a one-on-one fight, but he ends up becoming a zombie too after falling prey to a panty shot of Yurin’s underthings.

Zombified Master Roshi faces off against Goku and Tien, and we see that the old man still has quite a bit of strength in him. Their fight rages through the town until Goku ends things with a Kamehamehaeha wave that puts Yurin’s spree of destruction to an end. With the town saved, Tien and Roshi decide to allow Yurin to train at Tien’s dojo but also decide to join in the tournament as well, both for the glory and the prize money to rebuild the town.

Our Take:

While the buildup to the start of the Tournament of Power arc has given us lots of fun character episodes that build up the relationships and themes we can expect to see from the upcoming arc, this episode doesn’t quite get to that level of quality. Instead, it offers is a “one-off” of sorts, that explains how Tien and Roshi get on the team, but doesn’t really give them much of a purpose to be there other than for funsies. Don’t get me wrong, I love Master Roshi. In fact, he’s my favorite character in the Dragonball series, but he mostly just serves as a musclebound pervert in this episode. Furthermore, Tien doesn’t have a whole lot to do except look strong and be jacked enough to appear intimidating.

The plot is extraordinarily predictable, being just the kind of safe, non-threatening one-off filler episode that is used to assuage anime fans while they wait for the good stuff. Yurin’s “Connection” to Tien lacks the pathos of a strong hero/villain relationship, and just acts a plot device to get here where she needs to be in the story. As such, her defeat feels awkward, lacking the kind of strong interest needed to keep a story like this fresh. Yurin also isn’t particularly powerful, either, since her power mostly comes from turning other, stronger fighters into floating husks capable of kicking other people’s butts for her.

Overall, things just feel rather sparse this time around. Nothing in the episode jumped out at me as being interesting or particularly worth watching, and that’s a shame because these are two characters I enjoy very much. With both of them being more normal than the rest of the Z warriors I thought they might get a technique-based episode like Krilling did, but that is simply not the case. There was a lot of potential here for a more in-depth plot like we got with Android 17 or something more interesting and stylish to make this introductory episode more exciting, but it mostly goes to waste.

That’s not to say this episode is offensively bad, its just not terribly good. It’s competent as an animation and as a show (Unlike some anime I could name around here) and is relatively entertaining. It’s just not the episode that I want to see, and I don’t think its anybody else’s favorite episode. Watch it for the plot, but don’t expect much in terms of story.