English Dub Review: Dragon Ball Daima “Thieves”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Goku and Bulma’s teams meet up, Gomah is informed of their activities, and Arinsu brings forth a new Majin to do her bidding.

OUR TAKE

Crazy to think how we’re nearly halfway done with the series, huh? As mentioned, the subbed version finished last week, poignantly on the day before the one year anniversary of creator Akira Toriyama’s death, but now all we have left for Dragon Ball content that he had a hand in is the remaining dub releases of this show, with less than a dozen left. I’ll have more thoughts on that and what this show adds to his legacy near the end of the series and the season review, but for now, let’s talk about the episode that actually came out. Our heroes are on the hunt again, meaning things are slowing down a bit, but last week’s big Tamagami fight definitely added some momentum that we’re still feeling for a little bit. Plus, not to give anything away (assuming you have somehow avoided spoilers and are only watching the dub), but we’re not too far from another big hype moment, so we should be good for now in the interim. This middle third is really where a lot of the good stuff is, both for series staple fights, unexpected worldbuilding, and fun little character bits, of which this episode gives us those latter two.

It’s just genuinely super fun to see these smaller versions of the characters interact and do stuff, especially Vegeta, who gets a lot of funny bits this time like beating up people in a night club, arguing with Hybis, and just being his grumbly self. But the main highlight is the introduction of a new character. We’ve been following Arinsu as she gets in touch with this magician Marba, who is revealed to be the true creator of Majin Buu. Now though, it’s also revealed that Saibamen, those green little gremlins that Vegeta and Nappa had when they first showed up on Earth, are ALSO Demon Realm creations and used to be traded from there by Marba. That’s not the first Demon Realm connection this series has had and it won’t be the last, but it’s still neat seeing all of these dots start to connect in unexpected ways. And with this combination of Saibamen and Majin Buu’s matter comes Majin Kuu, who will actually turn out to be a total delight when all’s said and done. And we’ll see how, as next week he goes up against the First Tamagami. Will he succeed in obtaining the One Star Dragon Ball? Well, no, but watch anyway.