English Dub Review: Dragon Ball Daima “Taboo”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Gomah rallies his forces and cuts off access to the portals between the demon worlds, while Goku and the gang get ready to go to the first demon world in order to finish this.

OUR TAKE

I guess this wraps up Daima’s second arc, or at least as far as I can tell since Daima is pretty much just one solid piece, but it does feel like we are headed into the third act in the next episode. All of the Dragon Balls have been obtained, even if they haven’t been fully collected by one faction. Gomah is fully aware of the group that’s after him. And said group is now in the first demon world and facing off against his forces. That’s not to say the remaining six episodes are ONLY fight scenes from here on out, but there is most definitely a lot of action. Which makes it a bit odd that, after a good stretch of episodes the past few weeks that felt like they balanced the action, character moments, and lore expansion fairly well, this episode kinda felt like empty calories. We do get a bit more explanation about why the Namekians left the original Namek (apparently because the brutes from the Third World and the elitists from the First were encroaching on it), as well as why and how Neva created the portals between the worlds, but that’s kind of the odd thing out here.

The episode also feels the need to pad out the time by fully introducing us to top members of the Gendarmarie, that group of noseless Beerus looking foot soldiers that work under Gomah, in an extended Super Sentai parody. That alone is nothing new to Dragon Ball, as one of their most famous villain groups, the Ginyu Force, is also a direct parody of Super Sentai (which most westerners will know by its western adaptation, Power Rangers). The problem is that THIS parody doesn’t really add much to the joke of the FIRST parody, so other than a callback to remind us of a way better villain group, why was this needed? They do get a fun bit with Kuu and Duu at a convenience story later on, but I’m probably not giving that much away when I tell you these five are just not going to get much of the spotlight in the rest of the series. And Kuu and Duu definitely will, though not as much as I’d like, but we’ll get to that when we get to it. Anyway, six episodes left, and things are gonna most certainly escalate, though I’ll let you know if it hits nearly as hard as when I saw the subbed version.