English Dub Review: Dragon Ball Daima “Betrayal; Maximum”

Glorio, his betrayal is MAXIMUM! Also, long live King Kuu

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Glorio uses the wish on Porunga to return everyone turned into kids back to their old bodies. With their full powers returned, Goku, Vegeta, Piccolo, and the rest gang up on Gomah to remove the Third Eye from him and end his reign once and for all.

OUR TAKE

Oh, uh, I actually expected these last two episodes to be released separately like they were for the subbed version, but I only learned after I finished last week’s review that they would come out together. And I have to say, as much as I would have liked to keep watching and reviewing this momentous point in Dragon Ball history for one more week, watching these episodes together is actually the better move. The battle with Gomah already started a couple episodes back, but now that everyone has their regular bodies (and regular voices) back, this is really the final phase, though that’s not to say there aren’t a couple more phases within that phase. Vegeta gets a chance to show off Super Saiyan 3 in his adult form and gives Gomah a good walloping, but because of the Third Eye, Gomah can heal from basically anything. He’s not really stronger, he just has a bunch of free heals stocked up, which doesn’t make for a very interesting fight or villain, but…hey, who knows when we’ll see any of these characters get to fight again, let alone animated this well. And we get a funny bit about Vegeta and Bulma’s relationship out of it, so that’s something.

That takes us into the FINAL final part as Goku takes over, of course, and powers up to Super Saiyan 4 all on his own, which I have mixed feelings about to say the least. The canon of Daima was already a bit questionable from the start with a couple things, but Goku now having a whole ass transformation he can use (or may have had use of before this, depending on the translation) but doesn’t for all of Super is considerably harder to reconcile. Seems like an easier way to make this work would have been to say that Neva tapped into some ancient Saiyan potential because of his familiarity with that race and that Goku can’t use it again without his help or something, but that’s hardly the first time Dragon Ball has taking a bat to continuity for the sake of something cool. Chronologically right after this series, the gang fights a couple of stray Frieza soldiers and meet Vegeta’s previously unmentioned brother in a special that’s still not dubbed. Although personally, even if they did that, I have a nitpicky issue with 4 being a transformation from 3, since GT, where it was introduced, made it more of a expansion of the Great Ape powers than directly from the Super Saiyan 1-3 powers, but that’s the nerdy power level shit that Dragon Ball fans can get into on their own time…and boy howdy will we ever.

All this to say that the last fight with Gomah is goddamn immaculate, not just in animation where the crew very clearly left it all on the stage, but also because Sean Schemmel returns to voice adult Goku and apparently passed out “between one and three times” when recording all of the screaming for Super Saiyan 4 Goku. As it turns out, this is not the first time this has happened for Schemmel, but ONLY when dealing with Super Saiyan 4, which he uses a lower voice for. The man is in his early fifties now, so this is of course going to be harder for him, but even if he had a reduced role in this specific series, he definitely made sure to go all out when he came back for the finale. And if this was a challenge for him, I can only imagine what it was like for Goku’s Japanese actor, Masako Nozawa, who played Goku through the entirety of this series and is only a couple years from being ninety. The fact that both of them have held on and still bring so much to this role after all this time is nothing short of inspiring.

And I haven’t even gotten to how the show itself wraps up, with Majin Kuu becoming the new Supreme Demon King! While it’s a pretty standard conclusion in a lot of ways, and there are so many elements and characters that I still feel were underutilized to a criminal degree, it most assuredly sticks the landing, not just by finishing competently, but also by tapping into the goofy and adventurous heart of the franchise, especially in its final moments. And well…I thought I’d have more time. Most of us probably think that, and Toriyama likely did too, though we’ll never know for sure. Even when the subbed version ended, it was hard to accept that the last Dragon Ball story, or even in story in general, that he was significantly involved in was over, but now I think I’m ready. I’m sure there will be other Dragon Ball things to come that we’ll get to review here, Toriyama left it in trusted hands, but while letting him go is hard, it’s what we gotta do to move on to the next adventure. Plus, despite all of this finality, there’s still the Season Review, so come back next week where I try to cram all of my emotions into that!