English Dub Review: Dragon Ball Super “All Out War! The Ultimate Four-Fold Union vs. the 7th Total Offensive”

Sometimes, the best defense is a good offense

The opening starts when Dr.Paparoni reveals his trump card from the last episode which in a nutshell is basically adding himself to the Voltron-like robot “Koichiarator” and merges to form a new creature called “Anilaze, who is widely considered to be the most powerful warrior from Universe 3. As Anilaza begins to overwhelm the Saiyans, it forces Android 17 & 18 to reinforce them having all five of them attempt to coordinate their attacks to catch Anilaza off-guard, but it goes about as well as you’d expect…

Based on Android 17’s observation they come to the conclusion that Anilaza can use an echolocation-like ability to detect his opponents’ movements and begins teleporting his punches with a form of space-control, which nearly knock Goku off the stage until Frieza after who knows how many damn episodes, finally steps in and sort-of rescues Goku in his own violent yet comical way. After realizing that the Universe 7 warriors function as a team who looks out for each other, Anilaza in a suspenseful scene sets his sights on Android 17 while he fails to almost eat 18, he manages to overwhelm 17 by knocking him off the fighting stage, but 18 does the selflessly unthinkable by kicking Android 17 back onto the fighting stage removing her from the tournament in the process.

With no other options, What’s left of the Universe 7 which now consists now of all 3 Saiyan’s, Frieza and 17 power up to their maximum levels and go on a beam-firing frenzy with the winged monstrosity and managed to give Android 17 enough time to deliver a defeating blow to his energy reactor which enables the other four to unleash hell and eliminate Anilaza. With all of their warriors eliminated, Universe 3 is now out of commission for good While the episode ends with the stakes being raised now that the only Two Universe’s are left with Universe 11’s three heavy-hitter’s step forward.

Our Take

This episode was much better than last week. The animation was solid and Aniraza was quite a unique and worthy threat. I was caught off guard that Frieza of all people sort-of saved Goku not once, but now twice in a row. Also, Android 17 easily shined in this battle and while it’s a shame that his sister 18 lost, her removal from the tournament thankfully wasn’t wasted.

I think some of the best parts of this tournament-arc would have to be the freedom of just focusing on fewer characters at a time, so their interactions and reactions with each other are given more emotional weight and that’s further exemplified with Android 18’s sacrifice to save her brother’s ass at the last second. I just know the next episode will have an even larger sense of urgency now that only two universes are left in the tournament with only 9 minutes to spare, let’s see how many episodes can be stretched to make this battle epic in scale.