English Dub Review: Dragon Ball Super “Awaken Your Dormant Fighting Spirit! Gohan’s Fight!”

Gohan’s a little rusty, but this week he gives everything he’s got.

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Majin Buu took the first round of the Tournament of Power’s exposition match with relative ease, making Gohan the next to fight. His opponent: Lavender, a fox man fighter who uses poison mist to sabotage his opponents.

Gohan begins the fight with a sense of optimism, but its not long before Lavender’s swift strikes and blinding poison turn the tables on Gohan. Universe 7’s Supreme Kai offers Gohan a senzu bean, but he refuses out of pride, believing that he must win with his own strength. It looks bad, but Goku believes, with Gohan’s sight disabled, that this is perfect training for his son, who hasn’t fought in some time.

Gohan refocuses himself, using his other senses to detect Lavender’s movements, and to everyone’s surprise, starts putting up a good fight. Lavender is no fool, though, and switches things up by using his flight ability to hover in the air and shoot poison blasts at Gohan. Lavender is about to finish Gohan off, but Gohan responds by kicking things up a notch and going Super Saiyan.

With the power of a Super Saiyan flowing through him, Gohan goes on a counter-offensive against Lavender, taking back the fight blow by blow. However, things turn sour when Gohan’s Super Saiyan power turns against him; the poison in his body gets accelerated by Super Saiyan as well.

It doesn’t look good, but Gohan presses the attack as much as he can. With poison destroying his body, he goes Super Saiyan again and rushes Lavender, soaring into the air and performing a meteor slam that leaves an enormous crater in the tournament arena. Lavender is knocked out, but Gohan isn’t much better, so the round is considered a draw.

As the fight ends, the universe’s have their power levels revealed to them, as determined by Zeno. Universe 7 is shocked to learn that as of this moment, they are second from the bottom in terms of strength, with only Universe 9 beneath them. A sense of doom falls over the Universe’s, but Goku is still confident he can win and prepares to demonstrate what he can do in the next round.

Our Take:

This week’s episode does what Dragon Ball Super does best and gets right to the action. From the get-go, we’re treated to a tournament fight that’s satisfying, flashy, and offers a good amount of twists and turns to keep you guessing the victor until the very end.

Gohan hasn’t taken the stage for a while, and this fight serves as more than just a tournament match, but a setup for where Gohan is in the series as a whole, and how he isn’t quite the fighter he used to be. Because he doesn’t have Goku’s insane fighting ability, Gohan’s fight is defined primarily by his weakness, not his strength. This creates a fight that’s more of a struggle for Gohan to just keep up with Lavender. This makes for an excellent battle, however, since this places Gohan in an underdog position. Until its conclusion, the victor is uncertain as Lavender and Gohan try to one-up each other in power level to win the day. Ultimately, though Gohan doesn’t win the round, it still feels like a victory; he may not have gotten the win, but Gohan has personally triumphed over a powerful enemy and the audience shares in that accomplishment.

While the fighting is the main draw to this episode, this fight still feels like an important part of the larger story. Primarily, this is because of the universes getting ranked by Zeno, who places Universe 7 at second to the bottom. With Goku and the other Z Warriors becoming the strongest warriors in their universe, it’s hard to convince the audience that there are still obstacles for these fighting gods to conquer. But, similar to Gohan’s fight, they are now underdogs as well, small fish in an ocean of exceptionally powerful universe are all fighting for their lives. That feeling of smallness is essential to a shounen anime, which always needs better enemies to fight and greater challenges to conquer to keep things interesting. In addition, this draws a thematic connection between Gohan’s fight and Universe 7’s fight, which is a sign of the excellent craft that went into this episode.

This is a small episode, a single fight played out over 22 minutes that’s fairly straightforward, but an important one. The attention paid to even minor fights like this is great to see from a long-standing mainstay series like Dragon Ball Super, and it shows that we’ve got a lot coming that’s sure to be worth staying up for.