English Dub Review: Dragon Ball Super “Showdown! The Miraculous Power of Unyielding Warriors!”

Was this battle a “Perfect Fusion”?

Overview (Possible Spoilers Below)

Immediately after the last episode, tension rises as Goku puts all of his power into his Kamehameha wave and is able to pierce through Fusion Zamasu’s Beam, once again stopping him in his tracks. In the aftermath, Goku is tired, but parts of Fusion Zamasu’s body appear to have been damaged, as the skin on the right side of his face and right arm has turned purple and seems to be melting. Goku overpowers Fusion Zamasu using his Kaioken technique and knocks him out temporarily with a kick to the head, but his use of the Kaioken, of course, drains Goku causing him to collapse. During this time, Vegeta wonders why Fusion Zamasu isn’t healing, but Gowasu theorizes that, while Future Zamasu’s body was immortal, Goku Black’s was not. which means that Fusion Zamasu is only half-immortal, which should give our heroes a fighting chance against the sanctimonious, misanthropic douche-nozzle. We do get random scenes of the future survivors taking shelter in Bulma’s Capsule garage during the course of the battle, but gets the point across regarding what’s going on while Bulma continues the Time Machine repairs.

As Fused Zamasu recovers and powers up, the fusion’s instability begins to visually & physically take its toll in a number of ways. Because of Zamasu’s fusion instability, this motivates Goku with the solution that their best course of action is to fuse using the Potara Earrings. In a comedic scene, Vegeta at first turns this down, but begrudgingly changes his mind after hearing from Gowasu that, for anyone of the Non-Kai species, the Potara fusion will only last an hour but if two people of the same Kai species use them, it’s permanent. Knowing that it’s a race against time to take down this fusion monstrosity, Goku and Vegeta use Supreme Kai’s Potara earings in combination with Senzu Beans to fuse into one of the best things to happen from DBZ’s Buu Saga, Vegito! and since Goku & Vegeta have attained SS-Blue Status, they call themselves “Vegito Blue” which further adds to this badass scene.

The battle itself between Vegito & Zamasu is a grand spectacle in terms of animation quality as Vegito quickly gains the advantage. However, Fused Zamasu’s body continues to mutate strangely, powering up even more. Two separate subplots begin to converge as Bulma and Mai finally finish repairing the time machine, leading Mai to give Future Trunks his broken sword, which inspires him to keep fighting and he begins to redirect his energy to restore the sword into what I can best describe as a yellow light-saber. When we cut back to the Vegito Vs Fusion Zamasu battle, the stakes are raised when the Vegito fusion abruptly wears off early due to massive amounts of energy that were used during the fight. But just when things seem decidedly bleak for Goku and Vegeta, Future Trunks arrives to help and unknowingly begins gathering energy from all living things on the Earth, creating a massive Spirit Bomb, and then absorbs it into his sword which results in Future Trunks overwhelming Fused Zamasu to the point that the episode ends when Future Trunks delivers the final blow by impaling him with what I like to call his “Spirit-Sword”, and cuts him in half Kung-Lao-style, destroying him once and for all!

Our Take

While I’m mildly disappointed that Vegito didn’t deliver the final blow on Fused Zamasu, the limitation of the Potara fusion helped to add tension during the proceedings. And in my opinion, it felt deeply symbolic that Trunks had to be the one to finish him off. As a character, I really like that they developed Trunks’s power, while still finding new ways to differentiate him from Goku & Vegeta.

You could argue that it’s lazy writing in regards to how Trunks became the second character other than Goku to fashion a spirit bomb, but it’s handled in such a way that it makes sense to the character and in this case, Trunks formed it into a Large-Ass Lightsaber, But I guess we won’t know what will happen in the aftermath of Trunks’s dystopian shit-hole of a future until the next episode. But overall, while the episode’s pacing dragged in places with exposition-dumps from Gowasu and Bulma, I still consider this fight to be one of the best!