English Dub Review: Dragon Ball Super “The 6th Universe’s Destroyer! His Name is Champa!”

Well, we’ve beaten the crap out of everyone in our universe. Let’s head off to another one, why not?

Spoilers Below

You know what goes great after defeating an intergalactic emperor and his new super form? Training! Goku and Vegeta return to Beerus’ planet to continue beefing up. Their new regimen includes single-thumb-push-ups while wearing suits that increase their body weight far beyond the gravitic abilities of Bulma’s training room. As they reach their 50,000th push-up, something crashes in the nearby forest. This wakes up Beerus, and you know how he hates that. He thinks the Sayajins made the noise and begins throwing energy blasts at them. As the two dodge Beerus’ assault, two figures rise from the impact. We’ve seen them before, blowing up planets for no discernible reason. This is Champa and Vados, and they look very similar to Beerus and Whis. They arrive at the compound, and are about to knock down the door when the door knocks down on its own! Beerus whips through like a tornado, looking for the Sayajins. After a few tense moments, Champa states his business. He’s come with a challenge!

A challenge about eating. What did you really think that this pudgy dude was gonna try to beat up Beerus? No. In fact, Champa is Beerus’ twin brother (and Vados is Whis’ twin sister). They come from Universe 6, the closest parallel universe to our heroes’ Universe 7. Champa’s challenge is about food. He presents a rare egg from a newly discovered bird. While everyone eats up, Champa brags that his find is far superior to anything in Universe 7. After Beerus’ time on earth, he is easily able to top that rare egg. With instant ramen. Champa is furious, wanting to know where the earth is in Universe 6. Too bad, we wiped ourselves out over there. Champa has a new contest, however. Each Destroyer will present five of the strongest people from their universe for a tournament. The Winner will get to keep Universe 7’s Earth, and the mysterious Wish Orbs: planet-sized Dragon Balls without any limit on the wishes they can grant! Goku and Vegeta don’t really need to even think twice… They’re in!

So, this episode was one of those comedic ones leading up to the action of the story. It really isn’t all that interesting to me, in itself, but it took a moment to delve into the cosmology of the multiverse. There apparently twelve universes and they are paired off as twins. Each universe’s number and its twin add up to thirteen, which is supposedly a sacred number in this cosmology. So, we are likely going to see alternate versions of our favorite characters and races coming from Universe 6. Question is, are we ever going to see the outer Universes, like 1 and 12? It was kinda fun watching Goku and Vegeta as they tried to grasp these concepts. It was like a pair of college students that were far too stoned for class. Funny stuff.

This episode didn’t have any need for high-quality animation. So, it seems they just didn’t bother. The animation crew had plenty of deviations from the model sheets, and just plain lazy art whenever they could get away with it. I would be disappointed, but that’s just what this show does on its off-episodes. The voice acting was fine on an individual level, but there did seem to be a bit more going on between characters. Goku and Vegeta (Lex Lang and Christopher Sabat) were like a couple of frat boys, and Whis and Vados (Ian Sinclair and Caitlin Glass) did feel like siblings. Though it did seem like Whis was the older, despite them being twins. I’m glad that the voice actors put some effort into this, even though the animators didn’t. But, with the sub par plot and lazy animation, the slightly better chemistry in the voice acting just couldn’t carry the episode. I’ve got to give it five instant ramen out of ten.