English Dub Review: Dragon Ball Super “The Earth Explodes?! A Decisive Kamehameha!”

Wait, everybody can do this Super Saiyajin Blue now? What is going on here?

Spoilers Below

Courtesy: Adult Swim

Goku is in bad shape. After waiting out the Golden Freiza’s gas-guzzling, he decided to be lenient with the interstellar tyrant, and offer him clemency. That’s when Sorbet sneaky-sniped him with a laser. Freiza is rubbing it in, literally rubbing his foot in the wound, and about to finish the job when Vegeta decides to remind everyone about his presence in this show. After driving the pale meanie away from the foolish warrior, Vegeta kicks Goku over to the rest of the group for a senzu bean revival. Time to reveal his new power: Vegeta is also able to transform into Super Saiyajin Blue form. Not only did he learn how to attain this power level, but he did so without the shortcut of the Super Saiyajin God Ritual! With all this power, he mops the floor with Freiza in a most impressive way.

Courtesy: Adult Swim

However, just as he is about to finish off his former master, Freiza has a surprise! He channels the last of his power into turning the planet earth into a dusty smear. Only those immediately next to Whis survive. Goku is now painfully aware that his leniency is the direct cause of this massive loss of life. Whis offers him a Do-Over. Apparently, the deific servant has the ability to send people’s consciousness back in time by three minutes. Everyone present jumps back to just before Freiza blows up the planet. Goku unleashes his Super Saiyajin Blue form, and a hearty Kamehameha, turning the spot the villain stood into ground zero ocean. With the day saved, Goku heads off to get the Namekian Dragon Balls, and bring Piccolo back. At the afterparty, Gohan apologizes to Piccolo for his death, and tells him about his new resolve: To train under Piccolo, and be ready for any further problems.

I’m gonna buck my traditions and start with the technicals. The animation for the Vegeta/Freiza fight was great. Yeah sure, there was some cycled stuff later on, but the early portion was all raw animation. The choreography of the action was great. In fact, that was the action I had been hungering for since I took up this anime. Do I get seconds? Oh, wait. That’s the end of this season. Crud. Immediately after, the destruction of the earth is actually rather impressive, even if it was CG. Voice acting… meh. It’s a bunch of yelling. You don’t come to this show for the voice acting and plot.

So, on to the plot. While it’s really great that Vegeta built his Blue form from scratch, I wish they had shown how he did so. Goku did a bunch of training on holding his energy into his body, but he also had the help of the Super Saiyajin God Ritual to tip him off as to his hidden potential. Vegeta didn’t have that. What was it that gave him the ability to pull that out? We’ll never know. That is where the problem is with this show as it goes on. Transformations are really popular and make for more merchandising, but the show is now just handing them out like candy to its strongest fighters. Should Goku be the only one to get a new form? Heavens, no! But I would like to watch the others earn it, rather than just have it pop up out of nowhere. Also, I would love to watch Goku and Vegeta’s forms evolve down different pathways: Goku from harnessing the power of the Super Saiyajin God, and Vegeta discovering new methods of training. Having them gain power and new abilities that are different from each other would make the show far more interesting.

This episode does have an interesting note to it. Beerus and Whis are further counseling Goku in becoming more powerful, and even a defender of earth. They warned him that his cocky attitude would be his downfall, and it was. Rather than prevent the problem, they let him screw everything up, then gave him a Do-Over once he’d learned his lesson. Will this mean that Goku is going to be more willing to kill than before? The only way to find out is to watch next season! In the meantime, I give this episode seven Super Saiyajin Blue transformations out of ten. And you know what? I’m taking one for myself. HYAAAAH!

SCORE
7.0/10