English Dub Review: Dragon Ball Super “Universe 6’s Mightiest Warrior! Engage the Assassin, Hit!”

So, it’s like he has a fast-forward button for the universe. Has he ever used it to skip commercials?

Overview (Spoilers)

Vegeta’s next challenger steps into the ring, and he’s the last one in Universe 6’s corner, Never-Miss Hit. You know cause… he never fails to hit? I guess? The bell rings, waking Monaka and triggering Vegeta’s Super Saiyan Blue transformation. And that just makes Monaka pass out again. Hit has an incredible guard stance, but what’s really impressive is his speed. In fact, he vanishes just a fraction of a second before he strikes. Even Jaco can’t track him! His hits aren’t all that much individually, but there’s so many stacking up, Vegeta can’t take it! He comes up with a plan, though. He dashes in at full force, taking a hit for the express purpose of grabbing a hold of Hit’s arm. Hoping to disable Hit’s speed, Vegeta winds up for a strike of his own… And gets a devastating blow to the solar plexus for his trouble. The Saiyan formerly known as the prince is down! Jaco and the Space King have figured out that Hit’s power is to time skip. He jumps one-tenth of a second into the future. While Goku figures out what to do to fight back, Whis jabs at Beerus for filling out the team’s roster with Monaka, an amateur. Piccolo overhears this and is disturbed. Goku’s fight starts out no better than Vegeta, but that’s only because he’s still figuring out his plan of attack. After a few punches, though, Goku actually manages to block one. Then, he lands a strike of his own- and another! He’s countered Hit’s ability by predicting where the assassin is going to be in one-tenth of a second. For a guy who can barely do the math, he’s got a genius mind for fighting! Now, both fighters have seen each other’s weaknesses, and it’s time for them to fight for real!

As a side note, they keep saying that Hit skips ahead of time. If that were true, then he’d be vanishing, then reappearing right where he was. But what we see instead is that he is vanishing, and reappearing elsewhere. It’s more like he is freezing time but can only do so for a limited time relative to himself. Consider, every time he’s using that ability, he’s getting one-tenth of a second older. His race must never age! Either that, or they have their own Dragon Balls, and he wished for immortality.

Our Take

Now that they’ve ditched the gimmicky warriors, the Tournament of Destroyers gets more interesting with each fight! The battles against Hit are fun to watch, as both Vegeta and Goku get really acrobatic in their attempts to land a punch. This also leads to some pretty dynamic camera shots, such as one that swoops around Hit to look over his shoulder at Goku. The visual direction has come a long way since DBZ, and this episode shows it. These days, though, anime can’t merely rely on power levels and transformations to drive action. The direction of what is going on is key to inspiring excitement in the audience.

The animation was top quality, but only when challenging. Let me explain. Whenever the animators were doing shots where there was either a lot going on, or the camera has dynamic movement going on, the quality of the animation was high, and there weren’t many errors. When we were just looking at people standing there, and we were staring at their face, there were errors. Not much, just enough to make their face look weird. I liked that effect of purple sparkles flying out of Vegeta as Hit punches him. It gave visual emphasis to the strike, although I’m left wondering what that is supposed to represent. It isn’t just the “one-inch punch” effect that we saw so often in the fight between Vegeta and Cabba.

Matthew Mercer, who played Hit, did an excellent job with the assassin’s voice. He encapsulated a ruthless, professional hitman, but didn’t lay it on heavy with the aggression or creep factor. Coupled with the fact that Hit didn’t talk much, it worked very well for his character. It actually made me wish he had been a part of DBZ, so we could have seen him more often. Along with what just felt like better voice acting all round over the original Japanese, the ADR team wrote a really solid script for this episode. Whis’ shade is better, the explanation of Hit’s power is more clear, and Monaka’s bemusement at waking up is funnier. It’s just all around a better script. It’s kinda sad when the translation is better than the original, especially for a show that’s been around since the eighties, and should have built up some serious writing staff.