English Dub Review: Dragonball Super “The Start of Vengeance! The Frieza Force’s Malice Strikes Gohan”

It’s episodes like this that remind you that Krillin is the strongest human being on the planet.

Spoilers Below

The Frieza Force has arrived to ruin everyone’s day, but at least the Z fighters are here to give them a bloody nose. Gohan, Krillin, Master Yoshi, Piccolo, and Tienshinhan (and yes, technically Bulma and Jaco) stand against the sea of troubles coming out of the giant ship. But, hey, this time they have the much-feared Buu on their side, right? Right? Oh, no. Buu is napping and can’t be woken up. The Z fighters will have to hold the fort until Goku and Vegeta arrive. Why does that plot sound familiar? Anyways, the fight keys up, and our heroes are more than holding their own against overwhelming numbers of mooks. Frieza takes a moment to identify his enemies. He recognizes Gohan from way back on the planet Namek, and laments that the man is just as soft as his father. He also sees Krillin. That, right there, is an opportunity to really stick it to Goku. If he kills Krillin AGAIN, it would be a sweet step to revenge. He offers a bounty on that bald head: Possession of a planet to his killer. His friends tell him to run, but he’s frozen where he floats! Is Krillin going to have to call in another Dragon Ball respawn?

No. After the first punch is thrown, he discovers he can dodge any and all of their attacks with the greatest of ease! It’s hard to remember it now, but he stood toe-to-toe with the greatest fighters of all time! Even though Gohan is the strongest of them there, Krillin is the most powerful, full-blooded, un-augmented human being! These guys are nothing compared to him. Now at full confidence, the team trounces the enemy soldiers. With the lackey parade done, it’s time for a real fighter! The Frieza Force’s most elite soldier, Sasami, engages with Gohan. The half-sayajin takes the bull-horned monster’s bear hug in stride. Charging up, Gohan asks him nicely to leave the planet before he has to make him. Before he can, however, one of Frieza’s other lackeys shoots both of them through the chest! Tagoma, who had been Frieza’s sparring partner for these four months, is now taking charge of this fight.

Ah! This is the episode I’ve been waiting for. We actually have some attempts at animating real fights. There was one portion where they showed stock footage of Krillin’s original death. Compared to the art and animation of then, I could really appreciate how far this show has come. Each line is so much cleaner, and moving away from cel animation has done this show a world of good. We also get to see a small amount of CG, used to animate the landing gear of Frieza’s ship. Though this episode was not a shocker in terms of its quality, it finally tapped into a bit of its “A game”. From here, I expect it to only get better. The voice acting is pretty much par for the course for Dragon Ball, though I think we got a tiny bit more out of Brian Beacock (Krillin) for this episode.

As far as writing, I was surprised by how humorous this episode was. Ranging from Frieza’s awkward opening lines to the ribbing between Bulma and Jaco, we had a nice bit of levity before the action appetizer. Well, more like the breadsticks while you wait for your appetizer, but you get me. We are also given solid reasons why we won’t get Gotenks and Buu, but seriously, how many times are we going to have this plot of “Waiting for Goku”? Can’t we have a little more variance? I know, I’m asking a lot from the Anime WWE. The whole reason is to build up tension and show how powerful the bad guys are before the elites show up. That way, you can see how strong the elites are. But, let us have them fighting while we’re watching this! Almost every time we’ve waited on the two pure-blood sayajins, it’s been because they were off training or on another planet. Why not have them missing because they’re fighting another, equally powerful foe elsewhere? That way, every episode has great stuff in it. Oh, well. I guess you can’t fight tradition. I give this episode eight mysteriously familiar frog-creatures out of ten.