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duhragonball · 10 months

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Super Dragon Ball Heroes 13-19

“I am the universe itself! You might even say that I am... The World? Eh? Sorry, it’s a little inside joke I have. You probably wouldn’t get it. Anyway, I’m gonna drop a big heavy thing on you now.”

Okay, so this is the second half of the Universal Conflict Arc, which is basically about Hearts attacking different universes to gather energy for the “Universe Seed”, which will somehow help him kill all the gods, including Grand Zeno himself. In Episode 12, Hearts’ group arrived in Universe 7 for a final showdown. Either Goku’s group defeats him here, or he collects the last of the energy he needs. I’m a little fuzzy on how that energy is being collected. Is it the fighting itself that makes it possible? Or does Hearts have some mean to passively drain the energy from a universe just by being there, and the fighting is to keep anyone from interfering with that?

Anyway, while Goku takes on Hearts, he tells him that he’s read Goku’s mind, and knows of his desire to fight strong opponents. He then offers to satisfy his need, which might offer a clue as to how he got all these guys to join his team in the first place. Kamin, Oren, and Cumber don’t seem to have much of an agenda, but Hearts can actually read their minds and discover their true goals, and offer it up. Whether or not he can deliver is another matter, but just being able to know what someone wants is a powerful way to manipulate them.

Hearts is generally pretty carefree in how he fights, as if he’s got nothing to fear, but Goku manages to get the drop on him with a Kamehameha, and that seems to make Hearts lose his cool for a moment. It doesn’t actually hurt him, though.

Meanwhile, 17 and Piccolo are taking on Kamioren, and it looks like the Tuffle siblings have got them pinned down. 17 has to keep a force field up to protect themselves, but then it collapses under the assault, but then--

Piccolo fires back with a Special Beam Cannon, which he had been charging up while 17 protected him. Pretty smart teamwork from these two. See, this series has its moments.

Meanwhile, Vegeta and Trunks are busy with Zamasu. Trunks asks Zamasu why he would follow a mortal like Hearts after he tried to wipe out all mortals, but Zamasu refuses to explain himself. Okay, a couple of things about Zamasu.

First, it’s kind of weird how he’s just back. Side stories like this aren’t afraid to bring out a movie villain or two, or to resurrect a dead villain without much explanation. Trunks’ presence in this story is kind of weird enough as it is. But Zamasu’s a unique case because he was erased by Grand Zeno. And before that, he got chopped in half and exploded, so his indestructible essence was spread out across the entire multiverse... which was also erased by Grand Zeno. I mean, that’s about as permanent as it gets with this franchise.

Of course, Jiren and Hit were also erased in Dragon Ball Super, only to be wished back when 17 made his wish on the Super Dragon Balls. So maybe Hearts wished Zamasu back the same way? Maybe Zamasu got revived by the same wish 17 made? Like, he wished back all the erased universes, and didn’t realize this would also bring back the erased multiverse from Trunks’ timeline, which would revive Zamasu as well. But then Zamasu would still need a body, right? And even if we handwave this, what happened to his eye? Why isn’t the left side of his body distorted like it was before? And why is he helping Hearts?

It raises a lot of questions, but Zamasu refuses to elaborate, which is the second thing I want to bring up. In his original appearances, this guy never shut up. He would explain his motivations to anyone. Repeatedly. He’d tell his victims, his enemies, mortals, gods, himself. Hell, he’d monologue even when no one was listening. Now, he’s this strong silent type, and I gotta say, this is a very refreshing take on the character.

This sort of exemplifies my gripe with bringing Frieza back in the 2010′s. He’d been defeated and killed, and then he comes back and he basically hasn’t changed at all. I think we’re only just beginning to see Frieza mature as a character, what with his scheming in the Broly movie, and his ten-year training stint in the Granolah arc. He’s got a new outlook, so maybe it’ll lead to something interesting.

With SDBH Zamasu, we don’t get a lot of details, but it’s clear that he’s been profoundly affected by his defeat. His goals and motives are the same, but getting deformed and bisected and exploded and disembodied and erased has changed his outlook. Maybe he just doesn’t have the words to explain what he’s feeling. Maybe he’s decided that working with allies like Hearts might be safer than trying to go it alone. Maybe Hearts told him exactly what he wanted to hear, and Zamasu’s too in love with himself to notice that Hearts is just repeating his own thoughts back to him. Wait, did I just start shipping these two? Hmm.

Anyway, Hearts starts doing that gravity shit to Goku and basically ragdolls him. I don’t get why he doesn’t just use this all the time, since it basically shuts down his opponents 100% of the time. Maybe there’s a cooldown for the technique?

Then he notices Kamioren struggling with 17 and Piccolo and decides to give them more power by combining them with the Universe Seed. This seems like an extreme solution to the problem. Couldn’t he just beat up 17 and Piccolo for Kamioren?

So I thought this big crystal thing was the bad guys’ spaceship, but this is what Hearts puts inside a cube, shrinks, and then sends into Kamioren’s body, so I guess it’s the Universe seed.

And once the transfer is complete, Kamioren gets huger and dumber. They can still talk and everything, but their fighting gets really sloppy. Fortunately for them, they’re so powerful now that they can afford to brute force their way through this. The rest of the good guys drop what they’re doing to support Piccolo and 17, which seems kind of screwy, since Zamasu and Hearts were pretty major league threats already.

Kamioren clobbers everyone, but then Goku taps into Ultra Instinct again and turns the tide. He wears himself out in the process, and the others have to help him, but he manages to smash that red thing in the center of Kamioren’s chest, which kills them, apparently.

But that doesn’t destroy the Universe Seed. Instead, it flies back to Hearts, and he declares that it’s finally complete.

Hearts does some stuff, and it turns into a big gold cube with green balls around it. While he’s messing with that, Zamasu fights the rest to buy him time.

Here, Zamasu finally starts to show off the power he had in the DBS arc. I mean, he wasn’t just indestructible, he was damn near unbeatable in this form, so it seemed weird how he just sort of horsed around with Vegeta and Trunks for so long a little while ago. As he dominates the U7 guys, he finally explains that Hearts’ goals tie into his own. Once Hearts succeeds in killing Grand Zeno, there will be no one to stop Zamasu from carrying out his Zero Mortals Plan. Which... kind of makes sense, except that between their two plans, there wouldn’t be anyone left at the end, so one of them must be planning to turn on the other, right?

Jiren and Hit show up to reinforce the good guys. Their respective Supreme Kais sent them, but it doesn’t do any good, since Hearts finishes his transformation while they fight Zamasu.

So now he’s glowing yellow all over, and he has six spikes coming out of his back like Omega Shenron. The first thing he does is turn on Zamasu, because even though he’s grateful for Zamasu’s help, Hearts wants to kill all the gods, and that includes Zamasu.

I’m not clear on how he kills him, though. We see him immobilize Zamasu and then trap him in a cube, but what does that actually mean? And even if this is a lethal attack, Zamasu’ indestructible, remember? Did Hearts take that into account? Maybe that’s why he recruited Zamasu. He needed a god to test his powers on once he got this far, and Zamasu’s overzealousness makes him gullible enough to walk right into this.

Whatever he did to Zamasu, it gets the attention of the Grand Minister, all the way from Zeno’s palace. Is he actually concerned about this? Can Hearts actually kill Grand Zeno with this new power?

Well, he makes quick work of the good guys, but that’s hardly the same thing. As they fight, Goku convinces Vegeta to do the Fusion Dance, since Goku can’t predict when he’ll tap into Ultra Instinct again, or how long it’ll last. Gogeta might be their only chance.

And a lot of screentime is spent on this moment. That’s probably because the Broly movie had come out by this time, and Gogeta Blue was the hot thing, so Toei wanted to use it here. Fair enough, except we’ve already seen Vegito Blue and SSJ4 Vegito in this same series, so it makes this fusion feel less special.

Anyway, Gogeta takes it to Hearts, and Hearts is genuinely impressed by his power. He even says that Gogeta is strong enough to kill Grand Zeno, so he proposes that they team up and wipe out all the gods together to free themselves. Gogeta doesn’t understand, and Hearts is amused that someone as powerful as Gogeta fails to recognize his lack of choice.

So Hearts uses his gravity powers to hurl a big meteor down from space. He doesn’t say “Road Roller”, but I’m sure he was thinking it. Gogeta has some trouble pushing it back, but then Jiren and Hit join in to help.

And Gogeta gets an opening to punch a hole in Hearts, which defeats him for good. Hooray!

“KONO DIO HEARTS DA!”

As Hearts’ body disintegrates, he finally explains that he wanted to destroy the gods because Grand Zeno can erase whole universes on a whim, and he wanted to liberate mortals from that predicament. But then Goku and the others pushed past their limitations, and this reaffirms why Hearts loved mortals so much in the first place. So he seems pretty happy despite his failure.

From Zeno’s palace, the Grand Minister congratulates the good guys for their victory. I don’t think they can hear him, but the point is that he was monitoring the battle. Was Hearts actually a threat? Could he have truly killed Grand Zeno as he claimed?

All we really know for sure is that the Zenos have been playing hide-and-seek with the Gods of Destruction from all twelve universes, so they’ve all be unaware of what’s been going on. The Grand Minister seems more relieved that Goku managed to solve the crisis without anyone disrupting the Zenos’ playtime.

At the beginning of the story, Fuwa, the U6 Supreme Kai, said that he couldn’t reach any of the Destroyers when the conflict started, and I guess that’s because they were all summoned to Grand Zeno’s Palace. So I don’t know if Hearts saw this as an opportunity to strike, or it just worked out that way. But my interpretation is that if Hearts had gotten his way, the best he would have managed was to irritate Zeno enough that he might have erased Hearts along with whatever universe he might have been standing in at the time.

But it’s all over now, so it doesn’t really matter. Jiren asks Gogeta why Goku and Vegeta didn’t use fusion during the Tournament of Power, and Gogeta defuses on the spot. Vegeta explains that he hates using Fusion, but here they had no choice.

From his lab, Fu observes the outcome of this battle and seems quite satisfied with it all. Apparently he wanted Hearts to complete the Universe Seed, but he didn’t care if Hearts won in the end. Fu now turns his attention to his next experiment, whatever that is...

And that’s the end of the Universal Conflict arc. To sum it all up, I think there’s a lot of great action in this thing, but it’s had to take the plot seriously when the villain seems completely unconcerned with everything that happens. His henchmen defy him and he seems totally at ease with it. He loses a fight and he dies with a smile. And his plan was to assassinate God, which is kind of hard to take seriously. Was anyone watching this seriously worried that Hearts might succeed? I mean, Zeno can erase things just by thinking about it. Hearts could vanish before he even knew he was under attack.

Also, you have Fu in the background, basically making Hearts look like a pawn in a larger game. That might work for the series as a whole, but it makes this section of the story kind of tedious, as Hearts is nothing more than a means to an end. Also, how do Cumber and Cooler fit into all of this?

Hearts’ team was kind of interesting, but it seems like a waste now. Lagss defeated Ultra Instinct Goku, but then she just... left and never came back. Eyepatch Zamasu and Kamin and Oren had some appeal, but they’re dead now. Hearts will return, from what I understand, but I’m not sure where the character could possibly go from here. I guess we’ll see...

#dragon ball #super dragon ball heroes #2023dbapocryphaliveblog #goku #hearts #vegeta #gogeta #jiren #hit #piccolo #android 17 #trunks #zamasu #kamin #oren #grand zeno #grand minister #beerus #fu

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duhragonball · 10 months

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Super Dragon Ball Heroes 7-12

These two might be my favorite characters in this whole thing.

This is the “Universal Conflict” arc of SDBH, although as far as I’m concerned, this is just a continuation of the Prison Planet arc we were in before. I mean, the Prison Planet exploded, but Fu and Cumber are still in play, and nothing really got settled, so this just proves that calling it “The Prison Planet Arc” was a bad idea.

At the end of Episode 6, Universe 6 was under attack, so Vegeta and Future Trunks headed there to assist. Episode 7 opens with Hit, Caulifla and Kale fighting aliens on some unidentified planet. Cabba’s also involved, but he’s been taken out of the fight, I guess.

These two bad guys are basically eating Universe 6′s lunch. I mean, Hit’s a pretty big deal, and they’re taking turns fighting him for their own amusement.

Here’s Kale doing the Tails-gets-trolled face.

Then Vegeta and Trunks arrive, and this is presented like some game-changing moment, even though Hit has defeated Vegeta in his Super Saiyan Blue form before. So I’m not sure why Vanilla Super Saiyan Vegeta and Trunks is supposed to matter.

From his secret base, the bad guys’ leader watches this development and seems to approve. Also Zamasu is with him, and apparently taking orders from the guy. The boss says that he has to wait to resume his Zero Mortals Plan until after Grand Zeno has been defeated. Okay...

Back at the fight, the two aliens suddenly turn into clouds of sparkles and enter the bodies of Caulifla and Kale, possessing them. That’s right, these two are Tuffle Machine Mutants like Baby from Dragon Ball GT. Of course, no one in this show is aware of the events of Dragon Ball GT, so the two Tuffles, Kamin (the girl) and Oren (the boy) have to explain what they are.

For some reason, I thought these two were from Universe 6, which may be true, but this episode doesn’t confirm it. I mean, we’re in U6 right now, but that doesn’t mean these two couldn’t have come from one of the others. Anyway, I know they’re not from U7, since those Tuffles were wiped out by the Saiyans. Wherever Kamin and Oren are from, they were created by Tuffle technology to be the perfect weapons, but then the Tuffles began to fear them, and tried to destroy them. I’m pretty sure Kamin and Oren then wiped out the Tuffles in turn, so we can think of them as something like a Tuffle version of 17 and 18.

Anyway, I like these two because they take the stuff that made Baby interesting and carry it forward, without a lot of the dumb stuff that GT saddled Baby with. And these two characters actually get a minute to tell their origin and share their motivation, which is more than most characters get in SDBH.

So now Vegeta and Co. have to free the gals, which turns out to be pretty quick and clever. Trunks and Hit attack them and get them in holds, and then Vegeta launches a Final Flash at them. Kamin and Oren panic and abandon their hosts, and I guess Vegeta’s shot misses? Or Trunks and Hit dodge in time? It’s not really clear.

Then the gang’s leader shows up and uses a gravity technique to force all the good guys to the ground. He introduces himself as Hearts, and says he’ll defeat Grand Zeno, and eliminate all the other deities as well.

Let’s just get this out of the way, Hearts is voiced by Takehito Koyasu, who plays Dio in the Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure anime. It’s good casting, but it’s also just Koyasu doing his Dio voice on a different character, which is pretty distracting if you’ve watched JJBA like I have. Also, his goggles and the lines on his face keep reminding me of Agent X, Marvel Comics’ short-lived Deadpool spin-off character.

Hearts threatens to use the defeated heroes’ energy to fuel the “Universe Seed” which is the thing he plans to use to defeat the gods, but then Kamin and Oren protest, saying they want to toy with these guys some more. Hearts agrees to let them have their way, which seems kind of stupid. I mean, does he want to charge up this Universe Seed or not?

Hearts asks Zamasu to come with them as they withdraw to some other Universe to absorb their energy for a while, and Zamasu gets all indignant about a mortal giving him orders. Okay, but how did these guys get together in the first place? That’s what I want to know.

Hearts reads Hit’s mind and discovers that Hit considers Jiren of Universe 11 to be the strongest mortal, so they go to U11 to check him out. And this leads to Cumber vs. Jiren, because Cumber is part of Hearts’ team too, remember? Goku defeated Cumber on the Prison Planet, and then Hearts’ team showed up and took Cumber before it exploded. Say, whatever happened to Goku, anyway?

For some reason, he’s at Grand Zeno’s palace, and the Grand Minister is... doing something with him. My guess is that he trained Goku to fight Hearts, because he went to the trouble of dressing Goku up in the same clothes he wears, but this is never actually stated.

Meanwhile, Vegeta and Trunks follow the bad guys to Universe 11 (how?), and Vegeta gets possessed by Kamin. This time, Kamin transforms Vegeta’s body more than he did Caulifla’s. I get that this is their special power, but to have them use it again so soon after the last time is kind of weak.

So while Trunks has to fight his possessed dad, Jiren and Cumber have a hoss battle. Big meaty men slappin’ meat!

Then Hearts tells Cumber to go to Universe 3 for some reason. Cumber doesn’t like that but he still plays along. So was he on Hearts’ team before Fu captured him, or did Hearts convince him to join the team after he rescued him?

So this leads to Zamasu fighting Jiren which is... pretty fun actually. Jiren just clobbers the shit out of the guy, but none of it works because Zamasu is indestructible.

And Kamin Vegeta beats up Trunks, who is basically useless in this show. Then, suddenly, the Grand Minister brings Goku to the battlefield.

This is so fucking stupid. The Grand Minister actually pulls off that Dorito uniform really well. He just makes it work, I don’t know how. But when you have a guy standing next to him in the exact same outfit, they both look like idiots. Fortunately, the Grand Minister leaves right away, allowing Goku to handle things as he sees fit.

So Goku goes Ultra Instinct and cleans house, and he hits Kami Vegeta so hard that Kami gets knocked clean out of Vegeta’s body. Cool!

Kamin and Oren can’t stop Goku, so they join together to become Kamioren. Trunks is shocked that they can do this, as if he hasn’t already seen several characters combine like this before.

But Kamioren can’t stop Goku either, so Hearts brings in another teammate, Lagss. Lagss has a technique where she shoots broken glass as Goku, and it’s very effective, even though it never actually cuts him. I guess it’s like magic glass that only inflicts pain without injury?

So Vegeta goes after Kamioren instead, since he wants revenge for how they made a fool of him earlier. He uses his Super Saiyan Blue 2 Royal Evolution (Evolved) ~Sign~ Level B, and hits Kamioren so hard they separate.

Then Hearts decides to step in and fight Goku, since he’s intrigued by Goku’s UI power. He can tell that it isn’t complete, so he plans to force Goku to improve his mastery of UI, then defeat him.

That all sounds very high and mighty, but all Hearts actually does is that same cheap gravity field thing he did before. As Goku struggles, the Supreme Kai of U7 shows up and they teleport back home.

Hearts then decides that Universe 7 should be their next target, but they have to go pick up Cumber from Universe 3, I guess. Also, they put Jiren in a box. I dunno what for.

Meanwhile, Fu is watching all of this from some other laboratory he has. He seems very pleased with everything that’s been happening, as if he and Hearts are on the same side. I mean, he seemed to anticipate Hearts’ arrival into the story, so maybe they’re in cahoots, or he’s just letting Hearts do his thing because they happen to share a similar goal.

In Universe 7, Goku has assembled a posse to defend it from Hearts’ crew. I’m not sure why he picked Piccolo and 17 but didn’t invite Gohan or 18 to this party, or any of the other Z fighters. Mostly, I’m just grateful that this show skipped the obligatory “Buu would help but he’s asleep” scene.

Here’s Oren doing some liquid metal stuff. I like Oren a lot.

Meanwhile, I think Cumber is still in Universe 3? I’m not sure, but he runs into a new foe arranged by Fu. It’s... Cooler. Again. Well, this time Fu turned him into Meta Cooler, so he’s stronger this way! Wait, Cooler hated Fu when they last met, and now they’re on the same side?

Then Meta Cooler transforms, becoming Golden. He dubs this form-- you might want to sit down for this-- Golden Metal Cooler. Shocking.

Cooler actually gets the upper hand in their fight, and he powers up a big finishing attack, but then the left side of his head starts to break down, so he has to withdraw.

Cumber calls him a coward, but he passes out from Cooler’s parting attack, so I guess this is a draw. Which... is pretty good for Cooler, except I have no idea why these two were fighting. How did Cooler turn into a machine? You’d think that Fu arranged it, except he says Cooler was transformed by the Big Gete Star, just like in Movie 6, where Metal Cooler was first introduced. But it’s the same Cooler we met in this series, right?

I mean, was Cooler trying to stop Cumber or help Fu, or both, or neither? Was he just out to prove he could stand up to Cumber? Seriously, why is Cooler even in this thing? I think SDBH might be the third best Cooler story by default, but it makes no sense.

Back on Earth, Hearts does the same cheap gravity thing he always uses.

Then he powers up, and says the Universe Seed is nearly ready. I don’t know if one has something to do with the other, or if it’s just a coincidence. Anyway, Goku will have to fight him, but we’ll cover that next time.

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