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duhragonball · 9 months

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Super Dragon Ball Heroes Episode 50

The finale of the Supreme Kai of Time arc finally came out a few weeks ago, so let's wrap up my liveblog of it.

Just so we're all up to speed, I covered Episodes 41 through 49 here , here, and here. But if you're not in the mood to read that: this arc introduces Aeos, the previous Supreme Kai of Time, who has now returned to take back the position from Chronoa. Aeos believes that there are too many alternate timelines now, and Chronoa's refusal to deal with them has only made things worse, so Aeos and her four attendants take over the Time Nest to resolve the problem instead. Aeos's solution is to hold a big tournament with warriors from different timelines, and the losing teams get their timeline erased.

This all gets thrown into chaos when Demigra shows up, having recently gained a power boost from the Dark King energy once held by Fu. I'm not sure if this was just a coincidence, or if Demigra somehow manipulated the Aeos/Chronoa dispute to his advantage. Anyway, he tries to seize control of the Time Nest and destroy all the fighters who oppose him, which culminates in this climactic beam struggle against Goku, Bardock, and Future Gohan.

Just so we're clear, the Bardock and Future Gohan we see here are variants from other timelines, recruited by Aeos to serve as her attendants. Bardock was the "Hooded Saiyan" who occasionally helped Goku during the previous arc. Gohan hails from a world where Trunks died fighting 17 and 18, while he survived.

Anyway, the Father-Son-Grandson Kamehameha ends with Bardock daring the boys to push even harder, which leads to Bardock turning SSJ4, Goku going Ultra Instinct (again), and Gohan turning SSJ2. This overwhelms Demigra and he dies.

However, before Demigra is beaten, Aeos and Chronoa have this nice little reconciliation where Aeos points out that Demigra only got this far because of the multitude of alternate timelines. Even if he's defeated, some other menace will just rise up to replace him. She asks Chronoa how she can continue to support sparing the timelines if this is true, and Chronoa replies that a lot of good has come from the alternate timelines as well, and she's willing to trust the heroes to rise to the occasion. Then they hold hands and do some sort of time stuff, which might have helped tip the scales against Demigra, but I don't know. When it's all over, they use the Scroll of Eternity to restore everything to the way it was before Demigra attacked.

Goku is satisfied with this outcome, but he has one last bit of business to discuss with Aeos: Goku wants the Super Space-Time Tournament to be restarted, since he never got to finish his match with Xeno Goku earlier in the arc. Aeos agrees, and this time it's just an exhibition, with the fighters who still want to fight having 1v1 matches with no brackets.

We get some brief glimpses of the other matches, like Piccolo vs. Pikkon, Master Roshi vs. Grandpa Gohan, and so on, but none of these amount to anything. This episode spent a decent two minutes re-telling the beam struggle from Episode 49, which could have been used to show a little more of the cool fights they teased instead.

Credit where it's due, Goku vs. Xeno Goku actually gets some time, and there's some cool spots, like SSJ4 Goku trying to use a Warp Kamehameha on UI Goku, only for UI to try to float over to avoid it. Then 4ku snares him with his tail, but UI-ku is still too nimble to be trapped for long.

As everyone watches, Aoes reflects on how Goku impressed her, and I think the implication is that Goku's the one who convinced her not to erase the other timelines, at least for the time being. Then there's a credits sequence, like this is a big finale, but it's not.

They do the finish of the Goku/Vegeta fight from DBS: Super Hero, and it's UI Goku who wins. Sound booking, but I wish they could have come up with a different way to end it. I mean, Aeos's tournament was already a rip-off of the Tournament of Power, and Demigra's invasion was just a retread of his invasion in Xenoverse 1, and now this. It's tough to find anything really fresh in this story.

With the match settled, Aeos announces that she'll be leaving again to survey the alternate timelines for herself. She says she wants to re-check everything to re-evaluate her decision, and warns Chronoa that if she finds she had it right the first time, she'll be back to erase everything like she intended. Chronoa seems to accept this. Maybe she's confident that Aeos will see things her way, or maybe it's just that Chronoa has no choice. This arc suggests that Chronoa cannot, or will not, challenge Aeos' authority. I guess with Aeos leaving, Chronoa is reinstated as Supreme Kai of Time, but they never explained why Aeos left the job in the first place, or what claim she had to take it back. There's a lot of unanswered questions in all of this.

Aeos's four attendants will be joining her on her new mission, including Vidros, who proposed to Yamcha during the tournament. So what about that? Well, it turns out Vidros can't marry Yamcha right away. Her people have a tradition that says she can't marry until she reaches a certain age, which is still a dozen centuries away. So she intends to go with Aeos and return for Yamcha 1200 years from now. D'oh!

This did not go over well with the fandom, who were pretty hyped for the idea of Yamcha getting the girl. I think we all knew that there'd be some kind of catch. They weren't going to marry off an established character in a web series for crying out loud. I choose to look at this in a positive light. Yamcha's still got a fiance. And just because she has to wait 1200 years doesn't mean that he has to wait the same amount of time. Aeos might do her a solid and bring her back to the present day so she can still marry Yamcha during his natural lifespan.

At least Vidros had some sort of character arc in this story. I have no idea what this alternate version of Piccolo was supposed to be about. He just shares some meaningful looks with Gohan and that's it. Future Gohan says goodbye to Xeno Trunks, Bardock takes a last look at his son, and they all head out.

I seriously wondered if Episode 50 was going to be the finale for the entire web-series, since this arc seemed to wrap up the last plot threads of the whole show. Most of SDBH was about Fu's rise to prominence, and then he got defeated with the help of Demigra and Aeos's team, who settled all of their business in this arc. So this seemed like a pretty good stopping point, but no. There's an Episode 51, which promises a whole new arc that will probably take another two years to finish. I guess Super Dragon Ball Heroes will be around for a while longer.

And I'll probably cover those future story arcs one of these days, but this seems like a good place to stop for now. It's a lot more satisfying to watch this show several episodes at a time, and it'll be at least a year before we're far enough along to make this worth my time. But we'll see how it goes.

#2023dbapocrypha liveblog #super dragon ball heroes #dragon ball #goku #xeno goku #piccolo #vidros #yamcha #chronoa #aeos #supreme kai of time #pikkon #bardock #gohan

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duhragonball · 6 months

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Dragon Ball Super Manga ch.91-93

Last time, we covered the "prequel" story of Goten and Trunks adopting superhero identities and capturing Dr. Hedo. Now we get into the events of the DBS: Super Hero movie itself. I already liveblogged the movie extensively in September (here, here, here, here, and here), so for the manga adaptation I'll be focusing mainly on whatever changes Toyotaro made to the story.

First off, Chapter 91 opens with Piccolo picking up Pan from school, and when she talks about wanting to be a superhero like Goten and Trunks have been doing recently, Piccolo offers to train her just like he trained Gohan in Dragon Ball Z.

Unfortunately, this is the sort of thing we can expect from this adaptation. It's mostly a straight retelling of the movie, and the little extras that get added in don't really add much to the story. I mean, the movie established that Piccolo has picked up Pan from school in the past, but there was no need to show it. Also, the movie didn't really explain why Piccolo started training Pan, probably because it didn't need to. I think the manga pretty much proves my point, because it attempts to tackle the question, but only comes up with a fairly pat answer. She wanted to fly and shoot hand energy like Goten and Trunks, and so Piccolo offered to teach her and she said yes.

Then we get to this scene, where Krillin's boss in the West City P.D. holds a briefing on the Red Ribbon Army and their plans to recruit Dr. Hedo. This takes the place of the flashback montage that opened the movie, and it sucks.

That montage was awesome, and Toyotaro could have drawn his own version of it here, but instead he did this. We could be looking a Goku punching Tao Pai Pai, or 17 killing Dr. Gero, or Cell smirking like a boss, but instead we're in a boring conference room reading walls of text.

Look at this fucking page! It's awful! A lot of this one serves as a stand-in for Carmine's report to Magenta about Dr. Hedo. I get it, this is a lot of information to go through, and Toyotaro probably wanted to move on as quickly as possible, but part of what I loved about the movie was the way they showcased the characters and visuals during the infodumping. Carmine's report is pretty dry in the movie, but Magenta's office is interesting to look at, and Carmine and Magenta themselves are visually compelling characters. While they talk about Hedo, Carmine shows off his video editing skills and Magenta keeps screwing up his snacks

This police briefing, however, sucks all the fun out of it. This place looks like a hotel conference room with hardwood floors. All of the cops look exactly the same, and why the hell are they wearing helmets and sunglasses indoors, anyway? Krillin's boss, Sergeant Nutz, has some potential, but she has nothing to do with this story, so featuring her so prominently here is just a waste of time.

What really irks me is that the next scene shows Carmine and Magenta talking about Dr. Hedo, just like in the movie, except there's not much for them to say because Krillin and Nutz already covered it all! That's really dumb! We have two scenes designed to set up the plot of the movie, and one of them was in the movie, and actually features the main antagonists. But Toyotaro chose to emphasize the other scene instead.

So the idea here is that the police are already aware of Magenta's scheme to revive the Red Ribbon Army, and they know he plans to recruit Dr. Hedo once he gets out of prison. They also know that Hedo had that disc containing data on Dr. Gero's bioweapon, although I don't see how they could know that, since Trunks couldn't access the data on the disc and it was destroyed before anyone else could try. Hedo told Krillin in Chapter 90 that he memorized the contents of the disc, but he never said what it was that he memorized. This also goes against the storyline in the movie. In the film, Magenta had Gero's data on Cell, and the reason he wanted Hedo was because his own scientists couldn't do anything with it.

Anyway, the police seem to know everything about the Red Ribbon Army already. The only thing they don't know is where the Red Ribbon base is, so they send Krillin to follow Magenta's limo and spy on him. So we get the limo scene from the movie, except Krillin's clinging to the side of the car the whole trip, and then Hedo spots him and sends his cyborg bee, Hatchimaru, to attack him.

The gag here is that Magenta and Carmine don't even know Krillin is out there, and Hedo doesn't particularly care. The scene plays out almost exactly like it does in the movie, but with Krillin spliced in like Jabba the Hut in the Star Wars Special Edition.

Of course, Krillin gets shaken off so the base's location remains a secret, so this whole bit is completely pointless. It's just so dumb. I assume Toyotaro needed to pad out the story for one reason or another, or maybe he just wanted to add some new details so he wouldn't get bored retelling a movie like this. But if this is the best he can come up with, why bother? So far, this manga keeps "expanding" on the movie by answering questions nobody asked, like "Why did Piccolo start training Pan?" or "Why didn't the authorities stop the Red Ribbon Army?" or "Why is Gamma 1's cape red?"

From here, it's a pretty faithful retelling of the movie, which kind of makes the "filler" scenes even more conspicuous. It's refreshing to see the actual story move along without all these pointless diversions. On the other hand, it's kind of dull, because I already covered the movie and there's nothing else to talk about here.

There is some extra stuff in the Gamma 2 vs. Piccolo fight. Piccolo loses an arm, but then he grows a new one and makes it all long to catch Gamma 2 off guard. It doesn't slow him down much, but it's something we didn't get in the movie. I do find it a bit strange how Gamma 2 notes Piccolo's regeneration ability like it's this new data to add to his files. Shouldn't the Red Ribbon Army have all of this intel programmed into Gamma 2 by now?

Moving on, when Piccolo infiltrates the Red Ribbon base, he gets stopped by his superiors, who remind "94" that he isn't assigned to this area, but another soldier offers to switch assignments so "94" can gain some valuable experience watching Hedo eat cookies.

Again, what is the point of this? We're just derailing the story so Toyotaro can waste a page explaining how Piccolo managed to get this far into the base. In the movie, nobody notices or cares that "94" is in the command center instead of the hangar. That's because they're all faceless, interchangeable henchmen. They wear masks and refer to each other by numbers, for crying out loud! This is why Piccolo disguised himself in the first place! If Toyotaro wrote Star Wars, he'd do a whole scene where Luke Skywalker has to rewrite the Death Star's duty roster just so "TK-421" can get reassigned to prison detail. Nobody cares!

Okay now this is more like it. We get to the part where no one can reach Goku and Vegeta because they're training on Beerus' planet, and so Toyotaro gives us a little more of the sparring match Goku and Broly had in the movie. It's not a lot, but this is the sort of thing filler is good for. Toyo also does a whole montage recap of the DBS: Broly film, which is perfectly serviceable, but it annoys me because it demonstrates that he could have done the same thing with the Red Ribbon Army flashback in Chapter 91, but instead he did the briefing scene with Sgt. Nutz. Ugh.

We see the same scene where Vegeta explains the importance of mental training, although when he talks about all of their recent opponents, he adds manga-only characters like Moro, Gas, and Black Frieza. And that's fine, although it's strange when he talks about Jiren and Black Frieza in the same breath like this. In the manga, Vegeta has gotten pretty good at "Ultra Ego", his answer to Goku's Ultra Instinct. And Goku's learned to tap into UI at will. So I'm pretty sure Jiren and Moro aren't really an issue for either of them anymore. I mean, the only reason Goku couldn't defeat Jiren by himself at the Tournament of Power was because he lacked experience using UI, and now he's much better at it.

The point I'm getting at is that in the manga, Vegeta doesn't need to do "mental training" to defeat Jiren because he's already surpassed him. And he might need it to surpass Broly and Black Frieza, but he speaks as though that's their secret, and he needs to learn how to do it himself. I'm pretty sure Broly isn't "relaxed" between attacks when he's using his full power. He was kind of freaking the fuck out back then. Black Frieza might have been doing something like that, but he only hit Vegeta once, so I'm not sure how he could be certain.

So then we move on to the part where Piccolo wishes for a power-up from Shenron, and we just skip the part where Dende upgrades Shenron to do that. The implication here is that DBS-manga Shenron always had the ability to make Orange Piccolo, and no one bothered to ask before. Kind of annoying.

Anyway, while Piccolo and Bulma are getting their...ahem... enhancements, Trunks sees them and calls Goten. They make plans to sneak out and play superheroes again, even though Goten's grounded and he really doesn't need to run up a bigger bill with his mom. I guess this is the throughline for Goten and Trunks in Dragon Ball Super. No matter what happens, Dragon Team tries to keep the boys out of it. It's not just Chi-Chi wanting Goten to study. Back in Resurrection F, Bulma tells the others that she doesn't want them fucking around during the battle with Frieza. And Vegeta ices them out of the tournaments with the other universes because he doesn't want them turning into Gotenks and being dorks the whole time. The Saiyaman X-1 and X-2 caper probably didn't do much to convince anyone that Goten and Trunks have matured.

But they still crave the excitement of being in the thick of things. They know the adults are trying to keep them out of it, and that just makes it more exciting. I suppose this is the legacy of the Buu Saga, where they had to get involved because there was no other choice, and they've had the bug for DBZ mayhem ever since, but their parents said no.

And maybe that's why Goku and Vegeta were so determined to train the boys in the End of Z episodes. Sometime after Super Hero, they came back home, heard about the Saiyamen costumes and the battle with Cell Max, and decided that they needed to be toughened up. Like, okay, you want to go fight bad guys like we do? Stop doing the poses and quit relying on fusion and learn how to do it right. And if the sparring sessions are too hard for you, you can always go back to doing your homework like your mom wanted."

That's why Goten's so frustrated in DBZ 289. He just wants to go on dates or screw around, but his only options are a) homework and b) fight for-ev-er *clap clap clap-clap-clap*.

And now that I think about it, this is where GT dropped the ball with Goten, because he doesn't really seem to have gained anything from that. Hitting the books and getting hit by Goku should have made him a bit more serious about his life, but instead he's just constantly talking to girls on the phone, because that was the only thing GT's writers seemed to think of for him to do.

I mean, they kind of got it right with Trunks, who went into GT with a lot of responsibility and skills. He didn't enjoy his position, but you could tell he'd grown a lot as a person since the end of DBZ.

So yeah, maybe I'm beginning to appreciate Big Goten more than I did before, but this newfound perspective still doesn't do much for this part of the manga. There's just a lot of nothing happening here, and throwing more Krillin, Goten, and Trunks at it doesn't help matters.

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