Dragon Ball (All Series)

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I'm excited by the prospect of having the Kais play a big part in this upcoming story arc. Dragon Ball is always at its best when it's expanding its mythology and lore in interesting ways. That was the best part about Battle of Gods, and probably why that film resonated far more with audiences than RF did (even though I personally enjoyed RF more).

I'm also a little worried, though, that the writers may mishandle these characters and concepts and ruin a potentially awesome story-line idea by trying to focus too much on fan-service. What I mean is how they've handled certain things in the past. Take how they did the RF arc, for example. In the show, they brought back Captain Ginyu and I was excited by the prospect of what they could do with that character....and then they did absolutely nothing with him. They killed him off as little more than a throwaway joke, and it really got on my nerves. Later on in the arc they had Piccolo sacrifice himself for Gohan and die in the process as a callback to the iconic moment from the Saiyan arc, and that one really set me off. It's like the writers were saying: "Hey guys, remember that epic moment from the old series? Isn't it awesome to see it again!?" Except there was no sense of weight or emotional stakes to any of it. Literally right after it happens Goku nonchalantly remarks that they'll just revive Piccolo with the Namekian Dragon Balls, and what do you know, come the Champa arc it's like it never even happened. It didn't accomplish anything like further Piccolo's character arc or affect the plot in any way like it did in the classic series. It feels as though the writers didn't even understand what made that scene so great in the first place, but rather only knew that it was considered to be iconic for....reasons. My point being that they clearly just took popular and iconic things from classic Dragonball and utilized them as nothing more than blatant fan-service.

And with Future Trunks, I'm not surprised to see him being heavily featured in the next arc since clearly Toriyama and the writers know that he's an incredibly popular character among the fanbase. However, whether they actually deliver a story worth telling about the character remains to be seen.

To be clear, I'm not trying to bash the show, here. I'm both excited and very hopeful for what's to come in the near future for this show. However, I'm also being reasonably cautious with my expectations as this show's track record has been far from consistent, IMO.

[Spark Of Spirit]

I'm almost wishing they made this a third film first, just because Toriyama would have written it straight out himself.

Just not crazy about the re-adaptions of the films.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I honestly would've been fine if they just contniued the story as a series of films in general, rather than lowering the budget and going the TV show route. If they wanted to tell longer story-lines, they could have done the same thing that they're doing with Digimon Adventure Tri and utilize multiple films to tell one major story arc. That's just wishful thinking on my part, of course, and clearly a TV series is much cheaper to make and much less risky in that it will almost definitely return them a net profit, but having a life as a long-running film series could have been really cool.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Damn it! What a tease! It looks like we're finally about to get into some serious shit! I'm so pumped!

It's funny how a good preview can so easily wash out the bland taste that I got from the mediocre Copy Vegeta mini-arc.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Preview!

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

As far as I'm concerned, this is the first official episode of Dragon Ball Super. While I've liked certain episodes of the show before, most of it felt like little more than glorified filler to me. This is exactly the kind of thing that I wanted to see from this series since day one: a real progression of the plot and mythology of the story and characters, in addition to the stakes being raised to a level in which we actually care to see how the story unfolds. While I did enjoy RF for its humor and action, I always felt that the lack of Freeza being an actual threat really held that movie back from being as great as it could have been. Right away we see that Black doesn't fuck around and he manages to off two people close to Future Trunks, without Trunks being able to do anything about it. The situations is pretty desperate as he needs to find a way to time-travel back to Universe 7's past before he gets taken out as well, but  since he's not near his time machine and Bulma's lab was destroyed, he is stuck in a pretty bad bind now that Black has caught up with him.

I have a few minor gripes about logistical things here and there, but that's nothing new for Dragon Ball, and on the whole the team behind this show has finally done a good job of getting me hooked into wanting to see more. I look forward to what the future of this arc holds in store for these characters.

[Spark Of Spirit]

I actually saw this, making it the first episode of DBS I've seen. It was nice seeing Future Trunks again, especially seeing his future contrasted with what was going on in the main universe.

I have a bit of a theory on how the time travel works, at least as far as Future Trunks. The way they went out to explain the number of universes makes me wonder if some of them are created by time travel. Like, the reason Future Trunks couldn't change the past was because he actually traveled to another universe and back in time. The way his time machine worked meant it could only be sent to that universe. They essentially split the universes by interfering with the time line. The reason the future didn't change was because he wasn't fighting the androids of his universe which also shows why some things happened differently in both timelines. I actually wonder if there were other differences in Future Trunks timeline, but we just never heard them. Maybe we always assumed he was from the same universe, but he actually wasn't.

What if the reason there are not that many universes anymore is because the ones that were similar but interfered with by time travel were somehow merged together again? It seems like a way of keeping track of "redundant" universes. Though how time travel affects the universes probably will be explained soon enough.

Of course I'm probably wrong, but it's fun to think about.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

You picked a good place to start. There are some good parts before this episode, but nothing that really stands out as a must-watch, IMO.

The multiverse theory that you are talking about has actually been around for a long time; since well before the concept of multiverses became canon to Dragonball-lore, in fact. Most fans tend to follow that theory to explain how time-travel works in Dragonball. I also believe in that theory, except for the part about time-travel creating new universes since it has already been explained in DB-lore that multiple other universes have always existed. Hopefully DBS will confirm that Future Trunks is from a different universe pretty soon.

The funny thing about DB following that logic is that if true, it's probably one of the few really smart bits of logic that Toriyama has utilized in the series. It's also a concept that Science-Fiction writers have used before. In the Michael Chrichton novel Timeline, the time machine that they use is explained in detail to work by sending the occupants to an alternate universe's version of the past. I wouldn't be surprised if Trunks's machine works the same way.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

To the surprise of absolutely no one, viewership for the series has seen a significant increase with the start of the Future Trunks/Goku Black arc: http://attackofthefanboy.com/news/dragon-ball-super-tv-ratings-spiked-thanks-future-trunks-black-goku/

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

So it looks like Trunks and the Pilaf Gang are classmates and have become pretty good friends with each other. I actually kind of like this dynamic, though I wish that Goten was also part of the group. I like how it was U7 Trunks to be the first one to encounter the unconscious Future Trunks, and I like seeing Bulma's very motherly concern over Future Trunks despite not having seen him in years (same with Vegeta's concern as well). Even though he was only a part of one arc, you can tell that Future Trunks formed a bond with the U7 characters and even after not seeing him for years, everyone still really cares about him.

I predicted that when he woke up and first saw U7's Goku again he would instinctively confuse him for Black and attack him. That said, judging by the preview for the next episode, it looks like he won't immediately snap out of it and they may fight a bit. That'll be interesting since it will show us how strong Future Trunks currently is. Judging by his transformation and where he was at the end of his arc in the manga and DBZ, he couldn't be any more powerful than a normal SSJ2, and that's assuming that he kept training and worked his way up to fully mastering that level, which I doubt since he was clearly a lot more buff at the end of the Cell arc, and even if his slimmer form is just an art-style decision, it would make sense if he slacked off from training (much like Gohan did between the Cell and Buu arcs), since there would be no world-threatening events to be ready for between him killing the androids and Black appearing. Also, considering that when he transformed, there was no electrical discharge present (which the anime has always used to distinguish an SSJ2 transformation from a regular one) it's actually rather likely that his power may be less than what it was and he only managed to turn into a normal SSJ.

The whole point of figuring this out is that it would give us somewhat of a gauge of how powerful Black is. Even if he is a Makaioshin, we have learned already that the Kais aren't necessarily all that physically powerful in the grand scheme of things. Some can clearly use magic and possess unique abilities that no regular being can use, but in terms of raw fighting power none of the U7 Kais seem to be any stronger than an SSJ. From what we've seen of Black, he's clearly stronger than Trunks, and most likely even if Trunks is an SSJ2 after all, Black would still be stronger. That said, he didn't really seem to be taking it easy on Trunks, either, and Trunks almost took him by surprise with his startup attack. It did seem like Black was actually putting some effort into their fight, and the fact that he hasn't been able to kill him before, even if Trunks did run away each time, indicates that he's not THAT much more powerful than an SSJ2, so it feels like he wouldn't really be a match for the current Goku and Vegeta of U7, and of course not Beerus or Whis either. If that's the case, then I'm wondering how he could possibly end up being a threat to U7 once he makes his way over in the next episode, as the previews indicate.

On a side note, I like the touch of Future Trunks using the Masenko, which it makes sense that he knows since Future Gohan was his master and clearly would have taught it to him. It has been a long time since I've watched DBZ so I forget if he ever used it there, but I definitely don't remember him using it in the manga, unless the translation that I read merely just didn't feature any of his attack names in that way. At any rate, it's a nice little touch and bit of fan-service.

I'm definitely still very much on board with this arc. I do think that it could stand to pick up the pace just a little bit, but at least it's not moving at a snails pace like the movie recap arcs did.

[Spark Of Spirit]

It's been very entertaining so far. This is definitely the kind of thing I wanted to see in a post-DBZ Dragon Ball series since GT disappointed so heavily.

I think the question is about how long it's been since Trunks defeated Cell. We really don't know how long it's been yet, and that would make a lot of difference as to Trunks' power. I tend to think he's the type that would still be training despite no threats since he's never lived in a world without one.

[Dr. Insomniac]

The Trunks arc sounds neat, but I'm still waiting for the eventual dub. No offense to Masako Nozawa since I admire her dedication to the role after so long, but hearing her voice coming out of Black Goku would feel off. Like when she played Bardock.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

As much as I respect her iconic voice for Goku, I have always felt it to be a bit questionable that she would also portray his ENTIRE family. I don't think that Bardock, Gohan, or even Goten needed to sound like slightly tonally altered versions of Goku.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

So, the episode title for the next 4 episodes of Dragon Ball Super (after episode 49) have been officially revealed:

They are (minor spoilers):

Spoiler

#50. Goku Vs. Black
#51. Mai's Feelings, Transcending Time
#52. Gohan And Future Trunks
#53. Expose It! Black's True Identity

[close]

Assuming that those translations are accurate, we can speculate at least a little bit on where this story is headed in the near future.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Isn't Whis being a hypocrite here? He chastises Future Trunks for time-traveling since it could have incredibly bad repercussions in their timeline, but didn't he himself use time-travel in Resurrection F? It would have made sense if Jaco was there and said it, but not Whis who is just as guilty of it.

It really bugs me when writers overlook obvious stuff like that. Other than that, though, it was another really good episode. It's neat to learn what happened in-between the events of the Cell Saga and Black's appearance in Future Trunks's timeline. I also find it kind of funny how knowing Future Trunks's personality and how after the androids wrecked everything he would take all future threats more seriously, that he basically did what Goku, Vegeta, and Gohan should have done and killed off Dabura and Babidi before they could release Majin Buu.

Of course, as a result of that, he never managed to make it past the level of SSJ2. Not that it would've mattered much in this case since Future Trunks confirmed that Black is at the very least stronger than an SSJ3. Although, if Future Trunks was that impressed by Goku's SSJ3 form, I can't wait to see him flip his shit when he sees that Goku and Vegeta can both transform into SSJB and match his hair-color.