This episode rolled around a lot sooner than I had been expecting. Yet I found myself excited to actually shove everything else aside and spend eight minutes watching it.
Looking back at my attitude regarding this series when it first started, I am amazed at how much I have flipped around on this mini series. While I was always aware this was a promotional anime, designed to sell a card game rather than a serious piece of storytelling (as serious as Dragon Ball can get there days) or add anything new to the ongoing lore.
My initial complaints aimed toward this series centred on the fact that, despite the writers and animators have free reign to go completely wild on what went into these episodes, it didn’t feel like it came close to going far enough. Now, only nine short episodes in, the series feels like it embodies the wild “what-if” nature of the card game.
As this episode begins, Vegeta and Trunks (somehow) arrive in Universe 11 to find that they’re pretty much too late and everything is in tatters. Below them Jiren and Cumber trade heavy blows with one another. Before they can do anything else, one of the two machine mutants launch a surpass attack and possesses Vegeta.
Resulting in a form that is an obvious call back to Baby Vegeta from Dragon Ball GT. Very quickly, Trunks is punked out, as it his general lot in life these days, and the mysterious villain; Hearts decides to take his assembled force at Jiren.
Cumber seems pissed he was denied his fight with Jiren, especially after turning into some kind of Legendary Super Saiyan form. Hearts snaps his fingers and orders Cumber to get started on Universe 3, known to me personally as the Robot Universe.
And so we are treated to Jiren briefly squaring off against Punished Zamasu, possessed Vegeta and the girl Machine Mutant; Kamin. And we get a few snippets of really good looking fight animation. With how brief these episodes are and how infrequently they come out, I’m shocked they don’t look this good all the time.
And let’s be real, had Jiren been given the opportunity to actually have these guys in a more extended battle sequence, he would have beaten them all fairly easily. The only wrinkle being Heart’s weird gravity magic, which I’m sure he would have eventually powered his way out of too.
The purpose of this show isn’t to put Jiren over though, unfortunately, and who else shows up to save the day but Goku, with the Grant Priest in tow. I am surprised that Goku is returning to action this soon after the reveal that he’d been training with the strongest person in the multiverse, but it’s welcome because we get to see a return of the original, and much cooler, ultra instinct form.
With silvery eyes and black hair, Goku proceeds to wreck shop, beating the Tuffle out of Vegeta blowing the others away with mere gestures. And the episode ends with Goku starring down the enemies with Vegeta and Jiren at his back.
At this point, can anything aside from some high grade shenanigans stop Goku from outright stomping the enemy threat with a flick of his wrist. I’m looking forward to see what happens next month.
Before I finish, I want to look at the events of this episode in the greater context of the franchise. I don’t know how much communication is going on between the people writing this anime and the brains behind the proper lore of the manga, but the more we see Ultra Instinct used here, the less I think its going to reappear in the canon storyline, maybe ever.
By the way events are playing out here, it seems like Goku might have actually mastered ultra instinct completely, or at least made large strides towards using it at will. At which point, who the hell can actually stop him. Either Ultra Instinct is still going to be more limited than it appears to be at the end of this episode, or a threat is going to show up that even Ultra Instinct isn’t enough to combat.
In terms of pure fan service and hype, this episode is right up there, I’d even go as far to say that I’m… I’m… impressed… urgh, that was harder to get out than I expected. Super Dragon Ball Heroes actually seem to have become the show I actually wanted it to be when it first started, and I can’t wait to see what wild and wacky antics are going to save the bad guys from Goku’s wrath.
A Richard Wood Text Adventure 