Welcome back, my beautiful freaks, to the Assassin's Den!
Now, I know I said I'd wait until the Beerus arc ended before reviewing the arc, but I can't wait any longer to say what I need to say: this is BORING! Why is one of the most exciting franchises in anime history SO BORING in the first arc of the newest series?
At this point in the series, Goku is fighting Beerus in his Super Saiyan God form. Back and forth, Beerus lets Goku get used to power before wailing on him, only for Goku to come back with another power boost. But it's so badly paced; this much back and forth is FAR from necessary. Between when Goku becomes a Super Saiyan God and when the arc finally ends next week, it's 5 whole episodes. That's two and a half hours. The entire runtime of the Battle of Gods movie? One hour and forty-five minutes. The fight between Goku and Beerus in the show is 45 minutes longer than the movie in which Beerus was introduced.
And Beerus? He's a dick. All I've seen in this arc is "Give me what I want, or I blow up your planet!" If I hadn't seen him in Xenoverse first, I'd hate him. He is completely unlikable in this arc.
Now I know, maybe I'm spoiled by being able to buy a saga on DVD and watch it entirely the way through without stopping and having to wait for a week, but between the poorer quality animation in this first arc and my general distaste of cliffhangers, this is not boding well for my enjoyment of the series.
The only positive things I can say about this arc are about the English voice acting, and the early hints on what will be on full display later in the show with Goku. Sean Schemmel, Chris Sabat, Kyle Herbert, Meredith McCoy, Colleen Clinkerbeard...they've been doing these characters for over a decade, and they know the characters very well. They're experienced, they're dynamic, and they always a joy to listen to.
And as for my second point about Goku's characterization, you can see a LOT of early hints when it comes to future arcs. His selfishness is on full display, and you can tell right from the start that he cares more about his fight with Beerus than he does about the fate of the Earth. Oh yeah, the fate of the Earth is in his thoughts, but it's more "They make good food there!" and less "There's billions of lives down there!" Very inline with Toriyama's view of Goku's character.
All in all, I agree with a LOT of people when I say they should have just skipped this arc, as well as the Resurrection F arc, and just done new stuff. Granted, it would have left the few people, like myself, who didn't see the movies in the cold, but they could have easily done a whole "the story that came before" thing like they do before every episode.
At this point, I'm going to just go with a review episode by episode. And once I get to Episode 27, I'm going to link to the videos of MasakoX, the voices of Goku and Gohan in Team Four Star's Dragon Ball Z Abridged. That will also give us an idea how far ahead the Japanese version of Super is from the English dub.
But for now, look forward to my review of Episode 14 of Dragon Ball Super next week, check out my referral code if you're a SWTOR player, and stay beautiful freaks!
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