Dragon Ball Super – Episodes 100 – 105 Review
As Dragon Ball Super reaches triple digits, the “Universe Survival Arc” pushes forward into relentless action as the 80-person, 8-universe battle royal continues. One universe has already been completely erased from existence by virtue of their defeat, and the seven that remain are fully aware of what results in failure. It’s a very odd scenario, even for Dragon Ball, but amazingly it manages to get even weirder with some of the new characters…
Here is what I said at the end of the previous review: “I get the feeling my next review will be a hard one to write without spoiling anything, given the nature of this battle royal and that it’ll clearly take up 100% of the runtime. I guess I’ll have to deal with that in six weeks time!” Well, here we are six weeks later and sure enough, it is going to be quite difficult, but not as bad as I thought. Most episodes are focused on one character, meaning it’s easy to talk about the purpose behind the episode without giving away any results (which is a weird thing to say about a Dragon Ball arc, but results is right!)
Episode 100 focuses on Universe 6 female Saiyans Caulifla and Kale, who soon square off with Goku. Caulifla and Goku go at it, with the former teaching the latter how to push further and reach Super Saiyan 2, which is a bit of the kick in between the legs of Gohan’s amazing transformation from back in the Cell Arc of DBZ, but hey ho…During this battle the frail and afraid Kale feels bad for not joining in and fires a weak blast that distracts the two, leading to her being to told to stay out of it. This puts Kale into a rage due to his inability to live up to Caulifla’s expectations and she turns into a Legendary Super Saiyan, a.k.a. Broly, the lead villain of DBZ Movies 8, 10 and sort-of 11, but with lipstick and a tube top. Kale has insane strength, her destruction of the fighting arena is seen in all later episodes as background rocks and such, and focuses her hatred on Goku, only able to say “Son Goku”, much as Broly was only able to say “Kakarot” as his rage increased… it’s an odd thing really. They pretty much wrote Broly into the main Dragon Ball canon, but also went in a different way with it.
The focus mostly stays on Kale and Caulifla throughout Episode 101, though the two female Super Saiyans end up in conflict with fighters from Universe 11’s “Pride Troopers” group rather than “our” heroes. Episode 102 sees a group of gag parody magical girls from Universe 2, Brianne, Sanka Ku and Su Roas, do their whole love-based magical transformations into un-magical forms (Brianne being an unattractive overweight girl, Sanka turns into a wild beast warrior, and Roas turns into a … Chinese martial artist?) and end up fighting with various characters from “our” universe. When they first try to transform they are blasted by Android 17, who then gets a legitimately funny scolding from Goku, Toppo of the Pride Troopers and the magical girls themselves, telling him he was wrong to interrupt a transformation sequence. 17 defends himself by saying “but they were wide open…” and then shrugs. It’s a funny, nearly fourth-wall breaking moment.
Episode 103 focuses on Gohan, who ends up fighting some strong warriors from Universe 10. As you’d imagine, it’s played as if Gohan is once again going to fail due to his lack of training, only for him to overcome his limits and all that jazz. It’s a fine episode, and ends on a sombre note. Admittedly I was a little baffled that after staying in a tight group thanks to Gohan’s strategy, “our” warriors split up when the ring gets roughed up in Episode 100 for reasons I’m still not sure on in-universe, but obviously it’s done so Gohan and other characters can get some solo screen time.
104 is a unique episode because for a lot of its runtime it features only Dragon Ball Super characters as Universe 6 assassin Hit is the focus of the episode, seeing him being matched up with a Pride Trooper that can overcome his time stop abilities. It made me realise how long the series has been going on for as Hit did feel like an established character who I should root for against these new foes, despite the fact that a few years ago he didn’t even exist in the endlessly-repeated Dragon Ball lore. Sadly Goku pops in and gives Hit a hand when two Pride Troopers start to double team him, which was annoying because it really feels as if Toei have some sort of mandate that Goku must appear in all episodes or something…
Finally, Episode 105 focuses on, would you believe it in 2017, Master Roshi. The veteran warrior hasn’t had this much screen time since the original Dragon Ball series! Roshi faces off and, I don’t mind telling you, handily beats several foes from Universe 4 before getting into a spot of trouble. During the episode he uses his buff form, he uses the Mafuba wave and even his hypnosis spell from the original Tenkaichi tournament, the second ever arc in Dragon Ball history. It delivers 20 minutes of Roshi nostalgia, complete with Krillin and Goku being worried about him. It was a great story, in the end, with a touching final scene, something I never thought I’d see, given the Turtle Hermit’s lack of presence since the 80s…
Of course, during all of this chaos we see plenty of quick bits of action from other participants; the animation team are doing a good job of making it feel like all these fighters are wandering around the ring and bumping into each other all the time. Plus as each person is eliminated, we still see the two omni-kings swiping participants away on their godPads like excited children, uncaring about what’s happening as each universe looses their set of 10 warriors…
So there we have it, a set of six episodes that is literally non-stop action. It’s been a long time since such a heavy dose of Dragon Ball fight scenes have aired, and it’s been enjoyable, from the serious fights to the gag fights, they have at least kept me entertained and interested each week. By the sounds of a recent press release, there is a one-hour special (or two episodes aired back-to-back after a one week break) on October 8th that features the start of the battle between Goku and super-powerful warrior Jiren, and would you believe that the end of that one hour special makes six episodes from now? Handy! I’ll see you then!
