Dragon Ball Super – Part 6 Review
Dragon Ball Super Part 6 features Episodes 66 to 78, and kicks off with the final two episodes of the Future Trunks arc, which last saw two different versions of the corrupt God Zamasu fuse together into one all-powerful Zamasu in Future Trunks post-apocalyptic timeline in order to better fight the present timeline versions of Goku and Vegeta… Yeah, this arc goes a bit crazy, and funnily enough in just two episodes it gets a lot crazier, including the return of Vegito, the fusion of Goku and Vegeta using the “Portara Earrings”, which is retconned to only last an hour if it doesn’t involve Gods fusing (I mention this because he’s featured on the cover of this release!) I’ll just let the screenshot below do the rest of the arc justice without spoiling much, and leave it be…
After this arc finishes there are nine episodes of “filler”, though not filler in order to let the manga get further ahead as that’s not how Super works (both the manga and the anime have the same briefs from Toriyama and adapt them accordingly), instead it’s just filler because having some more comedic downtime in between arcs is just how shonen anime works apparently, and Toei Animation couldn’t bring themselves not to do it…
Luckily a lot of the filler is actually quite good. There are some comedic episodes that hit the right level of absurd and silly, like Arale from Akira Toriyama’s original big hit Dr. Slump reappearing in a Dragon Ball property for the first time since the original series, and an episode where Universes 6 and 7 do battle once again, but in a baseball game, which gives Yamcha a starring role (and takes a pee out of him several times, of course!) but there are a couple of really good mini-arcs as well. A two-episode story about Universe 6’s invincible hitman Hit getting contracted to kill Goku, where the assassin is once again made out to be a properly dangerous threat to our hero, and a two-episode story that sees Goku and Krillin do some training together like old times that leads to Krillin confronting some of his biggest fears (including Tambourine from the original Dragon Ball series, the first character to have the pleasure of killing our favourite bald underdog!) are both not only really good, but in the latter’s case, adds some new layers to a familiar character.
The final two episodes begin the Universe Survival Arc, where 8 of the 12 Universes do battle in a tournament, with the losing seven universes getting erased from existence. The actual tournament is more complicated than that, but for the purpose of these two episodes that’s the set-up, and to give the two omni-kings of multiverse a taster, a mini-tournament it sets up between three members of “our” universe (Universe 7) and Universe 9, each having three fighters. That’s where we leave it at the end of Super Part 6!
“Chōzetsu☆Dynamic!” by Kazuya Yoshii continues to be our opening theme until Episode 75, as shock of shocks, for the Universe Survival Arc (Episode 77 onward) we have a new opening, “Limit-Break x Survivor” by Kiyoshi Hikawa, which is catchy, and gives a good preview of what’s to come. “Chao Han Music” by Arukara continues as the Ending until Episode 72, with “Aku no Tenshi to Seigi no Akuma” (An Evil Angel and the Righteous Devil) by THE COLLECTORS taking over from 73 to the end of the set, an ending that features a very pleasing “manga coming to life” motif.
Dragon Ball Super Part 6 features the big ending to one arc, and the beginning of the longest (and final… as of this writing!) arc of the series, but actually mostly contains fluff episodes. Admittedly if you’re a big fan of Dragon Ball a lot of these pseudo-filler episodes will appeal, but even if you’re just collecting Super you’ll want to catch the end of the Future Trunks arc anyway, it has some great scenes (so long as you don’t think about how they work “in canon” too much…)
