© BIRD STUDIO/SHUEISHA, TOEI ANIMATION
As a professional anime reviewer, I am obliged to analyze shows and give you the most thoughtful and measured critiques I can muster so that we can all better appreciate what makes anime such a great medium. But sometimes it’s nice to throw all that in the trash and gush about a cool anime fight because boy howdy, is Goku’s fight with the Tamogami one of the coolest things to come from a TV version of Dragon Ball in quite a while. If I wanted to nitpick, I could say that the fight itself is over maybe a bit too quickly for how much the Tamogami has been built up, but since Dragon Ball fights usually suffer from being too long, I can’t bring myself to be upset about getting something short and sweet. It’s a pretty great showcase of everything fun and exciting about Dragon Ball and it’s probably left my inner 8-year-old bouncing up and down more than anything else.
The episode jumps straight into the fight. It features the same mix of slick animation and bouncy martial arts theatrics that made all the previous action scenes in Daima look stellar. What helps this one go above and beyond is Goku finally has an opponent who can keep up with him. While he’s still clearly got the edge for most of it, there’s just enough back and forth to keep the whole thing exciting, and there’s so much energy going into it that it’s hard not to feel the same level of Goku’s joy. This is also the first fight in Daima where Ki Blasts come into play beyond one or two uses, and it seems like holding off on them for so long was the correct decision because this is the freshest that kind of combat has felt in Dragon Ball in years. Even with the amount of energy beams on display it still feels flashy enough to keep it from coming off like a downgrade from the physical stuff. When Goku finally rips out a Kamehameha, the shot is so gorgeous it sent me right back to watching Dragonball Z re-runs in my PJs and seeing one for the first time. I’m so glad the animators were somehow able to replicate exactly how aggressively cool that moment felt. If anyone was still on the fence as to how well Daima would be able to deliver on the kind of killer action scenes that made the Z (and to a lesser extent Super) era of Dragon Ball so beloved, it’s hard to imagine anyone complaining after this one.
Had this fight been the sole highlight of the episode, and the rest of it was just Goku and the gang making silly jokes for 10 minutes, I’d still call it a winner, but somehow the rest of its runtime manages to be just as fun. For one thing, we get a post-battle challenge between Goku and the Tamogami. While it acknowledges Goku is stronger, it still decides to put him to the test by challenging his powers of perception. Said challenge involves a dice shuffling game using the Dragon Ball that’s simultaneously as goofy and predictable a scene as you’d expect. It makes for a fun way to cap off the fight and shows that Goku can be cool beyond just how well he can throw a punch. However, the biggest bombshell of the episode comes after the fight, as we finally get the full lowdown on what exactly Dr. Arinsu has been up to.
As King Gomah and Degesu continue combing through footage of the battle with Majin Buu they notice that Dr. Arinsu was hanging in the background and took a piece of Buu’s body for herself. While they remain clueless about her plan, we eventually find out that she’s hired a witch named Marba to create a new Majin for her. Marba is the one responsible for Buu’s creation (Bibidi taking credit for a commission is a bit of a weird retcon, but if he was anywhere near as petty as his son, that does sound in-character) and Dr. Arinsu wants to make a Majin with the same level of power under her control. Her goal is to use it to knock Gomah off his throne and take control of the Demon Realm herself, but if making a second Majin Buu doesn’t work out, her backup plan is to use the Dragon Balls, and Glorio’s real purpose in allying with Goku, was to trick him into gathering them for her.
This all more or less turns Dr. Arinsu into the actual antagonist of Daima, and since she seems to be all about working smarter rather than harder, that probably makes her the most dangerous villain the franchise has had in quite a while. While King Gomah is funny enough that I would have been pretty content keeping him as our chief bad guy, having him be usurped by someone more competent is about as early as Dragon Ball as it gets so I’d be lying if I said it didn’t feel fitting. More importantly, this twist gives us a clearer idea of where the rest of the show could be headed. It seems almost certain that her plan to create a powerful new Majin will succeed (although I’m not banking on her being able to control it) and pitting Goku and the others against another Buu-level threat seems about as strong of an endgame scenario as any. Whether or not that’ll live up to being as exciting as it sounds is hard to say, but if this episode is any indication of what’s to come, I’m pretty sure that we’ll have plenty to look forward to in the coming weeks
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Dragon Ball Daima is currently streaming on
Crunchyroll.
