English Dub Review: Dragonball Super “Clash! Freiza Vs. Son Goku- This is the Result of My Training”

Is anyone else creeped out by Vegeta and Freiza smiling? Just me?

Spoilers Below

Alright, we’ve finished with the Z Fighter’s rendition of Waiting for Goku (Godot?), and the hero has arrived to take on Freiza. To start off the festivities, the two super-powered aliens grab each other and start screaming with enough force to further crack the cliffside. When this approach doesn’t work, Freiza begins taking pot shots at Krillin and Bulma. Every time, Goku jumps in to stop the attack, leaving himself open for punishment. Goku manages to turn the table, regaining even footing with his opponent. Suddenly, another combatant jumps in, kicking the Sayajin in the back. It’s Vegeta!

Has he switched sides? Joining in with Freiza? Bulma and the Z Fighters speculate. Having lived under Freiza’s thumb for so long, it’s possible there were some lingering mental effects. Bulma and Krillin reject that thought. There’s no way the Prince of the Monkey Men would endanger his family. For better or worse, he’s an adoptive earthling now. But there’s a wrinkle in that line of thought. Vegeta floats up to Freiza, complimenting him on having come back to life. He even starts clapping! Clapping for a long time… In fact, he’s clapping to piss Freiza off. He’s got a beef with the evil alien, too, and he’s tired of waiting on the sidelines while the two of them pussyfoot around each other. Fight, and fight for real, or he’s coming to get you, Goku. With that, the two combatants decided to go all out. Goku leads off, and his aura turns gold, with lightning crackling around it. That lightning swirls around him, merging into his skin like a crystalline sheath. When this cracks and falls away, Goku appears in a whole new form! His hair and eyes are bright blue, same as his aura! He doesn’t have a name for this form, but he’s ready to mop the planet with Freiza’s face!

Okay! Now, we’re getting somewhere! The battle between the two titans has kicked off, and the animation crew got a bit more work in this time around. The fight isn’t entirely built around the stock DBZ combat of Gatling-gun punches and faster-than-sight, mid-air clashes, though it does contain them. There is actual fighting, with grapples, throws, punches, and blocks. You might say “big whoop, it’s a fighting show, it should have that stuff”, but there is a big difference. With those previously mentioned staples, you can loop the animation, which is incredibly simplistic and fast to draw. On the other hand, real fighting requires the team to choreograph those movements, sometimes between two different animators, to build the key frames. The more complicated the movement gets, the more work they’re going to have to do. While it may not always be as impressive and impactful, it shows more love of the craft and the work itself. I have a ton more respect for this than the corner-cutting stock animations.

I recently went back and watched the previous episodes of Super that I had missed, doing so through the Funimation website. One thing that is certain: the voice acting in the English dub is far superior to the native Japanese. I forgot just how out of place and painful Goku’s voice is before we tape over it. King Kai’s voice doesn’t even do anything! He just talks, even if he should be shouting or laughing. So, that being said, I decided to look closer at the voice work here. Lo and behold, I noticed a bit more depth in Lex Lang’s work tonight. It would be so easy to go into Goku’s screaming voice when he was enraged. Instead, it went lower, showing more of the contained rage that Goku was building up. Later, however, his conversation with Freiza about laying their cards on the table seemed a little flat, feeling more like a cheerful, playful Goku, instead of one that is confident and determined to win a fight. There was no ferocity, no fire, no anxiety. Maybe it was recorded on a different day, and he just wasn’t feeling it. I don’t know, but as a whole, the voice acting was good, and never really pulled me out of the experience. With the art as good as it is, and the animation and story picking up, I’m proud to give this episode nine grinning Vegetas out of ten.

Really? Am I really the only one that finds that creepy?