English Dub Review: Dragonball Super “I’m Here, Too! Training Begins on Beerus’ Planet!”

Master Beerus’ Dragonball Maids. Why does that sound familiar?

Spoilers Below

Whis has agreed to train Goku, and from the looks of it, this training is going to be worth a lot. Six months of this training, and Goku can barely recognize Vegeta’s aura. Before that, however, they have some chores to do, so it’s time don the maid aprons! Their first chore is quite a deadly one. They must change Lord Beerus’ sheets. While he’s sleeping in them. Oh, did we mention he sleep fights? Getting too close will result in a deific punch to the totally mortal throat. Potentially lethal that. With patience, ingenuity, and teamwork, the two Saiyans accomplish the task. After a few other tedious chores, Whis arrives to give them their training. They are each given incredibly heavy cinder blocks to lift. Even with all his training, Vegeta finds these blocks nigh-impossible to lift. Really? These guys have trained at 500x earth gravity, how heavy ARE those things? To add onto that, they have to run around the planet wit them, or fall into a void from which they will never return. They somehow manage to keep up. The training is cut short, however, as the Seer Fish arrives to tell Whis that Beerus is about to… Goku and Vegeta are teleported into Beerus’ chamber, as he releases a massive energy blast. They somehow manage to survive it.

The next day, their training is a bit more practical. They spar two on one against Whis! Despite their incredible speed, Whis can dodge every single one of their blows. He explains. Their weakness is the fact that their brains do all their thinking. Their reaction time is slowed because the signals have to travel back and forth in their body. If instead, they teach their body parts to act independently and think on their own, their speed will be uncanny. Before the episode closes, however, let’s take a trip across the universe to meet some folks. Flying across the galaxy in a saucer that resembles those used by Freiza’s army. Lord Sorbet bemoans the failure of his Freiza Force, but the ship has to quickly dodge a beam of power. It coalesces outside of a planet’s atmosphere as two MORE villains appear. Champa and Vados look like an evil version of Beerus and Whis, and blow up the planet in search of Beerus.

I have to be honest, I haven’t really watched Dragonball in a long time. I remember when the original Dragonball series came to America, and watched the DIC translation of Dragonball Z. I’m not totally up on the new stuff, but now I want to go back and watch what I missed. This episode is everything I remember from Toriyama’s bread-and-butter: Wacky humor, solid action and animation, and simple (but polished) character designs. These deities are interesting to me, seemingly drawn from Egypt, but given Toriyama’s signature style. I don’t get that halo-around-the-neck thing that Whis and Vados have, but it sets them apart from other characters, at least. I was paying close attention to the linework throughout, and while it is a bit inconsistent, the art has leveled up in subtle ways. It certainly benefits from having moved out of cel animation and into the modern digital processes.

Past that, however, this has all the hallmarks of a Dragonball training episode. There isn’t much plot, just slapstick. That isn’t a complaint, it’s the type of slapstick I was wanting out of it. The voice acting was… the same as usual. Lex Lang keeps up all the over-the-top, scream-as-talking that Goku has always done. Really, you don’t go to a show like this and expect deep method acting from the voices. You want stuff to happen. I enjoyed this episode, but it wasn’t something I would rave about, really. I give it seven incomprehensibly weighted cinder blocks out of ten.