English Dub Review: Dragonball Super “A Warning from Jaco! Frieza and 1,000 Soldiers Close In!”

Frieza hits the 24 Hour Fitness, and everyone else freaks out.

Spoilers Below

The Big F is back, and already he has plans. Yeah, sure, he’s gonna reconquer the galaxy. First, though: Revenge! He’s going to hunt down Goku and Trunks (the one from the future), and turn them into a mashed pulp. His people give him a warning. Goku has gotten far stronger since the Namek incident. He’s even beaten Majin Buu and Beerus the Destroyer, the two people King Cold warned Frieza to never cross. This gives the creepy, horned one an idea. He’s going to train for four months, and when he does, he should be far more powerful than anyone could imagine. Why you ask? Well, for the longest time, he was one of the most powerful beings in the galaxy. All that, and he hadn’t trained a day in his life. Hey, speaking of training, how are Goku and Vegeta doing? Well, Whis is having them contain their energy, rather than just let it blast out willy-nilly. This has resulted in them building up deific chi… or something. Beerus wakes up and asks a few questions of them and Whis, discovering his attendant has made multiple trips to earth without the Destroyer. Beerus is not pleased, but Whis manages to calm him down.

Back on Earth, Galactic Patrolman Jaco (who comes from another of Toriyama’s comics, set before the original Dragon Ball) arrives with dire news. Four months of training are now up, and Frieza and his goons are going to arrive in one hour! Bulma sends out the call, summoning the Z Fighters to take on the enemy. Krillin hands his daughter over to her mother Eighteen, entrusting the little girl’s safety to the stronger of the couple. Frieza’s ship comes to land, and the battle begins.

First, I’d like to say, I kinda like the reborn Frieza. He’s the only person other than Greg Proops I’ve heard use the words “salubrious” in a sentence. Come to think of it, Greg would have been a great voice actor for Frieza. It’s just, we’re watching a show that is effectively WWE with energy blasts, and one of the big wrestlers just dropped “salubrious”. Good work bringing the collective IQ of the show up by three points. Now, we have a sum of three IQ points and no idea what to do with them. I also like that they addressed the elephant in the room. Majin Buu was far more powerful than Frieza ever was, and Goku beat him, too. By now, Goku could breathe wrong and kill somebody. So, they say he’s gonna train for a while, and make him a stronger villain. That’ll do for an explanation, I guess.

As far as the technical aspects of the show, I really didn’t see much worth talking about, because (other than Goku and Vegeta training) we see no action. It’s all just talking. The art on Frieza is good, and they’ve worked hard to make him imposing, but some of the perspectives on his face are off, making it feel like he never quite looked right. There was a bit of nice animation as Jaco’s ship coming in, but otherwise, we have next to nothing in the art and animation department. Similarly, the characters don’t have much reason to emote meaningfully, and we have little in the way of excellent craft in the voice acting. It isn’t bad, but it is a bit flat to me. If pressed for a rating, I’d have to give it five months of training out of ten.