English Dub Review: Dragonball Super “Change! An Unexpected Return! His Name is Ginyu!”

It’s like The Princess and the Frog, only no kissing and a whole lot more creepy.

Spoilers Below

Tagoma, Freiza’s punching bag for four months, is now a potent powerhouse ready to swap spin kicks with the best of the Z-Fighters. He even manages to rip Piccolo’s arm off. Not that that’s anything we haven’t seen on this show. I think “Piccolo Disarmed” is should be worth a shot on the Dragon Ball Drinking Game. Just as the green meanie is about to get more damage, Tagoma is blasted back by a blonde cannonball. Gotenks, a fusion of Goten and Trunks, has turned Super, and tackles the alien lackey with a vicious headbutt to the danglies. This gives the Namekian time to recover. Unfortunately, the child spends all of his fusion time taunting Freiza. When the two split, they trigger all sorts of memories in the horned tyrant. Goten looks just like a younger Goku, and Trunks looks like… well… his older self. Freiza wants these people dead all the more now. On the other hand, Tagoma has problems of his own. A familiar looking frog writes in the dirt, and Tagoma reads it out loud, triggering the frog’s trap card! The two switch bodies and the new owner of Tagoma’s body is none other than the legendary Captain Ginyu! When everyone was teleported off Namek by Dende and Porunga, Ginyu was sent to Earth as well. Since then, he spent his days being tormented by human children. But now, he’s back and ready to kick butt and chew bubble gum.

Gohan steps up to the plate. However, he’s so out of practice, he isn’t putting up much of a fight. It takes a few more impacts that crumble mountains (take a drink everyone) to jog his memory and allow him to turn Super Sayajin. Within seconds, Gohan trashes Ginyu, then stops. He tells the defeated monster that he won’t kill him for his own pride, and Ginyu should leave the planet now. No sooner does he say this than he is repeatedly perforated by Freiza’s energy beams. Turns out, Gohan’s act of mercy touches the mercenary emperor’s sore spot. He remembers Goku sparing him, and won’t stand one moment of it any longer. He decides to torture and humiliates Gohan to death. Just as he fires the finishing blow, however, we are given a sight from so many years ago. A cloaked form stands between Gohan and certain death. Piccolo has sacrificed himself for his pseudo-godson yet again.

I’m a bit torn about this episode, and I’ll tell you why. On one hand, Ginyu’s fighting ability was actually rather impressive at the beginning, and Freiza was really creepy and intimidating in this episode. You had a huge amount of tension coming from him throughout, coupled with some great music that only amped up the feeling. It felt like he was going to snap at any moment. On the other hand, there was a good amount of the combat that left me feeling like as if this episode was a bit like Gohan. It was so close to being totally awesome, but it needed to have some real action to make anything worthwhile. Tagoma was set up to be this really powerful lackey, on par with Zarbon or Ginyu in his heyday. Instead, he just gets swapped out for Ginyu. That’s cool, Ginyu in Tagoma’s body should make for some interesting fighting, right? Nope, he doesn’t last at all. Gotenks has arrived and Gohan has whipped out Super Sayajin. Cool, time for the action to ramp up? Nope. That’s over. Every chance this episode had to bring in some real action, it’s either over far too quickly or ends up disappointing either way. Even Piccolo’s injury and later sacrifice feel a bit meaningless by this point. We know he can get regenerated/wish back. It was great nostalgia, but it lacked any gravitas. It felt like this series decided to make up for previous entries going far too long on one arc by compacting the stories, but in doing so, it doesn’t let any of the characters exists in a particular state long enough to warrant them being in the show in the first place. Really, if it weren’t for Freiza’s creep factor and tension, I’d almost feel like this episode was a bust from the action.

From a technical perspective, this episode was on point. The animation was good. Like I said, there wasn’t enough good action for my taste, but the action we did get was superbly animated and drawn. I noticed no errors throughout, and there was incredible detail on Gohan’s face and numerous injuries. They did a good job of capturing Ginyu’s quirky, disturbing personality and poses in Tagoma’s body. Voice acting was surprisingly good for a Dragon Ball show. Christopher Ayres did a great job with Freiza this episode, and it made all the difference. As a whole, I have to give this episode seven creepy finger beams out of ten, just because the villain really saved things.