“God or no God, you will know the shame of humiliation.”
For all of the Vegeta-heads out there, this episode makes for a bit of a bittersweet offering. On one hand, Vegeta does quit his groveling act that he’s been putting on for the last handful of episodes and finally gets his ass to work in this show. If all it took to get this guy to action was hitting Bulma, Goku should have ran his tractor into her by the end of the first episode.
Even though Vegeta does pull out the big guns and tries to take Beerus to task, the impression he makes on the God of Destruction is…minimal. What follows is a fight sequence that’s a lot of fun to watch, but it becomes clear almost immediately that Vegeta is no match at all for Beerus. He doesn’t even make a minor dent on the guy and Beerus is still very much toying with everyone and not even close to his full power.
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The sequence, while ultimately frustrating, is useful in the sense that now everyone has taken on Beerus unsuccessfully, so clearly some new plan of action is going to need to be taken. Vegeta is clearly not the Super Saiyan God that Beerus has been seeking, but that revelation allows for the show to move on. That being said, it still feels like this battle could have been handled a little more creatively. We’ve had a number of instances where a super powerful warrior attacks someone new with the result being simply no effect at all. The visual hits diminishing returns at a certain point. There are other ways in which Beerus could have demonstrated Vegeta’s helplessness here. Maybe every time Vegeta tries to attack him he quickly moves Bulma in the way? Maybe he tells Vegeta that for every hit he can connect with the God, that’ll mean one bone he won’t break in his son’s body. Seeing Vegeta getting all revved up, then totally overwhelmed still holds a certain degree of effectiveness, but more could have been done in what ends up feeling like a placeholder-y installment of the show.
As random as rock, paper, scissors is, it’s honestly likely for the best that Beerus confused Oolong for Buu. Rock, paper, scissors might not be a tricky game by any means, but I could easily see it evading Buu’s limited comprehension. Besides, things wouldn’t have gone very well if Buu tried turning Beerus’ fist into a bar of chocolate. Oolong never gets an opportunity to shine anymore, so this minor moment—as ridiculous as it is—happens to work.
The rock, paper, scissors match makes for one of the more ridiculous, suspenseful set pieces from Dragon Ball Superso far. It surprisingly manages to be a very effective moment for the show, even it does happen to all be for naught in the end. Beerus is about to deal with the results of his match with Oolong, when all of a sudden Goku shows up—in a fairly kick ass moment, mind you—with an actually decent answer regarding how to learn a thing or two about this Super Saiyan God urban legend: Why not ask the all-knowing Shenron?
Once more, Dragon Ball Super concludes just as it’s building momentum, but next week’s installment does cut right to the chase rather than spending an entire episode simply trying to ask Shenron a question or something else of equally insulting nature. Dragon Ball Super has been very patient with its storytelling so far, instead focusing more on re-establishing the borders of this universe and the characters within it, but the culmination of this first arc is finally about to begin. Things are going to truly start heating up here, with Beerus’ intergalactic journey finally about to start paying off. He wanted an extremely powerful warrior? Well, he’s about to get one.
