Dragon Ball Super 1 — The God of Destruction's Prophetic Dream
Welcome, to the Chapter Review Corner. This is going to be just one of our Wiki's features that'll give us something new and unique as a Wiki covering the Dragon Ball Universe. For every new chapter of the series, I will be bringing you a "review" of sorts, covering the details of the chapter in a sort of comedic recap, while giving my opinion on what's happening at the same time. I've been doing this on several wikis before, fanfiction ones anyway, and since this wiki is starting out, we're gonna need something to bring a bit more life to it. Tenny will be handling the reviewing of the anime series when it hits us in a month or so; leave the manga to me.
We open up with a flashback of Goku fighting the pure Majin Bū. We're all familiar with this scene, so I won't spend too much time on it. Goku destroys him with the Super Genki Dama, eradicating the evil Majin until he arrives as a human to do absolutely nothing in Dragon Ball GT. Majin Bū, everyone. He died to become our new Yamcha.
And then we cut to...a very hilarious scene, actually, Goku, driving a tractor. It's days like this I remember Goku is a radish farmer, that I also remember he has farming equipment, and that some of that probably requires him to drive it. Then I remember we dedicated an entire filler episode to this once and I die a little inside. So Goku is getting bored, probably because he remembered there was a farm in the movie Signs and that would depress anyone. Goten arrives, bringing his father lunch — and yet Goku thinks his boy was in school, despite it being a Sunday. Top notch parenting, Kakarrot. And then we cut to my second favorite scene of the chapter. After Goku eats, he decides to start image training.
He fights Freeza, Cell, and Bū in quick succession; disposing easily of the former two. It's darkly hilarious when you realize this seems to take place immediately after Bū, meaning Goku has yet to fight Golden Freeza. An asskicking is coming, Goku. He's about to fight Majin Bū, but Goten drives the tractor over a cliff, snapping Goku out of his training as he goes to save his son. Goku tells Goten that he needs to focus on his training, since they never know when an enemy as strong as Bū will appear (give it time, guys, you've got like two coming), but Goten tells him Chi-Chi wants Goku to get a new job — especially in light of his grandfather is now totally broke. Anyone bet that brokeness came from feeding a family of three Saiyans? Goku, however, says he'd rather keep his current job, so he can ditch it whenever to train. As they're talking, Mr. Satan pulls up, and then we cut to Lord Beerus on a planet far far away.
He's being treated to a meal on a planet I'm just going to call Planet C4 because trust me, it ain't staying long. These strange aliens, who we will call the Bombadeer race, for similarly dark reasons, are hosting a feast for Lord Beerus. Suffice to say, if all alien food looks as boring as this, then yeah, I don't blame Lord Beerus for being infatuated with Earth food. As he consumes his meal, we see one of the aliens with a vial behind their back, conveniently marked with a cartoonish skull and crossbones so we know it's poison. Never been a fan of that; it's like marking bags with $ so you know it's money. Anyway, after consuming most of the food, Beerus states he actually enjoyed it, and that the 'seasoning' was his kind of flavour...only to immediately call out of the Bombadeers for poisoning him, and simply exterminating their entire planet.
After the impressive display of fireworks, Lord Beerus tells Whis that he had a 'dream' about 'him'. We cut back to Goku, Mr. Satan, and Goten, discussing the matter of money. Mr. Satan has 100,000,000 zeni for Goku; Goku, being the modest guy he is, doesn't really want all of that money, but Mr. Satan insists. This is actually my favorite scene in this chapter. Mr. Satan, while not anyone's favorite character, is definitely a symbol of humanity as far as I am concerned. Or at least the good thingsabout humanity. He's flawed, he can be selfish, he falls for vices like the next man. But he really does love his daughter, his friends, and moments like this show that yeah, attention whore or not, Mr. Satan has a conscience and when something is the right thing to do, he will do it if presented with it, especially after his character development in the Bū Arc. Goten also convinces him to take the money, saying if he does, Chi-Chi might finally shut up and let Goku go to North Kaiō's world too. Goku, officially outsmarted by his son and Mr. Satan, takes the money. And then we cut back to Beerus and Whis, where Lord Beerus announces he dreamed of a Super Saiyan God. Or maybe he didn't. Or maybe he did. They resolve to go home so Beerus can think on it more.
We finally see Kibitoshin and the Old Kai standing, looking out into the distance as they observe Beerus' destruction.
Now, let's give my verdict and thoughts on this chapter. I use a check based scoring system. A ✓ is normal, or average. A ✓+ is above average. And a ✓- is below average, also called Yamcha. Ready:
Score[]
| Review scores | |
|---|---|
| Category | Rating |
| Art | ✓+ |
| Story | ✓ |
| Fight | ✓ |
| Overall Chapter | ✓ |
Okay, so, to start with the art; Toyable does really well as the artist for Dragon Ball. I commend him for being able to get as close to Toriyama's style as he possibly can, while still being able to see his own unique flare in it. Its not a perfect match, but it comes close, and I'll be judging Toyable based on what he can do from now on, not how he stacks up compared to Toriyama. Art earns a ✓+. For the story...I'm actually really iffy on this one. This was a set-up chapter, so by no means will it be gripping, action-packed, etc. And I'm fine with that. We had some good humor, but still some badass moments; my only gripe is where this takes place, and that's why I give it a ✓. Right now, we're immediately after Majin Bū, it can't have been more than a month or so. Beerus appears, but he's neither asleep, or is he acquainted with our heroes just. Meaning we've jumped back, past RoF, God and God, and probably even Yo! Son Goku and Friends Return! (which this might be ignoring, which will bring Tarble's canocity into question if it does...). The fact that this is starting off as a retelling of two movies we've already seen rubs me the wrong way. But, let's see where it goes from here. The fight, I also give a ✓, purely because it was just a few brief panels of Goku in his imagination. Overall, I rank this chapter with a ✓ as the final verdict; it was good, enjoyable, but I have just a few issues I'll look forward to seeing either resolved or exacerbated in future chapters.
Dragon Ball Super is all done for today. When it comes back, I'll be here to bring you guys another review. Let's hope this is the start of something great; until then, stay gold.