Dragon Ball Super: Manga Chapter 96 - Official Discussion Thread

[Cipher]

Way late on this, but I finally read the chapter the other day. Enjoyed it! Reminded me of how, even when I'm not super enthused about reading DB or DB Super prior to picking up a portion of the manga, I almost always immediately have a good time once I do so. In this case, I wasn't feeling like I needed to rush out of my way to go through it, given it's still the retelling, but I was having a good time from first page to last once I finally cracked V-Jump open.

I think this might have been my favorite chapter of the movie adaptation bits so far. Fun action, good pacing, and some stand-out drawings. The little added bits of humor with Gohan's eyesight and Trunks and Goten posing with the Gammas were fun too, and the humor and pacing in the Magenta-Hedo section mostly really read well, with light changes made for the medium.

I like that Cell Max's reveal is textured like a Junji Ito drawing, and appreciate the sense of scale to him in all his panels, even when there isn't a direct size comparison to something/someone else. Toyotaro uses angles and care about how much of his body is placed into panels to communicate his size.

Little nitpicks here and there include things like Piccolo's punching Gamma 2 not feeling super weighty or impactful (I don't think it was a build-up or paneling issue; just the impact panel itself needing more weight somehow), and a few instances of slavishly trying to adapt beats from the movie even if they didn't make the jump very well to manga. Things like Carmine's hair collapsing (you can barely even tell, and it doesn't feel like a beat a comic would normally include) and Hedo's twirling entrance after being shot (would probably have read better/more humorously to just suddenly have him back up), etc. But that's all fine. I understand not having the time to agonize over every adaptation decision with the series' schedule, and in general this part reads really well.

Along with Cell, that large Orange Piccolo panel is really cool too!