Chapter 41 remains, to this point, my favorite in
Dragon Ball Super, as I've alluded to a few times in the thread. Although it could be argued that the series' most visually spectacular action lies elsewhere, this chapter winds up being the total package for me in terms of pacing--both on the macro-level and panel to panel during Goku and Jiren's fight--and offering a vertical slice of the series' strengths in terms of both action and characterization. I honestly think it's worth just moving through it bit by bit:
The title page sets the stage for the battle moving into its climactic phase, as Kuririn notes that Jiren is displaying a visible aura for the first time--which also speaks to how towering Jiren is as an opponent, having not yet demonstrated what we've come to hold as the visual shorthand for characters expending the bare minimum of effort. The presentation of movement and the sense of timing connected to it has possibly not been stronger in
Super than it is in the chapter's early pages of Ultra Instinct Sign Goku vs. Jiren, from Goku's almost halting saunter into a diving lunge to begin the bout, to his weave under Jiren's punch, to taking a blow to the face just one panel after we see his fist centimeters from Jiren's. (Consequently, we understand the speed with which Jiren is moving, and the impact of his blow comes across.)The following pages achieve a sense of a camera rotating, accelerating, and stopping with each blow Goku takes from Jiren. See, for example, the panels on the lower half of the fifth page of the chapter, where the combination of reversing angles, speedlines in the impact panel, and hovering debris in the aftermath as the two characters have split apart convey the above sense of "camera" work and speeding up and slowing down of time.
The craft here is blink-and-you'll miss it, but I think this is among
Super's most animated fights, if not its single most. If it seems strange to be discussing things like being "animated," or a sense of speed in the static medium of comics, you're just going to have to bear with. Incidentally, the feeling I refer to as a quality of being "animated" is completely separate from, and even counter to, the idea of being laid out like an anime storyboard, as Toyotaro's paneling is sometimes (I think fairly at times) criticized for. Here, he's keeping most of those sensibilities at bay. The sense of timing in this fight is very comic-specific stuff--achieved through angles, moments shown and not shown, panel size, presence and absence of speedlines, etc.--but the effect is still one of "animation," in that you can intuit how things are moving and with what timing. It's an effect all over Toriyama's
Dragon Ball work, but which
Super rarely achieves on the same level. While not as explosive as the climax to the following arc, this is, I think, the best it's ever been on that front.
There's more effective communication of timing and movement to be seen, this time in the space of a single panel, as Goku dodges Jiren's kiais, with Toyotaro showing both "multiple" Goku's dodging two firings in a single frame, and an aerial shot of the arena to show the impact of the blasts he's avoiding. Jiren powering up in anger after Goku's line about his heart being still feels appropriately explosive as the ground chips away beneath him, even if it isn't the largest scale
Dragon Ball has ever employed for such a scene. The contrast of this moment with Goku calmly inhaling before the transition into "proper" Ultra Instinct, to be revealed a few pages later, is also a smart bit of pacing.
I'm not the biggest fan of Goku's gut punch on Jiren, especially with its borrowed composition from the Piccolo Daimao fight, but it works well enough.
What follows is more admirable timing, as Toyotaro's sometimes frantic employment of speedlines, which can occasionally crowd pages, is put to use to create a real sense of speed and impact as Jiren launches himself up to the debris hovering above the arena. We can feel Goku steadily getting the hang of his new technique as he blocks Jiren's flurry for one page before finding an opening to catch him with a twisting kick on the next, and Jiren pinballing through the debris and landing with a thud in the background is delivered with almost comical timing, communicating how overwhelmed he now is, and just being a bit of fun on its own. Jiren's following blast feels huge, and it being the move used to cover Goku's movement into the stage-piercing Kamehameha is a clever way to develop the fight.
The pacing from the start to the gigantic Kamehameha panel itself (a pretty visually striking beat, and one that manages to find something new to do with a Kamehameha in modern
Dragon Ball) is near perfect. No moment overstays its welcome, and each bit of the fight feels like it serves a purpose, while being enjoyable and impactful on its own.
Jiren's "aren't true strength" line from the middle of the Kamehameha-carved tunnel is an encapsulating quote for his character. Now that Goku has challenged what Jiren's idea of said true strength is (after having struggled with it himself), the cracks are beginning to show. Jiren is somewhat unassuming about his superiority so long as the very idea of what he believes strength to be isn't in question itself. Of course ultimately the "true strength" the arc throws its hat in for isn't Goku's martial arts evolution either, and the fact that we get
that payoff this chapter as well is another feather in its cap.
Jiren powers up once again to put Goku back on the back foot, and Whis remarks that Goku's automatic reactions may conversely becoming a burden faced with an opponent of Jiren's speed and strength. Jiren standing his ground against Goku's (deliciously twisty, slightly unnatural feeling, in a way that sells UI's movement) kick, then catching it and throwing him, provides visual evidence to accompany Whis' speculation--the fight is no lock for Goku. Ultra Instinct isn't invisible or infallible, which is nice to know both for the progression of the story from this arc, and in terms of the culmination of its themes.
Beerus and Whis make clear that the battle is going to come down to a battle of attrition--the characters locked in a stalemate until either Goku's Ultra Instinct or Jiren's stamina give out, and in the fight's last generous bit of pacing, the stakes now established, we shift into invisible impacts representing the two flying around the arena to montage out the rest of the bout. The large bottom panel of Whis, able to follow the two's movement, offering a single "Oh dear" just before we see Goku and Jiren snap back into focus, the former having been knocked out of UI, is a fantastic punctuating moment for this particular kind of intentional anti-climax.
That's just the first half of the chapter. I don't think there's a more smartly timed fight in
Super.
The back half of the chapter gives us several delightful character beats, including Jiren's backstory, which pulls through on several of the arc's existing themes in ways already well-covered by this thread. This back half may include Vegeta at his most likable in
Super as well, from his friendly berating of Goku for losing with the supposedly invisible UI, to prodding at Jiren for his childish yearning for his master's approval, to instigating the team attack attack against Jiren and once again calling to continue their charge at the end. (Incidentally, I've always thought the thick line work in that panel looked spectacular, and wonder if there might not be some Toriyama touch-ups in the faces.)
Beerus' frustration with Goku and Vegeta having not teamed up from the start, since it's going so well for them now, and the other gods' confusion over the same, pulls through on his ignored calls for teamwork at the beginning of the arc. The revelation of Whis having surreptitiously instilled effective combination fighting in them through his training (which they saw as competition against Whis rather than as tutelage in working with each other) is fun fluff. Vermoud's bitter acknowledgement that Gitchen's emphasis on teamwork may have been correct leading to a transition from the word "teamwork" in dialogue to Goku and Vegeta simultaneously socking Jiren in the nose is a final gift of timing just after the chapter seemed done giving them. (On that note, I quite like how human and sympathetic Vermoud remains for someone the arc paints as being in the wrong, as he continues to believe in Jiren's chances for success next chapter, maintaining faith in his fighter even as he begins to concede that Gitchen may have been right.)
The fact that Ultra Instinct is--not quite a fake-out, as Goku's journey to obtaining it is still an essential part of Universe 7's victory--but a red herring in terms of being the arc's sole savior, as one might expect in
DB, is satisfying, and something that helps allow the arc to convey its support for notions of teamwork (and general coming together) without seeming overbearing or preachy. Getting to that message is filled is filled with twists and play on conventions, reliance on somewhat morally unsavory characters, and bits of humor that keep it feeling in
DB's usual form. It is satisfyingly thematically coherent, instead of gratingly so.
That's it, I suppose. I don't think I have anything to add on Chapter 42, but I did want to call attention to the success on a craft and pacing level that is Chapter 41.
Again, this is an arc I only like more the more I reread or think about it.
Cipher has characterised it elsewhere as something of a gag that Jiren thought he needed to get stronger, and so went and got so much stronger, which I respect as a 'take', but I don't know whether 'gags' really fit with Jiren.
I don't mean to characterize the revelation as a bit of broad comedy, or anything like that. Certainly not in a way that speaks above or trivializes Jiren's character. I simply see an element of comedy to it while remaining completely sincere to its characters, which is one of
DB's (in my mind) appeals. The strongerest guy ever (to emphasize the almost comic hyperbole with which Jiren's strength is presented, though that too is to the effect of communicating his role rather than undercutting him) became who he is because he simply willed and trained himself into becoming it, and he willed and trained himself into doing so because he, essentially, was under a mistaken impression. Comedy, sincerity and tension are often intertwined so tightly in
DB that you can't tell where one ends and the other begins, and I see Jiren as a character through which all three of those strands run.
After a brief pause. My own contributions to the Super Re-Read now amount to over 120 pages and 80,000 words, so I'm pausing for a breather before launching into the Moro arc - it'll come very early in the New Year. Or, if all goes well, there may be an update for Christmas Day (think of it as a special gift).
Take a break! You've earned it!
Erm... well, the team needed 10 members; they were there when they were needed. Sometimes, that's enough.
. As he says, "Just standing there, he makes a perfect picture".
