Disappointing ending to Goku black arc?

[Ssjcell]

Is anyone else disappointed that the Goku black arc / future trunks ? I mean they had to erase the universe what is trunks and mai doing who btw is like 70 ? I mean it ended how it ended and it couldn't have ended any different but still. Kinda disappointing...

[Jackalope89]

The disappointing part was the lack of emotion by Trunks and Mai in regards to the loss of their multiverse. The anime at least had a brief moment of it. The manga...

The two just brushed it off, no second thoughts.

But a fan theory going around is that it was a setup for Trunks to become the first Time Patroller for the Supreme Kai of Time (Xenoverse and Dragon Ball Heroes games). Which, I wouldn't mind seeing Chronoa in the actual anime. She's a fun character.

[Logania]

• Vegito contributing absolutely nothing

• Trunks using the Spirit Bomb with no prior training or knowledge of the technique itself and the spirit bomb somehow actually being gathered without focus or gathering it

• Wallpaper Zamasu 'Blue Screen of Death' the universe

• The Zeno Button, Ctrl+Alt+Dlt that meanie head Zamasu

• Trunks and Mai living in a universe with ANOTHER Trunks and Mai

All these made me look at the ending and feel so disappointed. The arc was so good, then BAM! rushed, bittersweet mess.

[Kokonoe]

What urks me the most about about this arc is that Zamasu loses = he fuses with all universes and instantly wins.

None of this was foreshadowed, none of it makes any lick of sense, and these are universes where Jiren exists.

If he could fuse with all universes and take over everything, why not do this before? This is literally what he would want anyway.

It's the most bizarre ending to an arc I've ever seen in anime.

• Vegito contributing absolutely nothing

• Trunks using the Spirit Bomb with no prior training or knowledge of the technique itself and the spirit bomb somehow actually being gathered without focus or gathering it

• Wallpaper Zamasu 'Blue Screen of Death' the universe

• The Zeno Button, Ctrl+Alt+Dlt that meanie head Zamasu

• Trunks and Mai living in a universe with ANOTHER Trunks and Mai

All these made me look at the ending and feel so disappointed. The arc was so good, then BAM! rushed, bittersweet mess.

BSOD LOL

I agree with all of your complaints.

[Kataphrut]

It was awful. The idea could've worked if it felt like the arc was building towards it or had paid it off well (see Avengers Infinity War for a crash course on how to do the same idea but do it right) but instead it was just a mess. Like, they'd been building up toward the hopeful ending of episode 66, but then someone at Toei realised Toriyama's brief had called for an everybody loses and Zeno ex Machina ending (with no indication as to how the story would get to that point) so they had to half arse an excuse for Zamasu to suddenly win.

And of course the characters emotional reaction to it is completely token. Mai gets one (really well done) breakdown when it happens, Trunks gets another in the time machine, and apart from that you wouldn't even know it had been a sad ending if you missed the first half of episode 67.

[SupremeKai25]

I greatly enjoyed it. Trunks did not deserve to win. He created a Spirit Sword out of nowhere even though he had never witnessed the technique before. He imbued his sword (which he somehow previously reforged) with said Spirit Bomb, and was somehow able to completely vanquish Fused Zamasu, even though he was empowered only by two exhausted base form Saiyans (who were stomped easily by Fused Zamasu after they defused), and a couple of scattered and broken civilians. Not an impressive Spirit Bomb at all. Trunks, the one who was no longer a threat by episode 64 to the point that Future Zamasu alone was confident that he could defeat him easily, the one who could barely fight on par with Super Saiyan Rosé Goku Black, was somehow able to single-handedly overwhelm and defeat Fused Zamasu? Give me a break.

For this reason, I enjoyed when Fused Zamasu came back and got his revenge on Trunks for the stupid asspull that he had in the previous episode. Trunks was weak, he was always weak. He could not defeat the Androids on his own because he was a weakling, and so resorted to shattering reality itself by using a nefarious Time Machine. He always relied on others to survive. And so, it did not make sense that he suddenly had the strength and willpower to defeat the greatest threat that the multiverse had ever seen, the Supreme God.

Especially since Super Saiyan BLUE Vegito's famed Final Kamehameha did absolutely nothing to Zamasu, yet suddenly Trunks comes out of nowhere and stomps Zamasu. Get out of here Toei.

My bias for Zamasu aside, The idea of this ending was very good, In my opinion. It shows the horror of war, it shows that sometimes things don't always go according to the plan. War is unpredictable, it is a nightmare. Trunks thought that he had defeated Zamasu, but he didn't take into account his immortality. He was short-sighted and reckless. Perhaps if he had remembered that Zamasu was immortal (in fact, it was never stated that Zamasu ceased to be immortal after fusing, only that his immortality was unstable), he wouldn't have rushed blindly to destroy him. It was actually pretty obvious that it was going to happen something akin to this. If an immortal being loses their body, it is clear that their spirit will survive and haunt the battlefield, perhaps latching onto the nearest possible host. It didn't take a genius to figure that out. I certainly wasn't caught off-guard when it was revealed that Zamasu survived Trunks' desperate assault. Duh, he was immortal.

A villain having the last laugh is not very common in the Dragon Ball franchise, where the damage caused by the antagonist is usually undone by the Dragon Balls. This was a breath of fresh air. Zamasu lost his sanity and his existence, but he had the last laugh, because he deprived Trunks and Mai of their actual home, the home they swore to defend. And indeed Trunks ultimately cried, and clearly stated that he had failed to protect his world, and to protect his friends and family. The twisted reality, is that Zamasu did not completely lose, because the Future multiverse is now devoid of any mortal life left. Project Zero Mortals succeeded. Of course, Zamasu was then going to build his golden utopia upon the ashes of the destroyed world of mortals, but that is another matter entirely. He still indirectly completed Project Zero Mortals, although at the expense of his own life.

Perhaps what I found the worst about this ending was everyone's reaction in the manga. Why the heck were those people smiling and eating bacon when they had just witnessed multiversal genocide? The anime handled this much better, with Mai desperately trying to shoot Zamasu and lamenting the fact that those innocent people, who were just trying to survive despite the circumstances, were all gone, and Trunks, like I was saying, cried and admitted his failure.

None of this was foreshadowed

It was, actually, but it was foreshadowed brilliantly and subtly.

Goku Black was able to tear a rift through timelines using his newly-created scythe, foreshadowing Zamasu's ability to tear a rift into the Present timeline.

Upon his explosive birth, the Supreme God stated "My form is justice" (foreshadowing that he would later on become his own twisted idea of justice and order made manifest) and "My form is the world" (foreshadowing that he would later on merge with the very fabric of the cosmos).

and these are universes where Jiren exists.

What was Jiren going to do? Shoot the sky?

Perhaps Jiren died in the Future timeline. Who knows. Keep in mind that it is 20 years ahead of the Present timeline. Maybe during this period, Jiren was hit by a grave disease and died. This happens. He might be stronger than the Gods of Destruction, yada yada yada, but he is still mortal. He can still die of natural causes.

[Grimlock]

Is anyone else disappointed that the Goku black arc / future trunks ? I mean they had to erase the universe what is trunks and mai doing who btw is like 70 ? I mean it ended how it ended and it couldn't have ended any different but still. Kinda disappointing...

Yes, I'm utterly disappointed by Future Trunks' saga ending. It is the best Dragon Ball Super could offer despite it still being "meh", but certainly it could have been way better and part of it is because of how it ends.

Who thought that Trunks living with himself was a nice idea? This is actually the worst end I have ever seen. They/Toriyama could have done a much more, even Trunks sticking in the present would probably be more interesting, but nope, get rid of him just by making him going to the future once again to live with himself. Terrible, just terrible. It was also the perfect chance to make Trunks to pay for his crime of time travelling and making him a Time Patroller, but it happened what you can expect to happen from Dragon Ball these days: wasted opportunity and being stuck in the safe zone.

[ekrolo2]

Besides the obvious logical problems concerning what the hell Black's portal clones thing is, Trunks' form, the Spirit Bomb Sword,.... Tone is the primary issue with the ending: framing it as a bittersweet thing is stupid beyond belief. Trunks never being able to see his friends and family from the past & rebuilding the future with what he's got left is bittersweet, the ending we have? It's an absolute failure on every conceivable level.

Everything Trunks, Future Bulma, Future Gohan did and struggled for was meaningless, their sacrifices, the time, blood and sweat they poured in against the Androids then against Black & Zamasu was for nothing and that's fine, with the proper tone. The Bardock special had the balls to have Bardock completely fail, annihilated along with the rest of his species with only a tiny shred satisfaction left for him in the end. This arc doesn't have the aforementioned balls to frame this as a massive, crippling loss for everyone involved and expects me to buy it as bittersweet, fuck that.

The context and implications are far too bleak for me to ever buy it as what they're selling it.

[sintzu]

I loved that ending as it showed that no matter what you do, if something is meant to happen, it'll happen. Trunks tried to cheat fate by going back in time to find a way to stop the androids but despite temporarily preventing the "apocalypse", it still happened.

I do hate the spirit sword and him living in a timeline with another Trunks as they wasted a great way to permanently keep him around but him losing his timeline was perfect. I also don't like the melted Zamasu half or him becoming a giant as both ideas felt really out of place.

[Akira]

The things everyone else mentioned did bother me to one extent or another, but ultimately they were all things I could hand wave away for one reason or another and just accept. Although there is a single exception that just really annoyed me. The entire arc is supposed to show that time traveling, and meddling in the past was strictly forbidden by the gods. The creation of new timelines and altering the fabric of existence was considered among the gravest of errors. So much in fact that Beerus destroyed present Bulma's attempt to create another time machine.

So given all of this build up that this is all very serious crimes against the gods, Whis plans a solution that basically creates yet another parallel timeline to send Trunks and Mai to? They missed a great opportunity to truly bring everything that Trunks and Cell did originally to a happy conclusion. By this, I mean the timeline that Cell came from. In that world, Goku died from the heart virus, everyone else to the Androids, and that Trunks (after helping the Z fighters destroy the Androids in the first altered timeline presumably with the remote control plan) was planning to return to the past and tell the others he'd destroyed the Androids in his time as well. We know what happened to him, he was killed by Cell and the time machine was taken further back, thus creating two more timelines as a result of what had already been altered thus far. So, that timeline still had a Bulma, and a world with no Z fighters, no androids, and no Cell (because that world's Cell was the one who time traveled and eventually killed by Super 2 Gohan at the Cell games in our timeline) Why wouldn't Trunks and Mai go to that timeline, and bring the older story arc full circle with a happy ending for a world that had no one left to threaten nor protect it? Trunks lost his mother, and that world's Bulma lost her son.

Seemed like a major lost opportunity to just fill in the gaps so to speak, rather than expand the time traveling mess further with more timelines. That is an ending that I could have been happy with. But, I suppose the time patrol Trunks thing could have some bearing on it. I never looked at it that way before.

[Hulk10]

I agree that it was a disappointing end. All the previous responses had good points. I agree that the end was a little rushed. But in the end it ended the way it ended.