"Dragon Ball Super (Manga)" Official Discussion Thread

[Noah]

I have a lot of issues with a lot of what's going on in Super overall, both in anime and manga form including a ton of the surrounding context in this chapter itself, but Ultra Instinct and its rollout as a concept is in no way one of those issues.

I see your point, though I despise the idea that Ultra Instinct might be used as card to win any match (as many predict that Goku will unlock in order to defeat Broly in the upcoming movie) also how to make someone top that? Super Ultra Instinct? Will Vegeta learn it too making it less special like past transformations? I don't know I believe they could come up with this concept for the very end of the series, it's all going in circles again. (Though I know it's early to conclude anything.)

Doesn't matter, pal. Roshi could be Bulma level times negative infinity and it wouldn't change a thing about Ultra Instinct disregarding "muh power levels". It's a technique that overcomes any threat, no matter how strong. Roshi used a flawed variation. Simple stuff. Your video of Jiren intimidating some random scrub doesn't change that point.

Mate, the very idea of an imperfect technique overcoming the gigantic gap between Roshi and Jiren is a proof of bad writing. It just had the purpose of making Roshi look cool for nothing. The anime did it better, having him take on opponents that were on his league or a few notches above. Really, anyone would buy if it was Goku being weaker than Jiren, not managing to land a punch on him, but dodging of all his attacks. The concept was introduced by Whis, Roshi didn't trained with him, Goku did it.

Yeah, let's not pretend base Gohan being equal with Kefla is a thing, because fortunately, it isn't. A Gohan that doesn't need to turn Super Saiyan is Ultimate Gohan.

Sure you can close your eyes to that, but yes Base Gohan > Kefla is a thing. People say he was Ultimate, but there were no lined eyes and the hair bang indicating so. He didn't turn Super Saiyan merely for choice, a very stupid one, but remember Gohan was never a smart tactical fighter, so yea that thing Toyotaro got right.

And why is the anime always mentioned here?

Because some can't accept that with all their problems Toei did it a better work with Toriyama barebones than Toyotaro for a considerable margin.

[prince212]

I don’t think that kafla fusion is weaker than kale , I think it’s clear that gohan is a great fighter and that’s it.
People is confused with what happened in the anime where gohan didn’t show up good fight manners and here they took the route of a gohan that keeps on being one of the best fighters by nature and instincts.
Let’s be honest , if the case were that anime showed us what manga is showing us and viceversa the criticism will be the same ..

[Noah]

At last Toyo could have made Roshi do his "UI" against a weaker opponent instead of freaking Jiren, who is a the level of the Gods! I dont understand how someone can defend this, it makes absolutely no sense no matter how you explain it, and makes Jiren and UI Omen look really bad if Roshi can evade and block someone on their level.

Exactly and why would Jiren even waste his time? Is not like he couldn't wave out weaklings out of the ring with the pressure of his aura.
Again: some might be blaming Toyotaro for this, but that might be Toriyama wanting to change how fights works in DB, which I think is fine, although I definitely know he could do better than this.

[Aizamasu]

Kale by herself is Blue tier given last chapter, so Kefla should be more than slightly above.

Kefla is not "slightly " above blue tier. Kale alone was knocking around Golden Freeza and was about to get the upper hand on Goku and Kefla is many times stronger.

Kale's power was dropping before fusing with Caulifla. So she wasn't Blue tier when she fused so we have no idea how strong Kefla actually was.

[PFM18]

Some scattered thoughts I had about Chapter 39:
*snip*

I agree with pretty much everything you said. Brilliant analysis as usual

Obvious power scaling blunders aside, I don't like how the fights in this chapter were handled. The Gohan vs Kefla fight had all of this build up, and after Gohan flicks away her ki blast like it is nothing, it looks like Gohan is going to have a shining moment. Then, they have a brief exchange in which Gohan is ridiculously out of character talking about evolving his Human side rather than his Saiyan side. We are left to assume that this is his "Ultimate" state and that is why he has this much power, but the dialogue does not fit this at all whatsoever. Gohan is a character who, never in any way, resented his Saiyan side and expressed an interest in advancing himself as a human rather than a Saiyan. You may call this "development" but it just comes out of absolutely nowhere and doesn't fit the scene very well at all. This is in addition to the fact that Gohan's innate talent that Krillin referenced is a direct result of his Saiyan cells. Now he is becoming super strong because he is half human? What? What's worse is that they show this brief excahnge, cut away, and then when they cut back each character is battle damaged. This hyped up fight happened almost entirely off-screen. Then they both just kind of awkwardly agree that each are at their limit and are going to knock each other off in the most anti-climactic, boring way possible.

We get deprived of the majority of the Kefla vs Gohan fight and we get what instead? We see a short sequence of kicks from Toppo and Vegeta, in the most bland and boring way possible. Toppo just kind of says something akin to; "Yeah so I'm totally a God of Destruction candidate. That's cool huh?" Nothing about renouncing justice. Nothing about becoming more powerful for the sake of survival and casting aside who he is as a person. Just kind of whips his shirt off and makes a generic comment about being a GoD candidate.

Then we get to see Jiren beat the crap out of Goku for the millionth time and this is presented as if this is somehow more interesting than Gohan vs Kefla and we should be invested in this instead. Then, we have a ridiculous scene where Goku is portrayed as a fighting amateur and we act as though Roshi wasn't surpassed in every way like 20 years ago. Roshi literally said before that he has nothing left to teach Goku. Now here he is, Goku being a literal divine Saiyan, and Roshi is teaching him as though he is still 12.

Downright awful chapter. This is horrible even by the already low standard set by Toyo's previous manga chapters.

[CriticalThinker]

Whelp can't say I was a very big fan of this chapter. My biggest issue was with Gohan vs Kefla, not with the powerscaling but with how Toyo handled the fight. Prior to this chapter I thought we might get a team up of 17 and Gohan against Kefla or hell even Roshi and Gohan vs Kefla, the possibility of this happening made pretty excited to see the match up. But that didn't end up happening which is disappointing, but that's okay though Gohan is smart so surely he'll figure out a way to beat them. Such as catching Kefla off guard and destroying the Potara and then throwing out Kale and Caulifla when they defused. But that also didn't end up happening, instead what we get is a brief fight between Gohan and Kefla because most of the fight takes place offscreen. Boy oh boy was this just very disappointing, of all the fights Toyo decided to have off screen this is the one which shouldn't have been. For me this fight had so much more potential than the anime version and could easily been the best fight in both mediums but that sadly didn't end up happening. Hell even if the fight was just Gohan vs Kefla and none of the stuff I mentioned prior happened that be fine as long as we got to see the whole fight. At this point in the tournament Toyo should be going all out with the fights but so far for me he's dropped the ball. I guess I'm to blame for getting my hopes up and will lower my expectations even further since I get the gut feeling this is how most fights will be handled outside of Goku vs Jiren. Other than that though UI introduction was underwhelming and the stuff with Roshi and Jiren stretched my suspension of belief pretty far. Here's hoping next chapter is better.

[Xeztin]

Was Gohan in his “Mystic” state or was he truly relying on on his base state?

[PFM18]

Was Gohan in his “Mystic” state or was he truly relying on on his base state?

I mean he doesn't have the bang like his Mystic state usually has, but I think it would only make sense if he was in his Mystic state here? But at the same time, he said this was a result of "evolving his human side" and Mystic clearly has absolutely nothing to do with evolving your human state. I don't know maybe I am missing something here but it makes no sense to me

[ekrolo2]

Was Gohan in his “Mystic” state or was he truly relying on on his base state?

He's Ultimate, the SS eyes in his otherwise regular looking appearance are a dead give away.

[Xeztin]

Was Gohan in his “Mystic” state or was he truly relying on on his base state?

He's Ultimate, the SS eyes in his otherwise regular looking appearance are a dead give away.

I’m guessing in the manga version he doesn’t grow a bang almost like treating it as a “Base stated technique” rather where the anime has him grow a bang to show he has transformed.

[emperior]

I don’t care about Gohan being that strong to be honest. It may be bullshit for some for Gohan to be this strong or for Kefla to be this weak, but it doesn’t go against anything established before hand, and we don’t know how strong Kefla is. Gohan is surely around Blue level in both the anime and manga, and I like this as it gives Gohan some well needed action and respect.

What shouldn’t be accepted is everything else in this awful chapter. The way Goku and Roshi are portrayed is downright offensive to the fans of Toriyama’s original work. This is probably the worst thing I have ever seen in something Dragon Ball related in the last years. I wouldn’t expect such a badly written narrative to be written even by Toei’s worst writer, as they have respect for the original work and aren’t going to completely alter Goku, Roshi and how DB works just for the sake of their narrative.
I am not against technique winning over power, but not when the gap is too big or else it just contradicts the past stories.
And there are surely better ways to introduce such a big change than having it suddenly happening in the span of a single chapter. It also makes Goku and everyone else not named Roshi a martial arts incompetent.

This such a shame because I never expected Toyotaro to produce a chapter that ignores what was written in the past by Toriyama and completely fails to represent its characters.
I repeat, this chapter isn’t Dragon Ball. That old man isn’t Roshi, as Roshi never taught his students to focus on technique over strength and he had nothing more to teach them. Do not trust that black haired fighting newbie dude, he is not called Son Goku. The true Son Goku would never lose his temper like that trying to go for pure power and being ridiculed by his foe for that. The true Son Goku never forgot his trainings, as they were the reason why he was that strong. He was never a bad student, he was a fighting genius who could pick up all his teachings extremely fast compared to everyone else.

Do you guys remember Yakon? That showed how Goku surely hadn’t forgotten Popo’s teachings. The anime was faithful to this in the Zen Exhibition Match, when Gohan was still able to fight even though he was blind. That’s Dragon Ball. Call the anime bad as much as you want but it never failed to capture Dragon Ball like this. Sure, it had some inconsistent power scaling (which the manga also has), some flanderization of some personality aspects of the characters and probably one too many callbacks, but it never ever went to such lengths to the point the characters aren’t even recognisable.

[Hawk9211]

I don’t care about Gohan being that strong to be honest. It may be bullshit for some for Gohan to be this strong or for Kefla to be this weak, but it doesn’t go against anything established before hand, and we don’t know how strong Kefla is. Gohan is surely around Blue level in both the anime and manga, and I like this as it gives Gohan some well needed action and respect.

What shouldn’t be accepted is everything else in this awful chapter. The way Goku and Roshi are portrayed is downright offensive to the fans of Toriyama’s original work. This is probably the worst thing I have ever seen in something Dragon Ball related in the last years. I wouldn’t expect such a badly written narrative to be written even by Toei’s worst writer, as they have respect for the original work and aren’t going to completely alter Goku, Roshi and how DB works just for the sake of their narrative.
I am not against technique winning over power, but not when the gap is too big or else it just contradicts the past stories.
And there are surely better ways to introduce such a big change than having it suddenly happening in the span of a single chapter. It also makes Goku and everyone else not named Roshi a martial arts incompetent.

This such a shame because I never expected Toyotaro to produce a chapter that ignores what was written in the past by Toriyama and completely fails to represent its characters.
I repeat, this chapter isn’t Dragon Ball. That old man isn’t Roshi, as Roshi never taught his students to focus on technique over strength and he had nothing more to teach them. Do not trust that black haired fighting newbie dude, he is not called Son Goku. The true Son Goku would never lose his temper like that trying to go for pure power and being ridiculed by his foe for that. The true Son Goku never forgot his trainings, as they were the reason why he was that strong. He was never a bad student, he was a fighting genius who could pick up all his teachings extremely fast compared to everyone else.

Do you guys remember Yakon? That showed how Goku surely hadn’t forgotten Popo’s teachings. The anime was faithful to this in the Zen Exhibition Match, when Gohan was still able to fight even though he was blind. That’s Dragon Ball. Call the anime bad as much as you want but it never failed to capture Dragon Ball like this. Sure, it had some inconsistent power scaling (which the manga also has), some flanderization of some personality aspects of the characters and probably one too many callbacks, but it never ever went to such lengths to the point the characters aren’t even recognisable.

I think jiren was only curious about what roshi was doing.

[ekrolo2]

Was Gohan in his “Mystic” state or was he truly relying on on his base state?

He's Ultimate, the SS eyes in his otherwise regular looking appearance are a dead give away.

I’m guessing in the manga version he doesn’t grow a bang almost like treating it as a “Base stated technique” rather where the anime has him grow a bang to show he has transformed.

That's what Ultimate is supposed to be: Base with all your power available without transforming. The whole idea behind it is to render transformations pointless. The anime fucked up by turning it into one.

[Simere]

I've never enjoyed Goku less than I did in this chapter.

It's not just about foreshadowing, it's about character motivation. It's about establishing a logical progression of events with Vegeta learning that it's the key to overcoming characters like Beerus, Goku seeing the same technique in action during the Zen Exhibition, and both concluding that they have to overcome that wall. It's about having those goals interplay with the personalities of the protagonists and influencing the plot, like with Goku selfishly deciding to forego his team-up with Hit to focus on reaching this mysterious milestone. It's NOT about withholding those aspirations until after the form comes out of bumfuck nowhere because "hurrrrr he absorbed da spirit bomb".

Do you admit you were wrong about this?

[LightBing]

People are taking Gohan's line far too literally.

He' s just saying he won't be transforming anymore which we already know since the Boo Arc. Toyotarõ probably just wants to make it clear since he didn't had the chance yet and all other mediums can't decide themselves.

He's going for the Jiren/Beerus path, no transformations straight leveling up.

[emperior]

I don’t care about Gohan being that strong to be honest. It may be bullshit for some for Gohan to be this strong or for Kefla to be this weak, but it doesn’t go against anything established before hand, and we don’t know how strong Kefla is. Gohan is surely around Blue level in both the anime and manga, and I like this as it gives Gohan some well needed action and respect.

What shouldn’t be accepted is everything else in this awful chapter. The way Goku and Roshi are portrayed is downright offensive to the fans of Toriyama’s original work. This is probably the worst thing I have ever seen in something Dragon Ball related in the last years. I wouldn’t expect such a badly written narrative to be written even by Toei’s worst writer, as they have respect for the original work and aren’t going to completely alter Goku, Roshi and how DB works just for the sake of their narrative.
I am not against technique winning over power, but not when the gap is too big or else it just contradicts the past stories.
And there are surely better ways to introduce such a big change than having it suddenly happening in the span of a single chapter. It also makes Goku and everyone else not named Roshi a martial arts incompetent.

This such a shame because I never expected Toyotaro to produce a chapter that ignores what was written in the past by Toriyama and completely fails to represent its characters.
I repeat, this chapter isn’t Dragon Ball. That old man isn’t Roshi, as Roshi never taught his students to focus on technique over strength and he had nothing more to teach them. Do not trust that black haired fighting newbie dude, he is not called Son Goku. The true Son Goku would never lose his temper like that trying to go for pure power and being ridiculed by his foe for that. The true Son Goku never forgot his trainings, as they were the reason why he was that strong. He was never a bad student, he was a fighting genius who could pick up all his teachings extremely fast compared to everyone else.

Do you guys remember Yakon? That showed how Goku surely hadn’t forgotten Popo’s teachings. The anime was faithful to this in the Zen Exhibition Match, when Gohan was still able to fight even though he was blind. That’s Dragon Ball. Call the anime bad as much as you want but it never failed to capture Dragon Ball like this. Sure, it had some inconsistent power scaling (which the manga also has), some flanderization of some personality aspects of the characters and probably one too many callbacks, but it never ever went to such lengths to the point the characters aren’t even recognisable.

I think jiren was only curious about what roshi was doing.

Not really. There’s nothing suggesting this either. We also have Roshi beating Kahseral despite both having a wide difference in power as Kahseral himself says.
Toyotaro has murdered Goku, Roshi and even Gohan in a single chapter. I hope such a disgraceful thing will never happen once again.

[PFM18]

He's Ultimate, the SS eyes in his otherwise regular looking appearance are a dead give away.

I’m guessing in the manga version he doesn’t grow a bang almost like treating it as a “Base stated technique” rather where the anime has him grow a bang to show he has transformed.

That's what Ultimate is supposed to be: Base with all your power available without transforming. The whole idea behind it is to render transformations pointless. The anime fucked up by turning it into one.

Well it is supposed to "be a state that brings you past your limits without changing form" and that is essentially what the anime did. He would turn that "state" on and off, but he wouldn't actually change form he'd still be the same looking Gohan but just a cue in his hair style to let you know what is going on.

People are taking Gohan's line far too literally.

He' s just saying he won't be transforming anymore which we already know since the Boo Arc. Toyotarõ probably just wants to make it clear since he didn't had the chance yet and all other mediums can't decide themselves.

He's going for the Jiren/Beerus path, no transformations straight leveling up.

But it clearly has absolutely nothing to do with what was established in the Buu arc and clashes with what was established to be his state that was superior to Super Saiyan.

Ultra Instinct is an advanced martial arts technique that makes all power gaps irrelevant. No, seriously; that's literally its entire purpose. Roshi, a martial arts master with 300 years of experience under his belt, managed to obtain an imperfect bootleg version of Ultra Instinct. Therefore, Roshi can dodge and fight Jiren for a brief period of time. Baaasic fucking logic. Anyone who paid attention to those descriptions shouldn't have an issue with this from a power scaling standpoint because, contrary to popular belief, it makes sense. From a thematic standpoint, I guess it's more debatable.

One of these days you will decide to stop being tremendously condescending and rude, and that will be a glorious day

[CriticalThinker]

One other thing I forgot to mention that I wasn't a fan of was the characterization of Kefla this chapter.

[Doctor.]

Gohan vs Kefla had some interesting pieces of choreography but ultimately it's too short of a fight to have any lasting impact. Instead we get Jiren punching things really hard again. Not sure about the whole "I chose to evolve as a human" thing considering Gohan's power comes from his status as a hybrid; you can't have one without the other, it just makes no sense and it just seems like something Toyotaro thought would be cool to throw in without giving it much thought. Also the whole "he's managed to grow stronger during the fight" is ridiculously stupid, but it's a recent modern Dragon Ball trait, so I'll cut Toyotaro some slack.

Champa's goodbye was awful. Completely overblown on his part and Beerus' reaction I would say is out of character.

As expected, Toyotaro doesn't really address the issue of how Goku has managed to keep up in the tournament this long if presumably he and Jiren have been fighting in the background not only in this chapter, but on previous chapters as well. I also don't get the idea behind referencing the Kaioken for Goku's desperate move without actually bringing it in to the story. Like, what even was the point? Why not let him use the Kaioken and work around it with an explanation, instead of having Goku pull the kind of amateur move he'd have criticized in the Cell arc. In fact, this whole plot point just seems to be "let's make Goku look dumb in order to make Roshi look good."

Which leads me to the controversial scene of the month. Powerlevel issues aside (and they are there, but discussing them at this point is useless; if you don't think this is an issue, then there's nothing the manga can do to make you care about consistent scaling), this is thematically inconsistent with Roshi and Goku's arc. Goku has left Roshi in the dust, he literally has nothing left to learn from him as Roshi himself said back in Dragon Ball. As he left Karin, Popo and Kaio in the dust as well. Whis is his current master. If Goku was going to get some kind of master-student lesson, it should come from Whis, not Roshi. I get that Toyotaro is trying to give Roshi his time to shine, but that shouldn't come at the cost of everything else. If Roshi was this competent and talented, you're left wondering why the fuck he never did anything all throughout Z. You don't backpedal now and say Goku still has something to learn from Roshi when the previous series established the exact opposite. You could give Roshi his time to shine AND be thematically consistent by making HIM learn from his students (hmmm, that sounds familiar, I wonder if any potential alternate versions of Super did exactly that?).

Ultra Instinct was incredibly underwhelming, and the way he accesses it is too vague for my liking. I liked the composition of the chapter this month though, fight transitions this chapter reminded me of the early ToP chapters where the tournament actually felt dynamic and alive.

[sintzu]

I was really happy with the change made to who Kefla fights as it seemed like Gohan was going to get a bigger role but instead it mostly happened off screen which not only wasted Gohan but also Kefla. I understand why Roshi is able to do that but not against someone like Jiren when he was struggling against Tien back in the 22nd BT and couldn't land a hit on King Piccolo. This would've been so much better utilized against someone closer to his level. I also don't like the way Toyotaro has handled Goku's fight with Jiren as it's been very simple compared to the ground breaking fight he had in the anime. UI coming out of nowhere also wasn't a great move as the anime made it feel earned through his fight and the spirit bomb hitting him in the face. At this point I think it's safe the say the manga won't be surpassing the anime's tournament as too many mistakes have been to make up for.