Dragon Ball Super: Beerus - Episode 3 - Official Discussion Thread

[DestructoDisc]

Why do we need "slice of life" moments with characters who add nothing to the story ? Battle of Gods is the story of Goku, Beerus, and Vegeta; everyone else is just background noise; the less time spent with them the better the flow of the story is.

Right, this episode definitely proved how great the flow of the story is, with pacing that is completely all over the place.

Just because Goku, Beerus and Vegeta are the main chatacters of this arc, doesn't mean that the rest of the cast should be cardboard cutouts. No one said that an entire episode should be dedicated to them partying or something, and everyone and their mother knows the Pilaf Gang got too much attention in both of the previous iterations, but at least treat these characters as actual characters. Have them react at least to what is going on. The Z fighters vs Beerus fight was off for that very reason, they just randomly attack him, and get taken out in the blink of an eye, no one is giving any human reaction to what is even going on. Also claiming those 3 characters were the only ones relevant to the story is false. If you're not gonna treat these characters well, at least treat Bulma well. She's one of the franchise's main characters, and YES, she IS important to this arc, especially to Vegeta's character. The "my Bulma" moment didn't flow as well here as in the other iterations because up to that point Vegeta and Bulma didn't have A SINGLE interaction. Videl and Gohan should be treated better as they are also relevant to this arc, without them the God Ritual next episode wouldn't work. Yet so far Videl didn't even have a single line of dialogue, and even Gohan has only spoken once, lol. At the very least they should have kept the moment where they show Piccolo their wedding image, but no, Oolong's RPS scene was appearantly far more important to dedicate so much time on.

They probably aren't explaining why they're kids because of how creepy the concept of Trunks being involved with Mai is. If anything, I think they want the viewers to just assume these are the kids of the original Pilaf gang.

Do you genuinely believe they think their viewers are that stupid? This theory doesn't work anyways, not only do future arcs directly mention that yes, they are in fact the Pilaf gang, but they literally refer to Pilaf as "Pilaf-sama" in this episode. Unless you think they want their viewers to believe Pilaf named his identical looking son after himself lol.

[JulieYBM]

They missed three crucial beats: setting up Bulma's party, giving us slice-of-life moments with character reintroductions before Beerus arrives, and actually explaining why the Pilaf gang are kids. Rushing past all of that stripped away the charm and narrative logic. Huge disappointment. I hope this episode is the exception, not the rule.

Why does a birthday party need set up ? it's pretty explanatory.

Why do we need "slice of life" moments with characters who add nothing to the story ? Battle of Gods is the story of Goku, Beerus, and Vegeta; everyone else is just background noise; the less time spent with them the better the flow of the story is.

They probably aren't explaining why they're kids because of how creepy the concept of Trunks being involved with Mai is. If anything, I think they want the viewers to just assume these are the kids of the original Pilaf gang.

You honestly think Dragon Ball lowering itself to being "The Goku and Vegeta Show: Even More than Usual" is a good thing?

On that topic, Battle of Gods is a reunion movie, meaning every character is important to the story.

I think that focusing on the primary characteds of an arc is a separate thing from only being the Goku & Vegeta show. I would offer that getting other characters' perspectives on those events in episodes after this arc is a good idea for developing stories for them. This is why I loved the one-off episodes that connected the arcs in Dragon Ball Super (2025) so much and why I wish more episodes like that existed.

I don't need to see a spotlight on Piccolo in these first six episodes, but if Episode #7 was suddenly dedicated to showing us Piccolo reconciling with the appearance of Beerus and what that means for his and Dende's place in the god hierarchy or whatever, then that's where the way to go about things. Keep the Toriyama arcs based on films tight and small, then bridge them with stories about other characters that set up their arcs and develop them.

[kemuri07]

They missed three crucial beats: setting up Bulma's party, giving us slice-of-life moments with character reintroductions before Beerus arrives, and actually explaining why the Pilaf gang are kids. Rushing past all of that stripped away the charm and narrative logic. Huge disappointment. I hope this episode is the exception, not the rule.

Why does a birthday party need set up ? it's pretty explanatory.

Why do we need "slice of life" moments with characters who add nothing to the story ? Battle of Gods is the story of Goku, Beerus, and Vegeta; everyone else is just background noise; the less time spent with them the better the flow of the story is.

They probably aren't explaining why they're kids because of how creepy the concept of Trunks being involved with Mai is. If anything, I think they want the viewers to just assume these are the kids of the original Pilaf gang.

You honestly think Dragon Ball lowering itself to being "The Goku and Vegeta Show: Even More than Usual" is a good thing?

On that topic, Battle of Gods is a reunion movie, meaning every character is important to the story.

This is such an important factor as to what made Battle of Gods so enjoyable: It was the first "full length" Dragon Ball film since the 90s. A big chunk of that film is devoted to fan service and getting audiences back to speed with the rest of the Z gang. To say "nah none of that is important" is some wild fucking shit.

TDK, I think with every post you make you are honestly proving my initial point that the real purpose of this "enhance edition" (imma explain the joke: I don't think it's enhancing shit hence the quotation marks) is not to bring Super to Akira Toriyama's true vision (because let's be honest, it's completely failed at that), but instead to appeal to a very specific kind of anime fan who seems to just really despise storytelling or character beats, but only like aura-farming fight scenes and think that's what anime should only have. The purpose of slice of life moments in anime is to give downtime so that you can build relationships and world building, that there is more to these characters than just being fodder in another shounen battle action scene. Granted, I'm not even trying to say that Super is good at this. As it turns out, trying to break up a story meant for a movie into a multi-episode arc is horrendous for its pacing.

[JulieYBM]

Naw, you can turn Battle of Gods into a well-paced set of television episodes, you just need to actually do this shit well and with more character arcs. Not in the haphazard way that has been done both times lol

[The Dark Knight]

The purpose of slice of life moments in anime is to give downtime so that you can build relationships and world building, that there is more to these characters than just being fodder in another shounen battle action scene. Granted, I'm not even trying to say that Super is good at this. As it turns out, trying to break up a story meant for a movie into a multi-episode arc is horrendous for its pacing.

I agree with you actually, which is why I prefer Z over Kai, vastly prefer it in fact. The difference however is that the original DB and Z knew how to write fun slice of life moments that made me want to spend more time with these characters; Super on the other hand always came off as time wasting.

[MCDaveG]

3 episodes in and still unimpressed :/

Sure, the fights, choreography and some choices with visuals and on-model art, is vastly superior to OG Super. No contest. It looks marvelous.

Sadly, like Kai, not only Beerus inherits all the sins with the source material, it also pushes the despair with it further.
Somebody mentioned, that one of the strongest points of the original Z BOG movie are the characters, their reunion and slice of life after Buu and before EOZ, before things go sidequest ways in the 10 year or so gap.
All of that is missing.
We get quick recap and context stillshots in episode one, blink or miss it, to skip over characters and let them jump in the fight out of the blue, just so they are there. "Hi, I am Bulma, having a birthday" "Pudding!" Blam blam blam blam blam, just to end it on that horrid Oolong gag.
While I didn't gave a damn about that soldier in Godzilla and was more interested in that scarcely represented monster, here it's missing all the emotional/character meat.

Beerus is basically Dragon Ball Super – Just Fighting (Remastered).

If they were so creative to cut out Vegeta making an ass of himself – which were actually the only funny bits in the original – they could've cut out the Pilaf Gang alltogether, instead of having them hastily introduced just so they can keep the original shots.
Because mind you! We won't get the kids plothole fixed ever! In technically second adaptation of original story (3rd retelling of the story), where that issue wasn't present. And the writing was far superior.

To add salt into the wounds:
– sound mix of SFX has no impact whatsoever and it's missing juice.
– the voice acting is weird at times. Be it that they changed, cut and rearranged it, while Kaioh sounds worse to Yanami's poor health, even Bulma sounded out of place in her more emotional scenes. Not to mention, keeping that long sequence of Vegeta struggling vocally was uncanny somehow as well.
– Most art is not updated and kinda jarring.

[Makaioshin]

This really is an adaptation of the Super manga in spirit. You actually can't look at this show as its own thing with a coherent narrative. It exists entirely as a supplemental text to the original TV version of Super.

[Nafno]

Naw, you can turn Battle of Gods into a well-paced set of television episodes, you just need to actually do this shit well and with more character arcs. Not in the haphazard way that has been done both times lol

Yeah, you are totally right. Actually, when I read about the "bringing it closer to Toriyama's vision" I thought that the obvious way to do that would be taking the movie, improving its visual and adding the scenes that were in the script but didn't make it to the movie. What they are doing is actually the opposite of what they said, which is probably a new height in using Toriyama's name in bad faith. And only two years after his dead! Yippee!

[Lord Beerus]

Ugh.

I thought the original Super anime's version of retelling the Bulma's Party/Beerus' Arrival/My Bulma narrative portions from the Battle of Gods were terribly drawn out, but it at least tried to retain the whimsy and charm of all the scenarios, even if it got really melodramatic. And more than anything else, it was narratively cohesive.

This whole episode was a fucking mess from a storytelling perspective. It was poorly directed, sloppily edited and terribly paced. This is the third attempt by Super (twice with the anime and once with the manga) at adapting the events of Battle Of Gods, and they still can't get it right.

[Neo-Makaiōshin]

The cutting in this episode was overkill, a total frankenstein of an episode.

[Noah]

Funny to think something like this would make this episode a bit more interesting:

[PhantomSaiyan]

Funny to think something like this would make this episode a bit more interesting:

Spoiler:

The only thing it would do for me is make me ask "why tf would they do this, and not fix Kibitoshin still being fused"

[SaiyamanMS]

This episode was a massive disappointment, the only thing this series has over the movie so far is the stuff with Goku in episode one. I like that they redid Goku’s image training to be more like the manga’s version. Otherwise, there’s some improvement over the Battle of Gods arc of the original Super, but the movie is still vastly superior in every other aspect. (Also, changing the slap to... some kind of accidental elbow bump? Lame.)

I’m not against the idea of a recut of Super, but from the beginning I wasn’t sure why they should bother with the Battle of Gods or Resurrection ‘F’ arcs when the movies already exist and they’re already proving that Super’s Battle of Gods arc simply can’t be fixed. The extended cut of the movie is the perfect version of the Battle of Gods story.

Also, people hoping for SSJ4 Goku or SSJ3 Vegeta were never going to get that. I was at least hoping that Kibitoshin would have been changed back to just regular Kaioshin, but we can’t even get that much for continuity’s sake.

[taikufuru]

However, it seems to me that they have no interest whatsoever in telling this story in an engaging way—which, once again, makes me question the necessity of the whole thing. It is not "more faithful to Akira Toriyama’s original drafr" as was claimed, nor is it a suitable starting point for a new generation, given the massive gaps in the narrative that make it difficult to follow without having to refer back to the 2015 TV series or the 2013 film.

Even the visual enhancement isn’t all that impressive; given that they’re working with a much better schedule than in 2015 and utilizing most of the original material, the difference in the animation still isn’t as significant as one might have expected.

[emperior]

I had some hopes that Beerus would fix not only the animation, but also parts of the story, making it more faithful to the original Battle of Gods movie (which was perfect). I already knew this wasn't going to happen when they announced they hadn't recorded any new lines. But this episode made it even clearer that not only are they not fixing anything beyond some animation and the addition of Goku's manga mind training in Episode 1, they're actually making things even worse!

Removing the scene where Vegeta abandons his pride to calm Beerus down is a terrible decision. The original Super was already bad enough in this regard, as it completely "forgot" Goku's dissatisfaction with attaining Super Saiyan God through the help of others, only for him to set aside his pride to both fight Beerus and protect Earth (partly inspired by Vegeta, too). Now it's all gone. Not to mention that Pilaf's gang serves absolutely no purpose here (whereas their role in the movie was purposeful and nicely executed).

This is really bad, and it's sad. Battle of Gods is by far the best Dragon Ball movie, and 13 years later, on their third attempt, they still can't do its story justice.

[Cipher]

Just took a spin through the first three episodes. While it's still ludicrous that we're missing a line about the Pilaf Gang's youth, I thought the pacing of the episode was just fine. The pudding scene got a genuine laugh out of me, and while I was tempted to say for a minute that simply transitioning into Goku's arrival after the battle with the main gang would have been for the best, Beerus mistaking Oolong for being the same race as Majin Boo and using the rock-paper-scissors challenge as a cliffhanger is actually funny as hell, so I'm for it.

It's a shame we lost the "world's most comfortable pillow" gag (or was that only in the manga?). Otherwise, I'm not missing anything here. The "my Bulma" power-up is embarrassingly overlong, but at least we've lost the godawful buildup to the slap from the original anime.

The action scenes have all impressed, and this is certainly a watchable version of Super, but it's still held back by some of the '15 anime's storytelling and pacing choices, being beholden to its footage. In particular, though this is an Episode 1 issue rather than 3, the early scenes on the pig and dinosaur-meat planets make Beerus and Whis look far more mean-spirited and villainous than the story ultimately warrants and more than either the film or manga paints them. The latter also feels transparently like padding.

I think it's also coming to a head in Episode 3 that, while I do think this episode had fine pacing unto itself, the overall momentum of this story line as serialized feels off. Obviously that's because the scenario was written to be a stand-alone movie, but I think you could do a reasonably compelling four(?)-episode version of it; just not confined to the way the original '15 anime handled it and the footage it leaves you with.

Ultimately it's kind of a bummer to have a project where the ceiling for everything going right is still just "watchable," but it is what it is. While I think Super is still best experienced through movies and manga, this is as much a success as it reasonably could have been.

I actually started laughing my ass off when the filter came on during the scene with Buu not giving Beerus the pudding. In its attempt to make an inherently comedic moment serious, it actually goes the complete opposite direction and goes right into unintentional comedy where they have the filter and serious, intense music, all while Beerus is ranting and raving about pudding.

I think you may have mistaken intentional comedy for unintentional. The moment absolutely landed for me, and the contrast of serious tone (and actual danger Beerus poses) with the absurd impetus is part of it.

[Zinnia]

Battle of Gods is by far the best Dragon Ball movie

Nah, that's Fusion Reborn.
The actual fighting part of BoG sucked. SSG was on screen for only what, 5 minutes? And then the segment in space was just boring to watch.

[Zebra]

SSG was on screen for only what, 5 minutes?

Gogeeta was on-screen in Fusion Reborn for only, what, 1 minute?

The stuff with Vekuu and especially Hitler was just a waste of time. Fusion Reborn is easily the most overrated film. DBS Broly did Gogeeta a lot more justice; it's my favorite film for that reason. Doesn't get any hyper than Gogeeta vs. Broly.

[The Dark Knight]

SSG was on screen for only what, 5 minutes?

Gogeeta was on-screen in Fusion Reborn for only, what, 1 minute?

The stuff with Vekuu and especially Hitler was just a waste of time. Fusion Reborn is easily the most overrated film. DBS Broly did Gogeeta a lot more justice; it's my favorite film for that reason. Doesn't get any hyper than Gogeeta vs. Broly.

We literally spent more time with Veku than we did with Gogeta. Despite what the video games may lead you to believe, GT's version of Gogeta was handled terribly as well, although for different reasons than Fusion Reborn. Broly is by far, without the closest of comparisons, the ebst we've seen Gogeta handled in any media.

This is really bad, and it's sad. Battle of Gods is by far the best Dragon Ball movie, and 13 years later, on their third attempt, they still can't do its story justice.

As a result of Beerus being roughly the same length as the movie, I plan on watching both of them back to back once EP6 is released to see which is truly the better version of the story.

[Zebra]

Anyway, I feel the complaints are overblown. They're not doing the best job with the edits, but I'd have definitely accepted this over the shitshow we got back in 2015. And it's not like we can't just watch BoG if we want to watch the best version of the story. Does that mean this still fails as an adaption? Maybe, but adapting the movies at all was always unnecessary. This remaster is just intended to make the show prettier and shorter. What do we really expect here?

I never found Vegeeta's bingo dance funny, and while I chuckled at Vegeeta cooking back in 2015, it's not at all necessary. Vegeeta doesn't have to be made into a joke to show how much he's changed. Stuff like him defending civilians in DBZ Movie 13 and declaring himself an Earthling in GT did a better job at that. Him dancing and cooking always just amounted to silly gags.

Another thing, not every character was important to Battle of Gods. Far from it. Just because it's a "reunion movie" doesn’t mean every character needed to be there at all; it didn't even need to be a reunion. Nothing important changes if Oolong, Pu'er, Mr. Satan, Chichi, Gyuumaoh, Roushi, Kurilin, No.18, Yamcha, Tenshinhan, Chiaotzu, Dende, Pilaf, Mai, Shuu, Dr. Brief, Bulma's mom, or even Piccolo don't appear. Most of them are just glorified background characters.

Personally, I would've followed the manga's example and cut straight into Birus's rampage at the party after his first fight with Gokuu. I don't care about any of this other crap. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯