Written and drawn by former dojinshi artist Toyotaro (once known as Toyble), the Dragon Ball Super manga started out as a mere promotional item for the anime before slowly becoming a genuine product and alternate continuity of its own. Reception to it was warm at first with it offering fans glimpses into new content while the anime version languished in the movie retellings. As the anime caught up then blew past it, the manga has become a massive point of contention month to month, causing a massive uproar in the fan community as all battle to figure out which of the two is better.
As you'll hopefully see through this little project of mine, the discussion is far more nuanced than "manga rules anime drools" or vice versa. Without further adieu, let us begin with the first chapter!
Chapter 1 - "The God of Destruction's Premonition"
We begin with a pretty snazzy cover showcasing Beerus & Whis in the upper section in the background while a fairly intense trio of Goku, Vegeta and Gohan are positioned at the foreground and getting ready for battle. Beerus' intimidating grin and Whis' indifferent expression paint a good little picture of what follows.
However, I already have to ask, why is Gohan on this cover? Seriously, he does nothing but give Goku the energy necessary to attain SSGod, I'm pretty sure he doesn't even get dialogue until the ToP arc!
Moving on, we get to the actual content of the chapter which shows us a small recap of Kid Boo battle where Goku manages to finally kill him off using the Genki-Dama energy gathered thanks to Satan's- I mean Hercule's help. Yeah, the Viz translations use a dubism with Satan's name being Hercule and not, well, Satan. A major knock against the Viz translations, I myself am fairly indifferent to it.
What's really interesting is the fact they only call Boo, Boo. Another thing the Viz manga changed was calling Majin Boo Djinn Boo instead. I'm not sure why this is as the ma (魔) in Majin means several things such as demon, evil spirit or devil. Piccolo was even referred to as Ma Junior during the 23rd Tenkaichi Budokai, once again emphasizing the demonic origins. Purposefully skirting around a controversial alteration? Probably not, they kept Hercule around so the lack of Djinn probably doesn't mean anything.
Once Goku finishes Boo off, we jump ahead in time and get our first look at our hero, Son Goku!
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[/spoiler]Just in-case I haven't already killed the pacing of this read through enough, the "time had passed since then" box brings up another point of contention: the timeline. I will try to talk about this more but when Super was coming out, it seemed as though they moved up the Battle of Gods story-line to happening mere months after Kid Boo's defeat instead of the movies 4 years after.
This created some problems (and still does to this very day) over the timeline as Pan isn't supposed to be born until Age 779 but the months, not years after the Boo arc, would mean she would arrive MUCH earlier, a good four years sooner. The Dragon Ball wiki says the Battle of Gods arc of Super happens 4 years after Kid Boo was defeated but that place is a mess of misinformation and outright lies so take that with a massive grain of salt.
Back to the actual chapter, Goku yawns just to really sell us on how monumentally bored he is when Goten, still looking the same as his Boo arc self but sporting a new outfit arrives to give his hard-working dad some lunch.
Goku wonders if he left school early but Goten reminds him it's a Sunday. Being the hard worker that he is, Goku immediately tells his son to do his job instead of him so he can chow down then train for a bit.
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[/spoiler]Image training! A concept Toriyama just sort of drops into the story during Gohan, Krillin's and Bulma's trip to Namek and then will promptly forget it ever existed. I like it, ki, chi (Viz) or energy (FUNI) is established of being comprised of several elements such as revealed by Toriyama:
Genki (元気 lit. "Vigor")
Yūki (勇気 lit. "Courage")
Shōki (正気 lit. "Mind")
Since we know you can use ki to read minds and for telekinetic blasts, it makes sense someone could create a sort of imaginary plain to practice fighting in. This is also one of, if not THE only instance of image training being used solo and not with a partner.
Goku dispatches Freeza and Perfect Cell fairly easily as a Super Saiyan, some people use this as proof of his power but I personally don't put much stock in it and readies to fight an image of Kid Boo when Goten almost drives off a cliff.
His dad saves him and scolds him for not paying attention, causing him concentration to break. Goten asks his dad if he was training and Goku confirms as much, he goes on to lament the fact he has to work or else Chi-Chi will murder him and what he'd really like to do is ditch the whole thing so he could go train at Kaio's place.
Then, Hercu- I mean Satan arrives in his flying car and wow, I think Viz is being cheeky here:
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[/spoiler]That can't be a coincidence given what I said about the name change. Also, they go out of their way to change the name on the side of the car to Hercule too. I'm sure someone is foaming at the mouth over this but honestly, I'm actually enjoying the fact Viz might be taking the piss here.
Someplace else in the universe we shall learn is actually the seventh in about 5 chapters, we see Beerus and Whis at an unnamed planet being bombarded with lots and lots food. Unlike the film, the anime and manga versions have the duo partake in some hijinks before going to Kaio's to find out who and what the Super Saiyan God is.
Beerus looks a bit dubious about the quality of the cuisine:
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[/spoiler]I don't blame him cause the fish he's poking has six fucking eyeballs total but he decides to partake anyway while Whis sort of stoically stands at his side. While he's chowing down, we see that the inhabitants of this planet have decided to put a little bit of good ol' fashioned poison in his meal to kill him before he destroys them.
That's actually not a bad idea but of course, Beerus' power is too mother fucking maximum for it to work so he blows the whole place up anyway. In the anime, he's only somewhat disappointed by the food and destroys half of the planet instead, they never try to poison him there. Just before the planet goes boom, one of the aliens tries to bribe Beerus with something called Soup D'Saian Gahd, which reminds Beerus of a dream he'll mention in a couple pages.
Also, now Universe Seven only has 28 planets with intelligent life on them (UUUUUGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! *dies*)
*Is revived by Porunga*
Anywho, Beerus says he couldn't let such a species live but says the planet blowing up reminds him of a dream he recently had.
We move back to Earth where Her- I mean Satan, reveals he wants to give Goku 100 million Zeni! Goku and Goten are expectantly shocked by this and question why. Satan (yes, I got it right!) explains that he got "The World Peace Prize" for destroying Majin Boo, however, Satan doesn't feel right just taking the money for himself and so he wants to give it to the people who actually did the did.
I really like this, it shows nicely how Satan has developed as a character which is bar none a shining aspect of the Boo arc.
Goku says other people were there too and that even Satan played a pivotal role, then he starts to count the amount:
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[/spoiler]Goku is totally useless when it comes to math, big shocker. This is a thing both the manga and the anime bring up a lot. The latter does have a seriously funny joke about this later on when Beerus tells Goku to do one hundred trillion sittups and Goku counts them as "One trillion, two trillion, three trillion,...". That was pretty hilarious.
Goku's mind is blown when Goten explains it to him just how much money that is which makes him extra hesitant not to take it. However, Goten does his dad a solid by explaining that if he takes the money, Chi-Chi will let him off the hook to go train. Needless to say, Goku says yes because any sane person would do that.
I mean really, if someone gave you the option of farming for a living or taking a shit load of cash, we'd aaaallll take the cash.
We return back to Beerus and Whis as they gaze at the formers latest handiwork as he explains his premonition about an ultimate warrior who would be able to endlessly entertain him:
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[/spoiler]Dun dun duuuunn! In retrospect, Super Saiyan God gets quite a lot of hype for essentially being a form that gets discarded and forgotten about once Blue shows up. Although, Toyotaro does admitedly give it some more panel time down the road, whether that's a good thing or not... We'll cross that bridge when the time comes.
Beerus says he doesn't remember the rest and the two head home to clear things up. Thus ending the story content of the chapter but we do get a nice little page to end this first entry off with:
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[/spoiler]Hi Vegeta! Once again, really cool to see Satan being a better guy and going to Vegeta too, even though he obviously doesn't need it since Bulma is loaded and Vegeta is nothing if not an effective freeloader.
Ultimately, this chapter works really well a few years removed from the initial release. The arc is suitably charming, something you could argue the later stuff doesn't quite have and though the page count is limited here, we still get a fairly good idea of where the key characters for this arc are and teases for the future.
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