Dragon Ball Super: Manga Chapter 87 - Official Discussion Thread

[BWri]

Forgot to chime in. Elec, of course, proved to be a big dummy. I was hoping that he'd be more cunning. I know DB doesn't really do cunning anymore and when it tries it tends to get convoluted (Zamasu) but underpowered Vegeta on Namek was a great example. I was hoping that Elec would at least prove to be that cunning, but his wanting Gas to use up all his power/life span killing Goku and Vegeta furthers his plans how? If Gas dies, who takes out Frieza? Or did Elec have some knowledge of Frieza's strength gain and knew Gas needed even more to defeat him? I don't see how but IDK.

My reading is that Elec assumed Gas would already be dead. He seemed surprised to see fighting him again. After that, IDK whats going on. Did he lose his mind and grow some type of twisted pride for his brother? His actions during Gas' fight make little sense to me. And the fact that he couldn't think of a better outcome than wasting Gas' final moments on a pointless battle makes him, the schemer character, extremely pointless to me especially when he's outsmarted by Frieza who pulled the lamest "I'm smarter than you" card. Elec proved to be even more of a battle obsessed maniac than many of the fighters.

All in all, I'm just glad this arc is done. I'm actually grateful Frieza did that for us. He must've been reading it monthly too. I've no real opinion on Black Frieza except that it looks good on the page. One of my close friends hit me up to complain about it, but I'm so far removed from caring about the lazy recolors these days that I find such complaints trivial. My bar for Super has been incredibly low for years since nowadays I turn my brain off and enjoy the pretty colors, fights, and character moments, but if we get another arc like this one, I'll have to adjust it to an impossible degree and at that point, there really would be no reason to continue. The retellings and U6 made me stop watching Super. I still haven't watched that Pontefeu mini-arc or the last 3-4 episodes of RoF. Future Trunks brought me back with the improved quality of ideas and execution of ideas that I by all rights should have hated. But that quality is dipping again so IDK if I can remain interested. Might just get super casual and stick to the movies.

All that said, there were some really good ideas here and for some of them, the execution wasn't half bad. The Bardock stuff was cool and managed to add layers to Goku, Vegeta, and Bardock. If there was less pointless padded fight scenes in the present day, the Bardock stuff would feel even more welcome. I like how it tied into this idea of Saiyan Instinct/Pride and how that added to both Goku and Vegeta's current fighting philosophy and transformations. In a vacuum Granolah and the Heaters were good characters with good potential. The potential of the Heaters was basically squandered but Granolah can still prove to be an interesting ally going forward ... should he survive. I also enjoyed the slight expansion of Namekian lore and the fact that Bardock, like Goku, had ties to a Namekian ally.

And as dumb as Black Frieza is, it is interesting to see how he'll affect the plot going forward. Frieza has been a point of intrigue for me for a while now. Ultimately, I don't think anything substantial will come from his involvement because I have virtually no faith in the writing, but he's still a fun character and he's actually a character with agency who can directly effect the story in a variety of ways. This makes Frieza the most interesting character in DBS at the current moment.

[theherodjl]

Did Gas lose because Freeza was stronger or was it because he used up the rest of his life span for one more power up, which, lead to his premature demise?
Wouldn't it be funny if Freeza literally did nothing but put his hand out for a rapidly-decomposing corpse to impale itself upon?

[wertham]

I read this chapter twice: first in isolation and then after reading the last two chapters for more context. Surprisingly, this ending was foreshadowed two chapters ago, when Elec told Gas that the most important thing is to get rid of Freeza and that he should hurry up and take the saiyans down (...before Freeza arrives, as we know now).

Aaaand after re-reading the first chapters of this arc, I see more clearly that everything was thought of beforehand and the whole story has a lot of coherence: Whis and Beerus stated at the beginning that Ultra Instinct as a "transformation" is only the first step, and that the end goal is to have Ultra Instinct as a permanent state without any transformation. Whis tells Goku that he should find his own way of mastering it. That's what "True Ultra Instinct" is about: Goku realizes that his personality needs to come back and reconcile it with Ultra Instinct, and so UI gradually becomes more similar to Goku without any transformation. Another thing foreshadowed is that Elec is the weakest one: he's the only one who didn't fight Granolah, and he uses his brothers and sister as weapons at will (because he's weak, as Freeza says). It's all there. In fact, Gas is only important as a tool (for his brother and for the story itself), and the real main villain of the arc should be Elec.

BUT... It's clearly and painfully obvious that all this thematic/plot coherence is thrown away by the most fillerish and elongated battles of all the Dragon Ball manga, as well as the use of Gas as the "main villain" to beat. I don't know at this point if it is Toyotaro's fault or Dragon Ball Super manga's editorial mandate curse of it being constantly dependant of anime's production pace, but this arc would be incredibly better and on point if the middle section was trimmed out a lot.

[Draconic]

I read this chapter twice: first in isolation and then after reading the last two chapters for more context. Surprisingly, this ending was foreshadowed two chapters ago, when Elec told Gas that the most important thing is to get rid of Freeza and that he should hurry up and take the saiyans down (...before Freeza arrives, as we know now).

Aaaand after re-reading the first chapters of this arc, I see more clearly that everything was thought of beforehand and the whole story has a lot of coherence: Whis and Beerus stated at the beginning that Ultra Instinct as a "transformation" is only the first step, and that the end goal is to have Ultra Instinct as a permanent state without any transformation. Whis tells Goku that he should find his own way of mastering it. That's what "True Ultra Instinct" is about: Goku realizes that his personality needs to come back and reconcile it with Ultra Instinct, and so UI gradually becomes more similar to Goku without any transformation. Another thing foreshadowed is that Elec is the weakest one: he's the only one who didn't fight Granolah, and he uses his brothers and sister as weapons at will (because he's weak, as Freeza says). It's all there. In fact, Gas is only important as a tool (for his brother and for the story itself), and the real main villain of the arc should be Elec.

BUT... It's clearly and painfully obvious that all this thematic/plot coherence is thrown away by the most fillerish and elongated battles of all the Dragon Ball manga, as well as the use of Gas as the "main villain" to beat. I don't know at this point if it is Toyotaro's fault or Dragon Ball Super manga's editorial mandate curse of it being constantly dependant of anime's production pace, but this arc would be incredibly better and on point if the middle section was trimmed out a lot.

Great post! This is my takeaway as well. The arc and the twist at the end, as a whole, is actually a very coherent, consistently well written story...

But the story itself is not good:
The way the new transformations are treated is neither interesting, nor fun. Ultra Ego, especially, while a great idea for Vegeta's answer to Ultra Instinct, is executed so bad it hurts.
Gas is simply a bland character who did not deserve such a long fight.
Elec is pretty cool and his plan is fine, but since the arc goes on way too long and the twist comes very late, it makes it feel like he's playing some 4D chess and he has something else in his pocket, when everything is actually pretty straight forward. So, even though his plan made sense and was pretty good, it ends up with a fizzle.

Then, of course, we have the terrible universe sgattering lore additions. I don't want to sound like the usual manga whiner in this thread, but I really think these ruin not just this arc but most of Dragon Ball's story:

The fact that there is another set of Dragon Balls out there, created by some nobody Namekian, which can grant a powerful wish like being the strongest in the Universe is just... terrible. The idea that there are Namekians scattered all over is actually pretty cool and you'd expect that following a mass disaster on their home planet, some would simply relocate. It makes sense Kami was not the only one. But Monaito has no credible means to be able to create such a powerful Shenron. He's weaker than kid Dende, for crying out loud.

Bardock's charcterization, in a vacuum, is pretty good. He's a genocidal maniac, like all Saiyans, doing his work for Freeza with no qualms, but, consistent with his Minus/Broly character, he's also a good (for Saiyan standards) father and husband. It makes sense why he would go out of his way to protect Granolah and his mom. It even makes sense how he could defeat Gas. Even though Gas is stronger, he's still a weakling and Bardock is not so far from him that, due to his Saiyan genes, he can't overcome the gap.
But his Dragon Ball wish is terrible no matter how you slice it. It ruins all of Goku's struggles until his fight with Raditz. Even though it's presented fairly ambigous if the Dragon actually granted this wish or not, due to the fact we knows this Dragon is powerful enough to actually do it takes what could have been a cool, but inconsequential, character moment and turns it into a story shattering revelation.

Then we have Bardock's resolve being the reason for not only Goku and Vegeta's second wind (third, if you count the fight with Granolah), but Granolah's as well, makes very little sense. It's a lesson that the Saiyans should already know, having made use of this same type of resolve in the Tournament of Power. I can see it working for Granolah, who's a newbie, but if only it was on-screen. As it stands, it comes out of nowhere and we don't see him struggling at all with his choices till now. He basically goes from revenge driven to "all's fine" while in a coma. No matter how you slice it, that's terrible writing.

And all this comes back to two major problems:
1. And this was prevalent in the Moro arc as well: keeping the stories confined to Universe 7 and finding ways to up the stakes and the powers just makes everything more and more convoluted. The lore changes only hurt the story and makes the hard work Goku and Vegeta put in to become strongest in the Universe seem like cake walks.

2. Toyotaro's major insistance on giving all screen time to Goku and Vegeta. He's been doing this the entire manga run: in Universe 6 he treats Piccolo like trash, in the Future Trunks arc Trunks is given nothing interesting to do, in the Tournament of Power NO other team member (except maybe Freeza) does anything of worth and, when one does, it's off-screen (Gohan vs Kefla).
The only time side characters get something to do is in the Moro arc, but it's not consequential in the least. It's just buying time. You could skip their entire appearance and fight with the Galactic Prisoners and nothing if worth would change. Best character that arc is Merus. Too bad Granolah was not treated half as well as the other OC.

Hopefully, during this hiatus, someone breaks down these major misgivings and we get better stories in the future.

[Pkjoan]

So the ranking right now is what exactly?

Spoiler:

Gohan Beast

Black Frieza
Broly

Spoiler:

Orange Piccolo

Goku
Vegeta

Should we even include Granolah or Gamma 1?

[Xeogran]

So the ranking right now is what exactly?

Spoiler:

Gohan Beast

Black Frieza
Broly

Spoiler:

Orange Piccolo

Goku
Vegeta

Should we even include Granolah or Gamma 1?

I think Black Frieza stands above Gohan Beast to be honest.
It's hard to compare them but I doubt Gohan could oneshot both UI Goku and UE Vegeta.

[Super Saiyan Turlast x4]

Did Gas lose because Freeza was stronger or was it because he used up the rest of his life span for one more power up, which, lead to his premature demise?
Wouldn't it be funny if Freeza literally did nothing but put his hand out for a rapidly-decomposing corpse to impale itself upon?

Gas had fallen into a decrepit state, but he was still capable of tossing UI Goku and UE Vegeta around without much issue.

Aside from that, everything appears to point to Freeza's power as the reason why he was able to end Gas so easily. I don't think he'd power-up/transform to attack Gas if the situation didn't call for it.

[Koitsukai]

Monaito isn't the creator of the DBS, he inherit them or whatever from a fat elder during the Saiyan invasion.

Trivia: Gas powered up to fight Freeza and his messed up arm became a muscular arm. I wonder if Black Freeza one shot an even stronger Gas than the one Goku and Vegeta were struggling with. The wish really was broken and even more so is BF.

[Grimlock]

TL;DR: Black-haired ultra form can now perform “true” Ultra Instinct, whilst it was only capable of mustering -Sign- until Moro. The “true” Ultra Instinct’s accuracy from the silver-haired ultra form drops significantly when Goku’s heart is not calm, otherwise it performs similarly to the black-haired one while being Goku’s most powerful form.

Edit: And the end goal is “true” Ultra Instinct in his normal form.

So there are two "true" Ultra Instincts? With the silver-haired one being seemingly the pointless one? Well, maybe this is a -Sign- (get it!?) for these Saiyans transformations to end now. Not even the "writing" can keep up.

[Hugo Boss]

TL;DR: Black-haired ultra form can now perform “true” Ultra Instinct, whilst it was only capable of mustering -Sign- until Moro. The “true” Ultra Instinct’s accuracy from the silver-haired ultra form drops significantly when Goku’s heart is not calm, otherwise it performs similarly to the black-haired one while being Goku’s most powerful form.

Edit: And the end goal is “true” Ultra Instinct in his normal form.

So there are two "true" Ultra Instincts? With the silver-haired one being seemingly the pointless one? Well, maybe this is a -Sign- (get it!?) for these Saiyans transformations to end now. Not even the "writing" can keep up.

It’s not pointless, it’s still his strongest form. It should be used when a battle demands Goku to surpass his limits. It met the right conditions when he heard the planet was in danger.

[pepd]

I read this chapter twice: first in isolation and then after reading the last two chapters for more context. Surprisingly, this ending was foreshadowed two chapters ago, when Elec told Gas that the most important thing is to get rid of Freeza and that he should hurry up and take the saiyans down (...before Freeza arrives, as we know now).

Aaaand after re-reading the first chapters of this arc, I see more clearly that everything was thought of beforehand and the whole story has a lot of coherence: Whis and Beerus stated at the beginning that Ultra Instinct as a "transformation" is only the first step, and that the end goal is to have Ultra Instinct as a permanent state without any transformation. Whis tells Goku that he should find his own way of mastering it. That's what "True Ultra Instinct" is about: Goku realizes that his personality needs to come back and reconcile it with Ultra Instinct, and so UI gradually becomes more similar to Goku without any transformation. Another thing foreshadowed is that Elec is the weakest one: he's the only one who didn't fight Granolah, and he uses his brothers and sister as weapons at will (because he's weak, as Freeza says). It's all there. In fact, Gas is only important as a tool (for his brother and for the story itself), and the real main villain of the arc should be Elec.

BUT... It's clearly and painfully obvious that all this thematic/plot coherence is thrown away by the most fillerish and elongated battles of all the Dragon Ball manga, as well as the use of Gas as the "main villain" to beat. I don't know at this point if it is Toyotaro's fault or Dragon Ball Super manga's editorial mandate curse of it being constantly dependant of anime's production pace, but this arc would be incredibly better and on point if the middle section was trimmed out a lot.

I can totally see the pacing being product of editorial demands, but I believe it was confirmed Toyotaro brought Burdack, whose inclusion didn't just diluted the arc with filler, but diverted it.

Anyway, agree on what you said, and going for the previous arcs, he is still the best we have for adapting Toriyama's drafts, so hopefully he just focuses on (and learns to) fill the big blanks with content that is serves the main plot and themes, and does not pauses it (Gas) or breaks it (Burdack). Planning is vital to this, so hopefully the breaks helps here. As much as I was annoyed by the anime's existence for its inability to make DB out of Tori's drafts, I think it may have fulfilled the role of giving him a base to analyze and improve upon.

[hopjust602]

The only answer is... another LAZY recolor.

Ultra Instinct/Ultra Ego Super Saiyan or some other unnecessary bs.

NGL, I'd rather have UI SS than Mastered Super Saiyan Blue 2 Evolved Full Power happen. Combining the sudden return of Goku's serious DBZ attitude when he's in UI, and the great design of SSJ, it would bring back the true Late Frieza Saga-Cell Saga energy from Goku. This drawing perfectly captures what I mean here. https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca88777 ... 4gb8ZNBnzU

[EGonzo]

I read this chapter twice: first in isolation and then after reading the last two chapters for more context. Surprisingly, this ending was foreshadowed two chapters ago, when Elec told Gas that the most important thing is to get rid of Freeza and that he should hurry up and take the saiyans down (...before Freeza arrives, as we know now).

Aaaand after re-reading the first chapters of this arc, I see more clearly that everything was thought of beforehand and the whole story has a lot of coherence: Whis and Beerus stated at the beginning that Ultra Instinct as a "transformation" is only the first step, and that the end goal is to have Ultra Instinct as a permanent state without any transformation. Whis tells Goku that he should find his own way of mastering it. That's what "True Ultra Instinct" is about: Goku realizes that his personality needs to come back and reconcile it with Ultra Instinct, and so UI gradually becomes more similar to Goku without any transformation. Another thing foreshadowed is that Elec is the weakest one: he's the only one who didn't fight Granolah, and he uses his brothers and sister as weapons at will (because he's weak, as Freeza says). It's all there. In fact, Gas is only important as a tool (for his brother and for the story itself), and the real main villain of the arc should be Elec.

BUT... It's clearly and painfully obvious that all this thematic/plot coherence is thrown away by the most fillerish and elongated battles of all the Dragon Ball manga, as well as the use of Gas as the "main villain" to beat. I don't know at this point if it is Toyotaro's fault or Dragon Ball Super manga's editorial mandate curse of it being constantly dependant of anime's production pace, but this arc would be incredibly better and on point if the middle section was trimmed out a lot.

I can totally see the pacing being product of editorial demands, but I believe it was confirmed Toyotaro brought Burdack, whose inclusion didn't just diluted the arc with filler, but diverted it.

Anyway, agree on what you said, and going for the previous arcs, he is still the best we have for adapting Toriyama's drafts, so hopefully he just focuses on (and learns to) fill the big blanks with content that is serves the main plot and themes, and does not pauses it (Gas) or breaks it (Burdack). Planning is vital to this, so hopefully the breaks helps here. As much as I was annoyed by the anime's existence for its inability to make DB out of Tori's drafts, I think it may have fulfilled the role of giving him a base to analyze and improve upon.

I don't know, I've always felt the anime does a better job of making a story. People right now are praising Super Hero in large part for the small character moments in the movie, and character moments is something only the anime does, and really well. Along with conclusions with a pulse and excitement. My biggest peeve with the manga is that the endings are never exciting, only Moro had kind of a good climax

[Torturephile]

When I first saw Zombie Gas, I got reminded of good old Eddie the Head:

[hopjust602]

I read this chapter twice: first in isolation and then after reading the last two chapters for more context. Surprisingly, this ending was foreshadowed two chapters ago, when Elec told Gas that the most important thing is to get rid of Freeza and that he should hurry up and take the saiyans down (...before Freeza arrives, as we know now).

Aaaand after re-reading the first chapters of this arc, I see more clearly that everything was thought of beforehand and the whole story has a lot of coherence: Whis and Beerus stated at the beginning that Ultra Instinct as a "transformation" is only the first step, and that the end goal is to have Ultra Instinct as a permanent state without any transformation. Whis tells Goku that he should find his own way of mastering it. That's what "True Ultra Instinct" is about: Goku realizes that his personality needs to come back and reconcile it with Ultra Instinct, and so UI gradually becomes more similar to Goku without any transformation. Another thing foreshadowed is that Elec is the weakest one: he's the only one who didn't fight Granolah, and he uses his brothers and sister as weapons at will (because he's weak, as Freeza says). It's all there. In fact, Gas is only important as a tool (for his brother and for the story itself), and the real main villain of the arc should be Elec.

BUT... It's clearly and painfully obvious that all this thematic/plot coherence is thrown away by the most fillerish and elongated battles of all the Dragon Ball manga, as well as the use of Gas as the "main villain" to beat. I don't know at this point if it is Toyotaro's fault or Dragon Ball Super manga's editorial mandate curse of it being constantly dependant of anime's production pace, but this arc would be incredibly better and on point if the middle section was trimmed out a lot.

I can totally see the pacing being product of editorial demands, but I believe it was confirmed Toyotaro brought Burdack, whose inclusion didn't just diluted the arc with filler, but diverted it.

Anyway, agree on what you said, and going for the previous arcs, he is still the best we have for adapting Toriyama's drafts, so hopefully he just focuses on (and learns to) fill the big blanks with content that is serves the main plot and themes, and does not pauses it (Gas) or breaks it (Burdack). Planning is vital to this, so hopefully the breaks helps here. As much as I was annoyed by the anime's existence for its inability to make DB out of Tori's drafts, I think it may have fulfilled the role of giving him a base to analyze and improve upon.

I don't know, I've always felt the anime does a better job of making a story. People right now are praising Super Hero in large part for the small character moments in the movie, and character moments is something only the anime does, and really well. Along with conclusions with a pulse and excitement. My biggest peeve with the manga is that the endings are never exciting, only Moro had kind of a good climax

Yeah, the anime, for example, used Krillin in a really good way for the ToP. He had some time to shine, and it worked. But in the manga, he was eliminated extremely quickly, before he could do anything. In Super Hero, he was used as comedy, which is much better than nothing. I don't even like Krillin, but you gotta appreciate the work the anime does to make it more than literally the Goku & Vegeta show.

[Koitsukai]

And how much time went by between this and Super Hero?

[Pkjoan]

And how much time went by between this and Super Hero?

2 years maybe?

Also, is it wrong for me to say that I would rather have more creative stuff ala SSJ4 than all these recolors? What even is "True" UI, that just seems Omen to me and it makes no God damn sense for it to be stronger than the silver haired version.

Also, UE freaking sucked. Not even SSJ3 was this bad.

[Grimlock]

It’s not pointless, it’s still his strongest form. It should be used when a battle demands Goku to surpass his limits. It met the right conditions when he heard the planet was in danger.

Ah right, I forgot about the multiplier. But how long until they come up with excuses to also make the silver-haired Ultra Instinct a form to improve or to outright come up with an even stronger form (which I bet there would also have "stuff to improve")?

And how much time went by between this and Super Hero?

One year.

[MCDaveG]

I must say that zombie Gas kinda surprised and we won't get this in anime for sure
It was kinda brutal and something I am not used to in modern kid friendly Dragon Ball (it was always for kids, but well, kids changed and Super is pretty mild in comparison to the original run and even the manga, which sometimes had quite more graphic violence).

But overall, it was pretty anticlimactic. Freeza was kinda fun interacting with everyone, but basically, Heeters plan came literally to nothing and we had a sluggish arc about pointless revenge, flashback to Bardock adding not really much except for another Saiyan pride recap, another pointless power-ups that are not fundamentally changing anything... Goku returned for the semi Ultra Instinct because reasons, Vegeta is recolored and has no eyebrows and wears God Of Destruction mark and Freeza Black.

Even that promotional Heroes anime is more fun as it pretty much introduces new faces and transformations, without much of a story to it.
Unless the next arc tops Moro arc - which had it's issues but ultimately, it was masterpiece compared to Granolah - they should really stop.

[Hugo Boss]

Ah right, I forgot about the multiplier. But how long until they come up with excuses to also make the silver-haired Ultra Instinct a form to improve or to outright come up with an even stronger form (which I bet there would also have "stuff to improve")?

Maybe after Goku “normalizes” Ultra Instinct, perhaps this could be a possibility, but Toyotaro seems to be focused on telling Goku’s journey on making Ultra Instinct his own, so it will probably take a good while. He wants us to see Goku using Ultra Instinct even when he is asleep/unconscious, sorta like (Far From Home) Spider-Man vs. Dr. Strange.