Post
by LoganForkHands73 » Wed Feb 21, 2024 6:50 pm
Reading this chapter was quite surreal. The Super manga has had its share of meta wink-and-nods towards the fandom, but this felt like a rare opportunity for Toyotaro to throw his hands in the air and show fans what they've been begging for. Add to that an official canonisation of the name 'Ultimate Gohan'. I half-expected him to reply "thank you for coming up with that, Goten (Teen)". While gratuitous fanservice is usually a turn-off for me, the whole premise of Ultra Instinct vs Beast, a powerscaling debate people have been speculating ever since Super Hero came out, undeniably gets people turning pages. Goku's curt impatience to get the match on already also feels strangely meta. It feels like Toyotaro needs to stop playing coy and shoot some of those Chekhov guns that have been laying their motionless, unfired for years, otherwise people will just lose interest. If Toriyama, in a rare flash of foresight, wanted to plant the seeds for a future plot beat, you knew you wouldn't have to wait years and years for it to sprout. I've been peddling the narrative that Toyotaro doesn't know where the hell the story's going for ages now, but this chapter gives me some hope that there is a rudimentary plan for the comic's future, even if we don't know it yet.
Sadly, some of that annoying coyness could still be found here. Pulling a bait-and-switch with Goten and Trunks wasn't entirely unenjoyable though, in fact the choreography was nice and dynamic (side note, is it me or do all the characters look thinner again, like in the earliest chapters?). While Gohan having not lost his touch is a given, it's cool to see some assurance that Goten and Trunks, while still green in many ways, can still be formidable when they quit wasting movement on flashy attacks. However, the return of Fat Gotenks only elicited a pained groan. What's really frustrating is that Toyotaro is capable of good comedy. The Future Trunks arc, for all its violence and bleakness, had some of the funniest gags in the series. Fat people aren't funny. Dumb poses aren't funny. What even is the punchline? That said, the idea of Goku loading his kids and Trunks into a hostile stranger's car and teleporting it to Beerus's planet with hostile strangers still inside got a chuckle out of me. Carmine and #15 definitely have a role to play, much like Mr. Satan after being transported to the Kaioshin Realm. While everyone is distracted by the Saiyan sparring action, perhaps they burglarise Beerus's quarters and find some magical gadgetry they could bring back to Earth.
