Surprise, Bulla is here!
Warning: The following review contains spoilers for the episode.
Things slowed down this week as Goku returns to Earth to recruit members to fill the 10-person requirement for the Tournament of Power. During his search a side plot unfolded as Bulma and Vegeta welcomed their daughter into the world. Bulla’s arrival added some much needed excitement to the episode, as the opening minutes were very dull and tough to watch.
While everyone else is enjoying the newborn entering the world, Vegeta was his typical standoffish self but there were several well edited cuts to show his secret affection he just couldn’t allow anyone to see. There was also an emphasis on him giving Bulla a royal name, as Vegeta is still the Prince of all Saiyans, and the emphasis on this has me wondering what the future might hold for the newborn royalty. I also got a chuckle out of his parental tick: anytime Bulla started to cry, Vegeta would get upset and accidentally go Super Saiyan Blue.
Trunks was also quite affected by the birth, and in a way I hadn’t been expecting. We’ve seen his interest in having a new family member for a few episodes, but learning it was a girl put him into a sour mood, largely because of his assumption that he can’t train with a sister. I’m looking forward to seeing if Bulla takes the scientist route of her mother or follows after her father and becomes a fighter. Although the payoff might take some time, I prefer the latter. It would be far more interesting to see the first female Super Saiyan among the ranks of our heroes, and would also make for an interesting dynamic between Bulla and Trunks.
Although Bulla’s birth was quite fun, these moments only account for roughly half the episode. The opening 13 minutes were quite boring, and I could find little reason to care about watching. This isn’t so much a fault of the show itself, but of the blunt foreshadowing around it. We’ve known for months now who the 10 warriors will be thanks to Dragon Ball Super’s marketing, and even the very introduction sequence we watch before each episode.
They’ve hammered this point home so much that spending nearly half a episode watching Goku think of who will join him felt incredibly wasteful and dull. This could have been avoided had they kept it more secretive, perhaps teasing one or two fighters and leaving the rest to our imagination, but instead they’ve laid all their cards on the table already. This makes things tough going forward, as we now have to watch each fighter get recruited. These upcoming recruitment episodes will need to have some very clever storytelling, or else fall victim to this same problem and end up feeling like filler.
Yamcha also made a brief appearance this episode and I would be remiss if I didn’t write about him. Although he’s rarely in episodes, he is one of the funniest characters in the show and was used perfectly here, dreaming of joining the Tournament of Power in a way that surely will never come to pass.
The Verdict
Episode 83 had some great moments. Yamcha had a brief but funny cameo, and Bulla’s birth made the latter half of the episode both enjoyable and interesting. She promises excitement for the Bulma/Vegeta household. However, that only accounts for half the episode, as the first several minutes were quite underwhelming. We’ve known for a long time who the 10 fighters will be, so watching Goku spend so much time discussing the matter felt like a waste. Future episodes have their work cut out for them, or else they might fall victim to the same issues.
Aucun commentaire:
Enregistrer un commentaire