Dragon Ball Super: Future Trunks Saga [Episodes 47 - 67]

Hooooooooo boy.


I have to take a long, deep breath before I actually talk about this arc. It's... it's a very... polarizing arc of Dragon Ball Super, perhaps the most polarized I've been about any arc in Dragon Ball since its inception. The best thing I can say about the Future Trunks Saga is that it is an amazing collection of high-octane, great scenes, amazing-on-paper concepts and a hideously hateable villain that ends up being absolutely fucked over by horrible pacing, sequencing and a very unsatisfying ending.

And, well, the ending is going to be a huge can of worms I'll talk about later, but by god there are so many parts of the arc that ended up feeling like unnecessary shoving in of complications that try to make everything feel smart and inter-connected, but ends up just causing a fuck-ton of headaches handwaved away by random plot devices with properties we only know the moment it becomes relevant. Add that to the extremely questionable motivations of the Big Bad villain, Zamasu, and you get one hot mess of a Dragon Ball arc. And clocking in at 20 episodes, it lasts longer than Beerus (14 episodes), gold Frieza (12 episodes) and Universe 6 (13 episodes). And the thing is, we didn't need it to run that long. There is a significant amount of padding, random exposition and repetition that honestly wasn't necessary, and not to mention the glaring plot holes either.

One of which is the transformation of Trunks' hair from pink to blue randomly...  even in Dragon Ball Z flashbacks. Did he just dye it blue because he got the memo that blue is the new blonde?

The concept of Future Trunks, easily one of the most popular characters in the fandom, returning to have another dedicated arc where his apocalyptic future ends up being menaced by an EVIL Goku, a.k.a. Goku Black, sounds absolutely groan-worthy and feels like a shitty fanfiction prompt. But believe it or not, this concept is actually easily one of the best parts of the arc. Both Future Trunks and the desolation of the future timeline wrought by the insanely demonic Goku Black is amazingly done. And considering that I came into this entire saga blind -- I know that there was going to be a 'Goku Black' character and a Future Trunks Saga and a 'Zamasu' character, but I didn't know that they're going to interweave in the same plotline. And in that sense, the very first episode of this saga, episode 47, is one of the most chilling scenes I've ever seen since... oh, since original imperfect Cell's horror movie rampage, I think?

Unlike Beerus or Champa, who were capricious gods, or Golden Frieza who never felt like a threat, the way that Black was introduced was amazing. He chases down Trunks (from here on, 'Trunks' just means Future Trunks, and I'll refer to the present-day Trunks as Kid Trunks) first as this unseen malevolent whirling shadowy mass with glowing red eyes, proceeds to murder Bulma in a very shockingly graphic death where Bulma gets chocked and vaporized body-first in an explosion. Trunks meets up with his beau, Mai, who is his lover in this timeline. Also Mai has a ki shotgun. Baller. But then Black catches up with them and kills Mai, the only reason that Trunks is able to escape is that Black doesn't even know what the fuck a time machine is.

He ends up in the present day, collapsing in the middle of everyone (and we do get a hilarious bit where Kid Trunks and the Pilaf crew thinks that the Future Trunks is an illegitimate elder sibling) and we get a bit of a long, drawn-out explanation of Future Trunks' role in the Cell saga which lasts the entirety of episode 48. Which is definitely somewhat necessary... but this is not going to be the only episode where it's mostly exposition.

We then get a sequence of scenes where Future Trunks then exposits to us just how the Buu saga ended up happening in his splinter timeline, and we're treated with the awesome scenes of Trunks murdering Dabura and Babidi. And then we have a long-winded sequence of exposition intercut with Goku and Trunks sparring and Goku showing off Super Saiyan forms 2, 3 and Blue. And then for no real reason Black shows up in the present timeline, pulled back through time via a time rift, and Black seems as confused as everyone is. Goku fights Black, but after a brief scuffle that lasts exactly a whole episode, he gets pulled back to his timeline.

It's... it's an okay scene. It's a scene that teases the strength of Black, but the way that it's done ends up being pretty convoluted. But eh.

Black blows up Trunks' time machine, but Bulma reveals that she kept the time machine that Cell used to return back in the Cell Saga, which is an amazing bit of continuity remembering. Oh, and Whis and Beerus gives us a long exposition about the time rings and splinter timelines, and how time travel is actually pretty fucking illegal, especially time travel to the past. They're willing to let Trunks slide, but Beerus and Whis are playing the apathetic gods who don't want to interfere (later episodes reveal that Beerus actually straight up is unable to travel through time, which puts him in a somewhat less-jackass light) and so it's up to Goku, Vegeta, Trunks and Bulma to work through everything, beat Black, unravel his true identity and rescue the splinter timeline.

And honestly, this first volley of 3-4 episodes, despite the exposition, is actually pretty damn good. It starts to fall apart in the second arc, however.

Future!Mai is alive, by the way, despite Black being shown to not at all be opposed to killing. Somehow she survived that huge-ass explosion and is 'merely' knocked out and nursed back to health by the resistance members. This is not the last time Future!Mai will bullshit her way with an inexplicably thick amount of plot armour.

The next string of episodes just focus on the present day and just jump all over the fucking place. We get some great moments, like a very enraged Vegeta keeping his cool but secretly training in tranquil fury due to the knowledge that the future-version of Bulma was murdered. We also get some neat callback to the Potafeu arc where the blue experiment Bulma asked Monaka to help randomly in the prologue section of that mini-arc ended up being the fuel to the time machine. Beerus and Whis discussing the ki of Black is also interesting, and this ends up causing them to talk to Kaioshin (who's split from Kibito!) and give us some extra lore about the god/Kai race in general. I didn't think it need to be this long, however, especially since we have multiple episodes just dedicated to Future Trunks interacting with present day characters and... it feels weird. Like, I love the moments in theory, but it just grinds down both the 'back to the future' and the 'discover Black's true identity' plotlines to a halt. Episode 51 focuses largely on Future Trunks, Kid Trunks and Kid Mai kind of in a weird bit of crushing on each other and shit, with the Pilaf gang up to some shipping hijinks... which... I don't really think we needed.

Episode 52 has a very, very touching moment where Trunks visits Gohan, and we get a beautifully re-mastered flashback to DBZ's one-armed Future!Gohan teaching Trunks (from this arc onwards the flashbacks are a weird mixture of reusing old DBZ footage and beautiful remastery) and Trunks visits Gohan... and is absolutely flabbergasted that Gohan is not a fierce warrior but just a little civilian daddy who dresses up as a superhero and runs around playing chase with baby Pan. Also, Trunks can't deal with babies and it's adorable! It's a very, very powerful episode and perhaps the emotional climax of the entire Future Trunks Saga for me personally, because Trunks' acceptance that Gohan has found peace and happy at being a family with Videl and Pan is just so goddamned powerful. We also get to see a very powerful and short scene where Android 18 (who, by the way, was responsible for killing the entirety of the future timeline's cast because she never became good there) walks up to Trunks and, well, acts like the coolest big sister figure there, telling him that there's no bad blood between them before leaving with her own happy husband and child. It's a very powerful moment as Trunks realizes that his previous fucking-up-the-timeline during the Android and Cell saga has borne some fruit and gave some of the characters who ended up dead and a genocidal psychopath respectively a chance at a very, very happy life... and honestly, this was a pair of scenes that struck the feels button so, so hard.

Also, it kind of makes me feel bad about saying that 'Gohan needs to fight, the naive fool!' all the time. Look at him. He's so fucking happy, and I don't want anything to take that away from him.

(Especially since Trunks has this flashback to a dinner he will never have with Future!Bulma and Future!Mai, since he thinks they're both dead)

Of course, that was only one episode, and the 'downtime' period lasts a lot longer than that. We get a lot of Trunks/Mai shipping that was adorable the first time around and just plain distracting and grating the next few times. We get Trunks sparring with Vegeta for an entire episode which amounts to mostly nothing beyond "get stronger, boy! Saiyans don't let others do the fighting for them!" I was tickled when Trunks uses the Buff-Super-Saiyan form as a bit of a fake-out, but otherwise that whole episode could've been a montage.

Beerus and Whis, meanwhile, are playing investigators. They bring Goku to Universe 10, where we meet the Supreme Kai there, an old coot called Gowasu. His apprentice is called Zamasu, a.k.a. the Big Bad of the Saga. We get yet another huge talk about time rings, and Zamasu makes it clear that he doesn't think much of mortals. Beerus sics Goku on Zamasu, and the two fight a little, which ends up causing two things -- for Beerus to realize that Zamasu and Black have the same ki, and for Zamasu to be absolutely triggered and pissed off that a mortal can trade blows with a god! How dare the mortals?

There's a lot of tea-pouring scenes in Zamasu/Gowasu scenes and attempts at trying to make Zamasu feel ambiguously gray in morality, but by god, it's wholly unnecessary since all it does is just establish what a gigantic douche-hole Zamasu is, because he ends up getting more and more pissed-off at mortals (or 'ningen', which really just means humans) and his ideologies grow darker and darker. And it appears that Beerus, Whis and Goku accidentally caused a stable time loop by causing Zamasu's hatred to fester in the first place and putting Goku within Zamasu's orbit. We get huge scenes showing Zamasu and Gowasu observing a dinosaur caveman race, and to display how the time rings work. Gowasu also watches the Universe 6 and 7 fight via GodTube (I wish I was joking, but no, it's real -- he even makes a God-Tuber joke), which causes Zamasu to see Goku's power first hand.

Oh, and to add more complexity to it all, Zen'o summons Goku because he wants a buddy, and gives him a button (read: Portable Final Act Plot Device) to summon him at any time. Goku gives Zen'o the nickname of "Zen-chan" and... puts off playing with him because he wants to get back to Earth? Really, Goku, you can't spare like an hour to muck around? I mean, Trunks and everyone else is happy to muck around. It's a whole episode of weirdness that seems to exist just to give a plot device for no real reason other than to be a deus ex machina for the final episode. It's a neat bit of world-building that I really wish didn't take place in the middle of a lull of episodes.

Finally, in episode 56, a full 6 episodes after Goku fighting Black in the present day, the Saiyajin trio takes a trip to the future. Future Mai is alive! Yajirobe is still alive for some reason (he doesn't actually contribute anything to the plot) and we have a fight.

Vegeta and Goku fight Black... who reveals a new Super Saiyan form, Super Saiyan Rose (ro-SAY). Which is as unexplained as Super Saiyan Blue. How did Black get it? I dunno. Why is Black so surprised in the present day when he sees Goku? I dunno. Just what is Super Saiyan Rose? I dunno. We do get a pretty cool clash and Black stabs Vegeta through the chest with a fucking energy sword, and then we get the revelation that there are two enemies in the future timeline -- Black and Zamasu. And Zamasu is apparently immortal, in that just like Cell and Buu, he can regenerate from any attack fired at him. We get a very cool Final Flash from Trunks, but that's not enough as Black and Zamasu lay waste to our heroes. But somehow, in the short time that Vegeta distracts them with a final flash of his own, Mai and Yajirobe manage to spirit away our unconscious and wounded heroes without the two god-like beings Black and Zamasu noticing or following? Yeah I don't buy that at all. It's just an excuse for them to get to a place where the trio can return back to the present day with the time machine, which I felt was absolutely unnecessary.

Meanwhile, in the present day, Zamasu is going around demanding information about the Super Dragon Balls from Zuno, while Beerus and Whis take Goku with them as they try to stop Zamasu from ever becoming evil, with the two of them realizing that Zamasu will kill Gowasu, and also will create Goku Black in the near future with the Super Dragon Balls, which would lead to, er... him travelling to the splintered future and team up with Future!Zamasu... because... um... okay yeah you lost me there. Why bother with the splintered post-apocalyptic timeline? Why so fixated on Universe 7's Earth, when he's from Universe 10? Why not just wish for the eradication of all mortals in the first place if that's what he's bothered with? There are huge planet-sized holes in Zamasu's plan and executions and that's easily the biggest weak portions of the saga.

And also the holes in Zamasu's logic, but I have the feeling that we're never actually meant to sympathize with him. I just wish that he was more of an extremist paladin-style deliverer of justice similar to, say, Akainu from One Piece, but Zamasu ends up degenerating to just a mass-murdering psychopath with the very flimsy bullshit of "the ningen will bring fucking violence, and only gods can correct them". By... precipitating far more violence, Zamasu? Yeah, you're wrong in the head.


Regardless, we have our villain, and Beerus and Whis spring a trap for Zamasu in episode 59, where they show up in Universe 10. Beerus and Whis note that they cannot interfere with another universe's politics, and they can't stop a crime that hasn't been done. And then they just show up, give some dumplings, and then wait in space as Zamasu kills Gowasu... then has Whis rewind time and then they show up, stop Zamasu from killing Gowasu -- with the AMAZING way of materializing a kitty glove on his arm -- and then when Zamasu begins the first of his many motive rants, Beerus just grabs Zamasu's arm, breaks it, and says a simple word: "HAKAI." Or, y'know, destroy.

Throughout the past 59 episodes Beerus is lauded as the Hakaishin, a god of destruction, and it's just so motherfucking badass to see him actually show off his power. And it's not a huge glowing purple-black blast of energy like he uses when he's fighting Goku. This isn't a Beerus who's happy and fighting, this is a Beerus who's serious. And when the god of destruction destroys, it happens instantaneously. There's no attack, there's no big ki blasts or explosion, Zamasu just shudders and instantly gets deleted and it's such a fucking badass scene. From the kitty glove to the Hakai attack, it's easily one of the best moments in the saga.

Oh, speaking of Beerus... Whis randomly tells Goku that if a supreme kai is killed, the universe's god of destruction will likewise die, because they have a Piccolo-Kami thing going on. Which... kind of explains how Zamasu was able to survive the onslaught of 12 beings with Beerus-level power gunning on his head -- clearly he goes around killing the likes of Gowasu and Shin and never engages the Gods of Destruction. And the Angels -- Whis and Vados are angels, by the way -- apparently just go dormant without a god to serve. Great lore bombshells to us.

And there are many great badass moments like Beerus deleting Zamasu. Unfortunately they're interposed with so much bullshit and plot holes in between them that makes enjoying the Future Trunks saga a bit hard. Take this awesome sequence I just detailed to you. Beerus, Whis and Goku's investigation and execution of Zamasu takes around 2 episodes, but in-between all of that you have a fuckton of unimportant, and more egregiously, repetitive scenes of Trunks-Mai shipping, Zamasu ranting and the future resistance repeating the same tired "we must have hope" speeches over and over again. Anyway, the Saiyan trio and Bulma return back to the future just to make sure that it's changed (Beerus notes that a god of destruction's touch will destroy all future incarnations of the being, which is hardcore)

Oh, and Future Mai nearly gets killed only to be revived when the Saiyan trio and Bulma returns to the future for the second time. How shit is Zamasu and Black when they can't kill a random human with a shotgun? And why are they taking so much time wiping out humanity? Just drop an energy bomb and blow it up from space. Frieza did it at least three times. Vegeta did it once, I think. Beerus certainly did it many times. I do find that Zamasu and Black hanging out in their downtime in a random forest chalet to be hilarious, though.

Oh, and in episode 61, we get an even longer motive rant, and Future Zamasu and Black remain unchanged. Apparently while Beerus makes sure that Zamasu's plan will not work in our present day, the time ring has some bullshit power that protects Black and Future Zamasu from being changed by the god of destruction's powers. And they just created a splinter timeline or something? How does that work? What would happen if they take off their ring? Will they enter a different splinter timeline or will they get erased retroactively by Beerus killing present-day Zamasu? They try to be so clever by introducing spllinter timelines and time travel and the gods and parallel universes and the hakaishin's power, and all that ends up feeling far more convoluted, unnecessarily so, and while it sort of kind of makes some sense, it also ends up feeling that it's complex for complexity's sake.

Still, we go straight into the action for episodes 61 and 62, and it does feel a bit long for Super standards, although I honestly feel that it's adequately paced. The thing, though, is just how neither Zamasu nor Zamasu-Black shuts up and they just repeat the same mortals-are-scum gods-are-beautiful crapshit motivation over and over again. Even though we get the revelation that Zamasu and Black killed all the gods in all the universes in this future timeline. And mind you, we get a horrifyingly animated show of how the Black version of Zamasu murdered Chichi and Goten on-screen after he swapped bodies with Goku using the Super Dragon Balls in the timeline-that-wouldn't-be. And by god that's horrifying.

And this is where I think the Future Trunks Saga works best -- the actual primal moments in the fights themselves. It's the same problem I had with the Android/Cell saga where the setup is unnecessarily complex but the actual fights we got out of it are so awesome that I can brush it away. The thing, though, is that when I sit down and look back at the Cell arc, they both stand up very well under scrutiny and the time travel and alternate timeline makes a whole lot of sense when you prune away the noise. Here? It doesn't.

Still, we get a fuck-ton of great moments, easily the most amazing moments of action in the entirety of Super for the simple reason that Zamasu is actually a threat to our characters both as a fighting opponent and narratively. And the show makes us hate them so damn much, and it's a pretty great feeling to have such an ass-hat villain to root against.

Black's gimmick of creating energy blades might look simple, but it's still a neat attack style that makes the battles look relatively distinct. And how badass is Goku going wild and wailing on Black, and then doing that off-hand backhand punch-to-the-face to Zamasu? The animation are just so fucking smooth in these episodes, allaying the fears I had coming into Super with the quality from the Beerus and Frieza arcs.


The combination of two Zamasus are so powerful, that even with Trunks achieving a version of Super Saiyan 2 (?) they can't beat them... and they... return back to the present day? Future Trunks is left behind this time around in his new form and it's... wow, it's just shit pacing, isn't it? I really feel that they could have just extended this along to the end as a longer fight and it'd last better, but the constant back-and-forth felt absolutely unnecessary. Episode 62's second half is just a huge, huge, HUGE recap of what Zamasu and Black explained in the previous episode, with the excuse that they needed to explain this to Chi-Chi and the others. Piccolo suggests the Mafuuba and Goku instantly teleports away to learn it from Master Roshi (Piccolo's expression when Goku pops off just as he's about to demonstrate the Mafuuba is hilarious). All of this is just to inform Beerus, Whis and Gowasu about what happens in the future so Kaioshin and Gowasu can pop up later on to... do absolutely nothing, if we're being honest.

Gowasu's honestly just kind of shit, isn't he? For the amount of screentime he gets, all he does is just go "ZAMASSS" all the time and tries to act like a mentor but fails miserably. Although to be fair, that's a problem that Universe 7's gaggle of Supreme Kais also face, considering how flat they honestly feel throughout both the Buu saga and Super.


Which is all well and good, while Vegeta trains in the room of space and time. Vegeta trains so hard that he fucking blows up the room of space and time, while Goku trains to use the Mafuuba, the technique used to seal the original Demon-King-Piccolo. In the future Trunks is wounded-but-alive (how many times will this happen?), apparently because for being gods-beyond-gods Zamasu can't deal with tear gas. Yeah. Mai uses a sniper rifle and a special bullet to attempt to murder Black. It's pointless, but it's still a pretty fucking badass moment that, well, yeah, is another one of those 'great moments'. It does absolutely nothing, though.

Also equally badass -- Trunks showing up in his Super-Saiyan-2 form, using his sword as a decoy before unleashing the mother of all Galick Guns and blasting Black and the chalet apart. Trunks then unleashes the Cho-bakuhatsu-ha (Super Explosive Wave) which I remember fondly from the Cell Saga to attempt to blow up Black and Zamasu, attempting to take out at least the non-immortal Black... but he fails and gets beaten the fuck up. The scenes are still badass, though.

Episode 63 finally marks when the Saiyan trio and Bulma return back to the future again, and so do Gowasu and Shin. Gowasu and the Zamasus' arguments ends up coming up to nothing, really. Zamasu blows up the time machine, and we get a fight between Super Saiyan Blue Goku and Vegeta and the two of them. I absolutely love how Vegeta says that he's going to fight Black... because he wants to beat up the one that looks like Kakarot. That is amazing.

Also hilarious is how as Zamasu does another motive rant, the heroes completely ignore him as they discuss the delegation of opponents (and for Trunks, Bulma and Mai to fix the Mafuuba jar that got destroyed). Black even points out that "you do know none of them are listening, right?" and Zamasu just shrugs it off, saying that he's speaking for his own benefit.

Also amazing is the absolutely brutal beatdown that Vegeta delivers upon Goku Black, ranting about how he can never draw out the true power of Saiyan Cells from the body he's just borrowing, because the strength of Goku's body is from the experience of multiple battles... and the barrage of punches he delivers to Zamasu through abandoned buildings is just so mother-fucking badass that I genuinely thought that between the Trunks beatdown of Black earlier and this one that Vegeta's going to actually straight-up kill Black. And his gigantic skyward scream as he shouts proudly that "I AM THE PRINCE OF ALL SAIYANS, VEGETA-SAMA!" as he tosses Black around is just so spine-tinglingly awesome.

Also awesome? Bulma shrugging off the time machine being destroyed, tosses out a portable garage out of her pocket and starts fixing it.

Then, um... Black pulls a power-up out of his ass and turns his energy blade into an energy scythe. That's badass! Then Black bullshits about how he's going to use anger as a source of power, then creates a random rift that... spawns Goku Black clones? That exist only to harass Vegeta and Goku for the duration of an episode, before being blasted away and becoming irrelevant? That was dumb. Bulma tries to get Trunks to learn the Mafuuba in Goku's stead (we get a hilarious cameo of Saiyaman and Ginyu poses) via a phone-recorded Piccolo. How hilarious is it that Piccolo treats it in a stiff Youtube-manual style of teaching? But while it seems that Trunks is going to Mafuuba and beat Zamasu... Goku forgot to bring the seal.

Yeah. Forgetting to bring the Senzu beans is one thing. Having the jar get blown up in the time machine and forcing Trunks, Bulma and Mai to glue it back together is another thing. Not taking the seal from Roshi? By god, that's just too stupid even for Goku. And honestly? This is the last we see of the Mafuuba, making all the scenes spent talking and expositioning about it, for Goku and later Trunks to learn it... pretty pointless.

We do have Bulma being badass and stepping out of her garage, telling Trunks to master the Mafuuba in five minutes as she attempts to buy time from Zamasu by distracting her. It's a badass moment and while I know that Bulma probably won't die (or if she does, we can dragon ball her back) it is still pretty ballsy for her to just hold the line by distracting Zamasu the only way she can.

At the end of 64 and start of 65, Zamasu and Black fuses into Fused Zamasu. Or, y'know, just Zamasu with his mohawk transformed into Goku's hairstyle and a halo on his back. Remember fusion? Yeah, so did the writers for Super. It's pretty badass, and Fused Zamasu just rains down destruction all over with moves with pretentious names like 'heavenly judgment', 'holy wrath' and stuff like that, killing some random humans and blowing up some random buildings. Zamasu continues to rant and even the good guys are starting to lampshade how none of his arguments make any sense. We get an awesome beam struggle, yet another of those 'awesome fighting moments' that make this arc so tense to watch, as Trunks and Vegeta unleash a father-and-son Galick Gun against Zamasu, and they actually win the beam struggle. Vegeta then pulls off a Piccolo and blocks the next attack from striking Trunks, which is another awesome moment.

(Vegeta's character development from "running away from a fight? You should be ashamed of being a Saiyan!" early on in the arc to "you have to survive! For her sake, too!" is great, by the way)

Goku then briefly goes Blue-Kaioken to have his own beam struggle with Zamasu, yet another awesome moment. And this strain causes the Fused Zamasu to transform into Two-Face, where the mortal Goku cells transform half his face into weird purple goop, and they note that by taking the mortal Goku body into their fused form, Zamasu has essentially negated his immortality. Silly Zamasu.

We get some explanation about the Potara earrings from Shin and Gowasu, and that apparently the time limit for the fusion is only three minutes for non-Supreme-Kais, instead of being permanent. Which explains a question everyone asks two decades ago when Vegito pops apart halfway during his fight with Majin Buu. So Goku and Vegeta fuse again, becomes Vegito, goes Super Saiyan Blue and fights toe-to-toe with Fused Zamasu, which is yet another holy-fuck-so-awesome moment. Vegito just trash-talks Zamasu's now-tired arguments, does an awesome an appropriate Spirit Sword stab into Zamasu's gut (especially considering everyone got stabbed in the gut at least once by Black all throughout the arc). We get a Final Kamehameha, an instant-transmission punch... a lot of awesome shit before Vegito's transformation runs out... because apparently Super Saiyan Blue just consumes too much energy.

And then Zamasu beats up Goku and Vegeta... only for Future Trunks to show up with his new Super-Saiyan-2-esque form (some people online call this 'Super Saiyan Anger', although I'm not sure how official this is) and the broken sword that the nameless kids in the resistance gave back to him. And there's a Spirit Bomb esque thing going on as every mortal shouting at Trunks to SAVE US happens. It's slightly out of nowhere, but hey, it works. We got an Android 8 cameo and... huh, I guess Android 8 would survive the android apocalypse, wouldn't he? Anyway, everyone does their spirit bomb give-your-energy-to-Trunks thing, which manifests in a gigantic blade, and Trunks bisects Zamasu from cock to head halfways, and blows him up.

That was badass. And extremely cathartic.

A lot of people have trouble with the Spirit Sword coming out of nowhere and Vegito being somewhat of a jobber in this climax... but I'm actually perfectly fine with it. I could've used a bit of a foreshadowing as to the fact that Trunks knows about the Spirit Bomb (and is able to modify it -- maybe take away all the Mafuuba stuff that went nowhere?), but it's such a thematically appropriate ability to use on Zamasu. Part of it is perhaps because I don't actually give two shits about Vegito, but ultimately episode 66 ends up being a pretty satisfying ending in my opinion.

So yeah. Future Trunks Saga? Pretty awesome. It does feel a bit fanwanky at times, but considering Zamasu's status as a god and the prominence of the potara earrings he wears it's actually a neat foreshadowing that fusion's going to take place sooner or later. I definitely feel that going back and forth between present-day and future and dealing with three incarnations of Zamasu felt a bit overkill and them trying to fit in way too much. Plus there's way too much padding (and the Mafuuba thing went nowhere). But for all its faults, Zamasu is a love-to-hate jackass of a villain, and we got so much awesome moments at the end, even if I really wished that Super Saiyan Rose, Trunks' new Super Saiyan form, Spirit Bomb Sword and the random angry scythe clone rift were explained a bit further. Still, the arc works amazingly at delivering the tense fights and high-energy HOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH fights with great moments in-between them. And having Zamasu, who rants about how worthless mortals are, defeated with a variation of the Spirit Bomb -- something that channels the wishes and powers of mortals -- is amazingly appropriate.

Oh, and Trunks got the win! Not Goku! I really wish future arcs would allow some of the other characters to get the win, and considering how much this saga has been revolving around Trunks -- as inconsistently as he is written at times -- it's definitely appropriate for him to kill Zamasu.

Except -sigh- it's not over yet. We still episode 67. And somehow, despite being bisected and exploding into smithereens... Zamasu somehow became... stronger? And he just seeps "INTO THE UNIVERSE!" as a weird Antispiral-esque cloud of faces that envelop the entire world, and apparently the entire multiverse in the future timeline. And apparently they also somehow menace the present-day world, travelling through time. And um... why? How? This is a bigger asspull than anything else, because nothing really shows that Zamasu has had the power to do this at all. Zamasu then pulls a Kid Buu and unleashes his own version of the human extinction attack and finally succeeds in killing everybody except for the time-travelers, Trunks and Mai. So yeah, all that time spent to build up how we can have hope with Yajirobe and the kids and all that? They're all dead now. Whoops.

So yeah... it makes no sense, both in a narrative fashion and in-universe fashion. Goku remembers the Zen'o button from way, way back earlier in the arc, presses it and summons Zen'o... who, in this splintered timeline, never met Goku, who died from the heart attack. But Zen'o's reactions to Zamasu's blathering is the same as the audience's. "Man, that guy's annoying". Then Zen'o wipes out the entire multiverse, killing Zamasu, while our heroes escape via time machine to the present day.

What was the point of this, other than to show off Zen'o's power? And was it even necessary, I wonder? Also never mind how much it doesn't make sense that Zamasu randomly gets the power to become an all-encompassing wave of ego throughout the multiverse and the space-time continuum. Also everyone dies just to backfire on all the messages of hope and defiance that we've been talking about all throughout the arc, leading us to a very hollow ending that felt like it was tacked on at the last minute.

Goku then travels back to the future splinter timeline, where... it's just nothingness with Future!Zen'o floating in space. No reason for Future!Zen'o to trust Goku so much, but he does. Goku brings Future!Zen'o to meet Present!Zen'o, fulfilling the mission of bringing Present!Zen'o a friend. It's... umm... er... yeah. I dunno. It's a thing. Oh, and the Great Priest is Whis and Vados's father. That... should've seen that coming, to be honest.

Beerus and Whis then allows Trunks and Mai to time-travel one more time, to a point earlier in the Future Trunks' timeline before Beerus dies and tells them to get the future Beerus's help in killing Zamasu and I dunno. It's just a way to get Future Trunks out of the story and I honestly feel like it would  be better for them to just end the episode at 66, or to have Future Trunks and Mai stick around in our present-day timeline. The farewell with Gohan is bittersweet, too, but it all ends up feeling really hollow. More than the problems that the rest of the arc already inherently have due to its flimsy pacing and storytelling, the ending is just such a clusterfuck that it leaves me with a bitter taste in my mouth.

TL;DR Summary
So yeah... The Future Trunks Saga is definitely mixed. It ends up feeling like an adaptation of someone's fanfiction... and while there are many parts that end up feeling well-done, the arc as a whole is a messily-plotted one that coincidentally has a lot of great moments and wraps up a bunch of dangling plot threads from the Cell, Buu and Beerus arcs. It tries to go big and wide with the scope of its storytelling, delivers a crapton of lore to us in the process... but does it pretty messily and with an unsatisfying ending. It really should've been driven through the editing machine a bit more. It's a mess, but at least it's a glorious mess -- all the fight scenes are intense and well-choreographed, and I could (but won't) easily list some of the best and powerful action moments that would be as iconic as some of the best moments from Z. But ultimately it tries to do way too much, there are way too many inconsistencies, repetitive motive rants, plot holes and a shade too many ass-pulls, that it ends up easily being the messiest arc in the entirety of Dragon Ball, easily. So yeah... nice experiment, Zamasu's a great love-to-hate villain, and there are some undeniably great moments that if you'll excuse me I'll rewatch on Godtube Youtube right now.... but ultimately, it's definitely weaker compared to the Universe 6 arc by a huge, huge margin. There's a lot of great concepts, but it's foiled by a lot of misses in the execution and the desire to overcomplicate things unnecessarily.

Oh well. Next up... a bunch of side-stories before we finally begin the Universal Survival Tournament arc, which is, at the moment of me writing this, still ongoing.