Dragon Ball Super: Universe 6 Tournament Arc [Episodes 28 - 41]

So here we go with the Universe 6 Tournament Saga! Otherwise known as the Champa Saga. Whatever the case, while the past 27 episodes featured a long-winded retelling of two movies -- which, don't get me wrong, are at least partially competently done -- but most of what I ended up talking about is how they did things better or worse. And here we get to see the first straight-up new content in the official Dragon Ball canon (well, I mean there's GT but I'm under the impression that that's the black sheep of the franchise).

And my opinion of the Universe 6 Arc as a whole? It's... decently done. It's not super-duper spectacular, but it tries to combine the huge 'battle of the gods' mentality that the Super arcs have been hyping up with a Tenkaichi-Budokai style tournament... which is really cool! It brings up actual old-style Dragon Ball (without the Z) tournaments where we are rooting for one side and actively against the other, which I don't think we've seen since... oh, I guess the Cell Saga? That quickly degenerated to just a straight-up "kill the genetic bug monster" deal, though. We had a tournament in the Buu saga but that was more of a jokey filler than anything.

And the Universe 6 Tournament doesn't last as long as either the Frieza, Cell or Buu Sagas which is the biggest detracting point against Dragon Ball Z in general -- the exorbitant amount of length in arcs. The Universe 6 Tournament clocks in at exactly a single anime season (plus a handful of... not exactly filler, but shorter arcs at the end of the season which we'll talk about separately) which makes it pretty digestible, length-wise.

Oh, and the animation absolutely ramps up in this arc. Both the animation and choreography. The simple exchange of physical blows between Vegeta and Cabba (Kabe?) ends up being twenty times more interesting than the generic punchy-punchy and blasty-blasty in the entire Goku versus Golden Frieza fight. It's still somewhat inconsistent at places, but a lot of the fights -- Goku versus Hit, Vegeta versus Magetta, Vegeta versus Cabba -- are all insanely well-animated.

Yet at the same time, while we have the supposed "threat" being the fact that Earth is the prize left up for grabs by the wager between the two gods of destruction -- Beerus of "our" universe 7 and Champa of Universe 6 -- there's no real threat, and even with Champa throwing a tantrum all the time, the whole "he's like Beerus in power!" deal never really worked when Beerus, Whis and Champa's attendant Vados are all sitting there to make sure the fat rat behaves.

The tournament itself also ends up being reduced to another Goku-and-Vegeta show. And while the moments that both Goku and Vegeta had were undoubtedly motherfucking badass (I will go through the individual fights below) I do really have a huge problem with the 5-v-5 setup. I never expected Monaka, the touted and hyped-up-in-universe "strongest being in the universe" to amount to anything but a joke since Whis makes it pretty clear that Monaka is Beerus's little joke (apparently a lot of people didn't get it until the last episode that he is forced to fight, which honestly boggles my mind because they don't even try to keep it a secret after, like, the first episode Monaka shows up)... but having Majin Buu fall asleep on an entrance test? Vegeta telling Piccolo to fuck off and throw the match against Frost? I dunno. Piccolo at least gets to do something, but it's hardly enough considering the fact that Vegeta gets to beat up three of the five combatants single-handedly. And I'm a Vegeta fanboy myself, but at that point I really wished that they had built up the Universe 6 combatants a little more by using Majin Buu as a worf effect deal.

And the Universe 6 fighters themselves are... a bit of a disappointment, aren't they? The actual fights were great. Well-scripted, well-animated and well-directed. But the only real threat there is Hit. Frost is supposedly scary because he's an alternate-universe Frieza, but when it all boils down he's just the same Frieza we beat all the way back in Namek, so Frost never actually felt like a threat to either Vegeta or Goku, and honestly I totally bought that Piccolo would win that match. The cheating angle was cool but, again, it doesn't actually make Frost a threat. Botamo the bear dude ends up being one-shotted and they really didn't do much with the concept of absorbing all attacks, and while Cabba is my favourite out of the Universe 6 dudes he really ends up being a little chump. Magetta's cool, and the only one out of Vegeta's three knockouts that prove any sort of a match, but he also ends up honestly only getting an advantage because Champa and Vados made a cube around the arena. While the individual fights are pretty awesome I really wished they had done a bit more in expanding the movesets and power levels of these guys to make them feel more of a threat.

We also get a lot of introdumping here, and thankfully a lot of it is bundled up in the 28th episode with Bulma and Jaco's little space road trip. We learn about the Super Dragon Balls -- hence the title of the show -- and in the final episode of the arc, the Zen'ou (English translations romanize him as King-of-All-Things or the Omni-King, but I'll stick with Zen'o) shows up. Zen'o is apparently the god of all 12 universes, and is this weird happy little adorable shit! It does feel weird that we went from one 'ultimate god' to the next from Kami to King Kai to Kaioshin to Beerus to Whis to Zen'o. But it kinda feels somewhat foreshadowed by Whis explaining that there are 12 universes and all, so... eh. Whatever. Apparently Zen'o is just as airheaded and happy-go-lucky as Goku is, with the implication that he's even more capricious than Beerus is in destroying entire universes wily-nily. I'll... take it? I am a big fan of the buildup in mythology in this arc, be it Universe 6, the Beerus/Champa/Whis/Vados gang, the 12 universes and the Zen'o. We also get a hint of a future arc (not the next one, though, to my supreme disappointment) where the Zen'o wants to make a tournament between all 12 universes, which is cool. Oh, and he (she?) befriends Goku, and is voiced with the most adorable little voice for a potential cosmic sociopath.

Jeez, when did Dragon Ball turn out to have a more psychotic set of cosmic gods than the Cthulhu mythos?

There are definitely moments in the Universe 6 arc that I really wished they did better... but that's my feeling about every single arc in Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z anyway. I really wish that the next few arcs would stray a bit further from the Goku-and-Vegeta show, which is a same complaint I have about every single other shonen manga out there.

Anyway, I'll quickly go through the actual events of the arc. The whole thing is pretty well-done, all things considered, entertaining enough to be the start of something bigger and harkens back to the older days where it's not another space-time super-powerful tyrant trying to destroy the world, and finally utilizes Beerus and Whis in something far better as opposed to their rather lackluster role in the Golden Frieza arc.

Episode 28 is just a huge introduction to Champa and Vados to the main characters. The audience has seen Champa and Vados around twice in the past few arcs, but here they finally make contact with our main characters. We learn that Champa and Beerus are twins, and are the gods of desetruction for universes 6 and 7, which are 'paired' with each other. Whis and Vados are also siblings, and the dynamic between the 'aide' and the god of destruction is similar enough to Beerus. I'm not the biggest fan of Champa while watching these episodes, although in retrospect he's essentially just Beerus with less dignity, respect and gravitas and more erratic, psychotic manchild tantrums. And while Beerus has warmed up to the humans a bit (even if there's the hilarity of him going "get off my lawn!" anytime Goku and Vegeta trains a bit too furiously to disturb his catnaps) I do like how he still has these creepy moments where he scares Bulma by his whimsy "joke" that he might just wish the Super Dragon Balls to destroy the world so he doesn't have to do his job. I doubt that he's actually ever going to straight-up become evil, and Beerus is essentially going through what Tien, Piccolo and Vegeta did in the past, but it's still a relative work of progress.

Also, I found it absolutely hilarious that Beerus and Champa have a very absurd way of a dick-waving contest, which is "which of our worlds can produce the tastiest food", and challenge each other in that manner. And Beerus wins with motherfucking CUP RAMEN, a hilarious brick joke to Bulma and Vegeta bonding with Whis earlier in the series. And it's this pettiness that led Champa to challenge Beerus to a tournament to get Universe 7's Earth (Universe 6's Earth has been destroyed) and I really loved the verbal back-and-forth between Champa and Beerus. Especially when Goku goes "oh, the Wish Orbs are like the dragon balls!" and Beerus goes "yeah, nyeeeeh, we have them over here!"

Episode 29 is a bit more of a setup (essentially Bulma tries to build a new dragon radar and gets suspicious of Beerus), and introduces to us the concept of Monaka, the 'other mortal able to stand up to Beerus', as well as the creation of the Nameless Planet, the arena that they'll fight. Episode 30 is... a fucking clip show framed, at least, with Goku and Vegeta going around recruiting Piccolo and Buu. It's a fucking clip show and clip shows are horrible. I love the fact that Gohan is training with Piccolo... but Gohan can't join in the tournament because he has a conference? That's dumb. I'll talk about Gohan in greater length when I talk about the last four episodes of this season (the Potafeu arc) in a separate article.

Episode 31 is a unexpected 'filler' episode that doesn't actually feel filler-y, and it involves Bulma and Jaco going on a road trip through space to find out the true nature of the Super Dragon Balls and try to beat Beerus to the punch and preventing the manic cat-god from killing them all. It's more of a clever way to really introduce to us just who Jaco the Galactic Policeman is, his long-suffering relationship with Bulma, and also to tell us more about the Super Dragon Balls themselves (the balls are actually spread across Universe 6 and 7) which are as huge as planets. They hvae this little madcap adventure going to the planet of this super-smart oracle called... Zuno? It's a more hilarious mini-episode I didn't mind that much, and Jaco asking Zuno for Bulma's bra size -- not out of any pervertness but just to show that Zuno is super-smart -- is fun. One of Jaco's supporting characters from his manga, the Galactic King (a standard Japanese-octopus-alien) also shows up and joins our peanuts gallery but I don't really care.

Somewhere in-between all of this, Goku, Vegeta and Whis decide that "Super Saiyan God Super Saiyan" is a mouthful and come up with the name Super Saiyan Blue to refer to that form permanently. Which is... definitely preferable. I've always hatted the SSGSS term.

Episode 32 is where the journey to the Nameless Planet begins, and Majin Buu gets his stupid fat ass eliminated even before the tournament starts... and I'm really pissed off that they don't actually just replace Buu with another fighter, or have him wake up later on to fight in the tournament. Why write him in at all? Why not have, say, a token resistance from Gotenks or someone? Monaka also shows up here (and gets punched in the face immediately by Goku) and we get the revelation that Kaioshin and Kibito have separated. We get to see the Universe 6 fighters and they look really weird for sure. Hit kinda looks like a tall Frieza in a trenchcoat, Frost is straight-up a miscoloured Frieza, we have a giant fat gold bear and a robot, and Cabba, who then reveals that the Saiyans of Universe 6 aren't a race of raiding space pirates, but are a noble race of superheroes, essentially.


Episode 33 has Goku fight Botamo and it's... honestly pretty eh. It's a fight that is necessary in showing that our heroes can put up a fight against the weaker members of the U6 team, but it turns out that the rest of the U6 team not named Hit is kinda weak. As an individual fight, though, Goku and Botamo is pretty cool, especially how he ends up using his head (both literally and figuratively) to realize that if Botamo can somehow absorb all physical and energy attacks and shunt them to another dimension, all he has to do is to knock him off and Judo-toss him off the ring. Then we're introduced to Frost, a.k.a. Good Frieza... and kudos to the voice actor for still having the exact same voice as Frieza but making Frost sound well-spoken and nice. Frost is apparently the leader of the peace corps and is fighting to get money for all the impoverished people in his universe, and he's a swell guy, apologizing to Goku when he accidentally unleashes too many beams and claims he doesn't want to use his final form because he accidentally killed an enemy with it.

The most hilarious bit is Goku and Vegeta just telling Frost to stop dicking around with his 'assault' form and just go straight to the final one.

Frost fights Goku in, respectively, their Final-Frost and Super Saiyan 1 forms, and Goku has the significant advantage as he should (since, y'know, Goku's Super Saiyan form has powered up significantly since he fought Frieza on Namek) and has the advantage until he suddenly blanks and gets knocked out of the ring by Frost. Episode 34 continues with showing off Piccolo as he fights Frost... and it's not a bad showing necessarily for Piccolo in the episode. He lost only because Frost cheated, and a combination of his jumping around, making clones, using his stretchy arm and charging up the Makankosappo into such a strength that it blows through the Vados-created barrier is pretty hardcore, and it's not a bad way for him to fall. The fact that the show refuses to give Piccolo anything to do afterwards, or find some way to at least allow him to KO an enemy is a bit irritating, though.

Vegeta's general suspicion and Jaco's super eyes ends up finding out that Frost is actually cheating, stabbing Goku and Piccolo with fast-acting poison to knock them out. We get a hilarious bit of Champa and Beerus nonchalantly noting that Jaco will be obliterated if he lies, which I loved, and in episode 35 Vegeta literally just one-shots Frost. The transformation of Frost into, well, essentially just Frieza but going through the extra convoluted steps to make him into a villain pretending to be a hero is a bit eeeeh and I really wished they stuck with their guns and continued to make Frost a good guy, which I thought would be more interesting. Frost gets fucked up by Vegeta, then when he tries to steal the time cube he gets fucked up by fellow U6 contestant Hit the hitman.

Again, all of these are very cool individual scenes. Piccolo standing up to Frost, Frost getting one-punched by Vegeta, Frost getting one-punched by Hit... but ultimately it all felt like it doesn't work as well as a whole.

Episode 35 and 36 is a two-parter between Vegeta and the hilariously-voiced robot Auta Magetta, which is a perfectly cool and awesome fight that really makes Vegeta look so goddamned cool. Magetta himself is a pretty neat design, and while he initially looked super-unwieldy and dumb he ends up being a pretty interesting combatant, and honestly just how different he is from the rest of the cast makes me appreciate him a bit more. Vegeta has to deal with being trapped in a force-field cube that Champa puts around the match to make it a 'bit more interesting' but it's just such a way to make use of Magetta emitting smoke and heat and essentially cooking Vegeta up. Oh, and he spits lava and shoots out smoke. Hee hee.

The fight went on slightly longer than is healthy for it, but HOLY FUCK that Final Flash is amazing. Final Flash is one of those moments that are just made of utter badassery and its animated form during the Cell Saga is just amazingly done, so Vegeta powers up and HOAAAAAAH's so hard it breaks the forcefield cage, assumes the Final Flash pose, creating lightning bolts that run the entire circumference of the small planet, then unleashes the blast that doesn't quite destroy Magetta but he follows it through by moving through the blast, punching Magetta and destroying the tournament floor. (Apparently the reason Magetta dropped his guard is because Vegeta calls him a 'junkyard shit' and he's just a sensitive fellow?)

The 37th episode is Vegeta fighting against Cabba, the Saiyajin from Universe 6... and Cabba is not a threat. At all. Botamo felt more of a threat than this dude. And the fight isn't particularly super-interesting, although it certainly is purty. But it's easily one of the best emotional moment in the entire Super series as a whole, and I honestly wished Vegeta was actually far more cruel in attempting to teach Cabba how to become a PROUD SAIYAN WARRIOR and transform into a Super Saiyan. It's a very cool bit where Vegeta just pushes all of Cabba's buttons and threatens to blow up Planet Salad, then goes straight up to Super Saiyan Blue, showing Cabba of the true potential of their race then one-punching Cabba. Vegeta also rather awesomely tells Cabba that the kid shouldn't aim to be as powerful as Vegeta, but should aim to surpass him.

Yeah, Vegeta has came a long, long way from the prick killed his comrade for being 'too weak', yeah? As Piccolo points out, he's behaving like a proper Prince. Definitely the most well-written fight in the entire U6 tournament.

Episode 38 has Vegeta fight against Hit, who has been built up considerably throughout the show and he's... he's cool enough, I guess? He's like one of those characters, like Future Trunks that's built to be cool and I didn't like him that much in his first appearance, although I respect that he's the first that actually felt like a threat. Hit overwhelms Vegeta and absolutely fucks him up, all the way acting all businesslike like it ain't no big deal. But I felt that the revelation of Hit's power, which is essentially like Dio Brando's The World (stopping time for 0.1 seconds) or Guldo's power used by a competent fighter... ends up being info-dumped to us by Jaco and his octopus buddy and that felt clunky.

Episodes 39 and 40 is a two-part Goku versus Hit and it's... it's pretty cool, actually. It's filled with energy and lots of screaming and lots of manly, manly mutual respect between Hit and Goku. Hit and Goku work well as a pair of 'you are a worthy opponent!' 'shucks, you too!' bit going on, and with both of them constantly improving, with Goku coming up with a way to counter-attack and 'read' Hit's moves before he makes them, and Hit forcing himself to be able to stop larger amounts of time... it's a pretty amazing fight and it really helps that this is the absolute best Dragon Ball Super has looked.

And then Goku pulls off a combination of Super Saiyan Blue and Kaioken, the first power-up he ever had (that flashback to Goku using the Kaioken to beat Vegeta in his very first arc is a neat callback) which... okay, that's pretty cool. Slightly an asspull but pretty cool nonetheless, and unlike Super Saiyan Blue, we actually get an explanation -- Goku could never use Kaioken for the simple fact that in other non-Blue Super Saiyan forms the whole Saiyan battle rage prevents him from effectively doing the ki control that Kaioken demands. I did feel that the way the fight was ended felt rather forced, though. Goku tells Beerus to call off the rules because Hit can't use his full power and complement of assassination skills, but then apparently he can only maintain Kaioken for like ten more seconds or so? Huh? Why not ask Beerus to lift the limitations earlier?

It's a very great concept for Goku to note to Hit that they should fight as equal fighters and not 'pawns of gods', which is definitely punctuated very well with the immature blathering between Beerus and Champa above them... but at the same time, the fact that Goku doesn't actually have much fight remaining in him yet still wants to make it harder on himself felt really weird. Still, it doesn't really eliminate the super-awesome Hit-vs-Goku fight that happened before, and how they made Hit actually grow somewhat as a villain, forcing him to improve and actually realize that he enjoyed the fight as much as Goku does.

(Incidentally, Hit goes through the 'talented superpower forced to train to power up' antagonist character arc so, so much better than Frieza did)

And then Monaka gets sent into the ring, and of course, everyone but the insanely-oblivious Goku realizes that Monaka's actually a shit random dude that Beerus puts into the team as a joke more than anything... but Hit realizes what's going on and throws himself off the ring, pretending that Monaka's shit punch is powerful enough to knock him away. The fact that Hit doesn't have that much to gain probably factors into things, too.

And, well, kudos for Beerus. Like, for all of Goku's talk about how he's being used as a pawn, Beerus is actually relatively friendly for someone whose first appearance involved him wanting to blow up the Earth because of pudding. Here his reaction to Goku losing against Frost was angry "the fuck, man?" type of screaming and then amending himself to forcing himself to be sportsmanly. And after Goku throws the match against Hit, Beerus is likewise more of a "the fuck, man?" as opposed to what Champa does, which is "you failed me and I will obliterate you and everything you love." Also while Beerus is more immature, it's clear that Universe 7 got stuck with the more reasonable twin -- relatively speaking -- and Beerus was gracious enough to let the match end and have Monaka go out as opposed to just going crazy and murdering everyone.

Which ends up being what Champa ends up wanting to do. He tells his team in no uncertain terms that they're nothing but pawns and gets ready to murder them all (poor Magetta's expression!) and saying how utterly outclassed they all are against a goddamned god of destruction. Beerus doesn't seem to be interested in helping the U6 guys because it's not his place... and then Zen'o shows up in the 41st episode.

And there's just something so comical and terrifying at seeing the two previously-untouchable gods of destruction, Champa and Beerus, panic and fluster about and just jump down and bow to the ground in front of Zen'o. All the Kais and the attendants do the same... and the fact that when Vados and Whis tattles to Zen'o that their respective gods of destruction are being lazy and petty, none of them make any sort of protest, a far cry from what we know about them. Goku ends up just approaching Zen'o and attempting to befriend him, much to the horror of everyone else, but the Zen'o ends up... liking Goku! He shakes hand with Goku, who accidentally lifts him up into the air because he's a tiny dude, and it's pretty funny, actually. It has the Zen'o put Champa and Beerus in their place (with just a few words), note that they'll have a 12-universe tournament in the future and then buggers off.

The Super Dragon Ball summoning is... eh. The discovery that the seventh Super Dragon Ball being the Nameless Planet itself is predictable (although it's cool that it's Monaka and 18 that realizes it) but the summoning seems like the show's trying way too hard to make it look cool and all-encompassing, and "Super Shenlong" ends up looking tacky. It's neat that Beerus ends up wishing for Earth to be restored in Universe 6, to give Champa his own Earth, too.

I suppose I have to talk a bit about Champa. He acts as a more spoiled, more asshole version of Beerus and their sibling rivalry and Champa's childishness is endearing enough, but he just... he just doesn't have the same gravitas or threat that Beerus has. There's the implicit childish-tantrum-innocence that Buu and later Zen'o will have, which adds a layer of danger around Champa, but at the same time he is more bratty than threatening, and Vados acts like a far more blatant security layer around Champa than Whis was to Beerus (when we first meet Whis and Beerus, the two feel in sync and Whis feels more like an airheaded lackey/companion more than anything). But I suppose the fact that Champa isn't meant to be villainous, just antagonistic, makes this a fair bit more understandable, I guess.

Overall, though... it's an okay arc. There are definitely some weak parts, undoubtedly, and I really, really wished that they allowed other characters to do more things. And don't get me talking about power levels, which are all over the place with this one. Plus, with both Cabba and Botamo ending up to be not actually serious contenders, I really wished that they had done things differently. But at the same time I'm relatively satisfied by the Universe 6 arc in general -- it melds together the tones of original Dragon Ball with its more episode-to-episode tournament fights and the epic scale of Z, while putting its own spin on things. Just like what Z was to the original Dragon Ball, this is Super being a sequel while at the same time moving at its own (faster) pace and doing a more light-hearted, arc-focused tone as opposed to the big-long-running mega-sagas that Z is so infamous for. As the first real solitary arc that's going to hopefully set the tone for everything that's to come in the future, the Universe 6 Tournament is a very, very satisfying, if flawed, entry. And satisfying-but-flawed is honestly what I feel about the entire Dragon Ball series as a whole, so yeah... it definitely meets my expectations on that front.