Dragon Ball Super 126 Review: Saiyan Pride

Dragon Ball Super, Episode 126: Surpass Even A God! Vegeta's Desperate Blow

This episode is actually... quite polarizing. Literally so, too! Let's go with the bad bits out of the way first, which is actually quite coincidentally, the first half of this episode. Like, the entire first half. See, one of the rather glaring problems that old-school Dragon Ball Z has is that sometimes the villains and antagonists feel like absolute chumps after displaying such a huge power-up, and then absolutely failing to defeat their opponents. Which is exactly what's going on here. Toppo's god of destruction powers are so unbelievably badass in the previous episode, and the man's an unstoppable juggernaut. Honestly, the previous episode might be one of my favourite episodes of Super due to the fighting scenes between Toppo, 17 and Freeza. 

Here it kind of... undoes the impact of last week's episode, honestly. Toppo is just shouting HAKAI wily-nily and shooting the Justice Flash attack (probably now just called "Flash" since he's renounced justice) and the entirety of the first half of the episode honestly feels like filler, not helped by literal filler due to the extra-long recap. 17 just runs around without any of the badassery that made him so entertaining in all of his previous outings, and Toppo ends up just hakai-ing all the rocks and rubble, which isn't as impressive as... literally every single other thing he did in the previous episode. Freeza shows up, having recovered from having his skull crushed, to pull off a telekinesis attack to hold Toppo in place, before lobbing some rocks telekinetically at him... but of course it does nothing. It's a new trick, at least, even if it doesn't look impressive at all. 

Honestly, a lot of these felt more like they should've happened earlier in the fight, and not after Toppo has broken Frieza's spirit by flicking a little marble ball to destroy his death ball. 

And then the random errant energies from the fight between Jiren and the two Saiyans lashes about, and 17 and Frieza get caught in the crossfire from a Jiren blast and just get knocked out unceremoniously. I'm not a big fan of this. Thank god that 17 and Freeza don't actually get ringed-out in a ridiculous and out-of-nowhere attack, but the fact that they get taken out of the fight without doing much to Toppo after fighting him for the entirety of the previous couple of episodes is honestly a bit galling. 

And I would've been far more mad if the second half of the episode isn't as well-done as it is. Toppo and Jiren splits up, with Toppo facing off against Vegeta (and, well, since I go into anime episodes skipping their titles, it does mean that this wasn't a development I realize was going to happen). There's an actual bit of a clash of ideals going on between Vegeta and Toppo, which is genuinely unexpected, and I really, really wished that the writing behind Toppo shedding his Justice is actually handled somewhat better. Maybe cut out some of the recycled animation and sequences in the first half, and just have some Toppo monologues about abandoning justice? Maybe talk a bit at the impartiality that gods of destruction must have or something along those lines? 

But Vegeta is the perfect foil for Toppo, and the show acknowledges it -- I didn't really consider it, but Toppo harps about the Pride Troopers being warriors of justice, and it's similar to Vegeta being a huge proponent of Saiyan Pride throughout the entire series. It also gives me faith that Vegeta still has a character arc throughout Super instead of just being a generic, boring anime side-character-that-fights-and-has-no-other-personality. Vegeta is disgusted at Toppo for sacrificing his pride and ideals, while he himself has a brief moment to recall his wife and children, as well as his promise to Cabba... and actually powers up so much he punches through a hakai sphere and even goes through some amazingly animated fighting sequences to toss Toppo around. 

And we get a glorious flashback to one of the best moments in the Buu Saga -- Majin Vegeta's sacrifice, as he detonates himself knowing full well that he's going to be sent to hell after his death, marking his complete character growth back in Dragon Ball Z. It's pretty amazing, and without pointing it out overtly, it actually reminds me of how Vegeta actually did what Toppo exactly did back in that arc -- he threw away his allegiance to Goku, as well as his family, in order to get stronger and become Majin Vegeta just for the sake of power, and it's a decision he eventually came to regret and made peace with. Vegeta isn't just spouting and mocking Toppo's abandoning of justice because he's a jackass -- take note that he actually says "I won't sacrifice anything again!" And that comparison with past-Vegeta actually makes the latter half of the episode absolutely amazing, coupled with some pretty great voice acting from Horikawa Ryo that truly makes Vegeta's brief moments of contemplation really powerful. It is literally impossible not to get emotional and pumped up throughout all of the Vegeta scenes, which legitimately got me slightly misty-eyed, and for that I tip my hat to the anime staff. 

Again, outside of the Vegeta stuff, there's a lot of great material here that I really wish was made more impactful by having Toppo be somewhat developed beyond just repeating "hakai" and "justice is meaningless" like fifteen times throughout the episode. Still, Vegeta unleashes the Final Explosion (or Final Atonement) technique and blasts Toppo out of the ring, and while he's not killed by it he's reverted back to his regular form. This leaves only Jiren, with Goku, Vegeta and 17 ready to fight him (Frieza's presumably just groaning in a pile of rubble somewhere), and Jiren... Jiren's uncharacteristically chatty here, isn't he? He actually gets somewhat pissed off and gets angry at Goku and Vegeta earlier in the episode, and here he tells Toppo to piss off for being useless, before promising to show off his "true"power as he finally powers up. 

So yeah, there's like four minutes left in the tournament and around that many episodes are left for Super. Overall... probably one of the better moments in the Super series for Vegeta, and the parallels between Toppo and Vegeta ends up making this a fight I ended up getting far more emotionally invested in despite taking place for only half an episode compared to most of the "you and you, fight!" battles that have been happening throughout this tournament... but not a good episode overall due to poor pacing and the very weak first half.