Dragon Ball Super 127 Review: Beanie Hat

Dragon Ball Super, Episode 127: The Approaching Wall! The Final Barrier of Hope!

This episode of Dragon Ball Super is... odd. I tend to easily handwave a lot of Dragon Ball Super's shortcomings for the simple reason that I've never found Z to be as impressive or a masterpiece as most people make it out to be, not having the benefit of viewing Z with nostalgia. Both Z and Super are really good shonen action manga, and the franchise is iconic for a reason, but it's not without its shortcomings. And Super's biggest shortcoming is the lack of consistency between episodes. For the most part, they could be handwaved as being "oh, the characters are holding back" or "they're saving their strength", but this one ends up feeling super-inconsistent especially in how Jiren and Vegeta are handled. 

Vegeta, having been established last chapter as using up most of his energy to take out Toppo in that Final Explosion attack, ends up very easily going back and forth into the Beyond-Blue form not once but twice in this episode without any real visible signs of fatigue beyond showing off his ripped pecs... whereas the same show had Goku floundering around because of fatigue after fighting Jiren and using Goku's lack of stamina and energy as a plot point to his fight against Caulifla and Kale. On the same token, the exhausted Vegeta and Goku can somehow put up as much of a punch-trading fight against a supposedly full-powered Jiren, making this supposed gloves-are-off Full Power Jiren end up looking way, way less impressive than the original Jiren-vs-Goku fight so many episodes ago. 

There are, of course, some really neat action beats between the generic ATATATATATA's that make this fight still vastly superior to something like Fairy Tail's generic slew of naught-but-punches-and-blasts, like Jiren's neat bit of using the force of his uppercut to erase a Kamehameha, or Android 17 putting up a series of barrier shields in a row that Jiren plows through, or 17 kicking Vegeta aside so Jiren punches him instead of Vegeta....

But ultimately, everything feels a bit bland and unfinished, as 17 ends up being the first person to hurt Jiren... by unleashing a point-blank explosion from his back. Did 17 discover something? A weakness? A weak spot? That Jiren's endurance requires concentration to maintain? Nah, it all ends up to one big show of "HIT HIM HARDER GUYS!" We've got a funny moment where fucking Freeza shows up and screams a lot before being punted aside by Jiren as easily as everything thrown at him... poor Freeza. It's not his day, isn't it? He did shout something about "FUCK THE RULES", so I'm curious if Freeza's going to try something else rule-breaking later down the line.

And then Belmod finally gives this huge reveal about Jiren's backstory! Baby Jiren! Beanie hat angsty teenage Jiren! And the backstory is... painfully generic. Jiren's family is killed by an evildoer! He trains hard with a teacher and a group of friends, but they, too, are killed by an evildoer! It's the most generic superhero origin story ever... and doesn't... really inform much about Jiren's motivations or personality. The only bit that this tells us about Jiren that really matters is his obsession with strength and that strength-is-absolute (which we know) and that the Pride Troopers are sort of this quasi-new family he's adopted. Honestly? While I don't put any stock in the super-complex "oh Jiren is the survivor of a destroyed universe" theories or whatever (some Last Jedi flashbacks here).

17 and Jiren trade some words, with Jiren mocking 17's simple wish of a cruise ship (to be fair, it is simple) while 17 notes that living in the past isn't particularly something honourable to do. Again, a lot of the writing for Jiren and Toppo are insanely lacking, and had it been done better or tighter, these two would've been so,  so much more interesting. Zamasu and Goku Black did way too much motive rants, Jiren and Toppo didn't do enough. And then as Goku, Vegeta and Freeza lay immobile from Jiren's assault, he prepares to blow them all up to kingdom come. 17 stands up, blocks the blast with a barrier.... and then says "well, I'll be giving up on that cruiser" and then covers the Saiyans with barriers...

And then 17 is eliminated. Well, he's got a good run, he's got a lot of great dialogue here, and he's the one consistently good thing in this episode. 

Wait, what? He doesn't go into the stands? Did... did Jiren's blast kill 17? Does that disqualify Jiren? That'd be anti-climactic. Oh. Oh, he self-destructed to waylay the blast. Huh. Like, I don't really think 17's death will be permanent because he's definitely going to be revived via one set of dragon balls or another, but it is legitimately surprising. It's actually a neat little twist that I really wished happened a bit earlier in the arc -- and again, a lot of stuff in this arc really suffers from poor pacing and sequencing. The end result is that this episode, while having some very strong moments and some really, really cool bits from Seventeen and Jiren, also ends up feeling very lackluster and messy at parts.