Dragon Blog Super #20: On Universe 11

Article by Sean Wilkinson,
a.k.a. The Animeister

This post wasn't scheduled in Saturday's Time Drops, but I got sucked into watching/listening to a YouTube video on the lore of the Street Fighter franchise on Sunday and it got me in a mood to do some speculation about Dragon Ball Super.

From what I've seen and heard over the past year, there are some major shake-ups and power plays going on behind the scenes that are affecting how anime, manga, and video game content is being approached and will be approached in the future, such as the manga adaptation of the Super Hero movie (making this the first time a manga has had filler?), the choice to keep to plots within Universe Seven for the time being, characters included in current mobile games, Xenoverse 2, Super Dragon Ball Heroes, and the upcoming Sparking Zero, and the choice to go with the Daima streaming series instead of adapting the post-T.O.P. arcs into anime form. Well, Daima is more of a nostalgic choice because this year is the 40th anniversary of Dragon Ball, and they want to recapture that youthful, magical appeal of the original.

Speaking of padding and having to wait for promised content, rest assured that I am still, slowly, working on the next part of What If GOKU Was NEVER BORN?, but I need to clear my mind of academia and grandiose impulses before I can fully dive back into that world again. Today's post is more in line with something like my Hair-em Ball Z article, and touches on something that came out of nowhere and hasn't been touched since the Tournament Of Power: fleshing out Jiren's rushed backstory.

Before I get into that, please give me your energy by clicking the Follow button to Become A Ticketholder if you haven't already, commenting at the bottom of this post, helping out my ad revenue as you read, and following me on Tumblr, Reddit, Facebook, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my content.

Okay, so here's the premise: Universe Eleven Is Based On Street Fighter.

As you can probably tell from the thumbnail. this all begins with how much the Pride Trooper, Kahseral, looks like a lost member of Delta Red, the military group who took Cammy in after her Killer Bee programming failed at the end of the Alpha games. Also, it may just be a coincidence and I haven't seen anything to confirm this, but the black portion of the Pride Trooper uniform is triangle-shaped, just like the Greek letter, Delta, and the torso portion of their uniforms is red. So, Delta Red inspirations, anyone?

I mean, I know that the true, cited inspiration for the Pride Troopers is Super Sentai/Power Rangers, and they're meant to be a morality-flip on Universe Seven's Ginyu Force (even though the mirrored Universes concept was to be demonstrated with Universe Six, and was dropped almost as quickly as it was introduced), but just look at them!

Which leads into the main point of speculation that I really wanted to talk about: Who killed Jiren's master, Gicchin?

My answer as to the identity of the killer is: Gicchin's brother!

As for why I think this, it's pure speculation based on the above "U11 is Street Fighter" premise that I have stated despite there being very little indication of what the rest of the Universe's inhabitants look or act like, and Jiren having basically the same dark origin story as Ryu. He's a solitary warrior whose chosen means of communication is strength in battle, he is a candidate for inheriting Destructive energy, but meditates in his free time, and when necessary, he joins a diverse group of warriors to fight evil. But also, his master has a white beard and was killed by someone demonic-looking with glowing, red eyes. Then there are the slight name similarities between Gouken and Gicchin. And Akuma (Gouki in Japan) was Gouken's brother.

I'm not the best with Japanese (even Romanized Japanese), but let's give this hypothetical brother/murderer of Gicchin a Gouki-like name; something like Korochi (based on korosu, one of the Japanese words for "kill," daidokoro, one of the Japanese words for "kitchen," and orochi, the eight-headed nature dragon from Japanese mythology).

It's pretty thin speculation that lands more heavily on the fan-fiction side, and I don't have the image basis or drawing skills to make fan art of the character, but I'm happy with the name and the puns that went into it.

I know how the Dragon Ball fandom can get, so please be kind with your feedback as you click the Follow button to Become A Ticketholder if you haven't already, comment at the bottom of this post, help out my ad revenue as you read, and follow me on Tumblr, Reddit, Facebook, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my content. The "Month Of Love" begins this Thursday.

Animeister,

Out of Speculations.