Dragon Blog DAIMA #30: Legend

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. the Mini Animeister.

Christmas came early this year [insert blasphemous sex joke here], Ticketholders!

Not only is this my 700th post on Blogger, but after weeks of disappointment (because following up the story and combat masterpiece that was the "Tamagami" episode is like my cynical ass trying to appear - or feel - consistently happy, useful, and productive at a job where I'm outranked and outperformed by people half my age: rare to impossible), subjectively inconsistent comedy, lore with diminishing returns, and repetitive plotting, Dragon Ball DAIMA finally nails the runback with something...legendary.

And do you know what else would be legendary, Ticketholders? If you would please give me your energy and grant my wish by clicking the Follow button to Become A Ticketholder for real, commenting at the bottom of this post, helping out my ad revenue as you read so I can afford to be buried deeper than a foot underground, and following me on Tumblr, Reddit, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my content.

I said in my "Ocean" review last week that the presentation of the episode made it feel like something special, only for it to troll me with bloated lore, an (intentionally) anticlimactic fight, and (admittedly solid, laugh-inducing) comedy.

I also said in my "Collar" review that it was where DAIMA first began to feel like Dragon Ball Z (albeit more in the pre-fight filler sense).

So far, though, "Legend" hits this blend pretty perfectly, cooking up not just a full episode presentation package (the pre-OP, the "Jaka Jaan" OP, the static title card shown above, and a banger of a next episode preview at the end), but dialogue and comedy that (mostly) keeps the non-fight portion of the episode entertaining, and on top of that, a choreography and animation format we have rarely seen, if ever, in Dragon Ball: two concurrent fights of equal importance and scale. The sense of "Z-ness" is even more apparent here than it was between the "Collar" and "Tamagami" episodes, having DAIMA's first mid-fight cliffhanger (whereas "Collar" had a pre-fight cliffhanger).

The "Legend" plot is very simple and to the point. Neva makes himself known immediately and asks to join our heroes on their quest (with Gomah still too focused on them to notice the explosions happening in his own backyard, so he has some "the camera placement makes no sense" live surveillance footage of this entire exchange), Marba, Kuu, and Arinsu make a stronger big/little brother for Kuu so they can re-fight Number One, and Vegeta challenges Tamagami #2 over kraken-infested waters. That's it.

But the details are what make this episode feel like Dragon Ball is "back."

Starting with the Neva scene, it turns out Neva likes to play senile to get what he wants, and had the god-level foresight to orchestrate the Dragon Team getting turned into Minis and know that Gomah would kidnap Dende rather than kill him. 

But wait.... Didn't Gomah have the Miniaturization idea on his own before Neva was introduced? It was at this point that I went back and watched the beginning of "Conspiracy," and discovered that the answer is yes...but not clearly so. In fact, the pilot episode's titular "Conspiracy" may be more convoluted than first thought, especially in the context of "Legend."

Animeister's Note: I had this whole, "Neva is controlling everything so he can take the throne without engaging in direct conflict" conspiracy theory based on him having hypnotic suggestion powers when he "plays senile," and I'm keeping it in because it's fun and leads to a cool point. But I did some more re-watching and realized I was stretching when Goku asked Neva if he was the one who used the Dragon Balls. Neva replies that he knew of Gomah's wish and the motivations behind it, and would have played senile to trick him if he had gone for a different wish, but did not make the wish himself. So, my theory falls apart under examination (as most conspiracy theories do, right? Right‽ Right! Right.), but it's still fun and the pieces are there. Let's dive back into the insanity....

We know that it was Arinsu who suggested that the Dragon Team would pose a threat to Gomah, that Glorio is in league with Arinsu, and that Gomah not only thought of making the wish on Earth's Dragon Balls, but also of bringing Neva with him. However, the editing of these scenes make it seem (perhaps I'm making hindsight into a Pepe Silvia board here, but bear with me)

like Gomah just awkwardly non sequiturs these ideas out of nowhere, as if someone literally planted them in his head. Perhaps Neva himself‽ We know Toriyama put a lot of Star Wars influence into DAIMA, so it would make total sense if Neva could point Gomah to the 'droids he's looking for, so to speak. Yeah, I'm going with "Neva has the Force" on this one, to explain that he implanted Gomah with the idea to turn everyone into kids with the Earth's Dragon Balls, the desire for the Tertian Oculus, and the idea of bringing Neva with him. From there, it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to say he sent Arinsu to Earth for a Buu fragment, had her send Glorio to Earth to get Goku, and suggested Degesu ask for a wish of his own, as well as kidnap Dende. Though by this logic, Neva should have also known that Shenron would only grant one wish to Gomah, or because of his demonstrated power over Dragon Balls in general, been able to limit Shenron himself, which means he might have also been lying about not being able to hack the Dragon Balls twice in a row. Add on that Hybis just found the Tertian Oculus in the mountains somewhere offscreen, all of the repetitive stalling that has happened in this series, and the chaos element that is Goku, and the "one old tactical god is orchestrating everything to get what he wants" conspiracy theory falls apart pretty hard. Suddenly, Neva feels less like the all-seeing, all-controlling mastermind he claims to be, and more like a self-insert for Toriyama himself: a jaded discovery writer trying to fix his beloved masterpiece with "oops! My bad!" memory loss and late-game chess moves to make the on-the-fly journey feel like it was meant to lead to the destination all along...and because he was a good-natured troll who just got bored and felt like engineering chaos for his own amusement.

The heartwarming bit here, though, is Neva's conversation with Piccolo, where he mentions having known Katatz (which I misspelled as "Katatsu" last week), Piccolo's father. The "this name doesn't feel right" thing comes up again here, with Neva awkwardly mulling over both Piccolo and Dende (suggesting that maybe the invertebrate instrument nomenclature might not have been how the original Nameks were named). Which brings me to the negative of this scene (which I wouldn't have noticed if not for more ardent Dragon Ball heads like Geekdom101, MasakoX, and MistareFUSION). When Neva asks to join the group because the Demonic Dragon only understands wishes in Namekian (this calls back to how Porunga works during the Freiza Saga), Goku suggests Piccolo can speak the wishes instead, but Piccolo says he can't because he's been on Earth too long...even though he and Kami spoke "an alien language" to each other in the 23rd Budokai, and he has all of Kami's memories of the cosmology, and he's fused with Nail (a Namek native who hasn't been on Earth nearly that long), and he has bits of unlocked fusion memories to boot. So this is either a holdover of the Nameless aspect of his character, Toriyama himself forgot a thirty-something-year-old plot detail, or it's a lame conceit to make the plot go where it's needed. Either way, "Conglaturation! Neva have join your party!"

Meanwhile, we're caught back up with Arinsu, Marba, and Majin Kuu, who use the last piece of Buu and the last Saibaman seed to create another Buu clone. Kuu seems jazzed at the idea of having a little brother (whom he's "always wanted," even though he's barely a day old...or maybe this is a latent desire of Buu's?), who ends up taller, stronger, and more mature than him, but also louder and wilder because the more materials you use and the deeper you bury the seed, the crazier and stronger the resulting Majin. [Insert root-based genetics pun here]. I thought it was interesting how Kuu mentions the joy of being able to fight over snacks with your siblings (something Hybis said in the previous episode). Also note the naming convention of Marba's Majin. We have Buu, then Kuu (phonetically the same as Cuu), and now, Duu. It's alphabetical! So, if we're counting vowels, does that mean Buu wasn't the first? Could there be a Majin Auu out there somewhere? Is Fu from the Online/Xenoverse/Heroes/Divers continuity a similar kind of Majin, just created with a more sophisticated version of Marba's technique? Food Beam for thought....

Anyway, Majin Duu proves to be much stronger, more intuitive, and more practically unorthodox (repeatedly giving Number One the Stinkface, figuring out magic blasts on the fly, using his elastic body as a weapon, and just being a straight-up gag manga character) than Kuu was, actually putting the Tamagami on the back foot in this first half of their fight.

The main draw of the preview for this episode, however, was Vegeta vs. Tamagami #2, and although it's just a base form fight to build things up for Friday's coming episode, it looks as amazing and dynamic as any DAIMA fight before it. Two things make this fight interesting for me despite its lackof lizard-brain, meathead spectacle; those being its unique format of interweaving with the One-Duu fight, and the personality of Number Two himself.

Today, I'm in a mood to divine thematic patterns from the aether, so here we go!

Starting off with Number Three, as a personality and a fighter, he is a big, blunt instrument of power, stationed in the lowest, slummiest Demon World as a deterrent to those who would use stealth, deception, and any means or extent of force to take the Ball from him. So when he meets Goku, who presents as the refined embodiment of his own traits, surpassing his power honorably and without the intent to kill before seeing through the shell game deception he presents, Three's concession feels right for the story presented.

In contrast, Number One is a stoic warrior in an elite world, faced with two Majin who present a challenge that, like with Goku and Number Three, is not what he expects. Here, Number One contrasts with his opponents' personalities and fits the aristocratic nature of the First Demon World, whereas Three was designed to be at odds with his hostile environment, and so was caught off guard by Goku being a superior version of himself.

I expect Majin Duu to succeed for this reason, thus setting up a further juxtaposition of personalities when the heroes and villains meet to fight for control of all three Dragon Balls in the future.

So where does Number Two line up? He's an edgelord (further proof that I think Patrick Seitz is the perfect dub actor to voice all three of them and show off his range), making him the perfect match for Vegeta, and providing justification for me to think of random Simpsons memes when I'm watching other things.

If I had to stretch my Tamagami/opponent/environment argument here, I guess I'd go with Number Two being a nonchalant badass edgelord in an aquatic world that not even its former inhabitants care much for anymore beyond a mixed bag of nostalgia. If you think about it, Vegeta and Tamagami #2 have some things in common. Both are initially dismissive of their challengers for superficial reasons (Vegeta's Mini appearance and Goku's low-class birth), both are defined by themselves and others based on their status in an obsolete world (the Guardian Of the Second World Dragon Ball and the Prince Of All Saiyans), and both, for different reasons, hunger for a challenging fight. And of course, these different reasons feed the narrative of the fight. Two is disillusioned by millennia of inactivity and boring squash matches, and so seeks a fight with anyone who can make him enjoy fighting, making him a little bit of a jaded take on Goku. Vegeta's purpose for fighting in Dragon Ball, to a fault - to many, many..., many faults - has always been to defeat Goku. He's gone different routes to try getting there, and even conceded his runner-up status a couple of times, but he always comes back to that well. I kind of expect Vegeta to pull out the win here, doubly beating Goku by proxy (defeating both a stronger Tamagami than Goku did, and a combined stand-in for Goku and himself) and giving Number Two the satisfying fight he wanted. I almost want to see what would happen if these two just sat down and talked; it would be hilarious and surreal and awkwardly cathartic.

Instead, we get an incredible-looking, strategically rich, high-paced fight with Vegeta using his "signature move" to try distracting his way through Number Two's defenses and conserving ki for when he better understands his opponent's fighting style (if Vegeta has undergone any real character development throughout the series - that isn't spoon-fed dialogue, blatant self-sacrifice, or goofy family man antics - this is it)...and then he gets swallowed by a kraken as the episode cliffhanger.

This coming Friday, DAIMA gets its first two-word episode title with "True Strength," where the Tamagami fights are expected to continue. We pretty much know that the cliffhanger was a cheap ploy because Vegeta hasn't used Super-Saiyan yet, and that all of Super and GT need to happen after this. But I'm down to see where these fights go. How easy (or gory) will it be for Vegeta to escape the belly of a creature that Goku said was stronger than the two of them combined? What other wacky tricks will Duu pull out of his Duu-duu Pampers? Will the episode give me enough to talk about?

Find out next AniMonday, and as always, please give me your energy and grant my wish by clicking the Follow button to Become A Ticketholder for real, commenting at the bottom of this post, helping out my ad revenue as you read so I don't have to fight everyone for snacks, and following me on Tumblr, Reddit, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my content.

Mini Animeister,

Out.