Dragon Blog DAIMA #32: Conspiracy (Dub), Surprise, Taboo, Third Eye, & Degesu

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. the Mini Animeister.

As of the beginning of this writing, Dragon Ball DAIMA had returned from its New Year's Week hiatus with a single new episode, titled "Surprise," as well as the English dub premiere of "Conspiracy" (despite Toei Animation and the Funi/Crunchy team supposedly having three episode dubs in the can at that point). I successfully committed myself to taking the entire month of January off from posting new content, but I have at least five pieces finished for future publication, and I was intending to make this another, beginning in February (unless an absolute banger of an episode gave me the drive to put this out prematurely - Animeister's Note: it didn't), with an update to my SSSS review sssscheduled for SSSSuperhero May (that isn't actually what I'm calling it, but my original plan was to release it in September along with what I hope will be the actual release of the Legend Of the White Dragon movie so I can talk about that, too, #RIP JDF, but I had two other superhero-focused anime I wanted to update, so I'm giving my birth month a focus on superhero anime...and the Maniac films because watching the Maniac Cop trilogy in December opened up a can of worms in my brain), and a slew of other Anime Spotlight updates that I have planned but not scheduled or written yet.

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I don't consider myself a purist for one language or another when it comes to watching anime. Performances are an unwieldy contrast of objective and subjective quality to where fans of the original Japanese will say English dub performances (regardless of faithfulness to the meaning of the native dialogue) are generally flat...even when things like R. Bruce Elliott's delivery of "THE ONE PIECE IS REAL!!!" still hit so hard in the Marineford arc (Part I, Part II). But having watched Dragon Ball DAIMA in Japanese with English subtitles for the majority of its run already, my experience with the first episode's dub was underwhelming such that I plan to finish the series in Japanese and not really give the dub a second thought (perhaps with the exception of "Tamagami" and "Collar" because I want to see how the dub handles Hybis as a character, Tamagami #3's bombastic personality, and Panzy's dramatic moments).

The regular dub cast are perfectly fine for what you'd expect from modern Dragon Ball, but as for the new characters' voices, we have the following:

• Gomah: Tom Laflin (Young Anubis in Sacrificial Princess And the King Of Beasts) gives the little Demon King With Sour Cream And All the Pizza Toppings kind of a "Mark Hamil if the Joker was bored" delivery that doesn't really fit the bumbling, nervous, self-important energy of his Japanese counterpart (Showtaro Morikubo) or the animation.
• Degesu: Landon McDonald (Soshiro Hoshina in Kaiju No. 8) gives Degesu a basic, cold evil interpretation, like the vocal director told him, "just do Shin from the Buu arc when everyone thought he was going to be the villain," and loses the comedic nuance that the character can have as Gomah's sidekick.
• Dr. Arinsu: Morgan Garrett (Summer Rose in RWBY and Sabo in the Grey Terminal arc of One Piece, among a ton of other anime that I've talked about in previous posts) loses the character's sinister hime persona from the Japanese original in favor of a generic, sultry delivery that I've heard a million times.
• Neva: Having already voiced Gowasu in Dragon Ball Super, Garrett Schenck is maybe the best chosen voice actor for the Demon Realm's Namekian elder, and the best of the new character cast so far. However, I recognize Schenk's voice from villain roles in other anime as well, and even though I think he does a decent "old man who could be the villain or know more than he's letting on," he, like Landon does with Degesu, fails to capture the comedic nuance of his character. I didn't feel the "senile, walking fart joke with power beyond comprehension" energy with Schenk's delivery like I do with Hiroshi Naka on the mic.

In addition to the new voices not landing like I expected, the dub has the usual flaw of having to make dialogue more verbose, peppered with Western slang, and slightly off from the intended context and meaning of the Japanese original to match the lip flaps. Even something as minor as hearing dub Goku enunciating after I've been reading his hick subtitles for twelve weeks straight feels off, and this is coming from someone who spent his high school and college years watching the Z dub on Toonami. Plus, I couldn't remember if the original "Conspiracy" intro did this, so I went back and checked: the dub mentions that Goku was sent to Earth to conquer it (keeping in line with what Raditz said when he arrived to change Dragon Ball forever), whereas the subtitles keep things vague by saying that he was sent to Earth as an infant, with no mention of purpose. So I understand wanting the dialogue to match for what people grew up with in the West, but the Japanese intro feels more flexible and right, especially considering how different Minus, the Broly movie, and the Granolah arc have made Goku's origin compared to what Raditz gave us at the beginning of Z.

Okay, on to the new stuff.

Unfortunately, DAIMA's best episode so far, "True Strength" (hyped by the second half of "Legend"), was followed by one of its worst in terms of plot progression.

We get huge but minor lore like Warp-sama having an off switch (he apparently just goes to sleep, but the music cue makes it seem like Degesu killed him), and a conversation between Panzy and Bulma that made my eyes glaze over on first watch but may be the most naturally written and purposeful exposition in the series, if not all of modern fiction.

As you know (because I felt like being a bad expositor to balance things out), I previously ranted about the power source of the Demon Realm planes (in "Collar"), thinking it was katchintite. But apparently, it's a different Demon Realm element called magilite, which is activated by "acidic water" that seeps between Demon Worlds because they're all stacked on top of each other. So activated magilite creates artificial light, powers planes for thirty years straight (relative to a three-year battery life from a mortal human perspective), and probably every other gadget we've seen so far. But because the Demon Realm is literally a classist hellhole, magilite is rare and expensive despite everything being made of it...which makes the villains environmentally conscious? Couple this with Warp-sama having been forcibly Digivolved into Warpmon: Sleep Mode and the sealed gates from the "Daima" episode, and "Surprise" may have actually dropped lore that will impact the plot later.

Meanwhile, the Dragon Team have engine trouble AGAIN! that strands them on Planet Mega (not to be confused with GT, where they had engine trouble and crashed on Planet Imegga), at the mercy of giant hamsters, a giant dog (so Goku gets to fight giant ticks like he's in a K-9 Advantix commercial), and a giant, orange schoolboy (again, not to be confused with GT, where Pan made friends with giant bees and Goku knocked out an orange giant's tooth with a Kamehameha in exchange for a Dragon Ball). The concept was fun (and the idea that that was only a child, and there's a Planet Giga where everything is a thousand times bigger, is existentially terrifying in a "what if One Piece was a Twilight Zone episode set in that locker from the end of Men In Black II?" kind of way), and the animation is as amazing as ever. But that didn't keep "Surprise" from feeling like a giant waste of time.

Giant.

Things improve in "Taboo," however, with the Dragon Team finally making their way to the First Demon World because it turns out that in addition to the Dragon Balls and the Tamagami who defend them, Neva also made the seals between the Demon Worlds to keep the ruffians and snobs from ruining his World (including some Imperial/Nazi-inspired Gendarmerie officials and someone who looks like the Grand Priest if you zoom, enhance, and squint all three eyes), so he can just magically undo them and the group can fly their plane down through the hole in the ground to get there. So...is Neva maybe a former Supreme Demon King?

More importantly, what's up with the inconsistent tone of "Goku might die if he falls on a barrier!" and "Neva takes his sweet-ass time saving the day"?

The episode doesn't care, either, so anyway, Gomah has his own Ginyu Force, a group of five (obviously cannon fodder-weak in comparison to Freiza's top brass, and far too similar in design to be important) trigger-happy mercenary-type Gendarmerie Elites who do goofy poses. They have a funny interaction with Kuu and Duu at a Demon Realm convenience store, but that's the last we really see of them this episode, and the end of the joke doesn't really make sense.

When Panzy calls her hacker friend, Peral, to share the group's progress with her father, we get a quick shot of King Kadan looking stressed out and over-prepared to come rescue his baby girl, which immediately reminded me of the Namek filler where Chi-Chi kept trying to blast off for Namek to rescue Gohan, so that was the highlight for me.

There honestly isn't much else to the episode besides getting the different factions in place for the next episode's action setpiece, where the title suggests we will learn about the "Third Eye," and some Star Wars-inspired run & gun antics are to be expected.

And yes, "Third Eye" delivers on the preview's promises, with a flashback that shows Dabura betrayed his father by hiring a cockroach demon to steal the Eye and take it to the Third Demon World, where, as one should do with cockroaches, he gets stepped on by a troll marauder and the Third Eye goes missing until Hybis just finds it one day and shoves it into his favorite belt, which is either still the funniest, "mundanity of the divine" Toriyama humor of all time, or disturbing to anyone who's grossed out by eye trauma.

In the present, the episode is either a wonderfully animated, action-packed Star Wars-meets-Tombstone-meets-Red Ribbon Saga spectacle of gunplay, martial arts, and ki blasts (that Hybis somehow manages to casually nope his way away from because Hybis is walking comedy gold), or a power-scaling nightmare because the main characters, whom we've seen defeat the Tamagamis, Majin Buu, Cell, and Freiza, are struggling against cannon fodder soldiers with magic-powered Freiza Force-level energy weapons one moment and shrugging them off between cuts the next, all the while basically refusing to go Super-Saiyan and end what should by all accounts be a squash session because it's "important" to manufacture dramatic tension and teach children that emulating acts of excessive force to solve a problem is wrong until the plot demands it.

Also, Gomah and Degesu notice (now that they're actually watching everything that's going on) that Hybis is wearing the Tertian Oculus as a fashion accessory, and Degesu is sent to retrieve it...somehow. But does he? Suddenly this female majin shows up (she's designed to look kind of like an aged-down Towa, I guess, and I thought she might be Degesu or Arinsu in disguise at first, though a later scene seems to refute this) and hits on Hybis, who, despite his repeated advances toward Bulma in previous episodes, doesn't take the horndog bait, and instead trades his "favorite belt" for one of the dumbest-looking hats ever drawn because Hybis. No verb, no adjective; just writing his name should be explanation enough, and it's the first time I had any negative feelings about him as a character because his...decision (?) to trade the Tertian Oculus for a generously termed "hat" (more like a gaudy, yellow, inflatable pool toy that just happens to fit on your head) feels like written stupidity to make the plot happen.

Fortunately, King Kadan and his crew show up at almost literally the last minute to blow everything up so that maybe things can start fresh and sensible in the next episode, where the titular "Degesu" may show his true colors by holding Super Mini Kami Dende hostage. Yay?

The actual "Degesu" episode is an exercise in underwhelming payoffs, poor fight continuity, and bland motivations, but also some beautiful scenery, decent comedy, and promising plot progression. The fight between Kadan's forces and the remaining Gendarmerie fodder is resolved instantly offscreen so the Elites can show up and get washed by Vegeta (including an Indiana Jones reference) while everyone else wanders around the melted M.C. Escher catwalks of Gomah's castle in search of Dende, who has been re-abducted by Degesu because betraying the current Supreme Demon King to take the throne is something of a pattern, even if it makes a hastily introduced false villain like Degesu have the most basic, shallow motivation possible (to be in power because Glinds as a race suddenly crave power by nature, not to save his endangered species or make his Realm a better place).

I'm also disappointed that, given the Gendarmerie Special Forces are a Sentai parody with weapons, they didn't have a combiner weapon, which would have at least set them apart from the Ginyu Force, Pride Troopers, and Sigma Force. Instead, the captain just has a Spirit Bomb-type fire attack that he hurts himself with out of nowhere, and another cut to black puts them out of commission so Goku can eat potato chips instead of being useful.

As for the demon girl from the previous episode, she's revealed to just be some girl Degesu hired to steal the Third Eye for himself, but with Degesu also out of the picture now, she makes her way to Gomah's throne room where he uses a plunger to extract the Eye from the belt. The girl gets her pick of the Demon King's treasury (plus 100 thousand Dokuro for shoving the living toilet plunger Eye into Gomah's forehead, which turns him into a muscle bound giant who looks even more like a Pride Trooper than he did before).

Meanwhile, having rescued Dende, the Dragon Team make their way to Tamagami #1, where Panzy notices the Ball is missing, just as Arinsu and her Majin sidekicks arrive. This development seems to take Glorio by surprise, indicating that he isn't totally in the know about her schemes after all.

Finally, I had the suspicion that the Third Eye itself is a villain (again, giving evil characters like Dabura and Gomah a "lesser evil for the greater good" dimension that Degesu lacks, if I turn out to be right).

"Gomah" is set to be the titular character of the next episode, which will feature Goku and Vegeta fighting the Majin Brothers, as well as that one, spectacular, "massive villain fills the screen with energy effects" scene that has been in every Dragon Ball thing since Broly. It looks awesome as anime skybeam tropes go, and the little fight snippets and the longer length of the preview have me hyped for Friday's episode.

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 drop the ball, and following me on BlueSky, Tumblr, Reddit, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my content.

I'll see you tomorrow with my thoughts on Goosebumps: The Vanishing.

Animeister,

Out.