Dragon Blog DAIMA #33: Gomah
a.k.a. the Mini Animeister
There isn't much to say plot-wise about Friday's episode of Dragon Ball DAIMA, but plenty to say in terms of action, so 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 because I'm going to need it if this final stretch of the series is going to be as empty as "Gomah" made me feel.
At first, we get this cool standoff and verbal exchange between Shin and Arinsu where we learn that she wants to use her wish on the Dragon Balls to make the Demon Realm a worse, but also more terrifying and stronger place so that it can rival the outside Universes. "Future" knowledge (a.k.a. Dragon Ball Super, specifically the Tournament Of Power) could lead one to suspect that Arinsu knows of and fears Zeno and wants to raise the Demon Realm's mortal level to make it exempt from participating or ensure its survival in the event of a culling, but I could also be giving this series more credit than its jokey tone, repetitive structure, uneven pacing, and reliance on - and misuse of - new lore and characters deserve.
Speaking of misused characters and uneven pacing, the episode spends entirely too much time on Goku and Vegeta (whom I just noticed are the same height for once) fighting over who gets to fight first, so much so that Bulma has to literally pull them apart by their chubby little cheeks.
Goku ends up fighting Majin Duu in base and Super-Saiyan for awhile, making okay use of his Power Pole (not the best in the series, considering it's a stretchy weapon and Duu has a stretchy body, but there were a few moments of creativity in there) and not really fighting that seriously.
Unfortunately, their fight gets interrupted by the Attack On Titan appearance of King Gomah, and despite some dynamic camera work, epic forced perspective shots, and one of the few times in Dragon Ball history that everyone contributed to a fight without dying while waiting for Goku to show up, even more time gets wasted on dramatic staging and casual, "feel out the villain" fighting, which means this episode consisted entirely of preamble for two fights, only one of which is going to happen (and it will probably be short-lived because Goku dropped his Bug Bag and he goes into Super-Saiyan 3, which is a crash-out transformation founded on lies and character assassination).
There were some strong moments, like Arinsu having Kuu and Duu join the fight and save Goku and Vegeta, Neva trying to get Tamagami #1 involved without speaking the words (like asking straightforwardly breaks some rule we don't know about), Hybis realizing that he probably doomed them all in exchange for a dumb-looking hat, and Gomah punching holes in his own castle while yelling at Vegeta to stop breaking stuff. Even Gomah's arena looked cool despite the minutes I had to endure of him building it out of CGI goo and rubble.
As powerful as he's shown to be, Gomah is hard to take seriously as a villain (Jiren Wayne Gacy with less than a handful of Pokémon moves, basically), and he unnecessarily interrupted a more interesting plot for the sole purpose of flexing for fifteen minutes.
I think this post is going to be short enough that I don't have to put the call to action stuff here again, so Stay Tuned for the return of the GFT Retrospective on Wednesday, political nostalgia on Thursday, and my review of X (the movie, not Twitter) on Friday.
Animeister,
Out.
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