Dragon Blog DAIMA #35: Betrayal & Collar (Dub)

Dragon Ball DAIMA Episode 19 Review
"Betrayal"

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

I don't have much to say about this episode because it's mostly fighting and I want to give some time later in the post to the cast of the "Collar" dub, as well as put in work on my GFT Retrospective and Just the Ticket posts for later in the week, 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 can keep my eye on 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.

As many fans and viewers (including myself) suspected at the end of "Awakening" last week, the titular "Betrayal" at Glorio's hands this week was in the wish he granted, as Goku, Vegeta, Shin, Piccolo, Dende, and Bulma were quickly restored to their adult forms.

Though she definitely feels the "Betrayal" at not being granted incredible power, Dr. Arinsu simply fires Glorio like he's an insubordinate employee, only for Kuu to step up with reassurances that she still has him as her math savant, speed-reading, ass-kissing, employee of the month errand boy, which she receives with a surprising, motherly warmth.

There's also a moment or two of Dende and Panzy eyeing each other that's sure to get the shippers talking, and a cool exchange between Glorio, Panzy, and Goku, backed by a slow, dramatic instrumental variation of "Jaka Jaan," where Goku finally says Glorio's name right.

But of course, there is still the matter of King Gomah to deal with, and Vegeta gets the bulk of the episode to fight him. The camera angles and animation go cinematically nuts here as Vegeta, now getting his first appearance as an adult Super-Saiyan 3 in "canon" media, casually styles on Gomah, landing some hard, body-contorting punches and kicks, as well as an insane sequence reminiscent of Doomsday's Super from the NetherRealm Injustice games, where Vegeta punches Gomah through the ground of the arena and blasts him back through the massive hole into the clouds above with a Super-Saiyan 3 Final Flash.

Unfortunately, the Eye Of Playground Hax continues the boring escalation of Power Level Tennis and Gomah outlasts the stubborn Prince Of Four and Three Quarters Saiyans (I'm counting Tarble, Broly, and Pan, even though they aren't in the story yet at this point in the timeline) such that he cannot sustain Super-Saiyan 3 anymore, and it takes Bulma threatening to blue-ball him indefinitely to make him hand things off to Goku and possibly let Piccolo be relevant and effective for once in DAIMA's run.

It turns out that Arinsu just happens to suddenly have a book that tells how to remove the Tertian Oculus (give Gomah a triple concussion to the back of the head), so to buy Piccolo time to get in position for Operation CTE-3, Goku recycles the part of the Buu Saga where he hyped up Super-Saiyan 3 to distract Fat Buu (and commit character seppuku because he lied to Majin Vegeta about 2 being his max power when they fought prior to Buu's release), but gets a pop from the non-thinking portion of the audience by revealing a "bonus": despite Gomah siphoning him back to base in the previous episode a mere twenty minutes ago and there being zero indication that he was doing anything but watch Vegeta fight, he can go into Magic Super-Saiyan 4 at will...somehow.

Did I turn my brain off and let the hype grab me in the moment? Yes. Was it a lazy, cheap attempt by the Dragon Room to crash Crunchyroll two weeks in a row? Also yes. And it's how the episode ends; please Stay Tuned for the finale, where things get "Maximum" like Broly, but without Broly.

The preview makes it appear as if Goku will fight Gomah as a Super-Saiyan 4...again...but adult this time. I am seriously hoping this is not the extent of what the finale has to offer. The Join Bugs need to come back into play somehow, and there need to be relevant characters in the victory besides Goku and Vegeta. Period. None of the world-building or prior big moments in DAIMA will matter if "Maximum" doesn't stick the landing.

I said in my first DAIMA review of 2025 that the next time I'd check in on the English dub would be "Collar," which included the debut of Hybis and Tamagami #3, as well as Panzy's big dramatic moment.

Dragon Ball DAIMA Episode 7 Dub Cast Review
"Collar"

As in that previous post, I will be going over the new cast (this time including existing characters because the Mini versions have different VAs) and comparing them to the Japanese performances as I see fit.

• Mini Goku (Stephanie Nadolny): Hearing Nadolny voice a young version of Goku for the first time since my marathon of original Dragon Ball some fifteen years ago (and having "grown up" - I was in high school at the time - with her as the voice of Gohan throughout the majority of Z) hit my nostalgia center hard, and her delivery is so natural even if the lines don't always match the Japanese script.
• Mini Vegeta (Paul Castro, Jr.): we don't get much Mini Vegeta here, but Castro does a good take on a pitched-up Chris Sabat with a hint of Brian Drummond and some stoic, indignant line deliveries. Knowing he voiced a completely different tone of character in an anime I will review in my May double-feature, Castro has surprising range.
• Mini Bulma (Taylor Murphy): while her voice career is relatively recent and we don't get any of the sass that Monica Rial brings to the adult Bulma, Murphy has a decade of live-action film and TV experience, and her delivery here is admirably dynamic.
• Mini Piccolo (Nasim Benelkour): it's hard to judge a performance when the character doesn't get to say much, but Benelkour was fine as Lloyd's stern, older brother Albert in I Was Reincarnated as the 7th Prince so I Can Take My Time Perfecting My Magical Ability, so I can't complain, or do much of anything else, because Piccolo is seemingly just there, and that needs to change. Maybe an episode like "Ocean" or "Legend" will shed more light on Benelkour's performance when those dubs come?
• Glorio (Aaron Dismuke): As the voice of Senkuu in Dr. Stone (update pending) and Oscar in RWBY (#greenlightvolume10, Viz!), Dismuke has range, and so far, he fits Glorio's subdued badass persona quite perfectly.
• King Kadan (Major Attaway): this is a case of the voice director taking one line from one episode ("Panzy," where Kadan is described as a mafia boss), and having the actor speak in a generic gangster accent and stereotypical Italian slang. All I can say is it's a very dub choice...for thirty years ago.
• Panzy (Veronica Laux): Having voiced soft-spoken but expressive characters like the titular SHY, as well as the romantically unhinged Tao in 7th Prince, Laux has range and puts it to good use in the dramatic scenes with Panzy this episode. I think her angry delivery misses some of the sad, fearful hopelessness I felt from Fairouz Ai in the Japanese version, and the dub script gives her some odd, often dated Western slang to interject once Panzy's collar has been removed.
• Hybis: It's easy to look up the voice actress, but I'm not going to mention her by name because dub Hybis is not funny. The vocal performance is another case of "focus on one aspect of the character" (boredom) "and do the voice like that." There's no lyrical quality to the dub voice, no blunt savagery, no analog creepypasta feel to the performance; just flat boredom. I'd rather eat a large, deep-dish worm pizza with a glass of mud wine than watch more of DAIMA's dub now.

I also wanted to talk about Tamagami #3, but no information on his dub actor is available yet despite the character having a few lines at the end of the episode. It's clearly not Franky's voice actor from One Piece, and he sounds less like a bombastic superhero than an angry New York punk with an ego. I'm a little disappointed by the choice and the Westernization of the delivery.

I am also disappointed my my inability to choose and deliver a proper segue into the closing call to 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 can salvage my dignity, and following me on BlueSky, Tumblr, Reddit, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my content.

No-longer-Mini Animeister,

Out.