Ready, set, wait eight minutes!
The episode begins with an explanation of the rules. The tournament
lasts for 100 Taks—or 48 earth minutes and as time wears on the central pillar
will descend, when it hits floor level the fight is over. Weapons, healing
items and killing are forbidden, and only a ring out counts as losing. Skills to
prevent falling like levitation cannot be used.
Several fighters mumble about all of this but there is nothing they can
do.
After the talk Goku is ready for action but Gohan reminds
everyone they’re supposed to work together, telling them to stand back to back
in a circle. Vegeta and Freeza express their unwillingness to engage in this
plan.
After a lot of talking the fighting finally begins. The
stadium erupts in ki blasts and Goku dives in to fight Toppo, but is interrupted
by another fighter. Soon Gohan’s strategy starts falling apart as Seventeen,
Vegeta, Freeza, and Eighteen go out to pick fights.
Early on Universe three seems to be dominating with one of
their fighters acting like a spinning top, until Hit stakes him out, AS the
fighting continues a warrior from team Ten is the first to fall its revealed if
you fall off the side you end up in the bleachers with the gods.
The fighting goes on and eventually Goku encounters Jiren
but before he could strike a large man takes him in a lock from behind. He
attempts to drag Goku off the platform with him, forcing Goku to transform into
Super Saiyan blue. The big guy falls off but Goku barely holds on to the edge.
Nick from universe four is eliminated. As
the episode ends with several warriors including the trio de danger surround
Goku—which is just fine with him. Forty Seven minutes remain.
This episode started slow and when the action came it came
fast. A lot of fights happening with people we don’t really know. The latter
was predictable and well done all things considered. Their facial expressions
and throwaway lines actually give is interesting peaks into their characters. However
the buildup during the first eight minutes was dragged out too long. That was
time we could have used to start things off with a bigger bang.
We also saw the return of some budget animation for this
episode. It of course makes sense to save time and budget for the bigger more
important fights towards the end of the tournament but it is still disappointing
to see.
This episode could be the start of something great, but it’s
not a great episode. The pacing is off and the payoff is a little weak. The tournament
should have opened with a bang, not a slow build up in the form of throw away
fights.
Based on the preview we can hope the next episode will get
into the think of it with Goku fighting off universe 9.
-Gedaemon
No comments:
Post a Comment