Dragon Ball Super Ep. 105: Old Man Rhapsody

 Nostalgia fans rejoice!

This episode focuses on Roshi. Now for those who grew up with Dragon Ball Z Roshi wasn’t that relevant. He was comic relief and occasional exposition device. But to those who grew up with Dragon Ball he was all that and a bad ass. Despite that he was surpassed by Goku and Tenshinhan by the 22^nd Tenkaichi Budokai and has not been relevant as a fighter since his sacrifice against Piccolo Daimao. Yet now we are told he has been training and is not back up to a level where he can hold his own in a best in creation tournament. This was a bold if somewhat nonsensical choice, and this episode will determine if it pays off

As Zen oh tries and fails to count how many warriors remain Roshi stalks the broken arena. He’s talking to himself about pulling his weight when a beautiful woman—Caway from universe four-- attacks him from behind. She uses weapons made out of her energy to attack, but after dodging them Roshi determines she isn’t strong enough to beat him. Be then she reveals her other strategy: seduction.

Kuririn proclaims the seduction strategy useless from the stands. Roshi has mastered his lechery through training. Kuririn is of course wrong and Roshi barely avoids being impaled. Despite this he holds his own and easily blocks the attack at the last moment. He then does his muscle growth thing while the girl cowers and cries. Scared off by the lecherous subtext of his words Caway runs to the edges of the arena and jumps off to avoid Roshi.  

Beerus expresses his approval in the stands as Roshi faces his next opponent—Dercori, also from universe four. She is also a woman but seems far more serious than Caway. She uses talisman to attack with illusions. Using her talisman she surrounds Roshi leaving him unable to detect where he or she are. After a confusing sequence she uses a talisman on his shadow; binding him in place.

Admitting he is at his limit in a tournament above his ability he pulls out a small jar and attacks the talisman user with the mafuba. Sealing her in the jar and tossing it out of the arena. Watching these events Beerus and Quitela both accuses each other’s team of cheating for using items, but they are interrupted by Zen oh who says he will allow it because it was cool.

Kuririn is worried that the mafuba has taken its toll on Roshi, but he seems fine. Immediately after demonstrating his enthusiasm Caway and Dercori’s team mate Ganos shows up. He is enraged at Roshi and transforms into a huge duck billed monster. This doesn’t seem very effective however as Roshi reads his moves and counters. Ganos is seemingly beaten but suddenly powers up and manages to land several hits on Roshi. Its revealed Ganos has an ability that lets him continuously get stronger. 

After Ganos’s attack Roshi is out of steam, but he realizes that with Ganos’s ability he could become a threat to the rest of his team and so he pulls out another trump card; the hypnosis technique last seen in the 22nd world martial arts tournament. This nearly gets Ganos but he ki blasts himself to break the spell and counter attacks.

Roshi seems beat, but he is determined to surpass his limits in the mold of Goku and Kuririn. He releases his strongest Kamehameha which blasts Ganos out of the arena. The attack takes everything Roshi has and he falls, seemingly dead. Goku immediately goes to his side and tries to revive him with his ki.  After a suspenseful scene Roshi wakes up. Together they walk off to find shelter.

I was expecting a disappointment this week but boy was I wrong. Roshi delivered some brevity and nostalgia, not to mention some moving scenes. Is use of experience and advanced techniques to beat physically more powerful fighters is really fun to watch. His scene declaring Kuririn and Goku have taught him about breaking his own limits was also great.

If there is a real problem with this episode it’s that they didn’t kill him off. Death has no permanent meaning in Dragon Ball, but it can be used to reinforce the seriousness of a situation.  Letting Roshi die would show that even with all Goku as achieved he still cannot prevent the deaths of those he cares about. Instead we are treated with a touching but anti-climactic scene of the two walking off as Goku lends Roshi his shoulder. It’s not a bad scene but its bad overall writing choice.

Next episode it looks like all of team five will be facing a hidden sniper. This looks like it could be interesting. A nontraditional battle could be a nice break from all of the one and one and two on two we've been seeing.

-Gedaemon