Dragon Ball Super Episode 2 Review

To the Promised Resort! Vegeta Takes a Family Trip?

* Warning - This article does contain spoilers. *

As the title of the episode suggests, we get to catch up with Vegeta and his unlikely family as they take a family shopping trip to the mall and go on a little vacation of sorts. Much like episode one, this episode helps us catch up with more characters from the Dragon Ball universe. This episode was another slow burn with minimal plot progression. It focuses on character interactions over big action spectacles. I don't mind this so early on in the series because I do want the current state of things to be established before we run into our first big battle.

I'm a huge Vegeta fan, so I was very excited to see him as the focus this episode. Toriyama and company gave us another look back into DBZ and revealed that this episode is in response to the DBZ episode “Take Flight, Videl”. In that episode Vegeta promised Trunks that he would take him to an amusement park if he could land a single hit on his father, which he did. While they don't end up at an amusement park, Vegeta does take a trip to the mall with his family. I found it both surprising and a bit heart-warming that the creators took the time to craft a tale around such a minuscule piece of continuity. The trip goes about exactly as you'd expect. Vegeta seems like he's trapped in hell and is his usual grumpy self. There was a lot of humor in this episode and a ton of insight into the mind of Vegeta. At one point it seems like he doesn't want his wife, Bulma, to even lay a finger on him, but the next moment you can see the care and affection he has for her and his son Trunks. Vegeta may be extremely rough around the edges, but we can now see, without a shadow of doubt, that he does in fact have a heart. I loved seeing Vegeta keep his promise to Trunks even if he did hate every second of it. As I said before, it shows how Vegeta really feels about his family and proves he's not quite as callous and stoic as he seems.

While most of the episode was fun and games a little bit of plot progression does take place. We got another look at Beerus, the god of destruction, and his companion Whis. We didn't see much of them at all in episode one and, while we really only see Beerus destroy yet another planet, he starts to mention a dream that he can't recall dealing with something about a Super Saiyan God. We all know that if he's looking for a Super Saiyan then he is going to wind up on Earth. Those who have seen The Battle of the Gods movie will be well aware of the exact direction this is going. The animation was mostly solid this episode other than a few spots where they just froze the frame and played the voices over the still images. I'm never a fan of that particular shortcut.

Even though this was another campy, humor-filled episode without much in the way of plot, I still enjoyed it a ton. Catching up with the characters of the Dragon Ball universe is proving to be quite the joy. Now that we see Goku and Vegeta upping their training in preparation of the next big threat I'm ready to see them throw down. This slow burn better lead to a nice bang.