Dragon Ball Daima

Episode 14

So I've spent a lot of my Daima reviews praising this show for how well it managed to hearken back to the spirit of early Dragon Ball. What's really impressive, though, a lot of it has felt pretty fresh, and little has felt too derivative of things we've seen from the franchise before. Sure Panzy is kinda similar to Bulma from her earliest days as a character, and a lot of King Gomah's energy as a goofy evil overlord has the same appeal as Emperor Pilaf, but there's still just enough distinction in their personalities or character backgrounds that I would never accuse them of being retreads. Still, it was probably only a matter of time before we saw some recycled ideas, and in his latest attempt to deal with Goku and friends, King Gomah introduces the Ginyu Force 2.0 aka the Gendarmerie Force. I guess to be fair, the Ginyu Force are far from the only Super Sentai-themed characters we've gotten from the franchise, and we got at least least one other group in Super who whipped out similarly ridiculous poses during their introduction, but given where Daima's story is right now, it's hard not to feel like these guys are performing the same function as Ginyu and friends.

Now, if any of that came off as a complaint, I'd like to assure you it isn't, because I actually found all this pretty hilarious. Next to Freeza, the Ginyu Force was easily one of the most memorable and entertaining components of the Namek saga, so if Toriyama was going to copy any of his own homework in this show, there are far worse things he could have chosen. Plus it's not like these guys have nothing to distinguish themselves (well maybe not their designs since they all look kinda similar to each other) as they do have a couple of features to separate them from the Ginyu Force. For one thing, while Freeza didn't exactly hold the Ginyu Force in the highest regard, he at least respected them enough to entertain their shtick and otherwise tolerated them. In comparison, it's clear from the moment that the Gendarmerie Force is introduced that King Gomah can barely stand these guys, and it's pretty funny watching how visibly irritated he is throughout all of their posing (not to mention that he's not afraid to foot them with a bill for wrecking his throne room with their antics). The other thing is that despite King Gomah and Degesu giving them very clear warnings not to underestimate Goku and friends, these guys are utterly convinced that their bosses couldn't have been serious about having them fight children, and I'm looking forward to seeing just how badly that comes back to bite them. I also got a good kick out of their brief interaction with Kuu and Duu when they run into them at a convenience store, and neither party recognizes who the other is. It's both hilarious and weirdly wholesome seeing the Gendarmerie Force offer them some candy because they just think they're a couple of goofy kids (which to be fair isn't exactly inaccurate) and I kind of wish we could get these sort of casual villain interactions in Dragon Ball more often.

Sadly, aside from these goobers, there isn't too much else to talk about, as this episode is otherwise kinda slow. Much of our time with the gang this week is spent with them trying to make their way into the First Demon World, and when Goku falls to his doom after trying to break the barrier between worlds, we get the closest anything thing in this show has come to replicating the infamous “Namek Time” experience of the Freeza battle on Namek. Neva opts to break the barrier himself with his magic, and while it certainly looks cool, the whole process takes several minutes, during which Goku should have most certainly splattered his body across the barrier. It was kinda neat to learn that Neva created the barriers himself after seeing how much the Second Demon World kept getting attacked by denizens from the First and Third worlds, but it's not quite an exciting enough detail to carry how badly paced the rest of this sequence was. I've never had any serious complaints about Daima's pacing, but this was the first time where it actively felt like the show was trying to run down the clock a bit, and while it certainly wasn't bad, I do feel like some of this episode could have been trimmed without losing much. Still, it does at least end with the gang arriving on the First Demon World and getting immediately attacked by King Gomah's armies, so it's likely that this was an outlier rather than a sign of things to come. If anything, it feels like we might actually be pretty close to a conclusion now that every major faction in this show is within close proximity of each other, and it's hard to guess how that'll play out, I'm sure we'll be in for a wild final act.

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Dragon Ball Daima is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.