Dragon Ball Daima is two episodes in, and it’s a battle anime without a battle. There hasn’t been a fight scene yet, unless you count Goku and Vegeta punching each other in the first episode, and they fell out of the sky doing it.
Episode 2 is titled “Glorio,” and I watched it with my co-host Senpai Know-It-All, also known as Hellish Diablo on Twitch, so if you’re looking for a good gamer guy to follow, that’s him. We only just released the first one, but we’re going to get these on a regular schedule, closer to the weekends, because I really want this to become a thing. Even after the show is done we’ll probably stick to it.
First Timers Only Get One Wish
The episode picks up literally right where the last one left off. Gomah gets to use the Dragon Balls, everybody’s a kid, and he goes to make his second wish. That’s when we find out they’ve expanded the lore on how Shenron works. Apparently there’s a rule that first timers only get one wish. See you next time around, and then you get three.
So they ask Neva if he can do the thing again, and he’s like no, do it twice in a row, you crazy? So he’s got an ability that breaks the rules we know of, and he can only break them once.
I asked Senpai if the new lore bothered him at all, and he said no, it actually fits. You’re too powerful if you can have three wishes and you’re evil. Then we got stuck on Frieza. If Frieza got those wishes, would it be three, or just one? He’s wished before, hasn’t he? We’ll find that out eventually.
I thought it was cool, and I wasn’t expecting it. You’ve got to remember I come from the non-anime world, which means Star Trek, Star Wars, and all the bickering and crappy fandoms, which I love by the way, who complain about things all the time. So when I see a major lore change like that, I’m like, what is this? That’s going to spark controversy somewhere, and I’d love to see if there’s a debate of any kind online about it. I’ve gotten really familiar with anime YouTube lately, learning the lay of the land and seeing everybody who’s out there now that I’m doing these reviews. I’m not trying to be competitive. I just want to talk about stuff I like.
It’s a dangerous place out there. Not as dangerous as kid Goku trying to fly.
Kid Goku Can’t Fly, and Piccolo Can’t Either
Goku’s having trouble flying, and the excuse everybody gives is that his balance is off. He’s not used to how his body works. That felt very much like a martial artist problem to me. You train a certain way, you balance a certain way, and all of a sudden none of your normal movements are the same. They actually demonstrate it when he tries to hit a pillar and his sense of distance is off.
Then Goku nearly falls off the platform, and he goes, Piccolo, have you tried flying? Piccolo tries to show off, like yeah, I can totally do it. He falls out of the sky, slams his head, and ends up with a bloody nose. Dude, what is happening here?
So does being children throw off their power levels, proportionally? It shouldn’t. It really shouldn’t, not unless they’re going to start changing the lore to say their size decides how much power they can handle. Senpai called that total crap, and I’m with him. We just watched Goku up there. He swung and missed, like, two times with the pole, and when he finally landed that kick, it broke the pillar. I believe we’ll see them transform. We’ll see them turn Super Saiyan, the whole nine yards.
Roshi, Why Are You Using the Power Pole for Laundry?
Since he can’t fly, Goku goes down to Korin to find out if he’s still got the staff. If you remember, it used to be on top of Korin’s Tower. The staff would grow, and that’s how you got up to the top. Well, that’s not where it is now.
So they hang out with Mr. Cool, young Roshi, who by the way basically looks like Krillin with no dots on his head and a nose. He’s everything you think he’s going to be. He immediately hits on the wait staff at the birthday party, and he’s still getting turned down, which I thought was hilarious. And apparently he’s got the thing, and he’s been using it for something super important. Roshi, why are you using the power pole for laundry, dude? Even the turtle gave him the look.
We tried to remember the turtle’s name, and the best we had was Kame, like the Turtle Hermit, which is what Master Roshi’s name is.
Once Goku has it back he’s spry and quick as can be. Not that he wasn’t, but it’s so funny seeing him whip that staff around like, I’m so cool.
Does anyone believe Goku got the staff again for any other reason than this: now that you have a child Goku, you should be able to see him with the staff like he used to have. He’s small, he looks like he used to, so get these things. It’s nostalgia. Even I’m like, stop it, Dragon Ball. Stop it.
The Voices
I love the voices, too. Hearing Bulma’s voice, it’s not the original voice actress. She passed a couple years back. And I thought to myself, the American recap voice guy died also. This show’s been around for a while. People who’ve been working on this thing for a long, long time are passing away, man.
And of course Akira Toriyama himself. There’s a picture going around of him, drawn the way he always drew himself, with the mask and the eyes, and it’s like, this is me in paradise. It’s literally him reading a dirty magazine with a beer and a specific kind of food. Good for you, bro. Rock on.
Glorio Shows Up, and It Feels Like a Setup
Right after that they get a visit from another demon person. What’s his face, Kibito, gets the ship they came from the demon realm with, but they have to fix it, and Bulma’s the one working on it. Then another ship shows up, and it’s a new dude. Glorio, the titular character, who apparently needs Goku to come down to the demon realm, face King Gomah, and preferably defeat him.
The whole thing feels very much like a setup. I don’t think it’s a setup the way the show’s implying, where they think he’s trying to trap Goku into whatever. I think he has ulterior motives. Either he’s using Goku as a distraction, or he thinks Goku’s the only person who could do it. The demon realm seems very competitive, so to speak. We’ll see.
Everybody’s a Kid, Including the Babies
Gomah wanted the third demon eye, which I guess is a super powerful artifact thing, and he wasn’t able to make those wishes. So he’s like, well, at least everybody’s a kid, and now he’s got to deal with that. Sure enough, everyone’s a kid. Mr. Satan is a kid. Chi-Chi’s dad is a kid. Mr. Popo looked hilarious as a little kid with his two little spike horns.
Then there’s Goten and Trunks, who were kids and are now babies. That was hilarious. In Episode 1 it’s Trunks’s birthday, so I guess you can say it’s his happy first or second birthday now, and you see him in the same outfit he wore when we saw him born. What hit us the most was the baby noises. We thought, okay, baby noises, and then Goten and Trunks are talking in their heads and hearing each other. Telepathy. What in the name of Look Who’s Talking Now is this?
I wonder if that’s going to stick, and I wonder if they’re going to baby fuse. A little baby Gotenks. How many times do they fail? They’re known for fusing horribly wrong. Skinny Gotenks, fat Gotenks. I love fat Gotenks.
Android 18 we’ve never seen young. And Krillin and 18 had a baby, and their kid is now a baby again. It doesn’t look any younger. What should it be, an embryo? Senpai said it should be a computer chip, and that’s funny. Which got me asking about Android 17. He’d still be out there, and he’d be young too. Okay, then where is he? Maybe we’ll come to him eventually.
One more bit I thought was funny: the wish made their clothes smaller too. Thank you, Shenron. Shenron’s like, look, I don’t want you guys to be embarrassed, we’ll shrink them. It would’ve been funnier if Bulma was just sitting there in grown up clothes going, this is not the suit I was wearing.
Kid Gogeta, Heroes, and the Games
There’s a picture going around, and I don’t know if it’s real. I think it’s somebody’s fan art, and it looks great, by the way. It’s a little kid Super Saiyan 4 Gogeta, the one with the open vest, in the red version. I don’t think it’s a real scene, because I haven’t seen anything else like it. Senpai thought it might be from a game. He’s played Dragon Ball Heroes on his Switch and noticed they have a lot of kid characters, so it might be referencing that.
I’d love it if they rolled Heroes into this. I don’t know that they will, because Heroes is its own little side universe. But it’s an amazing universe, and I wish they’d do more with it. If you haven’t seen it, go watch it. They’re about eight minute episodes, and if you can find someone who’s made a supercut, it’s worth watching. I found one and I’m still watching it.
Senpai keeps up with new games, and he had news. Not even a day after Daima came out in English sub, we got a trailer for Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot, and Daima is going to be put in that game. Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero, which literally just came out, is getting its first DLC, and it’s this twerp. It’s Daima. So why are we getting a younger Goku? He’s younger than he is in Super, so he’s not even the biggest, most powerful version. You’re getting him because he’s cool and he looks just like he used to look, except for the blue shirt.
Why Not the Hyperbolic Time Chamber?
Did you hear the guy say it takes about five days for this or that? I’m like, oh, so ten days. So it’s going to be three episodes of them just getting ready and preparing before they leave. Find out next time. We’re not going to get them having left and arrived until well after Episode 3, and Gomah’s going to be all powerful by the time they get there. I think he’s going for the demon realm Dragon Balls. Neva joked with him and said you’re going to have to fight them if you want to get them, and I was like, ah, this guy.
I don’t know that I have the patience to watch these short stints week to week to week. Bro, give me the whole thing, or give me two or three episodes at a time. Once he said ten days, I knew what was coming. Here come two episodes of the team just BSing and figuring things out, or three minutes of every episode of Goku charging up his ki.
Senpai asked a really good question. Time flows differently in the Time Chamber, so why not just go in, sit there, train a little bit, and come out a grown person? One day of real time is one year in there. Spend thirty days and you’ve spent thirty years, and you’d age back up to roughly your age. That’s sound. Then he thought about the other side of it, which is how strong that guy can get in the same number of days. There’s always a time crunch. Even Korin said it: you’re always in a rush, Goku.
I just wish more had happened. I’m okay with what’s there. I know there are guys online picking every frame apart, and look, if they’re not going to give you enough to understand, take it on its face.
Where This Is Going
They’re leaving Vegeta. The ship has room for three, so the rest have to take the other one, the one Bulma’s fixing. I guarantee Goku and them are going to be on some kind of mini adventure by themselves.
A lot of people are saying it online, and I’ve been reading it: this is GT all over again, or at the very least GT with a little more common sense. In GT they went into space to find the big giant Black Star Dragon Balls. Here they’re going to hell, and there are only three of those Dragon Balls, which I find interesting. I wonder if they find Frieza down there.
I jokingly said it last week, and the opening says it for me. Halfway through, it’s Shenron, grant my wish. It always comes back to the damn Dragon Balls. It’s always somebody trying to make a wish.
So here’s my prediction, and keep track. They go to the demon realm. They either embarrass or defeat Gomah. Then Neva tells them they have to defeat the Dragon Ball guardians, get the demon Dragon Balls, and make a wish to reverse it, and that’s their only option. Add in whatever weird political machinations Glorio has going on. I can’t imagine how they fit the rest of this adventure into the next twenty-three minutes.
We also talked about the opening, which shows a figure that looks like Dabura, and apparently that’s his dad. Senpai had never seen him. He just knows Dabura and how strong he is, and his dad is apparently way stronger. It’s interesting to see how they’re lining things up. Super took Goku to a level that was unheard of. You’re literally doing tournaments with God, like the creator. So now you have to backtrack a little, the way the Super Hero movie did with the Red Ribbon stuff. At some point you’ve got to go backward and re-evaluate some of these adventures in that context.
As for the rumor: Senpai has a friend who keeps him up on Dragon Ball info, and on a Discord call the night before, he said they’re only going to do three episodes in sub, and then around December or sometime next year they’ll put the first three episodes in theaters in English as a movie. Senpai wasn’t sure it’s true, and I hadn’t heard it. I’m going to look it up so we can talk about it next week. It seems like a weird schedule. I know there was that gold Frieza thing they did briefly, which was kind of similar, and then they continued. It’d be a shame if we had to find something else to talk about. Luckily we have lots of that.
The Verdict
Dragon Ball Daima Episode 2 lands at a 6 out of 10 on the Know-It-All Index.
I’m going to be real with you. This episode, for me anyway, was less impressive than the last one. It moved the storyline forward, but this was a filler all day. This is classic Dragon Ball filler.
Senpai went lower than me. He called it mainly filler, said it nearly put him to sleep, and gave it a 4 out of 10. It would’ve been a five for him, and he took it to a four because it’s wasting time.
Five is average, in my opinion. But I take everything by itself, so I’m always a little higher on the curve. I’m a little more forgiving, because I know what goes into these. We’ll see what they do. Come on, Dragon Ball, fix yourself.
Your turn. Give me your own score for the episode, and tell me which one of us is full of crap. Are you liking where this is going, are you a big Dragon Ball fan or is this the first time you’ve seen any of it, and where do you think Android 17 is? The conversation lives in the comments on the video above.
