(ThyBlackMan.com) Recently, Dragon Ball Super ended it’s 3 year, 131 episode run in Japan with the conclusion of The Tournament Of Power Arc in The Dragon Ball Super Anime.
Here are several things that I greatly liked about The Tournament Of Power in The Dragon Ball Super Anime.
1. Like: Great Fights – There weren’t that many great fights in the anime version of Dragon Ball Super prior to The Tournament Of Power aside from Goku vs Beerus, Goku vs Frieza II, and Goku vs Hit. The anime version of The Tournament Of Power had showcased many great fights including Goku vs Jiren in episode 129 & 130, Goku vs Kefla, Vegeta vs Toppo, Vegeta vs Jiren, including Universe 7 vs Aniraza. I really enjoyed seeing those fights.
2. Major Like: Vegeta – It’s no secret that for 18 years that I’ve been watching him, Vegeta has been and will always be my favorite all-time Dragon Ball character because during The DBZ era, he started off as a vicious, ruthless, and arrogant heel (bad guy) that only cared about getting stronger uninhibited by foolish emotions and fast forward to Dragon Ball Super, we see Vegeta becoming more of a family man as well as achieving new Super Saiyan forms like Super Saiyan God in the manga and Super Saiyan Blue offscreen before The Resurrection F Arc. In The Tournament Of Power, we see him being the only one refusing to give Goku energy for The Universe 7 Spirit Bomb against Jiren and then he along with Goku in Super Saiyan Blue forms eliminate The Dangerous Trio with a Final Kamehameha as seperate beings and then later fights Jiren and gets a new Super Saiyan form for the first time onscreen called “Ultra
Super Saiyan Blue” and then fights Jiren briefly in the new form and then goes off and fights God Of Destruction Toppo (who in my opinion set the absolute worst example of Hakaishin) and tells Toppo that he’s shit for discarding his own pride for the sake of power and starts to think about his family as well as his Saiyan race and does an Ultra Final Explosion that not only overpowers Toppo’s hakaishin energy and eliminates Toppo, but it drains his stamina completely.
And then fights Jiren again and gets eliminated and right when he’s about to get eliminated, he gives Goku his last bit of energy to fight Jiren one last time which I thought was so admirable of him as he would have never gone this in the past. Vegeta was clearly one of the best things to have ever happened in The Tournament Of Power.
3. Dislike: The Underutilization Of Characters – One of the things that I greatly disliked about the anime version of The Tournament Of Power was how most of the characters that were in The Tournament Of Power were basically jobbers that were used to put over certain characters like Goku, Vegeta, Frieza, and Jiren. This was more apparent with The Legendary Assassin Of Universe 6 known as Hit and I saw that he was never given an opportunity to truly showcase his full potential in The Tournament Of Power because like most characters, he was used as a plot device to put Jiren over and I personally didn’t like this. Another example was how one of my two favorite all-time Dragon Ball villians in Frieza for most of The Tournament Of Power was very underutilized because he didn’t really fight very much aside from Cabba, Dyspo, Toppo, and Jiren, but he avoided much of the fighting by plotting and scheming behind the scenes which is smart, but many fans like myself didn’t like this including being beaten down by Jiren in a glorified squash less than a minute which is a Dragon Ball record for the quickest squash ever.
4. Dislike: The Concept Of Stamina – Another thing that I personally didn’t like was the concept of stamina, particularly in the case of Goku and Vegeta when they fought against certain characters like, Kefla, Jiren and Toppo, they would immediately become tired out, but then a few minutes later, their stamina was replenished and they were back on their feet ready to fight again and a lot of Dragon Ball fans like myself definitely didn’t enjoy seeing that.
5. Like: Android 17 – Another thing that I greatly enjoyed about The Tournament Of Power was seeing Android 17 and how well he performed against other universe fighters like Toppo, Jiren. He even went as far as to protect his teammates from being eliminated like throwing a rock that made Frieza land on the edge of the ring, blowing himself up (which he was later revealed to have survived) to save Goku and Vegeta from being eliminated by Jiren, finding the bugs that almost eliminated Vegeta and Gohan and eliminating him, and managing to figuring out Aniraza’s weakness and defeating him. Android 17 was definitely The MVP for Universe 7 in The Tournament Of Power. His fight against Piccolo was one of my Top 5 favorite fights from The DBZ era.
6. Dislike: Inconsistent Power Scaling – One of the things that I greatly disliked about The Tournament Of Power that many fans can actually agree with me on was the very inconsistent power scaling and several examples of this were Android 17 vs Goku, Super Saiyan God Goku vs Kefla, Berserker Kale vs Super Saiyan Blue Goku and Frieza vs Dyspo in which it made absolutely no sense to see how Kefla could keep up to a Super Saiyan God Goku, Android 17 keeping up with a Super Saiyan Blue Goku, Berserker Kale tanking and keeping up with a Super Saiyan Blue Goku, and Dyspo somehow managing to keep up with Frieza, it just didn’t make any sense to me at all.
7. Like: Great Moments – One of the biggest things that I liked about The Tournament Of Power was that it had it’s fate share of great moments like Vegeta using The Final Explosion to overpower and eliminate Toppo, Goku and Vegeta using a Final Kamehameha as separate beings to eliminate the strongest warriors of Universe 9 known as The Dangerous Trio, Goku accidentally tapping into Ultra Instinct for a third time against Jiren, and my favorite moment of all Tournament Of Power moments was when Universe 7 fighters Goku, Vegeta, Gohan, Frieza, and Android 17 combined all their super attacks into one to defeat a common enemy in Aniraza which is similar to The Power Rangers combining their strongest weapon attacks into one ultimate attack to defeat much stronger foes.
8. Dislike: The Roman Reigns Treatment Of Universe 7 – It’s no secret that Roman Reigns is hated by so many wrestling fans today and one of the main reasons for that is that he’s constantly being forced down the throats of fans at the arenas and viewers watching on TV every single week and I personally felt that The Tournament Of Power was very reflective of giving Universe 7 The Roman Reigns treatment because almost every episode of The Tournament Of Power, Universe 7 was constantly forced down our throats by Toei and the writers and this pissed off a lot of fans like myself. Sure we like seeing Universe 7, but damn, they could have give the other universes more decent airtime instead of brief shots of them.
The Conclusion – Overall, I did enjoy some things about The Tournament Of Power and I wish they could have did the things that they had gotten wrong even better in my opinion.
Staff Writer; Kwame Shakir (aka Joe D.)