Black Frieza Steals Granola's Ending in Dragon Ball Super Manga Chapter 87

Dragon Ball Super manga chapter 87 brought the Granola arc to an end, and it did so with Frieza arriving out of nowhere, killing both Gas and Elec, and unveiling a brand new transformation called Black Frieza. For me, the biggest problem is that Granola once again became a background character and did not get the revenge his story was building toward.

We all knew the clock was ticking and that a new arc would begin shortly, but I don't know if anybody could have predicted the specific way this one ended. Many of us thought Frieza would show up, if only for a cameo at the end. Many of us believed the true villain would turn out to be something else entirely, possibly even Elec. There was something else going on, but it wasn't quite that.

Monaito heals the heroes, then a zombified Gas strikes him down

In the previous chapter, Granola, Goku and Vegeta worked together to defeat Gas, who had used the Dragon Balls to make himself the strongest in the universe. Granola was starting to feel the wear and tear on his body. The wish had inflated his and Gas's strength but also shortened their lifespans, so Gas started getting old very fast, and Granola was feeling sick and almost injured after putting so much power into the blast that put Gas down.

Monaito, who made the Cerealian Dragon Balls, came over to heal Granola, Goku and Vegeta and discovered he could now restore them to full strength. The way I understand the explanation, the more he uses his healing ability, the stronger it gets, kind of like working out a muscle. I'm not sure if that applies to all Namekians, but it certainly did for Monaito.

Then the chapter took a dark turn. A huge energy blast pierced Monaito's chest and he fell, apparently dead. It came from a barely surviving Gas, who had become so decrepit from his aging that he was nearly a skeleton, a zombified figure focused only on revenge. There is good and bad here. The good is that Toyotaro gets to show off a zombie like aesthetic we haven't really seen much in Dragon Ball, while giving us an interesting new idea about Dragon Ball wishes. The bad is that, as storytelling, it wasn't something I wanted. I thought we were done with Gas, and "here we go again with gas round number 13."

Goku and Vegeta power up to their new forms, but Gas simply smashes their heads together and beats them relatively easily. Even fully healed, they're weaker than him, which is a little weird. I'd guess the only explanation is that he's truly at the brink of death. I've said before that many people feel this arc reads better as a marathon, but I hadn't done that yet, so month by month, all I was seeing was another month of Gas. Even Vegeta comments that it doesn't feel like they're fighting a living being anymore. He doesn't say "living dead"; that part is my own addition, but that is what it sounds like.

Granola is sidelined in the arc that carries his name

While all this is happening, Monaito and Granola share a very sad moment as Granola begins to say goodbye to his surrogate father. At that point I was thinking Granola would finally take this seriously, get back into the battle and get his vengeance. That's not what happened.

For many months I've argued that Granola has to be the one to beat Elec, and maybe even Gas, but really Elec. He has to kill Elec to fully close his arc, avenging his mother's death at Elec's hands, now with the extra anger of losing his surrogate father. If I had to sum up my least favorite thing about this chapter, it's that Granola once again became a background character and his own story did not end satisfyingly.

Some readers will think this arc was good, and that's fine. I think some of it was good too, and overall there are interesting ideas in it. Granola does go through a character arc, but to me that arc did not have a satisfying conclusion.

Elec's betrayal finally lands, and Gas earns a moment of pity

Elec's treachery is at long last revealed when he bails on his siblings. After instructing Gas to go all out and prove he is the greatest warrior in the universe, he abandons Oil, Maki and Gas. Gas realizes it when Elec calls him incompetent. What we knew as readers, Gas finally learns: Elec doesn't care about him and is only in it for himself. He's a narcissistic sociopath whose only goal is to take over Frieza's empire, even if he has to use his siblings to get there.

Gas then realizes how disgusting he looks, and for a moment you kind of pity him as he comes to terms with having become a grotesque monster through his obsession with winning to please Elec. It was a good, very subtle little moment. That's something I miss about Dragon Ball, where subtle things mean more and you don't have everything spelled out for you, and I like that about this scene.

Frieza arrives and delivers one of Dragon Ball's goriest kills

Then, in one of the most surprising moments in all of Dragon Ball Super, or even all of Dragon Ball when you really think about it, Frieza shows up out of nowhere and dismantles Gas in what I feel is one of the most grotesque and gory kills ever in the franchise. He penetrates Gas with his hand and rips him in half. Gas's face is melting into a pure skeleton, and then Frieza, much like Darkseid in the Snyder Cut, crushes Gas's skull.

The scene was absolutely hardcore. I can't say for sure, but at the time I had a feeling that when it got adapted to the anime it wouldn't be as gory, and that's too bad, because I like it when gore is used for extra shock value, and I really appreciated how it was used here. "Frieza is just ruthless."

Frieza ends Elec, which is great for Frieza and bad for Granola

We then learn it was Elec who called Frieza to the planet, planning for Gas to kill Granola, the Saiyans and Frieza too. Frieza calls him out on it. He knew from the start that Elec wanted his empire and was waiting for the right moment to catch him slipping. Frieza's appearance shouldn't be a surprise, because his presence loomed over this arc from the beginning. Granola wanted revenge on Frieza for his people, only to learn it was Elec who brought Frieza to his planet to wipe out a civilization.

Then Elec makes one of the dumbest mistakes you could make. He's supposed to be a highly intelligent manipulator, yet he tries to attack Frieza. Maybe he was defending himself, or knew he was going to die and figured he'd try something. Frieza blocks the punch and sends him to the afterlife.

This was an awesome moment for Frieza, but I feel it really hurt Granola. Besides fighting Goku, Vegeta and Gas on different occasions, he didn't do that much in this arc. I was waiting for him to kill Elec and finally avenge his mother, and instead it was Frieza. As a Frieza fan, and as someone who enjoyed seeing Elec wiped out, it was great, but it should have been Granola. "It's almost like Granola is an afterthought," and to me that's weak writing.

Ten years in the time chamber give Frieza his Black Frieza form

Goku and Vegeta wonder how Frieza beat Gas so easily. It turns out Frieza wasn't in Universe 7 when the wish was made, so the dragon couldn't sense him and made Gas the strongest at that moment. I talked about this roughly two years earlier when the arc began, because I knew the wish would only count for the moment it was made. I thought Goku and Vegeta would surpass Gas and Granola, but instead Frieza was the strongest.

While raiding a planet, Frieza found access to a Room of Spirit and Time. There are different versions across Dragon Ball, including the one where Goku, Gohan, Vegeta, Trunks and Piccolo trained in Dragon Ball Z. Frieza says he trained there for about 10 years, which works out to roughly 10 or 11 days. If four months of training let him leapfrog every Dragon Ball Z villain with Golden Frieza, imagine what 10 years does.

The very next panels prove it. Goku and Vegeta transform into True Ultra Instinct and Ultra Ego, and Frieza one shots them without breaking a sweat. That means it appears Frieza is once again, like in Dragon Ball Z, the most powerful villain we know of, though I'm sure more is coming. He then unveils his new form, Black Frieza. Vegeta had warned Goku that keeping Frieza alive would let him train, gain a new form and maybe build an army. "The nightmare is a reality." If you want to power scale him, he may be at God of Destruction level, if not higher, something I wanted to dig into later. Frieza then recruits Oil and Maki, the last two Heeters, into his empire. Was it a little lazy? I guess so, but I was curious where the story would go, because we may have had another Frieza arc on our hands.

Goodbyes, a disabled set of Dragon Balls, and Whis's teaser

As Frieza leaves, Goku and Vegeta crawl, near death, over to Monaito and Granola. Monaito is awake, because Whis appeared and healed him. Goku wants to train with Granola, but Granola chooses to stay on planet Cereal with Monaito. Monaito says he will disable the Dragon Balls, since in the wrong hands they can be a serious problem, as this whole arc showed. We predicted this, but it was done differently. Vegeta gives Granola the Dragon Radar, and Monaito gives Goku Bardock's scouter as a memento of his father.

In the final panels, Whis takes Goku and Vegeta back toward Beerus's planet, and they ask whether Frieza is the strongest in the universe that the Oracle Fish predicted. Whis says he doesn't think so, but maybe a stronger warrior has been born somewhere in this universe. That is a teaser for something big. Could it be Gohan? Probably not. I feel it's a new character, or someone we don't expect. The chapter ends with them training again, because Frieza is deadlier than ever.

My verdict: big highs, but Granola was wasted

Frieza killing people was awesome, and Black Frieza and what he did to Goku and Vegeta was cool for the character. It wasn't a terrible ending in the grand scheme of Dragon Ball, and not as bad as the Trunks arc ending. But Granola not getting his revenge bugs me. He became a sidelined character in his own arc. Past the first half, it became the Gas show; you could even call it the Gas arc, because Gas did a lot in the last half, while I felt Granola was wasted and almost unnecessary. He got a character arc, but it was missing the last piece of the puzzle.

So we go back into the cycle where Toyotaro gives us something good and all we can do is cross our fingers and hope he doesn't mess it up, because he has a history of that too. I liked some of this chapter and disliked some of it.

Should Granola have been the one to finish Elec, or did handing that moment to Frieza make for the better story?