Dragon Ball Super Chapter 86 Preview: Could Gas Burn Himself Out Before Goku Even Finishes Him?

Chapter 85 of the Dragon Ball Super manga presumably finally showed what the wish is doing to Gas: the more power he taps into, the older he gets. My prediction for chapter 86 is that Gas will lose, and that powering up again could make him so old that he basically dies.

At the time of writing, chapter 86 had not yet been released, so everything below is a preview built on what chapter 85 gave us.

Gas ages as he powers up in Dragon Ball Super chapter 85

The Granola arc continues, and chapter 85 is mostly one long fight. Goku, in his Ultra Instinct Sign form, which better suits his emotions, is facing off against Gas. The chapter ends with Elec giving Gas a pep talk, and Gas transforms again. This time, though, he is visibly getting older.

That gives us an answer to one of the questions we have been wondering about for a long time: how these wishes actually affect the body. The more power you tap into, presumably from Elec's wish, maybe not Granola's, but Elec's, the older you get. You get more power, but you pay for it with age.

The Granola arc's pacing has slowed down

A lot of people were complaining about the pacing of this chapter, saying the story has slowed down, that nothing is really happening and that it is just one long fight continuing. I can actually see that, because this arc was paced really fast last year and then it got really slow.

My co-host explained that it feels that way because everything we have seen with Goku, Vegeta and Gas has already been done with Granola. It is the exact same formula: you beat them up, they recover, maybe with a senzu bean, and then they get back into the action with a power up or a new transformation. Gas's unleashed form arrived five chapters earlier, and two chapters earlier we had the beginning of the Bardock flashback, so in that sense it does not feel slow. But overall, in his words, it has "kind of been dragging," and he wants the series to just do something new.

We also talked about how much easier it is to read this kind of story as a marathon, reading multiple chapters in one day out of a volume, than once a month. Monthly readers have four weeks in between chapters, and the Super Hero movie had also come out, so people had been focused on that.

My prediction: Gas loses in chapter 86 by burning through his life

I slightly modified my prediction. I think Gas is going to lose in chapter 86, and I hope so, because if not the fight is going to drag on even more. What I think happens is that Granola finally shows up, and Goku, Granola and maybe even Vegeta, beaten up as he is, come together and triple team Gas. That forces him to power up again, and when he powers up again he gets even older, until eventually he basically dies from using up all of his life energy.

That is where I think the moral of the story is heading: "no matter how strong you are if there's other dudes who are training and training and training they can gang up on you and you can lose." My co-host summed it up as Gas dying in chapter 86 not because he gets defeated, but because he runs out of gas, and I agreed.

We discussed how Goku and Vegeta, and maybe Granola, could wear him down with a stick and move tactic, attacking and dodging. The catch is that Gas has shown he can use instantaneous movement, teleporting Vegeta up and down and left to right all over the place, so that tactic might be a lot harder this time. Gas has new techniques in his arsenal.

Elec is honest with Goku but lies to Gas

My co-host agreed with my prediction, but pointed out the objection some people will raise: Elec literally tells Gas he needs him in order to kill Frieza. His answer is that Elec is using Gas.

What he has noticed about Elec is that he is a pretty honest guy when he talks to Goku, but when he talks to Gas, that is when he lies. Elec tells Gas he needs him, and then tells Goku moments later that there won't be a next time for Gas. So Elec already knows Gas is finished, and on that basis my co-host agreed that Gas is going to die.

Vegeta looks done for this fight, but maybe not for the arc

My co-host thinks Vegeta is out of the game. Back in chapter 80, Goku was done and said he needed more power and could not even move his body, and Vegeta gave him the last bit of energy he had. Vegeta recovered for a couple of minutes, got back into the action, did not have enough time to recover, and got beaten down pretty badly. So he thinks Vegeta is done, while Granola comes back and teams up with Goku, with Granola using long range attacks and Goku using Ultra Instinct Sign up close. We agree on that.

I pushed back on one point, though. When he says Vegeta is done, I wanted to know whether he meant this fight or the rest of the arc, because I think Vegeta still has something left to do. My co-host laid out the situation: the two senzu beans are both gone, and Monaito is taking forever. We both predicted Monaito is going to die at some point, because he is running out of power just healing Granola and cannot heal anybody else. So what does Vegeta have to recover with? No options, short of a long nap.

One possibility we raised is that Monaito heals Vegeta a little, but if Monaito shows up to do that, one of the Heeters might kill him, and then we would finally get that death. Maybe Monaito gives Vegeta his last bit of energy, enough for one or two more moves, and then Vegeta is done.

Gas's horns appear to be his weakness

We had theorized about Gas's weakness in an earlier discussion and mentioned his horns, but back then we did not have enough evidence and just said it seemed kind of likely. Chapter 85 changes that.

On page 28 of chapter 85, Goku punches Gas on the left side of his face and breaks his left horn. Right after this, the fight becomes fairly evenly matched. Then on page 35, Goku punches Gas on the right side of his face and breaks the right horn, and directly after that Gas starts to lose badly. At the end of the chapter, when Gas powers up and becomes like an old man, his horns grow back. Based on that evidence, the horns look like the key to defeating him.

The problem is that Goku probably did not notice. He seemed to be going for the face and broke the horns by accident. The horn being knocked off was never directly stated, yet it actually meant the difference. Bardock did not exploit it either, even though we thought he would. Maybe Granola or Vegeta noticed, and one of them could tell Goku to hit the horns. Vegeta might take out one horn and Goku the other, or Granola could use his sniping abilities to knock one out.

Frieza probably gets no more than a cameo in this arc

If Gas is finished, where does the story go? There needs to be a new threat. Elec mentions in this chapter that his ultimate goal is to kill Frieza, so you would think the story is heading toward Frieza.

One argument we raised against that is the Super Hero movie, which mentions Frieza in passing but does not address him having any recent major role or anything from the manga. If Frieza came back with a significant role in this arc, you would expect him to be mentioned more prominently in the movie, which suggests Elec's plan to reach Frieza never comes true. The counterpoint is that the movie was written before this arc. Even if they do go to see Frieza, that does not mean Frieza goes to Earth; they could run into him in space. Either way, I don't think Frieza will be in this arc for more than a cameo.

Elec is too smart to go down quickly

To him, the most logical end to this arc is that Granola makes peace with the Saiyans and kills Elec, avenging his mother, and Monaito dies. I can also imagine a chapter where Goku and Vegeta go back to Whis and Beerus, who tell them what they did right and wrong before they keep training, though that is more of an epilogue.

I don't think the story is done after Gas, though. I believe Elec has a backup plan, with another fighter still in his possession. He clearly does not care about Gas, but his plan is still to defeat Frieza. We have never seen Elec put himself in grave danger, so I don't think he will use the wish on himself, because he does not want the consequences when his goal is to rule and become the strongest organization. The remaining Heeters are side characters who are probably going to end up getting killed, either by Elec using them the way Bojack did, or by Granola taking them out.

Elec is too smart to just get defeated next chapter. His plan may not pan out the way he wants, but something is going to happen, and I am giving this arc at least five more chapters. With the pacing the way it has been, it might not even end until November. The first year of the Granola arc was a little too fast and the second year is the opposite, so there have been real pacing issues here.

Do you think the horns will be what finally brings Gas down, or will the wish burn him out first?