Dragon Ball Super Chapter 85 Reveals the Cost of Elec's Wish as Omen Goku Takes On Gas

Chapter 85 of the Dragon Ball Super manga finally answered a question we had been wondering about for months: what wish did Elec really make to the Cerealian dragon? The answer is that the wish lets Gas get stronger and stronger at the cost of his lifespan, and every time he powers up, he visibly ages.

Before the chapter, the open questions were whether it was the exact same wish Granola made, whether it ran on different principles, or whether it was some altered version. I think the answer the chapter gave is a very interesting one. Alongside that story point came the continuation of what felt like a never ending struggle between the Saiyans and Gas of the Heeters, with no Granola in sight despite the arc being named after him.

Granola's absence was not a fair complaint

Sitting Granola out for a few chapters is nothing too crazy. Back in the day, Dragon Ball would sit Goku out for weeks and weeks before Toriyama brought him back into the story. So to me, griping that Granola was not involved was not really a fair complaint. He was obviously going to be involved; it just was not his time yet, and I wanted to wait and see what they actually did with him.

Ultra Ego Vegeta absorbed Gas's attacks until a new teleport trick turned the fight

The first part of the chapter continued Ultra Ego Vegeta's fight with Gas, and at first Vegeta was loving it. Gas was hitting him with powerful attacks, and Vegeta was absorbing the damage and getting stronger in his Ultra Ego form, something we saw him do all the way back in the Granola arc. Vegeta has talked multiple times about how Ultra Ego makes him stronger as he fights, and Gas started to worry.

Then Gas busted out a brand new variation on instantaneous movement. He can now teleport other people using the same move, and he used it to bounce Vegeta all over the battlefield. This is a version of the technique that not even Goku has ever done. Even while absorbing some of the damage, Vegeta was getting very much beaten up.

Vegeta sent Goku away, and I did not like it

Vegeta told Goku that he did not think Goku had really figured out the right way to use Ultra Instinct, so he told him to leave the battlefield and go work out what to do with his transformation while Vegeta took on Gas. Goku did exactly that.

I felt it was a tiny bit uncharacteristic of Goku to just leave Vegeta behind, especially against an opponent as dangerous as Gas. It would have made more sense to me if Goku had stayed nearby watching the fight, not interfering but keeping his eyes open in case the Heeters attacked or in case Gas came close to killing Vegeta, so he could save him. Instead he actually left to go think about his form, and I did not really like that.

Vegeta never gives up, even as Gas pummels him

While Goku was off taking time to himself, Vegeta tried his best against Gas but got pummelled left and right. Even though he appeared confident in the power of Ultra Ego, he was also getting weaker by the boatload. The sheer brutality of these panels made me happy, because it really shows how dangerous both Gas and Vegeta have become compared to how they were earlier in this very same arc.

Tough as ever, Vegeta kept fighting, smiling with every attack and taunting Gas, essentially telling him he was not man enough to finish him off. He was not using those exact words, but he was goading Gas because he wanted Gas to keep hitting him so he could get stronger, even though he was in a lot of pain. The Heeters nearby were even shocked by his nerve.

That is one thing I have always liked about Vegeta's character: he never gives up, and he will fight you until the very end. I know there have been times when Vegeta has been a coward, for example against Broly in the first Dragon Ball Z Broly movie, but we are talking about this Vegeta here, not that one. Either way, Vegeta has always been the guy who goes as hard as he can for as long as he can until he cannot go anymore.

Goku returned with a barrier and Ultra Instinct Omen instead of his silver form

Gas laid Vegeta out and was about to finish him by manifesting a giant sword to stab him with, when an energy barrier suddenly appeared around Vegeta. Goku had created it to protect him, and this time he was ready to get back in the fight. He telekinetically lifted Vegeta inside the barrier and carried him to safety as he prepared to take his place.

Gas was expecting the blue haired form or the silver haired form, but Goku powered up into Ultra Instinct Omen, also called Ultra Instinct Sign. In some early leaks a few days before the chapter, the original leaker thought this was a new version of Ultra Instinct, but that was a mistranslation; it was apparently just the Omen version.

People may have been wondering why Goku would use Omen instead of the silver haired, perfected version, which we know is more powerful and faster. Goku himself says that properly using the silver form means pretty much emptying your head and letting your body move by itself instinctually, whereas with Omen your emotions can be part of the power too. The way I interpret it, Goku was trying to use his emotions, his excitement or rage, to give him a power boost while still keeping some of the speed benefits of Ultra Instinct.

The constant changes to Ultra Instinct annoyed me, and Bardock may explain the result

As a Dragon Ball fan and someone who covers the series, I was a little annoyed that they were going so wishy washy with Ultra Instinct. It felt like every other month we found out something new about the form, and it was either unnecessary or a way to get out of writing themselves into a corner. The more they changed things, the less sense it made, because Goku with Omen did better against Gas than Goku did with perfected Ultra Instinct.

Part of that could be that when Gas sees Goku with black hair, he thinks of Bardock and has that traumatic flashback, which may have thrown him off guard mentally. One of the ancient principles of martial arts is that if somebody can psych you out mentally, you might not be able to perform physically. Seeing that classic black haired look reminds Gas of Bardock and, as I put it, "his brain turns into linguine." To me, that is the only logical explanation. After spending a big chunk of the Moro arc getting Goku to control silver haired Ultra Instinct at will, going back does seem like a step in the wrong direction, but it had a nice consequence for Goku.

Toyotaro's fight panels delivered a Kamehameha, a mouth blast and a ball and chain reversal

Some of these fighting panels were really good. I have talked about how Toyotaro has improved as an artist when it comes to combat, and he was still pretty good at it based on this chapter. The Heeters themselves were almost killed in the skirmish, and Goku using the classic Kamehameha is always a treat. Goku took the advantage, aggressively knocking Gas backwards in retreat.

That onslaught led to Goku firing a mouth blast for the first time since his Great Ape form all the way back in Dragon Ball. Mouth blasts are usually done by villains like Nappa, and we saw King Piccolo and even Piccolo Jr. do it, as well as Broly, even though he is not really a villain; he just has that Great Ape energy inside his regular humanoid form. This was Goku's first mouth blast in humanoid form. The panel looked pretty cool and was unexpected, but I am not sure it was really that special.

A frustrated and somewhat discombobulated Gas then manifested a number of weapons in the sky to attack Goku. In probably my favourite sequence of the chapter, Goku dodged his way through all of them, grabbed a giant ball and chain Gas had created and used it against him. As Gas raised his arms to block it, Goku saw an opening and landed a huge kick to his midsection, knocking him away. At that point it looked like Gas might actually lose.

Elec's wish makes Gas stronger while aging him, and we can assume it will eventually kill him

Elec then showed up and gave Gas a pep talk about letting the Heeters become the strongest force in the universe and eventually overthrowing Frieza, which might never happen if Gas could not win this fight. That pep talk revealed the truth about the wish. It allows Gas to keep getting stronger, but just like with Granola, it shortens his lifespan. In Gas's case, every time he powers up, his body and face look older, so the longer the fight goes, the faster he ages, until eventually, we can assume, he will die.

Elec made this wish without telling Gas the details. So it is obvious to me that Elec is just going to use Gas to defeat Goku, Vegeta and Granola, and will not care about Gas's life afterwards. I see Elec as a complete narcissist who only cares about himself and will use his own family members for his gain, treating Gas as a weapon, a tool. You can see that in the foreshadowing and in how the character has been written since he was introduced many months ago.

Elec's speech was enough for Gas to power up and transform again, looking far scarier but also far older, almost as though his body was withering away. That was the cliffhanger. Going into the next chapter, the question was whether Goku, Vegeta and maybe Granola could simply play the waiting game and keep pushing Gas to power up until he did himself in, or whether something else would come into play.

My verdict: an okay chapter in an arc that was dragging

Honestly, I felt the pacing of this final battle had come to a screeching halt. It felt like Toyotaro was dragging out the fight, and while I am not complaining if the fight is good, there was very little story progression that month: maybe one or two points that continued the story, with the rest just a big fight. Dragon Ball fights are usually great, but in my opinion the Granola arc was getting a little long in the tooth.

Because this is a monthly manga with more pages than a traditional weekly Shonen Jump series, there is more room for story but also a longer wait to see progression. I felt they needed to pick up the pace, because I was a little fed up with waiting for a resolution. It also felt like it was dragging on, which is no surprise, because "it is drag on ball as they used to say back in the day."

At the same time, I enjoyed most of what I read and did not really hate anything. Some things were a little annoying, like the Ultra Instinct Omen usage, which I thought was kind of pointless; even though they explained it, it still felt like going backwards. Overall, it was "an okay thumbs in the middle chapter not terrible but not amazing either," and the question was whether they would stick the landing for this arc.

Do you think Goku's switch back to Ultra Instinct Omen made sense, or did it feel like a step backwards?