Super Saiyan 3 Vegeta Arrives in Dragon Ball Heroes, but It Feels Unearned

Super Saiyan 3 Vegeta is something people have wanted for 25 years, and Super Dragon Ball Heroes Big Bang Mission Episode 4 delivered it. The trouble is that it was thrown away. Vegeta uses the form briefly against Dr. W, and that's it. Apart from the most devoted Vegeta fans, the ones who live and breathe Vegeta, I don't see who would care.

The episode does more than that, though. Fu pulls off a real win, and the closing scene points toward Janemba, my favorite villain from the original Dragon Ball Z movies.

Why Super Saiyan 3 Vegeta in Dragon Ball Heroes doesn't matter

Fans have seen Vegeta go Super Saiyan 3 in various games over the years. Dokkan Battle has had the transformation, and so have plenty of other games, but never in anime form. Now it shows up in the Dragon Ball Heroes promotional anime, which is tied to a game itself.

That's the first problem. Heroes is a promotional anime made to sell Heroes cards in Japan. You can't take it seriously, because it isn't serious. It's more like a joke. And it gave people Super Saiyan 3 Vegeta very late, when in Dragon Ball Super, in both the manga and the anime, Vegeta has gone far beyond Super Saiyan 3 with Super Saiyan God, Blue and Blue Evolution. This transformation shouldn't matter when it comes to his accomplishments. It simply doesn't anymore.

They gave it to us in Heroes probably to promote the card, and to hand Vegeta fans something very artificial. It feels manufactured and unearned, like: oh, here's Super Saiyan 3 Vegeta for two seconds. I don't know how many people will hype this up, but I don't understand how anyone can care. I can't. The execution was bad and worthless. It was a throwaway moment with no big celebration, no excitement and no great music. He just did it, attacked Dr. W, and that was the end. Still, it might be the biggest story to come out of this episode.

Xeno Goku, Xeno Vegeta and Dr. W's Dokkan style scouter

This is the fourth episode of Super Dragon Ball Heroes Big Bang Mission. The main plot has Goku, the version from Dragon Ball Super rather than what I'd call a main timeline Goku, continuing the story and going after Fu. The side plot is Xeno Goku and Xeno Vegeta running into Dr. W.

When Super Saiyan 3 Vegeta comes in to attack Dr. W, the show displays the readout from the scouter over his eye, and it looks like the actual Dokkan Battle game interface. I don't know whether that was intentional. Maybe it was to imitate the games, but it makes it very obvious what this is, in case it wasn't already.

I wonder what future generations will make of this. People years from now with no context for what Heroes is will look at it and wonder whether it's a sequel to Super. They won't know. I feel bad about that, because I wish they knew it wasn't important and that it doesn't matter.

The Time Patrol fight against Dr. W

I exaggerated a bit when I said the transformation only lasted a few seconds. The whole episode is about 8 minutes, and the fight takes up a few minutes of it. The Time Patrol Goku and Vegeta turn Super Saiyan 3 and fire a series of blasts at Dr. W, who has a cool ability to detect them coming and knock them away.

These are concepts that would have been great to see in an anime maybe 20 years ago. Maybe not so much now. It's still a good idea, but a late one. Dr. W tries to cut Vegeta with his little purple sword, but Vegeta manages to block it. Dr. W also has a Cyclops style eye beam that comes out of his scouter.

So he's a character with interesting moves, but not revolutionary at all, especially compared with what we'd seen not long before this episode. Moro, for example, has far more exciting abilities than Dr. W. Still, Dr. W has a good design: the mad scientist with real powers. In my opinion it's a cool idea and a distinctive look. Not the best, but interesting enough, and that's all I care about with this character.

Super Saiyan 4 and the alternate GT timeline

Next, Goku and Vegeta use the third upgrade to become Super Saiyan 4, and Dr. W points it out. For anyone new: Xeno Goku and Xeno Vegeta come from an alternate GT timeline. It isn't the main GT timeline from the anime. It's an alternate one where they became guardians of time.

This version of Goku and Vegeta never trained with Whis and Beerus and never went through the ritual, so they don't have the god transformations. What they do have are the GT powers, like Super Saiyan 4. They hit Dr. W with the Kamehameha and the Galick Gun, but it isn't enough to beat him. In my opinion he's strong enough to survive that. Then again, in Heroes there's no logic to power scaling, but since he's a new character, we can assume he's strong enough to handle it, and that isn't strange.

Dr. W starts laughing at them loudly, and that's roughly where that part of the story ends: just constant laughing. I think the continuation will come in the next episode.

Fu captures Tokitoki and the villains win

The episode then cuts to Fu and the business with the evil bird. Goku and Vegeta, in Super Saiyan Blue, are still fighting Bojack and Turles, continuing from the last episode. Then, believe it or not, something actually happens.

Dogidogi, the evil bird, uses a technique on Fu's orders that freezes Goku and Vegeta in place. That gives Fu the opening to wrap something like a ki lasso around Tokitoki and throw him through a portal. Tokitoki is captured, which is obviously bad, because that's what they wanted all along. He's a very important figure for Fu's goals.

Fu then opens a portal and disappears completely, and Turles and Bojack follow. The villains all escape, and now there's a problem. Xeno Trunks and Xeno Pan are left wondering what on earth they do now. They're stuck, because the villain technically won, and for now at least, he has.

Dr. W hands his data to Janemba

What happens next is interesting, but I can't bring myself to care because it's just Heroes, and Heroes always disappoints. After analyzing Xeno Goku and Xeno Vegeta, Dr. W discovers something. The episode cuts away to Fu's scenes and comes back to him running away into a strange cave.

It's a great scene, I won't lie. The visuals are very cool, with plenty of creative backgrounds and an aesthetic that looks interesting. Then he goes to what looks like a prison cell and tells Janemba the data is now his. So Janemba is coming to Dragon Ball Heroes.

I want to get excited about this. Janemba is my favorite villain from the 13 original Dragon Ball Z movies. I want to be excited and I want to care, but because of Heroes' patchy past, I can't make myself care.

My verdict on Big Bang Mission Episode 4

Even so, this episode wasn't too bad. We got some action in the first half. The Super Saiyan 3 transformation was treated as an afterthought and wasn't promoted at all, but I think they assume you already know Vegeta can do it from the games. So it's unimportant, just a formality.

The Janemba tease is interesting, and Fu winning and taking Tokitoki is a good cliffhanger. I want to know where it goes, but deep down I know they'll ruin it, because Heroes has no momentum. The episode didn't show what this Janemba looks like or what his plan is. At the time, the next episode's title promised a huge battle in Hell and a new Janemba, so he was clearly on the way.

Janemba against Super Saiyan 4 Gogeta, if they did that, could be very cool, since there are two Super Saiyan 4s in Xeno Goku and Xeno Vegeta up against Xeno Janemba. But I don't trust it to be good, because Heroes has fooled me too many times. I'll keep following it because it's Dragon Ball. If it's bad, I'll criticize it, and if it's good, I'll enjoy it. In the end, it's just Heroes, and it isn't something I want to hold on to too tightly.