Tapion Returns in Super Dragon Ball Heroes Ultra God Mission Episode 1

Tapion is back. The first episode of the Ultra God Mission story arc of Super Dragon Ball Heroes, called the Supreme Kai of Time arc, brought him back alongside a huge crowd of characters pulled from across the Dragon Ball timeline. Overall, the episode is whatever: it's a big nostalgia trip, but it's not anything more than that.

Ultra God Mission is another Dragon Ball Heroes arc built on fan service

Like previous Dragon Ball Heroes story arcs, this one has a lot of really creative ideas and a lot of fan service. It takes things Dragon Ball fans probably want to see from the main series, from Super, from the movies, the anime and the manga, and puts them into a promotional anime. The whole purpose of it is to promote the Japanese Dragon Ball Heroes arcade game. It's not meant to be seen as a serious anime the way Dragon Ball Super or Dragon Ball Z are.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't be critical of it, and if you don't like it, you don't like it. In a lot of these episodes, I don't like what I see. I do like some of them, and I love the ideas behind them, because some of them create intriguing plot points.

Dragon Ball Heroes also often combines different continuities. You'll have movie characters interacting with characters from Super, GT characters from that timeline interacting with Super characters, and characters from the Z episodes or the Z movies mixed in. It's a big hodgepodge, with the Supreme Kai of Time, Mira and Towa in the mix too. There is no canon in Dragon Ball Heroes. Everything is canon. That might confuse people, but it makes things a lot easier, because there's an infinite number of timelines, and that's why you'll have characters like King Vegeta coming back to life.

I do wish we actually got a serious Heroes anime, something like half hour episodes with commercials that was strong and properly planned out. But that's just not how it is.

The first episode almost feels like a reset, with Goku back on his farm

Things had remained peaceful since the big battle with Fu at the end of the last Dragon Ball Heroes arc. Early in this episode, we see Goku back with his farming equipment on and the tractor. It's almost like the first episode of Dragon Ball Super all over again, sort of like hitting the reset button.

So it does feel like a new arc rather than a continuation of the last one. There was a cliffhanger that teased this arc, but the previous story arc with Fu is over, and from what we've seen so far, this is something totally new.

Why I review Dragon Ball Heroes with an asterisk

I always review these episodes with an asterisk, because it's a promo anime. The key is whether I enjoyed it, but I also recognize that I'm probably never going to truly enjoy these as much as I want to, because they're not fully fleshed out.

The episodes run anywhere between eight and nine minutes. Once in a while you'll get a 10 minute episode, including the intro and outro, but they never go past 10 minutes. That doesn't give them a lot of wiggle room to develop stories or give proper dialogue. It's just done to promote the newest Heroes card for that particular month.

A tournament across space and time is a premise I think fans want

The premise of this story arc is something I think a lot of fans are going to really want. It's something Dragon Ball Super probably needs to do at some point, but probably never will: a tournament across space and time, sort of like what Dragon Ball Legends did. The tournament takes what if battles from different timelines, with different versions of Goku, Trunks and other characters fighting each other.

That's like any Dragon Ball video game, because Heroes is a Dragon Ball video game. But I think a lot of people want to see this portrayed in a story, not just in a game, and Heroes gives that to you in the promo anime. The problem is that the promo anime ends up being lackluster most of the time. It's too bad, because I tend to like the ideas a lot.

Here's the setup. There's a new character, an older Kaioshin, a god older than even the Supreme Kai of Time. She appears and wants to destroy the time scrolls by holding these what if battles across multiple universes and timelines. So you get characters from the movies fighting characters from Super, and characters from Z filler fighting characters from GT. It's a big mix.

Jiren and Hit return alongside Goku, Vegeta, Piccolo and Gohan

Early in the episode, when Goku is told about the tournament, he's transported to a kind of time chamber. It's not the one from Z; it's somewhere else, in an alternate dimension. There he meets up with Piccolo, Gohan and Vegeta, and also Jiren and Hit.

Dragon Ball fans have wanted Jiren and Hit to come back since they were in Super, and we haven't seen them in the Moro or Granolah arcs, but they're here in Heroes. So it does the fan service, but it doesn't matter, because the story is always lacking and they never have enough time to flesh it out. All you can really hope for is a cool character who gets fleshed out more in the Heroes manga or the games, or a cool fight once in a while. You hope for the best, but a lot of times you don't get it.

A huge roster includes Xeno Trunks, Golden Cooler, Cumber and the androids

This first episode is obviously very story heavy because it's starting a new arc, and we see a ton of characters. We have Xeno Goku, the regular Dragon Ball Super versions of Goku and Vegeta, and the Xeno versions of Goku and Vegeta. Xeno Trunks is here. We also have Golden Cooler with Golden Frieza, and Cumber. These are characters we've seen in Heroes throughout the past 40 or so promo anime episodes, and they all appear for this tournament.

I popped when I saw the group of androids: 17, 18, 16, 15, 14, 13 and 19, all gathered together. They're being picked from different parts of the Dragon Ball timeline, which is fun. This is the kind of stuff I think is fun, but again, it just never pays off the way I want it to. Bojack's crew is there, and so are Frieza's forces.

Tapion meets Xeno Trunks, and Heroes kind of keeps the sword story straight

We also see Tapion, and yes, it's pronounced the way the tapioca pudding reference suggests; the dub gets it wrong. He interacts with Xeno Trunks, who is Future Trunks from an alternate timeline.

No matter which version of Future Trunks we're talking about, he never got his sword from Tapion. That has confused Dragon Ball fans for many years because of the way that movie ended. Kid Trunks got his sword from Tapion, but not Future Trunks. They're two completely different characters with different backstories, and we were never told specifically where Future Trunks got his sword.

So Tapion recognizes Trunks because of that iconic haircut we all know and love, but Xeno Trunks has no idea who he is, because they're from different timelines. I'm glad Heroes kept that the way it should be. People have wanted Tapion to come back for ages, and here he is.

Wacky matchups like Hirudegarn versus Hit and Kid Buu versus Janemba

We see all kinds of wacky fights, like Hirudegarn versus Hit, which was unexpected, and Jiren versus Broly from Dragon Ball Z, not the Dragon Ball Super Broly. We see Goku and Xeno Goku once again teasing a fight. We were teased with that in the very first Heroes episode back in 2018, and it wound up being a big letdown compared to the manga version of that story.

The fighters are spread across different time zones, not like 4 p.m. or 5 p.m., but zones in different parts of time. The one I thought was cool was Kid Buu versus Janemba. That's one I would actually like to see play out, but there's no way it'll ever happen in an actual Dragon Ball story. These fights seem like a fun idea, but it's Heroes, and so I can't really get excited.

One funny scene has Yamcha running away from Mecha Frieza. Remember, it's Mecha Frieza, not Golden Frieza, because they're picking from different parts of the timeline. We haven't seen this version of Frieza in ages.

The cloaked figures around the Supreme Kai of Time are still a mystery

The new Kaioshin is surrounded by mysterious cloaked figures, and we see them at the very beginning of the episode surrounding the Supreme Kai of Time. There's been a lot of speculation about who they are. A lot of fans think they could be characters like Bardock and King Vegeta, sort of the fathers from throughout the history of Dragon Ball that we didn't get much of. They haven't revealed who they are yet, but that'll probably be a big story point when it does get revealed.

The time scroll plot is very similar to Loki

As fighters start getting wiped out, the time scrolls start to disappear. The villain's goal is to destroy the time scrolls, which is going to mess up all of the alternate timelines. A lot of this might come off as very similar to what the MCU did in the show Loki. It's not identical, but in Loki it was Kang the Conqueror, and here it's this new Kaioshin wanting complete control of the space time continuum, of every timeline, by destroying other timelines, like what the TVA was trying to do.

My verdict: a nostalgia trip, and not anything more

There wasn't really much in this first episode other than establishing what the arc is going to be about. There's no big reveal, except that we're seeing classic Dragon Ball characters from throughout the timeline come back. Honestly, I find this premise far more interesting than the Red Ribbon Army coming back again, or Gamma 1 and 2. But the payoff never matches up to the premise, and that's been the story of Heroes for a while.

Overall, the episode is whatever. I can't even hate on it, because I'm so used to what this is, and I can't love it either. It's a new arc, and look, those characters are back. It's a nostalgia trip, but it's not anything more than that.

What do you think about the idea of a tournament across space and time?