Gohan Black Appears in Super Dragon Ball Heroes Ultra God Mission Episode 3, and I Liked It

Super Dragon Ball Heroes Ultra God Mission episode 3 revealed one of the mysterious Warriors in Black as an evil future Gohan, and this Gohan Black even showed off what looked like a brand new Super Saiyan form with a dark red aura. Overall, I liked the episode and gave it a thumbs up, though that is only my opinion.

Gohan Black is not the only thing worth talking about. The episode also brought glass warriors, a fairy that has to be stolen, and a cliffhanger that teams Goku with Jiren.

Ultra God Mission Is Easy to Forget Next to Super Hero and the Manga

With all the recent focus on Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero and what was going on with the manga, I can only speak for myself, but I almost totally forgot about Super Dragon Ball Heroes Ultra God Mission. I know a lot of people did, because it has been put so far on the back burner compared to everything else. And to be clear, this is Super Dragon Ball Heroes, not Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero. They share the same words in different positions, so I know some folks probably will mix them up.

I have said this before, so I will keep it brief. Super Dragon Ball Heroes is a promotional anime and is not meant to be seen as a regular anime. Some people hate it, some love it, and some prefer the manga version. Most of the time I personally do not like it. It exists to promote the Dragon Ball Heroes video game in Japan and nothing more, which is why the episodes run less than 10 minutes and do not feel like a regular anime, because it is not one.

Because of that short running time, the show never has room to flesh things out. My usual advice is to watch it if you have 10 minutes to spare. Some episodes have been downright bad, even by Super Dragon Ball Heroes standards, while others have been pretty good. I think the first two episodes of Ultra God Mission were good, and episode 3 continued the massive tournament featuring characters from various Dragon Ball timelines, universes and continuities.

Ultra God Mission Revives Characters We Will Probably Never See Again

That is the beautiful thing about Super Dragon Ball Heroes: everything is canon, so you do not have to ask that question. Dragon Ball Heroes has always tried to provide fan fiction, but this arc opens up a whole new level of possibility because it brings back a lot of fan favourites. We have future Gohan coming back, plus characters from the Z era such as Tapion.

These are characters we probably will never see again in the main material, because they were killed off in their time period or were movie characters. So this is an opportunity for fans to revisit them. If they ever do come back elsewhere, it will be Toriyama reworking them with a fresh coat of paint, whereas these are more like the original versions, or at least alternate timeline originals. The sky is the limit with this.

The Warriors in Black Are Evil Versions of Past Fighters

The episode is called A Fierce Battle of Transcending Time: The Threat of the Warriors in Black. The Warriors in Black are the lead villains, and as Ultra God Mission unravels it is revealing who they are. They are characters from the past with evil versions of themselves. Remember Goku Black? It is like that, except with other warriors and their black versions. By black I obviously do not mean ethnicity or race; I mean the evil versions.

Fans have been speculating about who they are. Is Bardock one of them? Is Goku Black one of them? I even heard somebody tell me that the one from Namek could be the nameless Namekian who was the father of Piccolo and Kami. Some are saying that is who it is, but I am not sure if that is true. I do not know; that has just been the speculation.

Losing Teams in the Tournament Have Their Timelines Erased

We find out that the timelines cannot continue to be diverted, which is very similar to the TVA idea from Loki in the MCU. The losing teams in this tournament will have their time scroll erased, and their timeline will no longer exist.

It feels like a weird way of getting rid of a lot of material they are probably not going to bring back, even though with Super Dragon Ball Heroes they always bring things back and something will happen to change all that. I do not think Dragon Ball having multiple continuities and multiple timelines is ever going to change, especially after Super Hero and everything that happened there.

Gohan and Piccolo Face a Piccolo Lookalike on Namek

Gohan and Piccolo get transported to Planet Namek, where they are confronted by a team including Cooler and King Cold, a lot of people you would not want to meet in a dark alley. Even the twins from the third Dragon Ball Z movie, The Tree of Might, are here, which is a deep cut.

They are also confronted by the Namekian Warrior in Black, who looks exactly like Piccolo, just with a great looking outfit. Is it actually Piccolo's father? I do not know. The rule for this part of the tournament is that they have to steal a fairy from one of the Warriors in Black, and if they manage it, they advance in the tournament.

Vegeta's Team Battles Glass Warriors

In the second round, Vegeta and his team have to fight glass warriors, and they are literally made of glass. They look really cool. I was digging all the cool material in this episode. As always, Heroes has cool ideas that we never see in the main material, meaning the anime, manga and movies of Dragon Ball Super.

I love these glass warriors and the idea of catching a fairy. These are solid ideas that can create different storylines and challenges for the characters, and that is what I have been wanting Dragon Ball to do. Heroes always does things I want the main story to do, and I wonder whether they will ever do things like this there. But it never quite executes them, because you have to play the game to get the real execution, and many of us do not live in Japan to do it.

Gohan Black Takes On Super Saiyan God Trunks

Super Saiyan God Trunks fights the mysterious Warrior in Black with the scar around his eye, and you can see where this is going. There is a really good animation cut where Trunks swings and swings at him, and it looks really good, yet the warrior blocks all of his shots because he knows all of his moves.

And yes, it is Gohan Black. I cannot believe that within the same month we got a white Gohan and a black Gohan. Talk about timing. This is future Gohan, the same one from the Trunks special, except he comes from a timeline where Trunks and Bulma were killed first and he was the sole survivor. That is an interesting little what if.

The evil future Gohan goes in on Trunks, who is getting beaten up but tells him he understands where he is coming from. Gohan does not even know that in another timeline he was the one who died; this is a totally different story. One armed future Gohan fires a one armed Kamehameha, just like his younger counterpart did against Cell when his arm was disabled, not cut off, in Dragon Ball Z. Trunks answers with a Masenko and they have a beam struggle. It is total fan fiction, fanboy dream material.

Gohan's Dark Red Aura Could Be a New Form

Gohan goes Super Saiyan, but something interesting happens. Remember how in Dragon Ball Super Future Trunks had a form that was Super Saiyan with a blue aura, called something like Trunks Rage? Here Gohan goes Super Saiyan with a dark red aura around him. I do not know what it is called or anything about it, and I am sure it is just for Heroes. I find it funny that Gohan gets two new forms within a month.

Keep in mind they do not actually state it is a new form. I am assuming it is, based on the aura, because it is not the traditional Super Saiyan aura. It could just be that he is evil and corrupt and that is what made it look that way. Either way, it looks cool, like sparks of sunfire, yellow with dark red around it. With Dragon Ball Super and Super Dragon Ball Heroes, anything is possible and there are no rules anymore, so I do not know what to expect.

Goku and Jiren Team Up for the Cliffhanger

The episode ends on a cliffhanger with Goku and Jiren side by side. Goku goes immediately into Ultra Instinct Omen, and they are about to face a mysterious Super Saiyan 3 warrior with the same dark energy that Gohan Black has.

It is pretty cool, because the two were rivals in the Tournament of Power. At the time, I thought Goku might go to the silver form in the next episode against this new Warrior in Black. So yes, I liked this episode. My verdict was a thumbs up, but that is only my opinion.

Do you think the Namekian Warrior in Black is really Piccolo's father, and is Gohan's dark red aura a new form or just a sign of corruption?