How a 2020 Dragon Ball Heroes Promo Revealed a Super Saiyan 4 Double Dragon Fist

In August 2020, a short promotional animation for Super Dragon Ball Heroes revealed something I didn't expect: Super Saiyan 4 Goku and Vegeta performing the Dragon Fist together against Janemba. I thought the animation preview was cool and I enjoyed it, even though I was still not a big fan of Heroes.

The promo showcased the new Limit Breaker forms that were coming to Super Dragon Ball Heroes, the Japanese arcade game, at the time. Those forms were expected to make their way into the Super Dragon Ball Heroes: Big Bang Mission anime, which exists largely to promote the game. In that sense, the anime is a promotional tool.

The Super Dragon Ball Heroes Limit Breaker promo was not an anime episode

When it came out, this promo wasn't necessarily a spoiler for the next Big Bang Mission episode, but I thought the events it showed could happen there. It's the kind of animated promotional piece Heroes has put out for years whenever new DLC arrives, animated by some of the lower staff at Toei. An older example is the promo of Super Saiyan 3 Trunks facing Majin Buu.

So I saw this as an illustration of what the next episode might look like rather than the episode itself. There was some cool stuff in it. With Heroes, though, there's always cool stuff, but "it's never really as great as it could be because it's heroes."

The headline move was the Double Dragon Fist, a new finishing move added to the game in Japan. Vegeta can do the Dragon Fist in Heroes, and he and Goku did it together. I have played the game in Japan. The Switch version is similar and a good representation of what the game is, but the Japanese arcade game has physical cards you go out and find, plus cards and missions the Switch version doesn't have.

Janemba remained the villain, and Heroes was milking his popularity

The promo picked up roughly where the story had left off at the time. Beat and the avatar characters were there, along with Super Saiyan 4 Xeno Goku and Dragon Ball Super Goku, still facing off against Janemba. I thought they were going to milk Janemba as long as they could, because people know how popular he is.

He is popular. Janemba is my favorite movie villain. By then they had already brought Broly back with Dragon Ball Super: Broly and in Heroes. Even if Janemba isn't your number one movie villain, I'd put him easily in the top five for popularity, alongside Cooler, Broly and Turles. That's my opinion, and it's based on what I've read.

The Majin wizards also appeared. At that point in Heroes, nobody knew whose side they were on. They were supposed to be villains, but it looked like they were helping Goku.

Limit Breaker Super Saiyan 4 looked like Super Saiyan 4 with god ki

In the promo, the Limit Breaker Super Saiyan 4 power was given to them by Goku, Vegeta and the others. It's similar to what happened in GT, when the other characters donated their power to Goku. Here, though, it appeared that this Limit Breaker Super Saiyan 4 had god ki. Goku, Vegeta and Trunks, who all have access to god ki, were giving it to Xeno Goku and Xeno Vegeta.

So it looked like the Limit Breaker form would be Super Saiyan 4 with god ki. I've said it many times: that's a great idea. I wished it were in an actual movie or TV show instead of Heroes. I liked covering it anyway.

The promo showed the donation of power and then the form itself. Goku and Vegeta's hair doesn't turn red. Instead, the aura around them is a maroonish, reddish color. It isn't like Gogeta Super Saiyan 4, but there are similar properties. At the time, I was guessing this Xeno Goku and Vegeta Limit Breaker form would beat Janemba, probably with that Double Dragon Fist. One shot of them pounding him stood out to me, and Super Saiyan 4 looked great in it.

A Double Dragon Fist instead of a Gogeta fusion against Janemba

As they power up, dragons appear behind them. The Dragon Fist technique calls upon the power of the dragon, and the user transforms into a dragon. In Super Dragon Ball Heroes, this version is the Double Dragon Fist because Goku and Vegeta both use it together on Janemba.

I was expecting a Gogeta fusion, to match up with the original Janemba movie, Fusion Reborn. I was pleasantly surprised that they went in a different direction and gave them this Double Dragon Fist instead.

Still, it was all about the new DLC and the new cards coming out, and promoting them. For me, following Heroes was torture because ideas that would be great for movies were being thrown away there. Back then, I didn't expect the next Big Bang Mission episode to be that good. But this preview was cool, and if we got at least a cool visual out of it, that was better than nothing.