Super Dragon Ball Heroes Big Bang Mission Episode 17 Wastes Gogeta Blue Evolution

Super Dragon Ball Heroes: Big Bang Mission episode 17 put Gogeta Blue Evolution up against a max power Super Saiyan 3 Rosé Goku Black. For me, it was a disappointing episode, though not a surprising one. Goku Black was the best part of it. Almost everything around him was undercut by one shot finishes, subpar animation and far too much story crammed into one short episode.

The battle between good and evil continued here, with Goku Black as the evil Goku and Vegeta on the side of good. In max power Super Saiyan 3 Rosé, Goku Black is enormous. He looks so jacked that I'd assume he's even bigger than Cumber.

Ultra Instinct Goku loses the form after landing a single punch

The episode opened with silver haired Ultra Instinct Goku and Vegeta facing off against Goku Black, whose mask had been cracked. Around 40 to 50 seconds into the episode itself, not counting the intro, there's a shot of Goku in Ultra Instinct as he first speaks to Goku Black. It looks like "amateur hour animation" to me. The way his chin sits in proportion to his mouth is all wrong. I'm sure people will pause on that frame and spread around how bad it looks.

Then Goku lands one punch on Goku Black, with some of the stiffest animation I've seen. He put power into it, but after that one punch, he loses Ultra Instinct. I couldn't believe it. To me, that takes away from the power of Ultra Instinct and from how impressive these characters were in Dragon Ball Super and elsewhere. That's why I think the Big Bang Mission manga is so much better.

I've asked myself a few times why I keep covering this show. I think some people like my reviews, and I like doing them too. I'm often disappointed, though not always, because there have been a few good episodes and good moments. But there's so much wasted potential. If they don't want to do things like this, they should slow the pace down. They can't, because they always have to promote the new thing.

The Super Saiyan 3 Rosé transformation had colors I haven't seen before

When Goku Black powers up to max power Super Saiyan 3 Rosé, the transformation animation itself was pretty decent. I liked the bright orange colors. I don't think we've seen a transformation that looks quite like this one. Super Saiyan God and the Kaioken might be similar, but they aren't the same. This is a bright orange, as opposed to a magenta pink or the darker red of the Kaioken.

I thought it looked great, or at least the colors did. Goku Black also looks good in this form. Vegeta was the first to go after him and hit him with a couple of shots. Goku Black quickly took the advantage, though, with one big orange ki blast that knocked Vegeta down into his base form.

The one shot finishes come down to an eight to ten minute runtime

We're supposed to believe these characters are strong because they one shot people. I think the real reason fighters get one shot in this show is time. These episodes run eight to ten minutes, and they never have enough time to flesh out battles. So many fights either have no conclusive finish, are simply bad, or end after one or two shots.

I can only speak for myself, but I like Dragon Ball fights because they're fun, well paced and have layers to them. I'm talking about Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z, which are fantastic. Dragon Ball Super fleshes out its fights a bit more than Heroes does, but it doesn't compare to the pacing of the old shows. The old shows let things breathe. Heroes lets nothing breathe because of that time limit.

That's sad, because there's so much potential here to make something interesting if they didn't have such a narrow time limit.

Omega Shenron arrives from a scroll to one shot Frieza and Cooler

Golden Frieza and Golden Cooler joined the fight. Then Goku Black pulled out what looks like a scroll, and out of it came Omega Shenron from Dragon Ball GT. He has an M on his forehead, so he's got the Majin upgrade. He's there to help Goku Black, and the first thing he does is one shot Cooler and Frieza.

Of course everything has to be a one shot. It's not impressive, and we know why they're doing it. Cumber also showed up and tried to attack Omega Shenron, and the two of them fought. I thought Frieza and Cooler were finished, but they came back, only for Goku Black to knock them away with ease.

Gogeta Blue Evolution versus Goku Black reads like fan fiction

Right before Frieza and Cooler's return, Goku and Vegeta decided they had to fuse. The big selling point of the episode was Gogeta with Blue Evolution against max power Super Saiyan 3 Rosé Goku Black. It sounds like fan fiction. In some ways, I guess it is, because Toriyama isn't writing this, and neither is Toyotaro. It still reeks of fan fiction to me.

They don't even show the fusion on screen. We don't see the fusion pose. Gogeta just shows up and flies toward Goku Black at a very awkward angle. The animation in this episode was not impressive, and I don't think it's a well animated episode. The shots and the directing were subpar, if you ask me.

The cut where Gogeta powers up and swings at Goku Black did have a couple of shots I thought looked pretty cool. They weren't as good as they should have been, and they were nowhere near Gogeta Blue in Dragon Ball Super: Broly. Comparing them would be a joke. Still, I liked how he powered up and swung, and how Goku Black was hurt by the hit. Those few frames looked good, especially next to the rest of the episode.

Goku Black then swung at Gogeta and missed. Gogeta hit him with a punch that cracked his mask, and Goku Black dissipated into nothing. Just like that, Goku Black was beaten, even though he was the best part of the episode.

A child version of Fu closes the episode on a cliffhanger

Goku was then transported to a tree, where a younger, child version of a character I'm pretty sure was Fu appeared. I could be wrong, but I think it was Fu. He laughed and giggled at Goku, and that's how the episode ended. The big cliffhanger questions were why there was a kid Fu, whether they had finally won, and what would happen next.

The episode was disappointing, but expected. They crammed I don't know how many episodes' worth of storylines into it. I don't see the point of Omega Shenron appearing if it was just for him to fight Cumber. The Gogeta Blue moment was a waste, and so was Goku in Ultra Instinct. This was the stereotypical bad Heroes episode, and we've mostly seen bad ones.

I guess I still love Dragon Ball so much that I'll sit through even the bad stuff, while criticizing it fairly. If you liked this one, that's fine, but I disagree. Goku Black did some cool things, and it was fun seeing Gogeta Blue again. That's just not enough for me, because a cool character means little if he never gets to do anything cool.