Super Saiyan Rose 3 Goku Black Arrives in Dragon Ball Heroes Big Bang Mission Episode 16

Dragon Ball Heroes Big Bang Mission episode 16 got a lot of love from a lot of people, and I wanted to know whether it was good. I'd missed much of it while I was out of town for a few days, so I caught up. My verdict is that it's a fun episode, not a waste of time, and worth seeing once. Its villain is Goku Black, and it gives him a brand new form.

Goku Black, not Cell, is the main threat in this Dragon Ball Heroes arc

Cell returned in the previous episode, but it turns out he isn't a villain this time around. The villain of this arc is Goku Black. He's the primary problem the heroes have to deal with in this part of the continuing Dragon Ball Heroes promotional anime story.

As I say every time I review one of these, this is a promotional anime. The best you can hope for is a good fight and some good animation. There isn't much in the way of story, because they can't cram anything too complex into around nine minutes. Because of that, Heroes often isn't regarded as the best Dragon Ball, and most of the time the promo anime isn't good. So all we can hope for is some good visuals, maybe a good fight, and maybe a cool idea.

Shroom joins the fight as the Zero Mortals Plan comes to Heroes

This episode brings in Shroom. He isn't a new character. He has appeared in the Dragon Ball Heroes story many times in the Japanese video game, and here he's on hand to help defeat Goku Black.

The characters talk about the Zero Mortals Plan, but this time it's transferred into Heroes. Apparently Black started destroying all the mortals he could get his hands on, including those in this newly created universe.

One of the things I do like about this arc is that even though it features many villains turning good, like Turles, Cell and Hearts, they have sinister motives. This episode hints that Cell might have ulterior motives, and the same goes for Hearts.

Goku hasn't mastered Ultra Instinct, which I'm guessing places this before the Moro arc

Goku mentions that he hasn't yet mastered Ultra Instinct. He can't use it at will, but in the Moro arc he could, so I guess this Heroes story takes place before that. That's what I'm guessing makes sense. Trying to fit this into any part of the Dragon Ball story is difficult if not impossible, because Heroes does its own thing separate from everything else and combines the canon of everything.

Very much in line with the formula Dragon Ball has followed forever, they want to train Goku and Vegeta. I guess Vegeta hasn't mastered the new blue rage form he has here in Heroes. So they create a portal into another dimension that, I guess, works like the Room of Spirit and Time. It reminded me of what they did with Whis's staff early in Dragon Ball Super, when Goku and Vegeta trained to get their Blue powers. While the two train, the others will distract Black, buying time for Goku and Vegeta to get strong enough to come back and defeat him.

The mysterious cloaked warrior turns out to be another Goku

The mysterious cloaked warrior had been discussed for months as a new character in Dragon Ball Heroes. There were all kinds of theories, including that he was a future Gohan who survived, but he could have been anybody. He appears here to confront Black, who it turns out has been having mortals fight each other so he can take their energy. That's similar to what Fu was doing, so there's not anything original in that aspect.

There was some good animation in these scenes, and some good direction that I have to give them credit for. In the scene where Goku Black explains the Zero Mortals Plan, they show a red background with people getting killed. I thought that was cool and well done. It felt like something we'd see in Dragon Ball, something creative visually.

Then the cloaked figure powers up into Super Saiyan, and when you hear the scream and see the eyes, you know it's Goku, another version of him. Goku Black asks this new Goku his name, and he replies, "I threw away my name a long time ago." I love that line. That alone makes this version of Goku different from the one in the main timeline, and I really like that. He's another Goku and a good guy, not evil, not Goku Black, with a different mentality, and that's cool to me.

Dr. Wheelo returns with a new mechanical body

Meanwhile, Gohan, Krillin, Cell and Shroom are confronted by Dr. W, Bojack, and the new Super 17 with the mask on. It's getting wackier and wackier. Many of these characters have appeared in the Dragon Ball Heroes games recently, though not so much in the promo anime, so people in Japan who play the games already know who they are and what they represent.

For those of us in the West, I think everybody should try to play the game at least once. Not everyone can go to Japan, so the best you can do is play the Switch game, but if you do go to Japan, I think it'd be worth playing the game at least once so you can try it. I did when I went to Japan. It's okay and not really my thing, but it was an experience, and that's important.

Dr. W reveals himself to be Dr. Wheelo, the same one from Dragon Ball Z's second movie, The World's Strongest. He isn't quite the same, though, because here he has a human body. Later he transforms, shedding his human skin like a cyborg to reveal a robot body underneath with the brain and everything. It looks like a smaller version of the one he had in the movie. I love that character from the movie, so seeing him in a new mechanical body was cool. I have to give them credit for a cool idea.

There's a beautiful animation cut of Gohan fighting Dr. Wheelo and Goku Black fighting the cloaked Goku that looked great. It's short, but it works. I love these kinds of fights where people get knocked through buildings. Too many Dragon Ball fights take place in the middle of nowhere, like mountains. I love it when buildings get destroyed, maybe because I've been a big Godzilla fan since I was a kid.

Super Saiyan Rose 3 is a Heroes exclusive form made to sell a card

Then Goku Black powers up to Super Saiyan Rose 3. Word had come out a few weeks earlier that they were going to introduce the form in Heroes. Super Saiyan Rose 2 and 3 are Heroes exclusive forms, and that's all they are. You can't say much more than that.

I saw some debates online about it, and my advice is not to overthink it. It's a form for Heroes to sell a new card, and that's all it is. It's probably an eight times multiplier over regular Rose, or four times, or whatever. They never reveal any of this, so I'm only guessing. It's probably there to make Super Saiyan 3 fans and Rose fans happy by combining the forms.

Goku and Vegeta finish a whole arc of training in minutes for the cliffhanger

Just as Black is about to defeat and probably kill the cloaked Goku, and as Gohan beats Dr. Wheelo, there's a big energy surge. It looks like Goku and Vegeta are done with their training. Yes, they crammed an entire arc's worth of training into about four minutes. That's funny to me, and that's Heroes.

Vegeta arrives with his new rage blue form, and Goku is there with silver haired Ultra Instinct, ready to take on Goku Black. That's the cliffhanger. Now we have Ultra Instinct Goku and Vegeta in his blue form, presumably at maximum power, against Goku Black. Will this be the end of the arc, or will something else happen? Something else is probably going to happen, but we'll see. It's a fun episode, not a waste of time, and worth seeing once.