The second episode of Dragon Ball Super, broadcast in Japan on July 12, 2015, belongs to the Saiyan prince in family-man mode. Vegeta keeps a promise he made to Trunks before Majin Buu appeared and spends a day at a resort, while Goku trains on King Kai's planet. Out in space, Beerus destroys another world and at last remembers the name of the warrior from his dream.
Summary
King Kai is out for a drive around his tiny planet when Goku pops up in front of him with Instant Transmission. The car slams into the house, and the deity is not thrilled to learn his guest wants to stay and train.
On Earth, Bulma flies to a resort island in her private plane: Trunks naps on the seats, Vegeta stands on the roof. When he complains that this trip does not count as training, Bulma speeds up and dives underwater. While shopping, she asks him why he agreed to come, and Vegeta thinks back to the promise he made his son before Buu showed up: he would take him to an amusement park. Bulma notices that her husband has changed since that battle.
The family tours the island, riding a little train, shopping and dining at a fancy restaurant, where father and son devour plate after plate until a whole octopus sprays Vegeta with ink. His anger shatters the windows, but he manages to hold it in. At sunset Bulma spots a cruise ship and thinks it would be perfect for her birthday party. That night, when the host of a show calls him up on stage, Vegeta finally snaps and blasts off into the sky. Bulma is impressed he lasted that long, and Trunks waves him off with a cheerful "thanks, Dad!"
In space, Beerus and Whis land on a primitive planet, where a tribal chief has just killed a giant winged dinosaur. Whis asks to try the meat, the chief transforms to fight, and Beerus, who hoped that eating something "gutsy" might jog his memory, kills him and blows up the planet. In the Sacred World of the Kais, the Elder Kai realizes that the God of Destruction has woken. Vegeta returns to the gravity room at Capsule Corporation, Goku drags enormous weights around, and Beerus, watching the explosion, remembers the name from his dream: "Super Saiyan God".
Our take
The episode works because it takes seriously an idea the manga only hinted at: Vegeta has learned to love his family, but has no idea how to show it. We watch him endure a full day of sightseeing and shopping with the face of a man counting the minutes, and his final escape is not a failure: Bulma and Trunks treat it almost like a gift. This is the Vegeta that Super will keep building on.
The Beerus half is weaker, since it repeats the previous episode's pattern on a different planet, but it adds one piece: the god does not destroy out of malice, only out of boredom and whim. Whis teasing him about his inaccurate "prophetic" dreams sets up the double act between the two, which will become one of the show's strengths.
Trivia
- Written by King Ryū and directed by Masato Mikami, with Osamu Ishikawa as animation director. It drew a 5.6% rating in Japan.
- The amusement park promise comes from chapter 429 of the manga (Dragon Ball Z episode 207), where Vegeta makes it to Trunks if the boy can land a hit on him.
- The two fruits that end up on Vegeta's head during the flight are a pomelo, zabon in Japanese, and a durian: a nod to Zarbon and Dodoria.
- Whis mentions Universe 7 for the first time, one of the twelve universes hinted at the end of the film.
- The host who calls Vegeta on stage is voiced by Hiroaki Miura, Zarbon's voice actor in Dragon Ball Kai.
Did you know? The storyboard for this episode was started on April 9, 2015, before the series was even officially announced on April 28: a sign of how tight the production schedule was from day one.