The fifth episode of Dragon Ball Super, broadcast in Japan on August 9, 2015, is the first with a real fight. On King Kai's planet, Goku meets Beerus, asks him for a match and shows off every transformation he has, up to Super Saiyan 3. The God of Destruction does not even flinch: two blows are all it takes to end things. It is also the series' most notorious episode for a less flattering reason, the quality of its animation.
Summary
King Kai welcomes Beerus and Whis with every honor, while Goku peeks out from hiding and mistakes Whis for the God of Destruction. Beerus warns his host: if the food is as bad as last time, he will make his planet even smaller. Then he asks about the Saiyan in hiding. Goku introduces himself, but knows nothing about a Super Saiyan God, and Beerus is disappointed. Whis suggests heading home; the god would rather go to Earth and question Vegeta. Before they leave, Goku asks him for a fight: despite King Kai's pleading, he wants to see Beerus' power for himself.
Goku goes Super Saiyan, but Beerus dodges everything. He moves up to the second level, and his punches still do nothing, partly because his opponent will not even bother to counter. Beerus asks him to bring out all the power he is hiding, and Goku reaches Super Saiyan 3. Now, the god admits, this is getting interesting; Whis decides there is time to eat his packed lunch. Goku's flurry of punches tears up the planet's surface, but Beerus blocks every one with a single hand. Not even a point-blank Kamehameha leaves a scratch.
There is one moment, though, when Goku pulls back an instant before Beerus attacks: unable to sense his energy, he still felt the danger. The god is impressed and wonders whether that potential could be linked to the Super Saiyan God. A second Kamehameha punches through the planet to no effect. To repay the show, Beerus teaches him one lesson: Gods of Destruction are scary. And he knocks him out with two lightning-fast blows.
Beerus and Whis set off for Earth. King Kai is relieved to find Goku alive, a sign that the god held back, and telepathically warns Vegeta, who has just arrived at the party on the ship: he must keep Beerus from getting angry at all costs. When Goku comes to, he realizes that not even fusing with Vegeta would be enough against such an opponent. Perhaps the only way is to become a Super Saiyan God.
Our take
On paper this is a great episode: the film's duel, given room to breathe, with a Goku burning through one transformation after another for nothing. The moment he pulls back on instinct, sensing an attack he cannot see, is a lovely detail that says a lot about him. Sadly, the execution betrays the script. Sloppy animation, off-model proportions and warped faces turned this episode into a cause célèbre, and for years it was the first thing critics of Super brought up.
Seen today, it matters mostly as a document: the series launched on an extremely tight production schedule, and this is where it first became obvious that the system was not holding up.
Trivia
- Written by Yoshifumi Fukushima and directed by Takao Iwai, with Naoki Tate as animation director. It drew a 5.3% rating in Japan.
- The worst scenes were redrawn for the DVD and Blu-ray release. According to Kanzenshuu the episode was made in about four weeks, and the series had gone into production only three months before its debut.
- At the 2015 Salón del Manga in Barcelona, producer Norihiro Hayashida defended the animators, calling the criticism overblown and focused on a handful of sequences.
- Beerus says he shrank King Kai's planet over bad food; in the film Battle of Gods the reason was losing a game of hide-and-seek.