Episode 51 of Dragon Ball Super, first broadcast in Japan on July 10, 2016, is a melancholy pause before the storm. While Bulma works on the old time machine, Future Trunks meets this era's Mai, still a child, and tells her who she will become in his world.
Summary
The machine Bulma brought out is covered in moss: it is Cell's. Years ago, on the day Trunks left for the future, she asked to keep it for study, but never managed to work out how it functioned. Now, with her future self's notes, she can, though it will take time. Goku wants to train, but Whis is not in the mood, with time machines everywhere and Black's ring to worry about. King Kai sends him back too, still angry about the damage from his last visit. Vegeta shuts himself in the gravity room, determined to make someone pay. In the future, Black feels the memories of battle being engraved into his body and mind: he wants to learn more about Goku, to become even stronger.
At Capsule Corporation, Bulma's parents return from vacation, delighted to see Trunks again. Dr. Brief will help his daughter, and the Pilaf Gang offer to pitch in as well, with Pilaf already dreaming of using future technology to conquer the world. When he hears Mai's name, Trunks realizes she is the same girl he knew. Left alone with her and young Trunks, he tells his story.
In his future he met Mai as an adult, about his own age. Black's first attack wiped out most of humanity, and the world's armies came at him one after another and were defeated. The survivors hid underground and organized into resistance cells, and Mai led one of them. Together they lured Black into an area rigged with explosives; when that failed, Trunks stepped in and was overwhelmed. Black explained his thinking: human beings are "the gods' only failure", and he wants to erase them to create a perfect world. Mai distracted him with a flare gun and rescued Trunks. Young Trunks asks why he did not bring her along, and the young man's silence is an answer. Later, Beerus and Whis confide in each other: Black's energy felt familiar somehow. Whis decides to look into it.
Our take
This is an episode with almost no action, and rightly so. The saga needs to put a face on what Trunks has lost, and it does so through Mai, a slightly comical little girl in the present and, in the future, the person who gave him hope. The contrast between the two versions is handled delicately, never mawkishly.
Black's line about humans being the gods' failure is the enemy's first real statement of purpose, and it changes the nature of the threat: not a conqueror, but someone convinced he is delivering justice. It is a seed that will bear fruit in the following episodes.
Trivia
- Written by Atsuhiro Tomioka and directed by Takahiro Imamura, with animation direction by Yukihiro Kitano, Yui Kinoshita and Tomoko Kusunoki.
- It drew a 7.3% rating in Japan.
- Bulma notes that young Mai talks like a grown woman, and the Pilaf Gang burst out laughing.
- The matching part of Toyotarō's manga is chapter 16.
- Funimation's dub of this episode aired on Toonami on February 17, 2018.
Did you know? Pilaf and Shu ask Trunks what became of their future selves. He replies that he never met them.