The seventh episode of Dragon Ball Super, broadcast in Japan on August 23, 2015, is where Bulma's party falls apart. Beerus, offended over the pudding, takes on Goku's friends one after another and knocks every one of them out. Then he makes the one mistake nobody should make in front of Vegeta: he raises a hand against Bulma.
Summary
Majin Buu hits the water with a huge splash and the ship falls silent. Bulma demands that Vegeta deal with it, but all he can offer is to make more pudding. Dende is trembling: he has never sensed energy like this. Buu attacks again and is swatted away again, while Whis enjoys sushi at the bar, completely unbothered.
Goten and Trunks fuse into Gotenks to protect the Dragon Balls. The boy scolds Beerus for making such a fuss over pudding, and the god loses it: he has never tasted the dessert and is dying of curiosity. Gotenks' attacks do not even graze him, and Beerus punishes him like a child, with a flurry of slaps on the forearm. Piccolo, Android 18 and Tien join the fight with no better luck.
Beerus calls for Whis, who takes his sweet time, and announces that he and the Oracle Fish must have been wrong: he might as well destroy Earth and head home. Buu tries once more, in vain. Chi-Chi scolds Krillin for letting his wife fight alone; he replies that he is retired and has Marron to think about, and Piccolo cuts in that it would make no difference. Gohan powers up and attacks, but falls too, and Piccolo realizes Dende was right: this being is a god.
Left standing alone, Vegeta remembers that he is the prince of all Saiyans. He goes Super Saiyan, but Beerus paralyzes him without lifting a finger and plants a foot on his head, just as he did to King Vegeta, mocking him as a weakling like his father. As the god charges the attack that will destroy the planet, Bulma marches up and slaps him for ruining her party. Beerus slaps her back and knocks her to the ground. Vegeta gets up with his eyes full of rage, demands to know what Beerus has done to his Bulma and transforms into Super Saiyan 2, swearing to make him pay.
Our take
The episode is almost entirely a string of defeats, and the direction lines them up without much imagination: each character enters, attacks, goes down. It is the main weakness of this stretch of the saga, which stretches the film well past its natural length. The side moments work better, like Krillin defending his right to be retired or Whis munching sushi while everything collapses.
The ending pays off, though. Vegeta's rage over Bulma is one of the film's most beloved scenes, and here it comes after a full episode of humiliation for the prince: the explosion feels like a release. It is also a key moment for the character, who for the first time fights openly for someone he loves.
Trivia
- Written by Toshio Yoshitaka and directed by Masato Mikami, with Yukihiro Kitano as animation director. It drew a 6.0% rating in Japan.
- The Japanese title quotes Vegeta's line from the film Battle of Gods, but in the episode he says something different.
- In the film Beerus spanked Gotenks; here he slaps his forearm with two fingers, the forfeit for losing at rock-paper-scissors in Japan.
- Vegeta describes the situation as yabure kabure, "desperate": the same phrase was the pun behind the title of Dragon Ball Kai's first ending theme, "Yeah! Break! Care! Break!".