Episode 80 of Dragon Ball Super, first broadcast in Japan on February 26, 2017 and titled Awaken Your Dormant Fighting Spirit! Gohan's Fight! in Funimation's dub, puts Gohan back in a ring after years of academic life. In the second match of the Zeno Expo he faces Universe 9's Lavender, who blinds him with poison. The bout ends in a draw, and right after it the Grand Minister tells the assembled gods the real reason behind the Tournament of Power.
Summary
Before the match, Gohan plans to ease in and find his rhythm again, but Goku tells him to go all-out from the start. Lavender, the middle brother of Universe 9's trio, holds his own in the opening exchanges, then grabs Gohan and breathes a purple cloud into his face. It is a powerful poison, and Gohan loses his sight. Supreme Kai offers him a senzu bean, since Basil was given a performance-enhancing drug, but Gohan refuses. He wants to win on his own strength, and Goku holds on to the bag: as far as he is concerned, this is excellent training.
Unable to see or sense his opponent's energy, Gohan relies on his hearing and starts dodging. Lavender takes to the air so his footsteps cannot be heard and peppers him with poisonous blasts. Gohan turns Super Saiyan and uses his own energy like radar to find him, but the effort speeds up the spread of the poison: he collapses, reverts, gets back up and transforms again.
A beam struggle between his Kamehameha and Lavender's toxic breath goes badly, and Gohan's skin turns purple. So he changes tactics. He dives into the toxic cloud, grabs his opponent and plunges straight down into the arena, leaving a crater. Lavender stays down; Gohan staggers to his feet, declares victory and passes out. The Grand Minister rules it a draw, and Goku feeds his son a senzu bean.
Then comes the announcement. Zeno has ranked the universes by the average level of their mortals: Universe 7 is second to last, Universe 9 dead last. Those rated above seven, Universes 1, 5, 8 and 12, are exempt; the rest will fight for their existence, and their gods will vanish with them. Only angels like Whis and Vados will be spared. The arena is repaired with a snap of the fingers, and Goku steps up for the final match against Bergamo.
Our take
The fight is a neat little study of Gohan. He is rusty, still clinging to a champion's pride and turning down help, but when things go wrong he rediscovers the instincts of the kid who beat Cell: he forgets about finesse and drags his opponent down with him. A draw is the right result, because it shows both his potential and how far he still has to go. Goku watching his son suffer as a "training exercise" strikes some fans as harsh, but it is perfectly in character.
The most important part, though, is the closing speech. Until now the tournament seemed to be entirely the fault of Goku's naivety; now we learn that the competing universes were already slated for deletion, and that the tournament is really a chance to survive. It is a shift in perspective that makes the saga less bleak and more interesting, and it instantly sets off a squabble between Beerus and Supreme Kai over who has done the worse job.
Trivia
- Written by Atsuhiro Tomioka and directed by Kōhei Hatano, with Yui Kinoshita and Shūichirō Manabe as animation directors. It drew a 6.6% TV rating in Japan.
- Universe 7's mortal level is 3.18; Universe 9's is 1.86.
- The whole bout is an anime original: in Toyotarō's manga the Zeno Expo plays out completely differently.
- Toei's own simulcast subtitles translated the title as Awaken Your Sleeping Battle Spirit! Son Gohan's Fight!!
Did you know? The fact that angels survive the erasure of their own universe is the first concrete hint that Whis and his kind do not really belong to the universes they serve.