Chapters 14-26
Like Chapters 1 and 5, the preceding arc intros, Chapter 14 is all about contrasts. The first thing we see after the cover page is the future once again in ruins. As Future Trunks runs through it we are treated to a conga line of much top-grade visual storytelling and detail: The lost helmet and ruined tank of a failed military resistance, a newspaper celebrating the anniversary of 17 and 18’s death floating lazily in the wind before being crushed under Trunks’ boot, its words now being as good as dirt, Trunks and Mai’s shelter having a taped-up cracked window and a lizard hanging on the wall. Whoever is hunting him down is framed not with the cool but somewhat overblown evil tornado visuals of the anime but more like a horror movie, the hybrid Saiyan being unsettled by even the slightest movements of rubble. We cut back and forth between the decimated future and the untouched present, which in this juncture features Bulma, Jaco, Beerus and Trunks’ private tutor all talking about time manipulation and its consequences, a motif which was already set up at the tail end of the Universe 6 tournament with the reactions to Hit’s powerset. Cut back to the future and Trunks and Mai make a break for the time machine at the ruins of Capsule Corp, only for their assailant to finally find them. Right from the title page we spend most of the chapter seeing the enemy as silhouettes over the horizon, or at best little dimly lit peeks at their face. The tension finally breaks as Mai is knocked out and Trunks turns to the enemy in tears, an accidentally lit fire finally revealing their full visage:
If the way I talked about it reverently didn’t clue you in already, this is my favorite individual chapter at this point and what I believe to be the best introduction of a new antagonist since Imperfect Cell. In general I’ve reached the conclusion that Toyotaro’s Black arc is a collection of some of his most underrated work visually. You see a fair amount of acclaim for the big battle setpieces like Goku’s Hakai, but take something like this page a little later in Chapter 16:
The use of the present and future versions of the Briefs family cat Tama, the future variant being totally exclusive to this arc’s manga equivalent is just class man.
After managing to make his escape following a brief standoff with Black, Future Trunks finds himself back in the present (or the past from his perspective) debriefing Goku and Vegeta on the situation. Branching off from this section are three more notable changes from the anime:
- Goku and Future Trunks’ sparring match is a pretty straight improvement, namely in the latter showing off his supercharged Super Saiyan 2 state that can compete with Super Saiyan 3 and forces him into God to end things quickly. This feels like a much better evolution of their spar from the first time Trunks came to this time period, showing how he has grown and isn’t such a rookie relative to the big G anymore with Whis even noting that Trunks might be the slightly stronger and more skilled fighter now before Goku’s new forms are taken into consideration.
- Another good alteration is how Trunks’ defeat of Dabura and Babidi is expanded upon. I already liked this being addressed in the anime as a nice bit of attention to detail and here it’s a much more detailed fight where Kibito and Shin actually help out and lay down their lives, the first case of their surprising prominence overall in this version while directly feeding into Black’s arrival. There’s one particular panel that caught my eye of Babidi pettily stomping on the heavily beaten Shin. My only manga-specific nitpick is that shortly after going SS2, Trunks’ first attack on Dabura is referenced from Gohan pummeling Third Form Freeza. Toyotaro’s over-reliance on referencing pre-Moro was something of a recurring complaint in this time period and usually I don’t find it too noticeable but the dopeyness of supplanting the fight choreography of a literal child on this hardened defender of the future was a bit too much for me to ignore.
- The last change is the biggest fundamental restructure of the whole arc and one I am a bit more mixed on. In the manga Goku Black never chases Future Trunks to the present, and as a result Goku and Vegeta only make two trips to the future instead of three with Beerus investigating and eliminating present Zamasu on his own without Goku present. The reducing of the back-and-forth is absolutely the correct move from a pacing perspective while eliminating the overly convenient popping up of the time hole that sucks Goku Black away, but I’m not sure if how they got there checks out. Like in the anime Future Trunks only just barely gets the Time Machine working under the duress of Goku Black’s assault, who sees this unknown vessel vanish into thin air and just doesn’t put two and two together as to what his prey just did, continuing to prance around the future until he returns with aid. This decision on his part gets even stranger when right in the finale Fused Zamasu confirms that he remembered Gowasu’s story about the Universe 12 time traveler, announcing his intentions to find their time machine to carry out his project across all realities. I don’t think this is an insurmountable breakdown of logic, there’s legitimate ways you can rationalize Black’s behavior that stay true to his character: Maybe he didn’t think Earth advanced enough of a civilization to do such a thing, or perhaps he does have suspicions but decides to let Future Trunks try whatever he’s planning so he can get a new challenge to grow stronger against (his dialogue in Chapter 16 vaguely supports this interpretation). That said, I can’t help but wonder if there was a more graceful way to pull this off.
This seems like a ripe transition into discussing the intricacies of Zamasu’s character and how he’s portrayed. WRONG! MARIO KART!
What does it say about me that this is my favorite scene of the arc? Genuinely, to me, this is what it’s all about. This is the kind of stuff that makes Dragon Ball. Beerus may be an ultra powerful divine being with planetary destruction part of his daily routine, Future Trunks may be a time-displaced freedom fighter who has spend the past year fending for his life, but my god if they can’t sit down and play some go-karts together. Sometimes you get those moments in a story that by all means should be tonal sledgehammers but somehow just aren’t. This is one of them. It’s a succinct reminder that for Future Trunks the past is just as much his home as his own time period. This scene empowers and respects him more than the entire Perfect Cell portion of his debut story and if you take it out the Goku Black arc drops a whole letter grade for me, I am dead serious. That said, I am LIVID that Viz had present Trunks say “This is the combined power of two Trunks!” when he and his counterpart won and not “This is the combined power of a pair of Trunks!”. Shame on them.
Alright, that’s enough of that, now let’s get back to more sober things like talking about the main villain. Manga Goku Black and Zamasu are an interesting beast to me. I once knew a really big Zamasuhead, like a “meticulously planned out a fanfic centered around Fused Zamasu dating Android 21” level of devotion, and they repeatedly went on record saying they strongly disliked the manga version of the duo. After reading it, I can totally understand why someone would harbor that opinion. Like with many facets of the manga version, I do think aspects of these two are just flat-out better written: Goku Black seems noticeably better prepared to face Trunks’ timeline, having Super Saiyan off the bat and with Zamasu immediately in tow to save him when Vegeta goes all-out to finish him ASAP in the new first battle with him, which again is a better, less convenient route than Goku holding back in the present enough for the magic time hole to get Black away. Zamasu doesn’t fight Goku in the present, instead being introduced in a duel with Kibito (More U7 Kai exposure!) and learning of Goku’s “sin” via Godtube. There’s also another really great use of present-past switching in Chapter 19 where present Zamasu gets ready to ramble on about his mad plan to Beerus with it then switching to the future to see Goku Black saying presumably the same things to Vegeta in the middle of their first bout before cutting back to present Zamasu again, the other gods around him peeved at his behavior. Super Saiyan Rose being a Blue variant makes more sense, and I personally prefer the effects here of the mortal-god fusion expiring which have a suitably creepy vibe, a metaphor for Zamasu having become so lost in his world that he’s become an incurable walking bundle of contradictions.
And yet... There’s just a lot of pizazz missing. One thing that shocked me was realizing that Goku Black never brings out his iconic scythe, and the only time he even uses a ki blade at all is his attempt to execute Gowasu after he fails at talking sense into him. In general there’s something a bit off about him, less high-and-mighty and more plain psychotic (one scene that comes to mind is him grabbing Trunks’ face and smashing it into the ground over and over, a moment that elicited Z Broly more than a fallen god laying down his delusional form of divine punishment). I think there’s a unique appeal to this with how it contrasts with his partner Zamasu keeping more of that Kaioshin coolness, but there’s definitely a shift and not always for the better. But the biggest casualty is undoubtedly Fused Zamasu, who has lost basically all of his visual iconography. The false halo hovering behind his head, his constant floating in the air like he doesn’t even want his feet to touch the same ground mortals did, Lightning of Absolution, Holy Wrath, the continued usage of ki weaponry, his Corrupted form, it’s all gone. Even his physical strength has been toned down considerably, from being able to reasonably compete with Vegito Blue to being just about dead-even against Perfected SSB Goku. Manga Fused Zamasu does have a few unique skills to his name such as opening portals and materializing blocks of Kachin to throw at his enemies, but it would be outright foolish to act like this is a remotely equivalent exchange. Like I’ve alluded to a few times previously I think the manga pretty consistently has a more sensible and intuitive escalation in strength and evolution of forms and such compared the wild jumps the anime makes, Perfected Blue itself being an example that expands on the drawbacks established for SSB in Universe 6 and lets it get more time in the sun as the top dog form while not completely sidelining God the way its counterpart did. I just don’t understand why compromises like this had to made: Why can’t we have both? Did Fused Zamasu being nerfed in strength and given some new moves that debatably follow more logically from pre-established Kaioshin lore really require so much of what made him distinct to be gutted to this extent?
I think this general throughline can also be ascribed to Future Trunks. Again, I fully concede that he is better-written in the manga, Super Saiyan Rage was always prime-rib nonsense and the reveal that he adopted Kaioshin healing and has been using it the whole time is genuinely a good twist. But there will always be that meathead part of me terminally frustrated by his superfluousness in the Cell Games that appreciates the immense overcompensation the Goku Black arc brought to him. Remember, that’s just my own name: The storyline is officially called the Future Trunks arc, and when I rewatch the scene of him triumphantly declaring the resilience of mortals and slicing Corrupted Zamasu in half with his giant glowing spirit sword I can fully understand the choice of nomenclature. Then again... Maybe it’s for the best that Trunks’ role in the manga is a bit more subdued.
Well, here we are, the Cell Max in the room that much like Goku Black’s stalking of Trunks hangs over the arc like an inescapable shadow: The ending.
In the latter half of Chapter 21, following Shin and Gowasu arriving from the present to save Trunks and Mai in the nick of time, we see Goku Black and Zamasu discussing their next moves now that they’ve been found out by other living gods. They determine they need to leave and lay low on another planet, but before doing so decide on their parting gift: To finish cleansing the humans. Shin and Gowasu suddenly sense the final life signatures being snuffed out, and with no regard for his life Zamasu’s master warps down to Earth to try and stop his pupil... And he’s too late. His greeting upon apparating in front of Goku Black is him pointing his thumb back at a warehouse freshly exploded by his comrade, the shelter of the last humans. It’s over. Goku and Vegeta haven’t even returned, but Trunks’ world is irreparably doomed. When I was taking notes while reading this arc, the first thing I put down for this moment was a disparaging comparison to Vegeta’s elimination of Frost: A lame attempt at papering over an unpopular story decision. Toyotaro presumably did not have the agency to change the ending outright so the next best thing was to let the audience down easy, to not make it as big of a sucker punch. But I can’t lie, as I finished my note-taking and thought it over more, I started to see the vision.
If DBS Broly didn’t exist, my favorite Dragon Ball story of all time would be the Saiyan arc. It’s one of those things where it’s hard to figure out what to say that hasn’t already been said so many times by so many others: It’s the arc that catapulted Dragon Ball to new heights, reforging the universe with a tale about a band of brothers standing against monsters unlike anything they’ve seen before that was as action-packed as it was heart-wrenching. From this masterpiece my favorite segment has always been the ending. Goku can’t move, Gohan is passed out, Vegeta is pathetically crawling back to his pod and Krillin only has just enough energy to decide the invader’s fate with Yajirobe’s sword. Both sides are completely beaten and broken, their closest allies all now residing in the next world. Earth has only survived by the skin of its teeth, the costs unfathomable and its greatest terror having lived to do god knows what. I don’t think any story in this series ever managed to live up to the melancholy the Saiyan arc leaves you. The next best thing is perhaps the Android arc’s ending and Goku’s death, but staying down was his choice, one that could’ve easily been reversed with one of the two sets of Dragon Balls readily available to the heroes by this point. Even if he never came back he left the Earth with his even more powerful son and plenty of other great warriors to help him with future trials. The same can be applied to GT’s much-vaunted finale. The exception is Manga Goku Black. The Saiyan arc may have been a pyrrhic victory, but when Goku and Vegeta reunite with Trunks they are placed in an even bleaker position they’ve never been in before or since: They have already lost. They could’ve brought as many reinforcements as their hearts desired and it wouldn’t have mattered. Every trick and technique they bring out after this point, from the Mafuba to Potara fusion to Perfected Blue, is not in service of stopping the machinations of a new evil. They’re doing it as damage control. Future Trunks’ trademark motto of hope takes on a whole new meaning: The hope that he can prevent others from meeting his terrible fate. To put it frankly, I love this. It is tragic, mesmerizingly so. It is a wake-up call for characters and audience alike who have grown complacent because of those magical wishing orbs while still showing the persistence of our heroes. Like I said before, for Future Trunks the present is just as much of a home as the future was. He may have lost one home, but by god is he going to fight like hell to make sure he doesn’t lose another. Putting the chips down now rather than later while reducing the opportunities to visit makes it so Goku & Vegeta couldn’t have done anything differently. In the words of Picard, “It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life.”
There’s just one problem. It’s not enough to totally capsize all this conclusion means to me, but it certainly puts a considerable damper on it: The actual reactions to this turn of events on the page are way, WAY too subdued, if not entirely nonexistent. Goku and Vegeta not having much to say is somewhat forgivable by virtue of them not having ever truly known the people of the future Earth, but Trunks and Mai’s lack of reaction is downright startling. The former acknowledges what has happened later, but there’s nowhere near enough passion behind it. The chapter where the last humans die gives more emotional weight to how this affects Gowasu than the fan-favorite character the entire arc is named after, it’s utterly bizarre. So y’know what? To hell with it, lemme workshop this.
Consider the following scenario: Chapter 22 starts, and Trunks finally either gets the bad news told to him by the Kais or senses the lack of energy across the planet. Either way, he becomes totally despondent. His pupils dilate and his arms and legs stiffen, his eyes locked in a thousand-yard stare at Goku Black. The body-snatcher enters Rose and starts beating on him, but Future Trunks doesn’t so much as try to throw a punch back. Both he and Zamasu laugh in unison as they realize what they’ve done: They’ve finally broken this poor neandarthal’s spirit. Goku and Vegeta arrive in the time machine, the first thing they notice being the Earth’s desertion of sapient life, a chilling sensation they haven’t felt since the battle with Super Buu. Goku looks up at the sky, his thoughts unknowable. Vegeta balls his fists, promising to make Black suffer for this. When the two teleport over they arrive just in time to see Goku Black about to fire a huge Rose-empowered Kamehameha at Trunks, who’s leaning on the side of a building unconscious. The prince has seen enough, taking advantage of Black’s distraction to viciously clothesline him away to their new battle site far away from where the others are standing. Goku does his part, taking Trunks and Shin to safety.
As the Vegeta VS Goku Black rematch proceeds unaltered, we take a look inside Future Trunks’ mind as he’s having a near-death experience. He can hear the voices of Goku, Shin and Mai trying to shake him awake, but they’re too muffled for him to make out. There is someone else accompanying in the white void of his mindscape, however. Someone familiar.
Taking care to keep his eyes on the “ground”, Future Trunks tries to walk past Future Gohan only for him to be pushed back. Still not looking at him, he speaks, barely choking back tears.
“Let me go.”
“Not yet.”
“I said let me go.”
“It’s not your time yet.”
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN IT ISN’T MY TIME YET?! What’s left for me, Gohan?! Mom’s dead, and so is everyone else! Zamasu won, I failed at my one purpose, SO AT LEAST LET ME JOIN THEM, DAMNIT!!!”
“Your friends up there don’t seem to want you gone.” Gohan replies, pointing up as the muffled shouts for Trunks to wake up get louder. “Besides, Zamasu can’t claim absolute victory just yet.”
“W-what do you mean...?”
“Didn’t his two versions say they want to eradicate all mortals? Including the ones in the other time rings? Our fathers from the past, who will fight to the bitter end to keep those monsters from causing any more damage? All their friends and family, praying for them to come home safe? Countless other civilizations whose fates will be decided by the outcome of this battle without them even realizing it? It’s too late for us, that much is true. But we’re just an infinitesimal fraction of all those who are counting on you, Trunks. For however worthless you feel right now, keeling over and letting that demonic duo have their way isn’t going to help matters.”
Future Trunks lets a few more tears out. He then looks at his sword, then back to Gohan with renewed purpose.
I just improvised all that so it could probably use some additional refinement, but you get the idea. At least we have this pretty touching exchange:
While I was pretty critical at points, I got quite the kick out of the manga’s take on the Goku Black storyline. On the whole, I think it’s the better version. That said, on the whole is a pretty important qualifier in this case, for as I’ve stated there are quite a few irritating downgrades including removals of entire scenes that added a lot to the anime like Goku Black telling Goku how he killed his family, or Future Bulma’s death being off-screen in the manga. This is purely anecdotal, but for a while now I’ve noticed that out of all of Super’s arcs and movies this is the on that gets the lion’s share of fan rewrites and high quality what-ifs, many of which are by people with far less charitable views on both versions of the canon material than I. Part of this is the malleability of the premise: You can easily alter surrounding events to facilitate Vegeta Black or Gohan Black or whatever alternate Zamasu body suits your fancy. But after rereading the actual thing I am reminded of the other big reason as to why. Simply put, even the biggest detractors recognize that within what I’d consider a good arc are the pieces to make a great arc. Something that in its current state I would give a 7/10 could easily go up to an 8 or 9: Just re-implement some of the lost visual flair of the anime and add a scene grappling with the immensity of future Earth’s fall like I described earlier and you’ve got an all-time Super highlight. Alas, that’s just dealing in hypotheticals, something I tend to look down upon when it comes to reviewing stuff. It’s easy for me to say what “should’ve” been done on the second layer of hindsight, the first being Toyotaro and Toriyama themselves getting to revise stuff with their manga, which in itself is a highly exceptional circumstance. I’m not even within spitting distance of the grueling mangaka grind!
