#and by solo i mean bring my team for insurance purposes

[woo-tori]

maybe i should level up my grenburr

[duhragonball]

Dragon Ball Super 131

At last, we’ve reached the sweaty, beefy, Super Sheronny conclusion of the Dragon Ball Super anime.

But don’t worry, because any day now they’re going to make Dragon Ball Super II, aka Dragon Ball 2uper.  Toei confirmed it, so we’re definitely going to see Crimson Super Shenron fight Morolah, the fusion of Moro and Granolah, in 2019.  I mean 2020.  I mean... 2021.  Wait, no, it’s definitely coming out in 2022.  No really, they’re bringing back the Shadow Dragons and Vegeta becomes a Destroyer God!  My uncle works at Nintendo, so you have to believe me waiiiiit!

Last time, Jiren seemed to have Goku beaten, but then Frieza and 17 popped back up to defy him.  They saved Goku from being eliminated, and Jiren questions the purpose of this, since Goku’s so badly wrecked that he can’t even fight.  Frieza is disgusted by all this “trust” and “friendship” talk.  He just says it’s insurance.  After all, the numerical advantage may be all Universe 7 has. 

Still Frieza sees an opening, because Goku worked Jiren over really good before his body gave out.  Jiren’s nowhere near as strong as he was before, which means Golden Frieza might have a chance against him.  So this could work out after all.

But Frieza overplays his hand by taunting Jiren.  He notes how he’s fighting a lot sloppier now, and suggests that it’s because Goku’s thrashing shook Jiren’s confidence.  He’s feeling weak now, like he did when he was a helpless kid.  That angers Jiren, so he...

... stomps on his tail!  Yeah!

And then he goes to town on Frieza’s face.  Very nice!  I’ve never been sold on having Frieza in this arc, but I can’t deny the advantage of the heel heat he brings to Universe 7′s team. 

But in spite of this predicament, Frieza’s still doing okay.  I guess Jiren was more worn down than I thought. 

Then 17 jumps Jiren with another energy blast, like he used on him before.  Jiren thinks he’s ready for him, but he’s not.

This time, 17 puts up a force field around them.  Which I guess concentrates the attack?  I’m not sure why this helps, but it’s different from what 17 did last time, so that’s cool.

And that seems to take the fight out of Jiren.  He collapses to his knees, and he seems to be knocked loopy. 

Frieza remarks that 17 took quite a gamble on that move, but 17 said he could afford the risk, since he knew Frieza could take over if things went wrong.  So Frieza’s part of this “trust” think whether he likes it or not. 

So it looks like Jiren’s really beaten this time.  Even Belmod begins to despair, and he tells Jiren that he did all he could. 

But Top hasn’t lost hope.  He does his best Krillin impression and begs Jiren to get back on his feet and keep fighting.  Top believes in Jiren, even if Jiren doesn’t. 

And that actually lights a fire under Jiren, and he taps into power he didn’t know he had left.  So now Jiren’s beginning to realize just what Goku was telling him about before.

Jiren shoots a big blast at Frieza and 17, and they’re not strong enough to hold it back.  Golden Frieza powers down to Regular Frieza, so it seems like they’re doomed. 

Z stands for the end.  But not yet.

Not yet.

So Goku’s back on his feet, and 17′s like “How?” and Goku’s like “You’ve blown yourself up like two or three times.  You tell me.”

Goku wants 17 to hang back and provide support while Goku and Frieza double-team Jiren.  Frieza refuses to fight alongside Goku, but Goku insists.  They’re all too weakened to fight solo, so they have to play it this way.  It’s their only chance, and Frieza knows that.  Frieza reminds Goku of his promise to resurrect him after they win, and Goku assures him that he’ll honor their agreement, so Frieza decides to cooperate.   17 asks if they want to hug before they attack.  Frieza denies it, but I think we all know the answer is “yes”.  I mean, Goku’s always down for a hug, so there’s no point in asking him. 

So Jiren smiles and waits for their assault.  I’m not sure exactly why he’s so upbeat here, although it’s probably because he can settle things with Goku without that crappy finish they almost had in the previous episode. 

So they go to work.  And I suppose it’s time I talked about the insert song used throughout the Tournament of Power, “Kyuukyoku no Battle”, aka “Ultimate Battle”, by the band ZENTA, with lyrics by Akira Kushida.  It’s mainly used when Goku does cool stuff in Ultra Instinct, but it also gets used in multiple episodes, including this one, where UI is clearly off the table.  Sometimes it’s just an instrumental version, but in Episodes 110, 116, and 131, we get the vocals. 

Here’s a live performace I found of the song, and it kicks ass.

My main gripe with the dub of DBS is that they replace the insert song with an English version performed by Elliot Coleman.  The English lyrics suck and Coleman’s no Fushida, let’s put it that way.  Ever since Episode 110 aired, I’ve been looking up this song on YouTube, and I’ve found plenty of covers that do it justice, and somehow Funimation got a lemon.  Oh well.

Anyway, this entire final exchange fits within the song.  The animation’s awesome, the choreography is easy to follow, probably because everyone’s so weary that they can’t stop to do big light shows or too-fast-to-follow maneuvers.  Goku and Frieza are relentless, and 17 keeps bringing the pain with his ki blasts.

Even so, Jiren’s not done yet.  So they keep on clubberin’.

While he knocks them aside, Jiren goes after 17, and Frieza comes up with a plan.  He wants Goku to throw him at Jiren. 

Goku’s currently sliding down what’s left of the big column that used to sit in the center of the tournament stage, and he sets Frieza up like a volleyball. 

Then Frieza does the Nova Strike, aka that thing he did against Goku near the end of their fight on Namek, before he ran out of gas and cut himself in half. 

But it’s not a strike this time, it’s a grab.  Frieza’s trying to tackle Jiren and force him out of bounds.  Unfortunately, Jiren’s got enough werewithal to angle their descent to a ring fragment, saving himself and giving him a chance to knock Frieza loose.

Bad news for Frieza, right?  Wrong, because here comes...

Super Saiyan Goku!  Well, he’s not exactly Super Saiyan.  He just keeps flickering on and off, because he’s so spent.  I can’t capture that in stills, but let me assure you it’s awesome to see.  My guy’s just forcing himself to use whatever transformation he can manage. 

So it looks like all of these guys are flying, which I’m pretty sure they shouldn’t be able to do, since the anti-flying effect is still in place.  My guess is that they’re actually falling, but the camera angles are such that it’s hard to tell which way is down.  Anyway Frieza and Goku both hang on to Jiren for all they’re worth, and basically force him clear of the stage...

This looks like they’re shooting a ki blast at Jiren, but I’m pretty sure they’re just using their combined power to blast him down as hard and as fast as possible.  No more escape artist stuff, Jiren.

And yeah, 17′s the only one left on the stage...

Goku and Frieza get zapped to the bench.

And so does Jiren.  The Grand Minister makes the official ruling, and the U11 group all begins to fade away. 

Before they go, Top thanks Jiren on behalf of the whole gang, and Jiren is confused because (a) he lost and (b) he’s been ignoring the Pride Troopers this whole time, and pursuing his own agenda.  

Then Goku interrupts to tell him how much he appreciate their battle, and how he hopes to see Jiren again in the future.  Jiren smiles contentedly as he is wiped from existence.

So that ends the Tournament of Power.  The only business that remains is summoning the Super Dragon Balls to award the grand prize.  And since 17 is the only one left in the ring, he’s the winner.

I guess this was the big thing with Frieza going along with Goku’s plan earlier.  Throughout this tournament, Frieza’s kind of been reluctant to work with the others, and that may be because he was aiming to earn the Super Dragon Ball wish for himself, in part because he didn’t trust Goku to honor their agreement.  But Frieza had to eliminate himself to get Jiren out of the ring, and he made the decision to abandon his Super Dragon Ball plan and just leave his resurrection up to Goku. 

So 17 gets his wish, but instead of asking for that cruise liner he mentioned before, he asks the Grand Minister to wish back all the universes that were erased in the tournament. 

A lot of people in the crowd are like “WHAAAA--?!” but I don’t get it.  I mean, what other wish could there be after something like this.  Are you telling me Roshi would have wished for porn after watching seven universes get annihilated?  I mean, Frieza wouldn’t care, obviously, but why is anyone else surprised?

Well, we need us some montage music, so here’s KISS with “God Gave Rock ‘N’ Roll To You II”!

So we have this nice montage of everytone reappearing in their home univese.  Caulifla jumps on Kale and hugs her immediately, which is just like what the Yakuza do, don’t you know.  Incidentally, Frost is in this scene, just off to the left, so he got un-erased as well, even though he was penalized for trying to attack Frieza from the bench.

Oh, fuck, Universe 10 is back, which means Gowasu’s reign of error can continue.

Get bent, Gowasu.

And Universe 4 is back...

Universe 3 is back...

U2 returns with a light and sound spectacular...

And Universe 9 is back, but the joke’s on them, because Universe 9 is a shithole.  They probably liked it better when they were erased.

And of course, U11 is back, and the pride Troopers are back on their world.  Or maybe this is Belmod’s planet, I have no idea.  Top asks Jiren what’s bothering him, and Jiren says that Goku wanted to see him again someday, but he’s got no aptitude for interpersonal relationships.   Top calls him a silly coward and reminds him that Jiren was inspired to power up when Top cheered him on.  Doesn’t that count for anything?   The Pride Troopers are Jiren’s friends, whether he knew it or not.

Top said that they should meet U7 again, and next time they’re gonna win, and Jiren likes the sound of that. 

Back in the Null Realm, 18 seems really worried about 17 passing up the chance to get a sweet boat, but he says it’s fine.  He couldn’t just leave those poor universes to stay erased.  I mean, he’s a park ranger, so of course he should feel that way about it.  Goku thanks him for his wish, since I think it’s pretty clear that’s what he would have done, and Vegeta had the same idea earlier.  He’s not gonna thank 17, though, because he’s still mad about his sister breaking his arm that one time.

Frieza finds this happy ending stuff grating, and asks Goku to escort him back to hell, but then Whis uses his staff to restore Frieza to life.  I guess he can just do that now?   Whis says it’s a gift from Beerus, to reward him for his performance during the Tournament. 

The Zenos hang out with Goku for a bit....

And the Grand Minister reveals the true purpose of the Tournament of Power.  While no one else was expecting 17′s wish, the Zenos did.  They believed that the winner of the tournament would have the compassion to restore the erased universes, and the competition itself would drive the winner to that conclusion.  I guess that’s true enough.  17 was so indifferent about the whole thing at first.  Remember, when Goku first told him about the rules, 17 didn’t even care about his own universe getting erased, much less anyone else’s. 

But if the winner had asked for any selfish wish, then that would have been a great condemnation of mortals, and the Zenos would have erased all twelve universes on the spot.  So Universes 1, 5, 8, and 12 were not truly exempt after all. 

The Zenos ask Goku what they should play next, and Beerus hastily makes an excuse to get them out of there before Goku starts any new crises.   Ah well. 

They share a hearty fistbump, and then it’s back to Earth.

Everyone watches the sunrise on Earth, and it’s kind of nice of Frieza to behave himself during this.  I guess he knows he can’t pull any shit with so many guys around who can kill him.

And then we move on to the end credits.  Goten and Trunks foiled some poachers while 17 was gone.  Good for them.

Yurin got a proper uniform from Tien’s dojo. 

Buu’s still fucking asleep. 

And while most of the gang is celebrating Bulla’s birth, 17 sends pictures from his new cruise liner.

Bulma just gave him the one she had back in Episode 4 or whatever.  Did she pay everyone the prize money Goku lied about?

Frieza returns to his subjects.... although I’m not sure who these people are or where this is happening.  Most of his staff died in Res F, I would have thought. 

And Goku and Vegeta have a match together.  Vegeta challenges Goku to use his Ultra Instinct power again, but Goku can’t do it, and he isn’t sure why.    But they both resolve to keep getting stronger forever.  And that’s it, that’s the show. 

I kept forgetting to make this point, but to sum up what makes the Tournament of Power so much better than the rest of Dragon Ball Super... The problem with the first 75% of this series is that it’s a lot of characters talking and talking, or speculating about things they don’t know or can’t control.     The show isn’t all bad, but a lot of the good parts are mired in padding and extended scenes of conversations that just don’t matter. 

The Tournament of Power has a lot of talking as well.  I skipped over most of it for brevity’s sake, but almost every action scene is punctuated by the spectators discussing it at length.   But at least the focus is on the Tournament of Power, because the Tournament of Power is literally the only thing happening across those 35 episodes.  And since it’s only 48 minutes long, Toei can’t just cut to a scene of Mr. Satan doing something goofy, or Emperor Pilaf arguing with Jaco.

Simply put, the Tournament of Power lets the characters fight.  That sounds so obvious, but think about all the other episodes where fighting always seemed to be secondary.  The Destroyer Tournament was more about Beerus and Champa bickering than the action itself.  Goku Black would stab a dude, then start a whole lecture, and the lecture was supposed to carry all the dramatic weight. 

You could do a whole movie or saga where it’s just Goku and Vegeta having a friendly match, or any other characters you like.  This show works that way, where fighting is the medium through which the stories are told.  So when you get stingy with the fighting, you’re removing one of the keys to the franchise’s success.  Fortunately, the Tournament of Power got it right, and it basically redeemed the entire series. 

But as far as I’m concerned, if I ever rewatch Dragon Ball Super again, I’m just skipping straight to Episode 97.  There’s a machete cut I want to list out sometime, but I know 97-131 are a fun time, so why bother skipping around the rest? 

Well, that’s it for the DBS anime, but the 2023 Apocrypha Liveblog isn’t done just yet.  I still have to catch up on the manga, and there’s a couple other things I need to look into.  So stay tuned for that.

[arronm169562-blog]

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[woohooligancomics]

Webcomic Whimsy: Parhelion

Welcome to the Woohooligan Weekly Webcomic Whimsy! I've given a couple of interviews in the past, but this is my first experience with reviewing. If you have any suggestions for improvements, feel free to leave a note. If you're a webcomic author and would like a review, you can see my announcement and review rules here.

Title: Parhelion

Author: Riley Smith • Twitter • Tumblr

Site: ParhelionComic.com • Patreon

Genres: Experimental, Dystopian, SciFi, Space Opera, Black Comedy, Experimental, Surreal, Action/Adventure, Gay Space Pirates, A day in the life of a bargain-bin Han Solo

Rating: PG, T for Teen - adult situations, some language

Updates: ??

Synopsis: (from ParhelionComic.com/about) - The World’s Collective, an ambitious plan to unite the galaxy, has just formally collapsed. A despondent interpreter hires a pirate to retrieve some personal files from his office, and they hit it off. Meanwhile, wheels are turning throughout the galaxy, with all kinds of plans at cross-purposes. Warlords lock horns, Boltzmann Brains fight for freedom, and plenty of people just want some peace and quiet.

The first thing anyone is bound to notice about Parhelion is its experimental art style. I suspect this will be a case of "love it or hate it" with very few people in the undecided camp. It certainly has its appeal, with a kind of "baroque simplicity", (which in English means it looks more complicated than it is). Although later chapters get some monochromatic coloring, there's never full color and it might be better that way. Even when a character is human, the lines of the form often don't intersect, leaving a gap at a joint like a waist or elbow, so full color might look out of place. With alien characters, all bets are off, as there's barely a passing nod to notions of anatomy. One drawback to this style is the ambassador from the Planet of the Floor Lamps! (See, it's like Planet of the Apes but...)

A small side-note: so far, Riley is the only author I've reviewed who maintains an annotated synopsis of all his chapters. It's a nice touch if you'd like to see the whole outline of the story in advance.

If you don't mind an occasional character who looks like office furniture, there's a dystopian space opera here that you might enjoy, hot on the heels of a failed galactic government called the Collective. The first page opens with, "like it or not, civilization is built on stimulants, pornography and worse." I'm not sure if the author thinks poorly of porn or if they expect the reader to. I personally think porn is like other industries, there's some bad stuff to be had, but there are also unscrupulous insurance people making money off of the death or misfortune of others. So I won't personally single-out the porn industry as "bad stuff", and stimulants? Meh... coffee is a stimulant. But if you're expecting any porn in this comic, remember that any dick picks will inevitably look like a Tinkertoy with this style of art. (There isn't any porn, it's T for Teen.)

But I digress... that opening line is intended to set the mood of Parhelion's dystopian future. The main character, Peter, is jaded while not being entirely cynical, describing the recently collapsed Collective as "a beacon of hope, smothered at birth by a pack of vultures."

Peter meets his alien, soon-to-be partner, a translator named Cerril, at a bar. In fact, Peter interrupts Cerril's week-long alcoholic bender, mid-gargle-blaster. You see, Cerril's an ivory tower jackoff who used to work for the Collective, before it's untimely collapse just days or weeks before the story started. That's why he needs all the booze. What he didn't know is that Peter needs a translator.

This is also a good time to point out another small problem with the art style, which is, when you use straight, perpendicular lines for your dialog balloons, especially when you're drawing in black and white, the dialog can easily get lost in the illustration, like it does at the bottom of the above page. Or it can create parallel tangents or fake panels like at the top of the previous page.

There's also a fair amount of black comedy or "gallows humor" in Parhelion, like Peter insisting to terms for his own murder, specifically that it be an involved and painful mano-a-mano affair. And Riley occasionally gets technical. Unlike Star Wars in which the function of the protocol droid C-3PO is simply assumed, Riley stops for a couple pages to explain why Cerril's job title is "translator" instead of "office clerk". Oh, but I was wrong about the Tinkertoys...

Several pages are devoted to developing the characters for Peter and Cerril before there's been any real plot. Peter presents himself as a happy-go-lucky space pirate, a kind of bargain-bin Han Solo. And it turns out that the falling-down-drunk Cerril isn't entirely cynical either.

I know I sound like a broken record here, but I see a lot of what I feel is slow pacing in the webcomics I'm reviewing. Maybe it's just me, maybe I'm being a little overly critical on this point. Having said that, I'm seventeen pages in and while I've gotten some good character development for Peter and Cerril, I still haven't seen any plot development beyond "you need to bring me the translator and you can't refuse because I'm your pirate-boss and you're in deep." For reference, a standard issue of a Marvel or DC title is twenty to twenty-four pages, so if this were one of their books, we'd be on the very last couple of pages with only just the basic character development covered.

That's when we see Peter's gnarly missing-eye scar... or is that mechanical? Hard to tell.

But I do think they make a good team... it's basically that bargain bin Han Solo teamed up with a drunken, curmudgeonly C-3PO.

Note that in the bottom half of this page, those are supposed to be fully human, factory-direct hands, with no modifications. It's that sort of thing that makes me say I think this art style will be fairly polarizing: you'll love it or hate it, there won't be a lot of indifference. The hand on the left looks like a bunch of straw sticking out of a sleeve and the one on the right looks like a garden rake. Yeah, he's a bargain bin Han Solo, but this picture makes him look like a badass, one-eyed, space-pirate scarecrow from the land of Oz.

At the beginning of their three-day trip, Cerril asked Peter to steal something for him. By day three, Cerril finally explains that it was just some personal files he wouldn't be able to retrieve from his offices after the Collective collapsed. That's when it's revealed that these particular space pirates are gay, although that reveal is weirdly subtle and kind of sprung on the reader out of the blue like a jump-scare in a horror movie, or maybe a Rickroll. (I'm bringin' back ALL the dated memes, bae!) Pete and Cerril mention "neck marks" without any indication they had been playing tonsil hockey, although that's preceded by some peculiar seating arrangements that weren't foreshadowed in any way. So in a storytelling sense, it feels like we went from teeth-clenched teamwork to the power of love while skipping the middle part where "I'm going to murder you in your sleep, you slaver" gradually becomes "let's slip into something more comfortable".

And then they touch-down on what appears to be literally the land of Oz, right off the yellow-brick road, just outside of the Emerald City. There's even an old-fashioned hand-made crossroads sign.

Just in time to let us know that three days alone in the ship wasn't nearly enough time for sex! Seriously, you need at least a week for a proper blowjob.

But if you thought Peter's missing eye looked painful, it's nothing compared to the hopelessly tangled earbuds that comprise the "face" of the tyrant known as the Basilisk.

Although some of the Baroqueness is rather nice.

We've had a few budget cuts, so the part of Parliament's architectural columns will be played by butt-plugs. (You can't unsee it! You're welcome.)

Starting in the second chapter, Riley starts getting creative with the lettering, occasionally replacing a character or two with an alien symbol. The only pattern I can see is that a particular letter or combination is always given the same symbol, so what would be "th" becomes a single symbol that vaguely resembles a J, making "the" look like "je". It's obviously not used for the purpose of censoring swearing, since the page starts with the phrase "fucking joke" (a priest, a rabbi and a minister walk into an orgy). Given that, I can only imagine that these random substitutions are purely for the purpose of adding an alien flavor to the narration or dialog of certain characters. Personally, I'm not on-board. Riley's already added some similar decoration around the dialog box, and I feel like that's the more appropriate way to create that flavor. These substitutions in the text keep interrupting my reading flow as I have to stop to workout what "video#at" or "fai#ful" mean. It's only a fraction of a second for any individual word, however even that fractional pause is noticeable and mildly irritating as a reader. Like I said, the style of this comic is experimental, and experimentation always comes with some risk and sometimes it pays off. I just don't feel like, as experiments go, this text experiment was a keeper. What do you think?

It isn't until the fourth page of chapter two that Peter and Cerril officially become partners, with a little light comedy that reminds me a little of C-3PO's pitch to uncle Owen in Star Wars IV, except that Cerril is arguing against going with Alison. (That may have a lot to do with my already saying Cerril reminds me of C-3PO.)

While the writing on this page is good and Cerril's body language is well done, the page as a whole has several trouble-spots. There are several ways the first panel could have been composed without letting the dialog cut into the top of Alison's head. While it's not hard to figure out in this particular case, dialog from a character off-camera is frequently shown as it is here in the 2nd and 3rd panel. This is problematic for a couple of reasons, one because there's no visual difference between these dialog boxes and a narration box. That's not confusing on this particular page, but I could easily see it becoming confusing on other pages. Second, and more importantly, I've seen a few more recent pages where this is done in a scene with three or more characters and it's not always apparent who's speaking. Use of colored dialog boxes or a small symbol indicating the character could resolve this issue, although as an artist myself, I would work a little harder to keep the speaking characters on-camera. I might still use the symbol on some infrequent occasions if I were having a really difficult time with the composition of a specific page. I just don't think the off-camera boxes should be a frequent occurrence... reserve them for when Dorothy finally meets the Wizard.

And on page six of the second chapter, we're finally on to our dynamic duo's first suicide mission (of many, natch). I'm pretty sure they have one of those hole-punch coupons, they get a free sandwich after every fifth suicide mission they complete. Loyalty is important, yo!

Don't worry though, the veteran Peter has a plan! Peter's plan is to show up unannounced to a definitely hostile, likely heavily armed facility, and say "Hi! I'm peter! Go fuck yourself!" Which, of course, works every time. No, seriously, nobody even mentions it being weird and they make plans with the manager of the hostile station to go get tacos later.

But Peter wants to to know you don't fuck with a space-pirate's tacos, you spineless corporate cuck!

And since Parhelion is more of a black comedy than an adventure (I'm sure it's in there somewhere), this taco tirade is the big mistake where shit gets real. (Yeah, no, it's totally not lazily waltzing in on a hostile, likely heavily armed base. That part was cake.)

I really like that dramatic last panel on page fifteen of chapter two, so that's where I'm going to end this review.

So there's my pitch. If you enjoy tongue-in-cheek space opera, surreal and experimental illustration, and gay space-pirates, it's worth a look at Parhelion!

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Thanks! Sam