Dragon Ball Daima

Episode 18

Dragon Ball canon has become tricky over the last few years, and it can sometimes be hard to tell what counts and what doesn't. Some events from the Super-era Dragon Ball films don't quite match up with some of the developments in the TV anime of Super, and some of the story from both don't quite match up with parts of the Super manga. While a lot of recent narrative have at least been careful not to do anything that outright contradicts the ending of the original Dragon Ball manga, the closer that new arc gets to that point in the timeline, the more unlikely it feels that it can resolve all of its new plot threads without overstepping it.

What doesn't help is that Toriyama had certainly been involved in some recent Dragon Ball projects more than with others. Much of the story development went through him in at least some capacity, making the distinction between canon and non-canon even harder to determine. Still, through all this, there has been one thing that has remained consistent up to now: nothing has truly outright retconned the distant Dragon Ball sequel, Dragon Ball GT. Sure, the power scaling in Super has long since surpassed everything we saw out of GT in the '90s, and a couple of bits of lore concerning the Dragon Balls themselves don't quite match up, but technically speaking, nothing has happened that has truly negated the possibility that GT could have happened further down the main timeline. Until now.

As Goku whips out Super Sayain 3 to turn the tables on King Gomah, the battle appears to be heading in Goku's favor. He's a bit too fast for the big guy, and while Gomah can keep up with the transformation physically, it's clear that Goku has the edge in actual skill. We even see Majin Duu coming in to assist Goku and getting a power boost of his own by imitating Goku's ki boost and giving himself his own SSJ3 styled hair-do (which, even for as goofy as a lot of this show has been, might be the funniest image it's produced so far). With all that going against him, I was surprised to see Gomah powering through both of them (though I guess it helped that Duu's “transformation” went away once he got hungry again) and nearly having Goku at his mercy. However, when all hope seems lost, Neva decides to help Goku and bestows him some extra power that should be enough to take on King Gomah. Power that should look awfully familiar to anyone who watched GT or has played pretty much any Dragon Ball fighting game over the last two decades:

That's right, it's Super Saiyan 4.

Sure, technically, it's never outright referred to as Super Saiyan 4, and it's always possible that Toei or Shueisha could opt to call this something else, but it's Super Saiyan 4. Everything from the look of the transformation to how we visibly see Goku's body morphing to become more ape-like pretty much screams what it is. Of everything I could have expected to see appear in Daima, this was certainly not on the list.

The SSJ4 transformation is pretty iconic, not only because it was stated in GT as the ultimate evolution of Saiyan biology as it fuses the Super Saiyan form with the Great Ape transformation that existed since Goku's earliest days as a character, but it was also a form that explicitly appeared towards the end of GT. As such, seeing it here is about as big of a retcon to GT as it gets, and I'm kind of in awe.

Granted, GT has a rather infamous reputation, and I can imagine some Dragon Ball fans are outright celebrating this. Still, bits of it have appeared across enough Dragon Ball games that I didn't think it would ever be contradicted outright. Plus, unlike a lot of the aforementioned developments with Super, where there's some level of debate to be had as to what counts, it's been stated more than once by the staff that Toriyama ended up more involved with Daima than they anticipated. In that respect, Daima is arguably the most authentic piece of extended Dragon Ball media to exist since the end of the manga, and you can more or less take SSJ4's appearance here as gospel. So unless this ends with everyone getting their memories wiped (which would be funny but extremely cowardly, so I pray it doesn't back out of this), this eviscerates GT from the main timeline. While it's likely this was just meant to be a shout-out to long-time fans on Toriyama's part, it's still pretty surreal to see the joke that Daima is a canon version of GT made into actual text.

Still, as crazy as that is, other important events did happen during this episode, so I suppose I should talk about them. Firstly, the episode looks pretty impressive, and for as wild as it was to see SSJ4 pop up out of nowhere here, it was even more incredible seeing it in action. Even as remarkable as last week's episode looked, this one goes toe-to-toe with it pretty handily. I'm glad this show is pulling out all the stops with its last few episodes. It's also pretty wild that, while the appearance of this transformation should have almost certainly spelled the end of the fight, Gomah manages to keep up with SSJ4 Goku (which, for further damage to GT's status, would probably scale him to Omega Shenron at the very least), and outright overpowers him as he ends up doing a transformation of his own: an even bigger version of his already ridiculous looking new form. Even for as weird as Super got, this is some of the most bonkers power escalations I've seen throughout a single episode of Dragon Ball. Whilehile I'm not always big on seeing numbers go up so rapidly when it's happening this quickly, it's hard not to clap like a seal at what's happening.

After seeing Goku get overwhelmed by Gomah, Dr. Arinsu decides it's time to pull out of this fight, and orders Glorio to bring her the rest of the Dragon Balls so she can make her wish. While this would seemingly spell certain victory for her, as she aims to become even stronger than Gomah, this plan seems to hinge on massive oversight. Namely, she had Glorio learn Namekian so he could use them properly, but she can't speak the language herself. As such, there's really nothing stopping him from pulling a fast one on her and wishing for something else. That seems increasingly likely, too, because it's clear that Glorio is having second thoughts about abandoning the others to their fate, and for as dangerous as Gomah is right now, giving Dr. Arinsu even more power than that sounds like a terrible idea. Since Glorio made his wish in Namekian right as the episode ends, we have no idea exactly what he wished for, but whatever it is, it's bound to make things even crazier. After how much this episode has gone off the rails, I'm not sure where else this can go in terms of escalation. Wherever its destination is, I'm strapped in to see the rest of this ride through to the end.

Rating: Dragon Ball Daima is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.