Dragon Ball Daima

Episode 5

Daima continues to chug along as Goku and friends pick up their newest traveling companion on their road trip through the Demon Realm. That new companion comes in the form of Panzy, a demon girl who seems big on spunk but less on strength, which would otherwise make her feel pretty out of place in nearly any other iteration of modern Dragon Ball. However, she seems like she'll be a good addition here. While her introduction isn't the most exciting thing we've gotten from the show but it's still fun enough to make for another solid episode.

After being rescued by Goku, Panzy decides to tag along with the boys while they continue to make their way to the Third Demon King's Castle. Ever the grump, Glorio is less than pleased at the prospect of her dragging them down, and considering that her abilities as a Majin are barely powerful enough to move a rock, he may not be entirely off base there. While Panzy probably won't be making it into the roster of the next Dragon Ball fighting game (though she totally should), having someone this out of their depth join the team feels refreshing after how long power levels have defined everything, and she reminds me a lot of Bulma's role in early Dragon Ball. Like Bulma, she specializes in tinkering with machines and claims those skills would make her a valuable asset. With that much overlap in their roles, it worries me that she might feel redundant when Bulma joins the team. Still, she seems to be considerably less vain, so hopefully the show will be able to make that work when the time comes. At the very least it makes me look forward to seeing what happens when those two interact. 

As for the moment though, Panzy's presence helps further our understanding of the Demon Realm. For one thing, we learn that every Majin possesses unique ability, and while hers don't seem very powerful, it casts a bigger shadow on Glorio, as it means that we haven't seen what he's capable of. We also learn that the Supreme Kai/Shin's race of demons, the Glinds, have mostly abandoned the Demon Realm in favor of the outside world, making his presence here even more of an outlier than we had originally thought, and leaving me wondering what the story is there. 

Most importantly, we learn that Panzy is the daughter of the king of the Third Demon World, King Kadan, and can help introduce the others to her father. While he doesn't initially believe that Goku could be the warrior they need to take out King Gomah, when Glorio and Panzy decide to vouch for him, he immediately tries to marry Panzy off to Goku, who immediately responds that he has a wife and kids and probably makes for one of the funniest jokes of the whole episode (the real winner being that King Gomah has hired a nanny for baby Dende because he needs him happy and healthy for his evil plans, and I can only hope King Gomah maintains that energy for the rest of the series). While King Kadan doesn't insist on Goku committing infidelity, he tests Goku's strength by pitting him against his best fighters. As has become the current standard for the show, the fight looks pretty incredible, but I feel like there's only so much praise I can throw at it without feeling redundant. If you enjoyed the action of the last two episodes, it's continuing to deliver pretty well.

That said, there is a moment in which we see Goku briefly turn Super Saiyan only to immediately return to his base form. Assuming that wasn't a flex, I wonder if he hasn't adjusted to his child form well enough to pull off the transformation successfully. I'm hoping that's the case since it'd be another good way to put a limiter on Goku while also ensuring that Daima's action can continue to be more reliant on physical combat than energy attacks, so hopefully that ends up being where they go with this.

While Goku impresses King Kadan enough to secure a new ship, the whole situation also makes Glorio even more capital-S suspicious. Shin points out to Goku that he never informed King Kadan that the two of them had been turned into kids, and despite claiming to be sent by King Kadan, it seems more like Glorio approached him first than the other way around. Whether Glorio is secretly working for someone else or operating on his own agenda is still hard to say, but he's hiding something. 

Those are concerns for the future, but in the meantime, it seems Goku and the others still can't catch a break when it comes to air travel. As soon as they get a new ship, they almost immediately end up crashing straight into the ground, as Panzy has brought too much luggage along for the trip. It feels a little weird for the show to pull that after they spent so much time trying to find a new ride. This is yet another solid, if not particularly remarkable, outing for Daima, and now that we've gotten both of our new characters, l'm looking forward to spending more time getting to know them.

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Dragon Ball Daima is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.