“The Fate of the Saiyans”
Creative Staff
Story/Art: Akira Toriyama, Toyotarou
Translation: Caleb D. Cook
What They Say
Goku’s adventure from the best-selling manga Dragon Ball continues!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Having not seen anything from this property since the anime finished, the arrival of a new chapter on Shonen Jump had me opening it up and just diving right in to see what the manga is up to. Coming from writer Akira Toriyama and artist Toyotarou, the 48-page installments definitely have the look and feel of the Dragonball of old in my mind. I always struggled with the property in anime form in the 90s but once I read all the manga sequentially, I was able to get into the anime eventually and then enjoy what came after, including this particular iteration. So while it’s been a while, I decided to just dive right in with the latest installment.
And it is fairly easy to just dive in even though they’re clearly in the middle of an arc. Here, Vegeta is facing off against Granolah, the last of his kind, the Cerealian. Granola has certainly powered up a lot and we see that Vegeta has as well, having made a deal with Beerus to boost up his powers with a special mode and that has combined with his need to deal with powerful threats like this on his own has made it a real slugfest of a fight. But Vegeta has changed over the years and the person that he was when he first showed up on Earth is long gone, meaning that the power bestowed upon him doesn’t connect and click as it should, and he’s unable to really utilize it to its full extent. That’s made it so that Granolah has a far better chance of taking him down, which Vegeta actually doesn’t mind in a way because of the connection between their two races and how the Saiyan’s ended their world all that time ago.
Vegeta’s also not pleased when Goku shows up and inserts himself in this fight, but Goku is his usual self in that he can’t understand how not just Vegeta but Granolah as well as more than willing to die for this rather than to live and make for a better life. Goku does manage to get in some time with Granolah, as Vegeta is smacked down hard early on, and we see how Goku has figured out a way to at least play defensively against Granolah by moving his vital points just before Granolah lands a hit. With the speeds they all move at, it’s no surprise. For Granolah, it all keeps coming back to justice/revenge for him and his push to eliminate Vegeta is what drives this, as does Vegeta’s need to face people like him with such power. It’s a really great fight overall, one that does get interrupted by a surprise arrival of not just a Namekian, but one with special knowledge that will change the balance of this fight.
In Summary:
This is a fun chapter even though it’s at the point where it’s going to try and flip a character from villain to not-villain, at least for a bit. But that’s part of the thing with Dragon Ball as a whole in that everyone becomes friends in the end, or you go to hell. This installment uses its time well with the fight, giving us good moments between Goku and Vegeta while having both works well against Granolah separately. There’s a lot of detail to the action sequences that make it feel kinetic in a really great way and the end result is a chapter that you don’t fly through because there’s enough dialogue to it to pace it while also making sure you enjoy the artwork as well. A good solid chapter.
Content Grade: B
Art Grade: B
Text/Translation Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Shonen Jump
Release Date: September 20th, 2021
