Dragon Ball Full Color: La saga di Majin Bu, Vol. 2

Dragon Ball Full Color #28

by Akira Toriyama

Dopo la sconfitta di Cell, la pace è tornata a regnare sulla Terra, ed è ormai tempo di un nuovo Torneo Tenkaichi. Gli incontri sembrano procedere senza intoppi, ma sul ring Gohan viene assalito da una coppia di strani tizi che gli sottraggono l’energia vitale. A spiegare a Goku e i suoi come stanno le cose sarà Kaioshin, iscrittosi al torneo proprio per tenere d’occhio quei loschi figuri...

Genres: Manga, Humor, Shonen, Comics

240 pages, Hardcover

Published June 24, 2020

About the author

Akira Toriyama (鳥山明) was a Japanese manga artist and character designer. He first achieved mainstream recognition for creating the popular manga series Dr. Slump, before going on to create Dragon Ball (his most famous work) and acting as a character designer for several popular video games such as the Dragon Quest series, Chrono Trigger, and Blue Dragon. Toriyama came to be regarded as one of the most important authors in the history of manga with his works highly influential and popular, particularly Dragon Ball, which many manga artists cite as a source of inspiration.
He earned the 1981 Shogakukan Manga Award for best shōnen/shōjo manga with Dr. Slump, and it went on to sell over 35 million copies in Japan. It was adapted into a successful anime series, with a second anime created in 1997, 13 years after the manga ended.
His next series, Dragon Ball, would become one of the most popular and successful manga in the world. Having sold 260 million copies worldwide, it is one of the best-selling manga series of all time and is considered a key work in increasing manga circulation to its peak in the mid-1980s and mid-1990s. Overseas, Dragon Ball's anime adaptations have been more successful than the manga and are credited with boosting anime's popularity in the Western world. In 2019, Toriyama was decorated a Chevalier of the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres for his contributions to the arts.
In October 2024, Toriyama was inducted into the Harvey Awards Hall of Fame.

Reviews

[Brandon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Almost immediately upon this volume's start, we are thrown into the Boo Arc proper. That is, Kaioshin, Kibito, Spopovich, and Yamu are introduced as tournament participants. It's not immediately clear that the former two are Kaio, as they have slightly different faces from Kaiosama, but their clothes are somewhat more similar. Spopovich and Yamu look too similar to one another that they don't feel like major enemies, but the "M" on their foreheads looks notable (which it is). As with previous tournaments in Dragon Ball, some bad shit happens. In this case, it's Spopovich and Yamu absorbing SS2 Son Gohan's energy and flying away to their boss. Kaioshin and Kibito let it happen so they could follow the goons to Babidi and try to stop the resurrection of the ultimate evil, Majin Boo.

Son Gohan appears to still be the principle protagonist in this arc (so far), but Son Goku and Vegeta joining the flight to Babidi's base there is a risk of the two full-blooded Saiyans taking over the manga's focus (which is indeed what happens). Luckily for Gohan, Vegeta and Goku take care of the first two enemies Babidi sends against them, saving Dabra, Babidi's right-hand man, and presumably the strongest henchman overall, for Gohan himself (per the conditions of the Saiyans' janken matches). Before Gohan gets a chance to fight Dabra, the action cuts back to the Tenkaichi Budokai stage, where Goten and Trunks (in disguise as "Mighty Mask") proceed to fight Artificial Human No. 18. Unfortunately, readers familiar with the story will note the importance of Vegeta catching Goku's brief jump to Super Saiyan 2, which will reignite the full-blooded Saiyans' rivalry and lead to events next volume that will lead further to Goku and Vegeta stealing the limelight from Gohan for the rest of the manga.

The manga continues the humor-focused vibe of the previous volume. None of the main three Saiyans are too concerned about Babidi's goons; they decide Dabra is only about Cell's level, and the other guys are far below that, and the heroes have been more or less training ("less" in Gohan's case) in the seven years since Cell. Goku in particular has shown a little display of SS2, proving he's reached new heights in his afterlife training (and we will soon see him go "even further beyond"). Gohan seems to default to SS2 during his tournament match, so he has better control of the form despite goofing off a bit. Vegeta can't do SS2 yet, but he's strong regardless. So the lads play rock-paper-scissors to see how they'll proceed with fights in the spaceship, and they joke and taunt their foes because they know they are way stronger than Babidi expects. And then the volume ends with more shitting on Mr. Satan!

****

*Piccolo going by "Ma Junior" in the tournament, so as not to freak out people who remember his father
*Goku: "Hmm. Kuririn, do you want to come with me?" Son Goku essentially joking about killing his friend so they can live it up in the afterlife.
*Kuririn: "You're dead. Why are you hungry?"
*manga colors have a blue Kibito and pink Kaioshin, unlike the anime's pink Kibito and purple Shin
*Mighty Mask in the tournament, who only exists for the joke with Goten and Trunks stealing his clothes later. It's hard to view the character as anything other than a disguise for the boys, as of course I'm too used to having knowledge of how the kids sneak into the adult tournament
*Trunks: "Id...idiot! Now you've shamed us! What were you thinking?" Trunks showing a bit of his father's personality?
*Yamcha, to Marron: "Your dad's the strongest guy in the world! ...That is, the strongest human." Tenshinhan BTFO
*Kuririn just not giving a single shit about his weak-ass opponent
*Announcer (internally, smirking): "Incredible! This is the way it should be."
*Videl's black spats are inked too dark to see her buttcheeks when she kicks Spopovich in the face, or when she knees him in the chin, both in Chapter 441. The latter shot made it look like she got CAKE (as the kids say).
*"Aah!! Spopovich's neck has been broken!" Somewhat funny that this is the only time someone accidentally breaks a weaker person's neck when hitting too hard. Villains have done it on purpose. I think maybe heroes have snapped fodder enemy necks on purpose as well. Also, when Videl kicks, you can actually see the line of her asscrack through the shading of her shorts.
*Chapter 442 going full ryona with Spopovich punching Videl in the gut, then breaking most of her teeth by kneeing her in the face
*Videl's fist-pump upon recovering via Senzu, used as basis for a MegaHouse "Dragon Ball Gals" figure
*mystery element of Kaioshin and the Majin plans. Kibito challenging Son Gohan to go Super Saiyan. Yamu and Spopovich pulling out their weird Majin energy reader.
*SS2 Great Saiyaman (after Gohan's classmates saw through his "disguise"), being one of the swappable heads for the S.H.Figuarts action figure
*Kibito: "He isn't even at full power. Isn't there any limit to his potential? With all of this pure energy... I can see why they chose him." Set-up for the Z-Sword stuff.
*I kind of smirked at Kaioshin and Kibito's serious lore-dump involving all the names derived from a Disney Cinderella song
*Babidi's power to control people through the evil in their hearts feels not unlike the Devilmite Beam from way back when
*Videl: "Don't die, Gohan! If you come back safely, I'll go out with you!"
*some neat gore: the severed torso of the farmer's wife, the farmer's missing hand, the blood pooling from the child's head, all showing that Babidi and co. mean serious business
*Dabra's existence allowing later spin-off games to dickride the Demon Realm into oblivion
*I genuinely can't remember if I realized Dabra's name came from "abracadabra" earlier in my life
*Vegeta: "So, if this Boo guy is brought back, this world is toast! I won't let that happen! I wouldn't lose to the likes of them." Vegeta has mellowed out to being a guardian of Earth after seven years tapping Bulma's ass?
*more gore in the explosion of Spopovich, which is more overtly similar to the aforementioned Devilmite Beam
*Kibito blown up by a ki blast to the face by Dabra
*stone Kuririn is notable to me because for some reason I distinctly remember the CCG card I had, among all the hundreds I owned in childhood
*Vegeta, to Kaioshin: "Too bad for you. We Saiyans are an impatient bunch." Saiyan bloodlust starting to cause more problems for the universe because the "heroes" let bad guys get stronger to put up better fights.
*janken to determine the order by which the Saiyans fight Babidi's goons, all while Puipui stands nearby in surprise
*Vegeta: "So? Is that all you can come up with? Just ten times gravity?" Then he kills Puipui with one blast (in fairness, he hit Puipui like three times with melee attacks before they transported to the planet)
*Gohan: "It's like a video game."
**Vegeta: "This is stupid!"
*Dabra is determined to be Cell-tier at best, so none of the Saiyans give a shit about fighting him
*Goku using the aura of a Super Saiyan as a flashlight in Yakon's dark arena
*Babidi's crew use some bobo power-level quantification, so we're at the same shit as the Freeza Force's worthless Scouters. Before, the heroes were tricky for Scouters because they could control their power-levels. Now, the heroes are tricky for Babidi's device because they're simply way too strong for Babidi's expectations
*Goku explodes Yakon by briefly going Super Saiyan 2 while Yakon gives him the SUCC
*Gohan getting infected by his dad's wakuwaku: "No way! It's my turn to fight!"
*Mr. Satan's Rolling Attack, which I remember from Budokai 2 or something
*No. 18 uses a Kienzan against "Mighty Mask," which can be assumed to have been learned by her baby-daddy. Then again, Vegeta and Freeza both used similar moves before, so I guess it's not too hard to copy it. Hell, didn't Krillin comment on how easy Taiyou-ken is to use, after Imperfect Cell did it? And I think Yamcha's jobber ass taught himself the Kamehame-Ha so long ago. It's still cute to think she got it from her man, though.

[Mattia Lugli · Rating 4 out of 5]

Questo è il primo, effettivo, numero della saga di Majin Bu, che si colloca dopo il siparietto del torneo Tenkaichi per bambini e dopo tutta la narrazione del volume precedente sulle diverse strade intraprese dai nostri eroi in tempo di pace.

Il torneo degli adulti si apre con dei protagonisti particolari, che nascondono un secondo fine sui combattimenti che li attendono, e presto verranno palesate le diverse fazioni che partecipano al torneo ed il motivo per cui stanno affrontando questa sfida.

Bastano poche pagine per apre gli occhi del lettore sulla futura minaccia della terra, e vengono presentati dei nuovi personaggi che saranno incisivi nel proseguimento della storia. Tuttavia, al contrario del volume precedente, questo pecca di un eccessiva dose di stupore da parte dei vari eroi, nei confronti dei loro amici combattenti.

Sembra quasi che la forza sopita di ogni guerriero sia una novità per tutti, tranne che per i guerrieri Sayan, che invece sono stimolati dal vedere quanta strada hanno percorso i proprio amici durante il periodo di pace. Una scelta, quella di Akira Toriyama che verrà spiegata nei volumi successivi dell'opera, e che porterà ai futuri avvenimenti che tutti conosciamo, ma che tuttavia risulta a tratti ridondante in questo numero.

Molto interessante anche il rapporto tra Gohan e Videl, che si palesa agli occhi del lettore e di tutti i personaggi, anche dei due interessati, che non riusciranno più a nascondere il sentimento reciproco di stima ed affetto.

[Carlo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Recensione sull'ultimo capitolo della saga

[Guido · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sigue la saga de Boo con el torneo fallido. Me faltan varios personajes por catalogar todavía.