#dbsreread Thread #3: Resurrection "F" anime comic. Toyotaro excludes this from the Super manga, though he does cover the first two-thirds or so via Volume F, the partial adaptation project he was on between Victory Mission and Super. Probably won't be covering it on this reread.

The early portions of "F" play better in anime comic form than the early portions of BoG did, which may actually speak in opposite terms to the presentation quality of the two films. Things are just less animated here, and thus easy to capture as panels.

I laughed out loud at Shuu's last-minute wish for the money. Also, it's kind of fun that they wind up interacting with the Freeza army at all, much in the same way that it's kind of fun that Vegeta and Uranai Baba share a dire conversation near the end of the original run.

Otherwise, not much to say about the first "chapter" of the anime comic, which runs up through Freeza's announcement of his intention to train. "F" is a movie I really enjoy without loving, and it's probable not much will change while going through it in comic form.

Whoops -- Toyotaro's partial "F" adaptation wasn't called Volume F, which was actually the theatrical book containing Toriyama's script.

Jaco's scenes are very funny, from being distracted by Dr. Brief's fishpond to the punchline of Freeza arriving in an hour, but I couldn't help but imagining them on this reread given Toriyama's timing, which neither the finished film nor its anime comic version have.

The Kuririn-#18 exchange still bothers me a bit, but I will give it that she notes in plain terms she's stronger than all of them (except Piccolo and Gohan, realistically), and it reads more like a beat of Kuririn wanting to be the brave one for their daughter; she plays along.

Whis' lines about body parts reacting on their own sure does read like a foreshadowing of UI in retrospect, huh? Especially in Japanese, where his description (あらゆるところが勝手に判断して行動できる) matches the 勝手 (katte) used in 身勝手 (migatte)'s central pun.

Who knows if that was actually the intent at the time, of course.

Oh, I didn't talk about "Earth's hell," which I always forget is referenced multiple times in the script and even forms part of Freeza's motivation for wanting to destroy Earth after he's had his revenge.

Like, yeah. That doesn't make much sense. But it ...

... does do a little bit to explain why Freeza would be so non-nonchalant about continuing with his evil ways after being resurrected, and why his underlings don't have existential crises over their boss talking openly about his time in actual-factual hell.

Maybe they're all betting hard on space-hell not existing.

Finished the anime comic tonight. Observations as follows:

Freeza describing the details of his hell to Goku and co. is a comedy beat that comes off rather limply in the movie, but is pretty funny on the page. More Freeza talking about hell to everyone else's discomfort, please.

For some reason I always remember Gohan and co. intentionally sparing the soldiers as a bid to buy extra time, but Freeza's dialogue just lays out that it's because, like Goku, they're nice. Sure, I guess, but I'm not sure how that really squares with ...

... Kuririn and five-year-old Gohan certainly sending two Freeza mooks to a watery grave as soon as they get to Namek.

There are parts of the Freeza vs. Goku fight I enjoy in animation, but it's a clean-reading (thanks to being less flashy than BoG's fight), but rather dull and small-scale fight on the page.

Super Saiyan Blue gets probably the most unspectacular showing of any major new form in the series. The early parts of the story build Freeza's new power up well, but once he starts fighting Goku, nothing really shows off any sense of scale, and there are few impactful beats.

It's no wonder there was a kind of fandom joke about Blue being the form the characters turn into to lose (which will be increasingly true as Super goes on). Super Saiyan 3 never gets a clean win either, but its first appearance is suitably grand in presentation...

... as Goku uses it to get the upper hand on an up-to-that point unstoppable Boo, and leaves on his own terms due to the situation at hand. Blue instantly loses to Freeza, in a fight with little visceral sense of scale. It's a very small battle, for what the series has built to.

Beerus lying about eating more than his share of strawberries and then instantly saying it's okay because he's a god when challenged is a Toriyama joke that doesn't work without Toriyama timing. It's funny if you imagine it with different execution and have read his other work.

The script's moral is that it's good to kill your opponents, which is weird.

Not too weird for DB and its kind of flippant amorality, especially for a one-off story like this, but kind of weird.

Speaking of, "F" sure is stuck in a weird place between being a one-off and being a serialized piece of what was clearly going to be a longer-form continuation at this point. I enjoy it for what it is, though. It's definitely more fun as a film than a comic.

Vegeta and Goku's ending lines about not working together set up something to be paid off in ... Broly? The Tournament of Power, depending on which version you go with?

Oh well, at least Freeza's dead forever. Up next, Universe 6.

P.S. Super Saiyan Blue was surely--surely--intended to just be their new Super Saiyan form at this point, replacing all the others, as that's basically what all the dialogue and flavor text in the front and back of this volume imply, but we all know how that wound up.

P.P.S. Freeza clearly states that all that's left of his army by the end of the fight is Sorbet, but later in Super (spoilers), he apparently still has a fairly robust operation to fall back on, and it bothers me that no one ever talks about this plothole.