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duhragonball · 2 years ago

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Dragon Ball Super 114

Some guy in my replies: “No u don’t understand that’s a Yakuza reference all the criminal gangs in Japan hold hands like this it’s how they tell each other they like crime.”

Last time Goku started fighting Caulifla and Kale to show them Super Saiyan 3, but we’ve scratched that itch and now they just want to defeat him in battle. So Kale powers up to her maximum, but she still has that little problem of being able to control herself at this level.

And Goku would know, since she clobbered him pretty good the last time she did this.

Caulifla, on the other hand, is all for it.

Elsewhere, Vegeta and Top have been fighting, but Vegeta keeps getting distracted by what Goku’s up to. The girls have been improving dramatically since the tournament began, and I guess that’d be hard to ignore.

Top admits that the Saiyans are a remarkable people, and Vegeta can’t help but take this opportunity to point at himself and talk about how he’s the best Saiyan of all.

So Kale finishes hulking up, and Caulifla is worried at first that Kale still can’t recognize her in this form, but she takes her hand anyway and assures her that they’ll push forward together no matter what. This somehow reaches Kale, and...

She changes back to her “happy medium” form, and regains her personality. And yet, everyone observes that she still retains the power she had in the her jacked up state. So somehow she’s finally gotten a handle on her Super Saiyan form.

Meanwhile, Goku notices that his hands are trembling. With excitement, I guess? He’s been excited about a good fight before, though, and this time he acts like he doesn’t understand.

It’s like I was saying before, this time is different for him. He’s got these two younger Saiyans fighting him, and they’re pushing him out of his slump from Jiren clobbering him. But they’re also sitting under the learnin’ tree, and he’s showing them things they’ve never understood before. He’s finally getting to spend quality time with his own people, and the culture he never got to experience because his homeworld was destroyed. And I think he understands that on some unconscious level.

The closest example I can think of to compare this to is like when he was sparring with teen Goten in one of the last episodes of Z, or that barn-burner he had with Gohan in Episode 90 of this show. He had the same sense of satisfaction, but he could tell himself that it was a father-son moment. Here’s he’s having the same kind of feeling, but with strangers, and he doesn’t get it.

Or maybe he’s parsing these romantic undertones without realizing it. Kale starts out saying she’ll follow Caulifla’s lead, but Caulifla insists that they fight as equals. Remember, they’re part of an outlaw gang back in Universe 6, and Caulifla’s the leader of that gang. But she’s not the leader of their relationship, which is why I get so irritated with randos who keep trying to interpret this whole thing in terms of Yakuza stuff, or taking the “sister” thing too literally. You know who’s actually a blood relative of Caulifla? This guy:

Renso speaks highly of Caulifla, but he’s not part of her gang and he seems to have closer ties to Cabba from their time in the Sadala Defense Force. I’m pretty sure Caulifla never even mentions her brother at all.

You know who’s part of the inner circle of Caulifla’s gang? This dude:

Not Cabba, I mean the anonymous guy with the pompadour mussing Cabba’s hair. He must be a pretty big wheel in this gang or he wouldn’t be acting so high and mighty in Caulifla’s presence. We never learn anything about this guy, except that he defers to her without question. And we know this is where all the big shots in Caulifla’s gang hang out, because Kale’s standing just off screen.

You know who calls Caulifla her “one and only”? Who Caulifla looks at with unrestrained adoration? Who Caulifla keeps holding tenderly?

Seriously, what gang sign is this? Harold, they’re lesbians. Honestly, I don’t even care that much, but every time some weenie trolls my #caulifla tag and tries to deny or downplay this, I just get more convinced. Because they’re always like “no no they’re not gay they’re not gay u just don’t understand gangs” and I’m like just give it up already. Seriously, who are you trying to convince, me or yourself?

Look, I’m old enough to remember when Simpsons fans used to argue about whether Smithers was gay. I can admit that I once thought there might be some heterosexual explanation for his whole bit. But that was thirty years ago, and these two goofballs are constantly gazing into each other’s eyes. Don’t piss on my head and tell me it’s raining.

Now, where was I? Oh, right, Caulifla and Kale start fighting Goku and whoopin’ his ass.

Bam!

PONCH!

Pursuit!

Goku starts to get boxed in, so he uses a Solar Flare. I like how he still says “Sorry, Tien, but I’m borrowing your move!” before he uses it. Meanwhile Krillin spams Solar Flare more than Goku and Tien put together, and he doesn’t even acknowledge the creator.

Caulifla misses Goku and eats a faceful of rocks, so Kale gets upset and attacks Goku on her own. She’s a house of fire!

Then they run across Frieza, who decides he wants in on this, but Goku tells him this is a private party.

I know Frieza has a bigger role to play near the end of the tournament, but I gotta say he’s a real pain in the ass here in the middle. He keeps standing around talking about how he’s going to do horrible things to his opponents, but he hardly ever jumps in and fights. It’s almost like he’s still that lazy fuck who spent most of the Namek Saga sitting in his scooter and drinking wine. Anyway, Goku tells him to fuck on outta here.

Also, Catopesra shows up to offer Frieza a different challenger, but Frieza ignores him completely, so clearly Frieza’s just phony tough. Catopesra even changes the “P” on his costume into an “S”, but Frieza doesn’t care.

Anyway, Goku gears up for the next round, and Caulifla says he sure is confident, and Goku admits that he’s not. Make no mistake, he’s not toying with these ladies.

So then... wait, seriously?

I spent so much time talking about the other handholding scene that I forgot about this one.

Which issue of “Way of the House-Husband” is this from? Like, the main guy’s talking about laundry detergent with someone, and then he goes “I like to hold hands with my wife”, and the lady he’s talking to is confused because everyone knows holding hands is a thing criminals do to express how loyal they are to their boss, and the more murders you commit, the longer you have to hold their hand.

So they do the bit where they make a dust cloud and Goku uses his senses to locate them, but that was the plan. Kale traps his arm, setting Goku up for...

Fuck yeah!

See, some of you may be confused, so let me break it down for you. The “sworn sister”, hand-holding, the “weeping at the though of being apart” stuff? That’s Caulifla and Kale being gay. This part? Where one holds him while the other beats the shit out of him? That’s the gangster stuff.

“WHERE’S MY FUCKING MONEY!”

“Gettin’ real tired of you ducking me, man!”

I can see it now. “tumblr user dipshit89 replied to your post: But but Kale’s holding Goku’s arm and that doesn’t prove she loves him!”

I forgot how he got out of this one, so I had to look up a YouTube clip of this, and basically Caulifla went for a spin kick to his head, which gave Goku enough time to duck and swing around Kale to reverse her hold. Goku’s the man. This fight rocks so hard.

Likewise, I couldn’t get a good shot of this action, but Goku tries to teleport after he breaks free, but Caulifla’s seen that too many times, so she throws a ki blast behind her, guessing that’s where he’s going to reappear, and she’s right on the money. I think that’s the first time we’ve seen any character scout the Instant Transmission. Cell was just so fast that it didn’t bother him much, and I think every other character Goku has fought since then has been the same way, just rolling with the fact that Goku can teleport, rather than learning to anticipate how Goku uses it in a fight.

Well, Frieza used the same strategy to beat Jimmiz, but I don’t think that counts, because with Jimmiz teleporting was pretty much all the guy does, so it wasn’t exactly difficult to predict. Goku’s whole deal is that he’ll go so long without Instant Transmission that you almost forget he can do it whenever he wants.

So Goku finally turns it up to Super Saiyan God. Well, I say finally like he’s been holding back up to now. This whole thing has been kind of similar to the way Goku started out against Jiren, except that in the Jiren fight, Goku was fresh, and he was deliberately working his way up to the higher transforms to feel Jiren out. Here, Goku isn’t waiting to use Super Saiyan God. Chances are he couldn’t use Super Saiyan God until now. And it’s likely he’d still rather wait a little longer, but if he keeps fighting at SSJ2 he’s gonna get his ass kicked, so it’s now or never.

But now, Caulifla and Kale aren’t so impressed. They went into this eager to see Super Saiyan 3, and now Goku’s showing them an even higher form and they’re like “Yeah, we can still take him.”

Goku opens with fingerguns. Wait, there’s ki blasts coming out of there, that fingergun is loaded! Watch out!

Kind of weird to see Goku using a beam attack. Someone should write a fanfic set before this fight where Goku fights a memorable opponent with a beam attack and that sort of serves as a call-forward to this fight, where he uses a similar beam attack here. It’s me, I should be doing that.

So things go as they did before, except this time Goku’s much harder to double-team.

Not sure Kale’s entirely on-model here, but I still like this shot.

The girls stay on him, though. Kale manages to catch Goku in a big green ki blast, and Caulifla’s like “Yeah, you got him!”

But Goku just swims up the blast and clobbers her. Shades of Cooler’s Revenge!

Then Goku fires two ki blasts at once. Kale struggles mightily against one of them...

... While Caulifla tries to dodge the other. Except Goku’s steering it to chase her. Now, as Goku recovers his strength, we begin to see the gap between their powers. They were doing well against him as a Super Saiyan 2, but in this form, Goku can sling around bigger, more powerful ki attacks and overwhelm them, despite their numerical advantage.

Kale manages to toss her ki blast up into the air, but Caulifla gets caught before Kale can help. And that one blast pretty much took Caulifla out of the fight. She doesn’t want to quit, but she knows she’s finished, and Kale can’t fight Goku alone.

Goku congratulates them for their great talent, but he says they need to learn how to “finish a fight”. I didn’t understand what he meant before, but now I get it. They probably had Goku cornered at least a few times before he turned Super Saiyan God. If they had capitalized on that advantage, they could have defeated him before he ever got the chance to make it to Super Saiyan God. Or, more accurately, if they had known how to capitalize on that advantage while they had it.

It goes back to that “street brawler” thing Whis said about Caulifla last episode. She’s good, but she lacks the martial arts background that Goku has, so there’s a lot of subtle aspects of a fight that she doesn’t know how to deal with. As we saw, she’s a quick study, and Goku could show her what to do through fighting a lot faster than explaining it. And the same holds true for Kale. But ultimately, no matter how much they improve from fighting Goku, their basic approach to fighting is the same: Pound the other guy down until he can’t continue.

And that usually works, but in this case Goku was getting stronger, not weaker, as the fight progressed. Their best bet was to put him away early instead of trying to wear him down. Their moment was probably about the beginning of this episode, where Kale reached her full power and Goku wasn’t ready to go God Mode on them yet.

But they didn’t know how to seize that opportunity, so they just kept attacking and waiting for a better opportunity that never came. It’s like when I play chess and I focus more on trying to take out all the opponent’s pieces instead of looking for checkmates. That approach can work, but it also gives your opponent loads of time to find a way to checkmate you.

Anyway, Goku’s got the clear advantage here, and he starts preparing a Kamehameha to blow them both out of the ring. But Caulifla reminds Kale of that thing they got before the tournament began, and says it’s time they fought together “all the way”.

But Goku is unaware of this plan, so as he blasts them (and a chunk of the stage) away, he doesn’t notice something cool is happening.

Awwww yeah.

It’s Kefla Time, Bay-Bay!

This was Champa’s secret plan all along. Before the tournament began, he gave Potara earrings to the girls and told them to put them on near the end of the tournament. They didn’t understand, but he insisted that they trust him on this. And so they have, and here we are.

This tournament fucking rules. We’ve seen everything else so far. Spirit Bombs, Evil Containment Waves, like four or five Hellzone Grenades. It’s been five years and I still can’t believe they brought back Android 17. So yeah, let’s throw in some good ol’ fusion.

EVEN VEGETA IS AFRAID

Kefla is so strong and fast and cool that she overshoots Goku when she jumps over to him.

Goku tries to punch her, but he misses.

Here’s KISS with “Unholy”.

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#dragon ball #dragon ball super #2023dbapocryphaliveblog #tournament of power #caulifla #kale #kefla #goku #113-116 are the best episodes

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