With
chapter 88 of Dragon Ball Super, the focus has officially moved down from Goku
and Vegetal and onto their sons, Gotten and lockers, as they begin a superhero
career much like Gihan’s while attending high academe. It's a significant shift
in tone from the Granola the Survivor saga, and it serves as a tie- in to the
recent Dragon Ball Super Hero film, which itself had a truly different sense of
the significance of Super. The chapter takes a farther slice- of- life
approach, with a slower pace and lower action thus far, but that isn't the only
new order the series is dabbling in.
The
plot of the chapter involves Gotten and lockers probing some Capsule Corp
robots that have begun to go haywire, and discovering that a scheme is in the
factory to commandeer them. They follow a strange man with a remote reverse to
an abandoned mansion overlooking the municipality and discover a bunch of
helper bots being used by a team of weird men who act Frankenstein's monster.
After defeating them, Dragon Ball Super's Gotten and Trunks discover a safe
containing a slice full of Dr. Gyro’s secrets and take it with them. Not long altered.
Hero (from the Super Hero film) arrives and freaks out over the state of his
creations and the missing slice.
The
structure of the chapter's plot strongly resembles that of a classic Film Noir
operative movie. Noir filmland constantly revolve around an object that
multitudinous parties want to gain (like the eponymous statue in The Maltese
Falcon), a situation that's just been set up also. They also constantly start
out probing a fairly small crime, analogous to the hijacking of the robots,
only to uncover a much bigger scheme, in this case. Gyro’s android data. Indeed,
the setting of a mansion high upon a mountain in the dark of night is not an
uncommon one, although the mansion in this case looks more like a haunted house
(borrowing from the horror order). While the tone hasn't been in line with that
of a traditional Noir, it's near to that of Noir parodies, which constantly
poke fun at the serious nature and sophisticated plots of Film Noir.
While
Dragon Ball Super has abstained from going full parody on this one, the mix of
Noir tropes with a slice- of- life superhero story should produce a unique
experience that's unlike anything Dragon Ball has done ahead. How nearly the
story will equal that of a Noir mystery remains to be seen, but indeed if this
is the extent of it, it's good to see a long- lived series like Dragon Ball
Super isn't hysterical to try commodity new.