There Are Spoilers In Our Dragon Ball Super Episode 123 Review – Post Episode Discussion
So episode 123 of Dragon Ball Super just aired and in this episode we see Goku and Vegeta continue with their fight against Jiren. The tournament is getting closer to the end and our warriors continue to face off against some of the strongest opponents they’ve ever faced.
Continuing on from last week, episode 123 continues to have a strong focus on Vegeta who we saw performing well against Jiren last week, but lost out in the end. In the start of this episode we see Vegeta still on the ground and out of the fight and Jiren taunts him saying “Warrior, sleep” with his back turned. This type of comment is a great insult to Vegeta who as we know, he is a character whose pride can be hurt at times. So the comment is in a way a final attack on the character from Jiren and marks I guess the end of Vegeta vs Jiren, at least in the current blue form.
As the episode continues we see Goku step up and fight Jiren on his own, with Vegeta still down and out of the battle. Goku actually does perform well in the fight and interestingly applies a few things he learnt from Krillin during his fight with him, which seems like a long time ago now. What is interesting about this, was that if you remember the Goku v Krillin fight, the two are severely out matched. Yet Krillin was able to hold for some time because he used strategy rather than strength and this caught Goku off guard. It’s this that Goku attempts to do against Jiren and it’s impressive.
At first Goku started out by putting a lot of land mines on the ground around Jiren that would explode when he stepped on them. Jiren hadn’t seen Goku put them down, so these things came as a surprise but were easily dealt with by Jiren who just jumped really high and moved to attack Goku, who used a destructo disc attack on him. Jiren was able to counter most of the discs, destroying them all and catching one and throwing it back at Goku. The disc cut one of the tall rocks, which fell onto the arena and the two later fought on top of that and right on the edge of the ring.
It was here that I didn’t actually see it coming, but Goku looked all but defeated by Jiren and Jiren was just about to finish him off with a final punch. But the last disc was still flying around and it cut the rock in two that Jiren was standing on and he fell off the edge. I actually was completely surprised by all this and didn’t see it coming at all and neither did Jiren. Goku moves to punch him and Jiren starts falling.
It’s during the fall of Jiren where we see I think the first change in the character. Vegeta did mention he was not fighting at full power and the fall seemed to have enraged Jiren. Although Jiren was able to get out of it, he came out fully powered up. Jiren was able to strike Goku a few times, but I think this Krillin attack from Goku really did rattle Jiren. What we have now is a full power Jiren that Goku alone is not able to at all match with his current strength alone.
Towards the end of the episode we see more from Vegeta who is not done fighting yet and starts to power up alongside Goku who has just gone to blue with Kaio Ken. But Vegeta, motivated by his want to save the Universe 6 Saiyans and his promise to Cabba, powers up stronger than he’s ever been. It’s still a Blue form, but it’s a darker version. It’s described by Krillin as Vegeta’s limit breaker form.
With both Goku and Vegeta powered up and working together, Jiren looks to be on the defence now. It’ll be interesting to see if the two can continue to work together or not going forward. I know that when Whis was training them a few arcs ago he did mention to them that if they worked together, there’s no one that could defeat them. But they never could get it right during training, but in this episode Whis comments on that, saying that they could never do a properly coordinated attack but “ironically that’s, what’s throwing Jiren off”. I’m very interested to see in the coming weeks how these two characters will perform.
Apart from the Jiren v Vegeta/Goku fight we see a little of what’s going on with Frieza and Dyspo. Frieza is unable to fight Dyspo because he’s too fast and seems to be winning at first, but it seems that Dyspo’s attacks aren’t strong enough to do any damage against Frieza at all and he’s not even in the Golden form yet. 17 and Gohan continue to fight Toppo and the two look to be struggling. They try to co-ordinate their attacks together, with 17 holding Toppo with his shield while Gohan tries to blast them both out of the arena, but it fails due to Gohan pulling out.
Looking at next week’s preview, it looks like Gohan is going to have a big episode and possibly Frieza as well who I saw go Golden. I don’t know what happened to Gohan v Toppo but it looks like Gohan and Frieza are going to face off against Dyspo themselves.
Overall this was a great episode for the show and our characters were pushed to all new limits. We got to see a powered up Jiren for the first time and also a new form from Vegeta. It was also great to see Goku use some of the techniques and strategies from Krillin and it provided I think one of the biggest surprises in the arc so far, with Jiren almost falling off. Next week looks to be like another great episode and I’m excited to see what could come out of that one too.
