Moro Arc Review - Dragon Ball Super (Super's Best Arc)

this video is sponsored by surf shark about 16 months ago i made the biggest mistake of my career bigger than that dreaded animated moments video and bigger than my pokemon video those two were either naivety or lacking in clarity but this one i should have known better you see 16 months ago i released a breakdown of the morrow character and the ark as a whole before it's finished on top of being largely negative i also got so so much stuff wrong so once i realized all of this i made a promise to myself that i wouldn't talk about the moral arc until it finished up completely and while i was waiting in silence you guys sent me thousands and i mean thousands of messages asking me to make a video on it to rectify my mistakes and to own up to them and so with this video i'm not going to do just that today i'm going to write to you all about why this is for me at this moment in time the best dragon ball super arc in the entire series today i'm reviewing the very first manga original story entitled the morrow arc [Music] this year has been a roller coaster when it comes to content with me exploring a brand new story in one piece and as a result it's been literally seven months since i've released or made anything dragon ball related so i thought what better way to end the year than by returning to my roots in reviewing the latest from the world of dragon ball and this one's rather special the arc itself started in november of 2018 and to be perfectly honest by the time this one rolled around i was sort of apprehensive to say the least toyotaro's tournament of power didn't exactly set my world on fire and with this new arc to have the slate wiped completely clean once again with another story out of nowhere with a little connection to the prior i was really starting to feel tired of the product overall and thus were the feelings surrounding my time with the manga for the months and chapters that trickled on into 2019 and ultimately 2020 until i arrived today with this video for you to say that this story is honestly way way better than i thought it was and easily my favorite in dragon ball super's catalog and what's more is that it actually boasts a pretty simple story goku and vegeta get recruited by the galactic patrol to stop some bad guys we're introduced to the galactic patrol prison where all the worst people in the universe are kept except for frieza it's here we also are introduced tomorrow and after escaping from prison he defeats goku and vegeta on namek forcing them to do their own independent training while he becomes a more powerful younger fighter culminating in a massive battle on earth and with earth i swear it'll make sense later until finally goku and vegeta alongside the combined efforts of the planet's inhabitants overpower and defeat moro for good it's a simple story and honestly has some surprisingly good execution when you go back over it and read it all at once peppered throughout there's plenty of interesting choices that honestly remedied many of the transgressions of the prior story arcs that more than anything else made this a joy to read through in comparison this manga by toyotaro has been in serialization since 2015 releasing one chapter every month since however starting with battle of gods through universe 6 goku black and even the tournament of power akira toriyama has written the story for the series and a successor for lack of a better term has assumed the responsibility of bringing toriyama's vision to life in the illustration department and his name is toyotaro i've spoken about him in a number of different videos and if you're interested you can check them out too but to be brief going into this new act over two years ago i was extremely nervous for what was to come not just because i had tremendous issues with toyotaro's illustrations in the past but also because the production of this arc would be unlike anything we've received in the past it would be the first story in dragon ball super with the most direct involvement from toyotaro and while the story had some minor issues here and there i sincerely think this is the best story in dragon ball super so without delaying it any further let's start at the very beginning and break down what i thought of it the introduction the intro to this arc isn't particularly flashy but one aspect i did think it nailed is its build up to the character of moro starting with a cold open to recruit the likes of vegeta and goku by the new addition to the cast of this arc in maris we as viewers get to see flashbacks to 10 million years ago with the likes of the lord of lords battling with moro along with introducing us to the expanded world of the galactic patrol in terms of world building i loved this aspect of these introductory chapters as they further expand the scope of universe itself the new dynamics and explorations through the ranks and day-to-day tasks of the galactic patrol made for scenes i was quite excited to see more of specifically those concerning jocko because while reading one piece over the last year i also took the time to blitz through jaco's manga and if you haven't seen it it's honestly a delight it's one of the more recent works from akira toriyama from a paneling and illustration point of view too and thanks to that short story i was able to really enjoy jocko a lot more as a character in this tale when i revisited it for this video specifically and speaking of characters a criticism i had right up until the death of maris in the manga was that i really didn't feel connected to him as a character however now having gone back over everything i can happily say that i was wrong not only does he get characterized with this interesting air of mystery surrounding his person early on but he is all over this story from the very first chapter he is the inciting incident that sparks the activities and introduces the heroes to the rest of the main story's world but more on mirrors a little later needless to say it's time to dive into some of the major conflicts of the arc as we follow moro having escaped from prison with his eyes set on namek the nanix section one of my larger criticisms of this series has been their implementation of the other characters like piccolo or perhaps more obviously vegeta it feels to me at least that after having gone through all of super toei akira toriyama and toyotaro never really knew what to do with vegeta's character itself forcing him to relive these same tired routines we've seen plenty of in the original series in one respect i can understand why from the very moment vegeta was introduced up until the very end of the series in dragon ball z he was designed to fulfill a very specific purpose to undergo a change arc to cause conflict and tension within the story as a result of that growth and to be honest he was incredibly effective in that role as someone who their favorite characters are from dragon ball z and i'd wager a sizeable chunk of folks will choose vegeta very very early on and it's easy to see why but now that his character's initial purpose for lack of a better term has been satisfied what now well the obvious answer would be to give him a new goal but that's easier said than done you can't just give him anything to do it needs to be rooted in his character or more specifically his history otherwise it runs the risk of feeling extremely artificial and that's the last thing you want with a character that feels so real so at the very least i can empathize with the struggles of the writing staff at toy and akira toriyama at large they've clearly been dealing with a lot however thankfully this arc changed all of that and not only gave vegeta a brand new experience for us to see him deal with but it was also rooted in his character's history we've been there for all of vegeta's transgressions after the events of the saiyan saga we know everything he got up to during that time period on namek and thereafter and so was now revisiting namek for the very first time since becoming a more complete character we not only see vegeta feel shame for having committed the things he's done not only act in a positive way to enact change but to also without flinching accept and own up to his past acknowledging that it's something he needs to atone for leading to some of the most compelling motivations in all of dragon ball super that i've seen culminating in him diving in before goku to save a small namekian boy called esca we've seen the character of vegeta accept love into his life before to accept friendship and to fight for those people time and time again it doesn't need to be brought to the forefront like a pivotal moment for his character anymore he's grown past it and in this moral arc this scene with vegeta interacting with the surviving namekians fighting on behalf of them and losing really felt like something that was destined to take place in the original series nothing about it felt artificial it's easily one of my favorite aspects of the story with these specific motivating factors being informed by the past and influencing the path vegeta takes in this story this desire to pay this debt he owes to this people this noble act to him is the very trait that leads him down the road to train with the ardradians later on on their behalf this new maturity specifically makes him not only a stronger person mentally but physically as we soon will find out it's also during this sequence we learn more about moro as a character but more specifically how he fights and boy did this impress me in a major way ignoring the fact that his magic is visually stunning and unlike anything you've seen from dragon ball in the past morrow's set of powers is the perfect remedy to one of the biggest issues i had with dragon ball and maybe even shonen at large what i am specifically talking about is something called power creep you see eventually after the frieza saga the strength of the characters started to leave the realms of imagination and onto stages that literally encompass the worlds of god's fighting every subsequent challenge met by goku and the gang as a result needed to be met by stronger and more imposing villains than they last encountered in order for it to be worthwhile it's one of the weakest aspects of long running shonen if it's not planned in advance it can seem contrived that there's always someone randomly stronger to fight against and that can get tiring as it usually results in goku needing to punch him hard to fix it which this moral arc has a lot of but what makes it different is that unlike the prior arcs where goku vegeta's strength make it remarkably unbelievable that they could ever find someone to challenge their godly powers it's that very energy that strength they've cultivated to make morrow so dangerous because just by being around him he absorbs their strength turning what was a glaring weakness of the series into a strength for the villain and i thought that was brilliant leaving goku and vegeta totally and completely drained of energy on their first outing on the verge of death leaving more to wreak havoc on the rest of the namekian people as they recover building him up as this imposing monster of a foe complete with a fresh new design unlike anything in the series no transformations here folks just tons of visual indicators that this eater of worlds moro is reaching a new level of strength with each passing second forcing goku and vegeta to retreat they lost and now they need to do something about it the training arc having spent most of this year covering a story that didn't have a focus on training in general i sincerely found it refreshing watching goku and vegeta lick their wounds after the events of namek and go on their own separate ways to train for me these trainiacs while offering some nice training sequences demonstrate the growth of each character i think by far and away the most interesting of these has to be vegeta's training on yardrat on top of visiting a location we've only ever heard of in the original series seeing the place felt equal parts new and nostalgic like it really belonged there which is not something i can save for everything in dragon ball super these days while this training is taking place however another parallel storyline concerning morrow and a secret wish arises and this becomes the talk of the online community for months you see in the closing moments of the namek section morrow manages to get his hands on not only all of the dragon balls but he manages to get his wishes for said balls on namek this personally i thought was exceptionally interesting as to my recollection i hadn't ever seen a scene like this before in the series and what's more is toyotaro decided to dangle moro's final wish like a carrot in front of us by keeping it secret twitter instagram reddit and youtube were set ablaze theories were firing left right and center it was so cool watching the fandom speculate over something so vigorously regarding dragon ball i mean the possibilities seem endless and then it was revealed that the surprise was well he wished for the prisoners to be released from the galactic prison whoa some fodder for the secondary characters or at least that's what i thought and just like that all these months of speculation went down the drain it was disappointing why are you the way that you are but you know what's funny going back over this arc all at once this didn't bother me nearly as much which brought something interesting to my attention this story is remarkably simple but it felt really long at 25 chapters if you include the ending chapter of the universe survival arc featuring miris despite being the fifth story are covered in the dragon ball super manga it accounts for over 37 of the total chapters in all of the series now that's not to say 25 chapters itself is long i mean please i've read about a thousand chapters of one piece this year but what made this story feel long and at times strange to follow was its release and production schedule you see with the classic dragon ball manga by akira toriyama in the 80s and 90s readers in japan got to experience the story not once a month but every single week with the chapters being shorter the story as a result had to be structured such that every 11 or so pages there would be a cliffhanger to end that week's release chapter this is in part why i believe dragon ball z was so infectious and so well paced in the manga uh he's not the anime a chapter would be released every single week creating routine and for those binging it every 11 pages there will be something to encourage them to read on if you've ever held a dragon ball manga in your hand you'll know exactly what i'm talking about open a random page and you'll get sucked in immediately the thing's infectious so what does this have to do with the moral arc of super well in classic dragon ball 25 chapters would usually translate to about five and a half months worth of content in super it translated to over two years and when you get a cliffhanger once every month if the particular chapter is uneventful which some of them genuinely are it makes it so easy to forget about this series and the specific events therein if something bugs you about this story you now have a month to be bothered by it whereas had it a more regular release scheduled the weaker chapters wouldn't hang around very long anyway speaking from my own personal experience there have been months where i genuinely forgot the manga was being released had i not had twitter for you guys to remind me i legitimately would have been months behind at this point it's a small criticism and maybe i'm nitpicking but from a scheduled release standpoint i sincerely don't believe enough story gets covered in the manga month to month to warrant this sort of release schedule comparing it to series like attack on titan that releases monthly also the difference in how much story is covered per monthly chapter is honestly staggering and so given all of that my first negative critique of this arc actually has nothing to do with the story but in fact it's serialization release schedule and as a result that one secret wish morro made while it was a blip in the overall story being told it was at the forefront of fans minds for literally months allowing them to build false anticipation had this been released weekly like the classic dragon ball audience expectations could have been managed much much more efficiently and going back over this series this moment comes and goes so fast it honestly doesn't even feel like it's worth talking about but i digress [Music] i want to thank surfsharkvpn for sponsoring today's video in the ocean of online content there's a lot of websites that take your info without you even knowing it but you can swim under their radar using surfsharkvpn with this particular service you can stop websites from tracking 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risk to even try it out for yourself so if this service sounds interesting to you or you want to support the channel please check it out now back to the video it's the green let that child along when it came to this section of the story something that immediately stood out to me while i was reading month to month was that finally we were getting multiple points of view rather than following the same isolated linear path for the entire tale if you cast your minds back to the namic and frieza sagas of dragon ball z for example the point of view wouldn't stay on gohan and krillin ducking and dodging the frieza force the entire time we got goku training king kai's planet vegeta's perspective and not to mention frieza's among many others dotted throughout this is something that adds richness to the world and most importantly keeps pivotal plot points interesting if you spend too much time somewhere then it starts to get boring this was something super struggled a lot with in my opinion but this arc breaks that trend and successfully establishes and utilizes multiple different scenes running parallel to one another we got goku training with marist that while brief at least establishes a nice relationship between the two we have vegeta training on yardrat attempting to cast his pride to the side to repay a debt in learning a new strange technique this scene in particular acts as a mystery box for earth and in addition to those two scenes we have the point of view of the gods with whis beerus and the grand priests but perhaps most compelling of all we have a massive conflict brewing down on earth as morrow begins to move in with his henchmen the battle for earth it's at this point in the story my excitement was honestly building quite substantially i recognized how interesting maura was as a character in helping remedy the power creep issue and i also noticed the concurrent storylines running all together knowing full well that they would all converge on the battle for earth eventually i was really excited to see how things would unfold as the two strongest in the universe vegeta and goku eventually finish up their training and make their respective saves but the question was to me at least between goku and vegeta who would make this save on who and to my surprise as the z fighters were defending the earth goku arrives first leading myself and many others to be excited in seeing vegeta eventually making the save on goku this was again something we weren't too used to seeing from vegeta and to say we were all anticipating it was an understatement once again this was a situation where the entire community was talking about it finally goku would be saved by vegeta prior to this much of the time on earth had been spent with the likes of gohan piccolo and the androids as they overcome the interesting and bizarre henchmen of moro establishing for us a pecking order and the means with which moro has been harvesting energy across the universe however once they realize that they vastly underestimated the forces of earth more and more fighters start to pour in leading to them eventually being overwhelmed until goku shows up to save the day and save the day he most certainly does taking out the individuals that have been causing the most trouble quickly eventually coming face to face with the goat man himself moro for me the interest behind this particular fight stemmed from the prior battle where goku was well i mean he was dominated on top of that we know full well that moro has become even more powerful since but perhaps at the forefront of everyone's minds at this point would be the fact that goku has been training with maris who has revealed himself to be an angel in training and together their training consisted of maris trying to acclimatize goku to use ultra instinct on command and while they found some success the form was still unrefined only managing to reach ultra instinct's sign however now he can control it so that's something at least looking more abstractly for a second there are a variety of elements that make up this story taken from various parts of the original dragon ball storyline morrow's search for power and youth bears striking similarities to king piccolo's saga the dynamic this ultra instinct sign introduces in this specific battle is very similar to that of the kaioken technique used during the frieza saga goku isn't going all out at first but even after he does it's still not enough and all the while it drains him off his energy and stamina and perhaps my favorite similarity of this story comes by way of a role reversal which in all honesty is fitting considering this journey vegeta has specifically undergone in this arc after having spent quite some time training alongside the likes of the ardradians vegeta arrives using a signature technique of his rival at the last second to make the save on a downed goku after his initial fight with moro and it's thematically fitting too this arc has made it its mission to drive home the fact that vegeta is a different person now and regrets having committed the atrocities he did on namek way back when those events and choices he made on namic led him to where he was before frieza beaten defeated and crying all the while goku shows up to make the save at the very last second however now things are different armed with a new technique and a virtuous motivation vegeta has not only told us through context clues and dialogue but in a very real way has shown us by reversing his position in this very instance he is no longer the one being saved he is the one that arrives to save the day this is one of my favorite moments not just in this arc but honestly the series it's a great moment for vegeta unfortunately this greatness is short-lived as it's quickly followed by some of the most ham-fisted dialogue i've ever seen in dragon ball there's this sequence where piccolo turns into a youtube video essay channel and begins deconstructing the character telling us what he means to people and what he's done for them within the confines of a story this doesn't need to be spelled out to the audience something like this feels right when it's unspoken but when it's spoken it feels like he's winking at the camera everyone knows what he means to the rest of the cast and so should goku but in this scene stupid super goku makes his return and blissfully nods along before acknowledging that he has no idea what piccolo was even talking about in addition to that piccolo also makes note that vegeta isn't one to underestimate his opponent why are you the way that you are this in addition to a couple of other minor plot contrivances make up the low point of this arc for me if this arc ever gets adapted into an anime please for the love of all that is holy please remove these ridiculous sections sidestepping those bad bits for now let's talk visuals because there are some genuine improvements from the older arcs now as many of you know i have not been the biggest fan of toyotaro's paneling i think oftentimes he relies too much on large numbers of panels too many speed lines and takes an approach to depicting his stories that more closely resembles a storyboard for an anime than an actual manga making full use of its medium and despite much of what i've just spoken about being present in the latest material i am not afraid to say that i've seen some marked improvements that i enjoyed too from some really wonderful full and double page spreads a less cluttered approach to his paneling in places and an abundance of gestural drawings for the various characters in battle oh my god let's go it really helped to bring this story to life for me and in ways prior arcs under his control had not in other words from a visual point of view this manga is trending up in a direction i think is favorable for the series at large and that makes me happy oddly enough however while i appreciate the significance that this new move vegeta brings to the table from a lore standpoint i think visually it looks extremely unimpressive this normally wouldn't bother me too much but we're talking about dragon ball here the show that popularized the kamehameha mesenko kamehameha and countless other important and visually interesting techniques however force spirit fission as it's called really looks boring which honestly i think is a shame this move i can see being a massively important component to later arcs in the series too so it sucks that it's not cool to look at at least not for me and finally an aspect i really didn't like from a visual standpoint was the final powerful form moro takes in response to vegeta and goku's efforts on him having sealed away his power in another interesting being called 7-3 moro literally eats him regains all his lost power that was taken by vegeta's four-spirit vision and he just looks like a weird version of cell now while i didn't think the goat form of moro looked particularly dragon ball i at least thought it looked distinct in that form morrow had his own identity but this version of him just looks like that homework you copied from a friend right before class started you know what i'm talking about you change it just enough so that it doesn't look like you completely copied the guy so yeah visually i'm not a huge fan of this but despite this however what this means in terms of the narrative is clear morrow is back to full power and vegeta and goku are spent forcing maris to break the rules of the angels helping in an effort against moro damaging him prominently before vanishing completely into thin air the character of maris is honestly one i adored in this story the idea of an immortal being an angel in training grappling with the morality and ethics of his individual situation not knowing whether or not what he has been told to do is just forced to make this difficult decision he chooses to do what he perceives to be the right thing despite death being the consequence it's a touching moment and one that is made much more powerful if you go back and read it all in one go month to month i totally forgot so much about maris as a character and when i went back the second time it was so so much better i might sound also like i'm harping on about different character moments here and there but honestly this arc is filled with them immediately after this goku rallies himself from the ground fueled with motivation after maris passes on and has a really nice interaction right before his fight with moro as he speaks with jocko asking him why he joined the galactic patrol and it's quiet moments like these that really added so much more flavor and texture to the story again something that the other acts of super lacked in my opinion what follows this however is a really nice beat down at the hands of goku wielding the full power of ultra instinct once again there's some really nice artwork on display and in addition to there being some interesting back and forth including an unfortunate cell saga callback regarding a senso bean and a downed morrow the best part of the final act for me is the cooperation between vegeta and goku there's some crazy stuff like moro turning into the earth and goku attaining the avatar state which okay i get it sounds like it's coming out of nowhere and it's kind of silly and okay it's kind of silly but it definitely doesn't come out of nowhere this is actually a really subtle callback to something that happened way back towards the beginning of the arc itself by the arduino elder in this brief section he discusses how it's a link or harmony between your body and spirit and if that's not enough during that very section too he fooled vegeta into thinking himself to be massive when in actuality he's not and given that ultra instinct satisfied all of those parameters it stands to reason that goku would be able to use it too specifically because he must have been made aware of the technique as he already spent a lot of time on yard drag and so something that was thought to be silly actually turns out to be a really nice callback that completely took me by surprise so much so that i actually completely forgot about it when i was reading month to month but again when i was reading it straight forward start to finish binging it it made so much more sense culminating with vegeta helping goku form a spirit bomb fueled by the most unlikely of characters adding even further build up to a moment we all know is coming in the future with boob overall loved this decision personally the last chapter the last chapter of the morrow arc provided for me something i've been waiting for since the original dragon ball story ended after the buu saga something that the super series has been sorely lacking has been finally addressed a cohesiveness that was present in all of the original material that allowed it to feel like one massive story rather than individual smaller segmented ones is now present in super in some regard you see in z raditz flowed naturally into the vegeta fight which flowed again actually into the frieza fight and so on in super the battle of god's story has nothing to do with the resurrection f material which has nothing to do with universe 6 stuff and for the future trunks saga there has been a massive void from the storytelling department present since the series rebirth back in 2015 and now for the first time in the revamp i can say categorically that this one flows into the next story making it instantly more interesting in ways that i can't even begin to comprehend alone in this one paragraph there's even a scene that gives actual consequences to the actions of the prior chapters miros gave himself up and in the process vanished a quick fix for this usually would have been the dragon balls or for the gods fixing this and while he is brought back he lost his angel abilities and is now mortal that's a large consequence for that character and while not massive compared to the other stories it is at least for dragon ball significant i am more than ready to launch into this next story of the dragon ball series with toyotaro at the helm now and i'm excited to see this new wonderful character being introduced this granola character sports a really nice design i love the hair and the artificial body attachments and beyond anything else i love that he has a vested interest in the recovery of 7-3 after his battle on earth it's connected it makes sense and it's compelling it's all very exciting and i'm so interested to see what more is to come and despite coming away from certain chapters disliking what i perceive to be cheap callbacks and unoriginal takes on a tenuous story at best upon rereading the ark for the sake of this video i was so surprised to see how little those negative nuggets mattered when i could immediately venture forth onto the next chapter taking instances like morrow looking to get young again feeling like king piccolo or goku giving moro a sense of being feeling like the cell games when i finished reading this story i was able to put those isolated instances to the side and enjoy the story for what it was last year i wrote a review i am honestly embarrassed by and i hope that this review at least helps to write that wrong the moral arc while there are hiccups here and there is easily the best arc pinned by toyotaro to date implementing narrative choices i've been waiting literal years for and now that we've gotten a glimpse of this new strikingly modern toriyama design for granola it's clear to see that dragon ball super has potentially a very bright future ahead of it if they can keep the standard up beyond the currently discussed stories i love dragon ball i always will and i can't wait to see what the series has to offer in the future but until then i've been totally not mark i'll see you all in the new year and thank you all so much for watching [Music] hmm you

Channel: Totally Not Mark

Views: 921,383

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Id: Mb6skhi6mFo

Length: 30min 8sec (1808 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 31 2020