Dragon Ball Super — Episode 87 Review

Slight spoilers may be talked about below, so please be sure to watch the latest episode before reading on! This review is based off of the dub version of Super that currently airs on Toonami.

Episode 87 picks up right where we left off with Android 17 refusing Goku’s offer to join the Universe 7 team in the Tournament Of Power, all the while Space Poachers are fast approaching earth and as luck would have it the same island that Goku and 17 are on. So lets get right to it and go in-depth with a recap!

We open up with Goku trying to bribe 17 with the prospects that if 17 wins, he can use the Super Dragon Ball to make any wish he wants. Goku even went so far as to say that these aren’t ordinary Dragon Balls and instead they’re the size of planets. But 17 saw right through this bribe and didn’t accept the offer to join the team at all. But midway through their talk, the Space Poachers finally appear in their ship and start abducting all of the animals on the island. Goku and 17 fly to the ship, but the Poachers start speeding away. Goku, with 17, instead Instant Transmission into the cargo room of the ship and see all of the exotic wildlife captured around the universe.

We take a brief little story detour and see what Krillian and 18 are up too. They’re back home with Krillian sensing Goku and 17’s energy leaving the planet somehow — unaware that they’re on a space ship at the moment that’s leaving orbit. 18 is worried that both Goku and 17 are too similar and immature.

Back on the ship 17 and Goku triggered an alarm and armored Space Poachers start filing into the cargo room. 17 tells Goku not to go all out and endanger the animals, so they use their fists to punch their way through the room full of armored Space Poachers. Eventually 17 leaves Goku alone to deal with the last two Space Poachers and heads to the command room where the head Space Poacher is at, basking in finally capturing the elusive purple minotaur/bull-like animal that we saw previously in Episode 86.

The head poacher summons more armored poachers to attack 17 but he makes short work of them and then dodges a few more hits from the head poacher, with 17 finally kicking him into one of the windows and cracking them. Around this point, Goku finally catches up with 17 and they’re about to stop the head poacher, but he pulls out a bomb trigger threading to blow up the whole ship and all the animals on it if they do anything. We cut to a commercial break at this point.

We come back from the break and the head poacher actually hits the trigger and blows up the ship with Goku screaming!… Well that is it was just a dream that Beerus had back on earth at Bulma’s house, waking up and startling Bulla. The stress of the Tournament of Power looming is getting under the skin of the God Of Destruction causing him to freak out even more. However he’s somewhat right that something is up with Goku and he’s dealing with space poachers.

Back on the actual space ship, the head poacher is still threatening Goku and 17. He goes on and on and on about things, like the bomb being implanted into him, but 17 doesn’t say a single word until a minute or two later. He tells Goku to take care of his family and to watch over the island for him, then he suddenly charges after the head poacher and tackles him through the crack glass out into the vacuum of space. They go tumbling into the cosmos, as Goku gets pulled to the opening. Goku then uses Instant Transmission once more to warp out and grab both 17 and the poacher. They instantly transport to King Kai’s planet, startling the dead Kai.

King Kai then ask what the hell Goku and 17 are doing on his planet with the poacher, with Goku saying that he has a bomb on him and that this was the only place he could think of — mimicking the time that Cell blew up King Kai’s small otherworldly planet in Dragon Ball Z. But as luck would have it, Dende reaches out to Goku telepathically and says that the head poacher doesn’t have a bomb at all on him and he’s bluffing. 17 then forces the poacher to press the trigger and as luck would have it, it was nothing but party streamers coming out of his nose. Goku then wonders why and the poacher says he was going to a birthday party after abducting the animals.

With the day won, Goku and 17 with the help of Jaco, return the animals back to the island on earth while Jaco takes all of the poachers up to Galatic Patrol. Turns out that Jaco was actually looking for this Space Poachers, but they moved so fast that he never had a chance to find them. Jaco then says that he’ll take all the credit for this catch and not mention a thing about Goku and 17 to his superiors as he flies off. 17 then at the very end of the episode, finally agrees to join Goku’s Universe 7 team with the hope that he can get a boat for himself and his family, so they can finally travel the world together.

I didn’t like this episode as much as I liked the previous one. Last week’s episode was better due to the fact that Goku and 17 did go all out against each other when sparring. This episode however felt too much like filler and was easily resolved by Dende’s interference. It’s weird that Dende was able to sense the bomb being a dud and not King Kai himself, who is technically more stronger at sensing things. The whole situation with the Space Poachers themselves felt laughably bad as well, and I wouldn’t be surprised that when a Dragon Ball Super Kai revision is made, this episode will be cut and instead of 17 not joint Goku in Episode 86, he’ll say yes instead instantly.

The other thing that bothering me was Goku using his Instant Transmission move to travel, it’s like he forgot all about it while flying to Dende’s yet he can easily pull it off not just to get to King Kai’s planet but also somehow warp inside a fast moving space ship he’s never seen before. Ah, plot holes! Hopefully next week’s episode is more back to basics with Gohan taking on Piccolo in their own unique sparing match, but we’ll see.