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.
With only eight hours away from the start of the Tournament of Power, can Goku recruit the final two members of his team in time? And what about Cabba and his situation in Universe 8? And lastly, who is this mysterious female character that’s out for revenge on Tien?.. Enough expository questions that make me sound like the Dragon Ball Super narrator, lets get right on into that review!
So Episode 89, outside of two key moments, is mostly just filler focusing on Tien’s martial arts school that gets under attack from a mysterious girl of Tien’s past, Yurien. Yurien, while having revenge on her mind, also has to deal with Master Roshi and well his horny ways. Yeah, I know, it’s 2018 and we still have character moments like this, sigh..
Photo Source: Funimation/Toei Animation/Cartoon Network
Anyways, Episode 89 picks up actually concurrently with what happened in last week’s episode between Gohan and Piccolo. It turns out that during that time, Goku flew over to Master Roshi’s island and found out from Oolong that Goku’s old master was over at Tien’s new martial arts school. So after getting the directions from his pig friend, Goku flies off to find the two martial artists. This the cuts to Tien’s school, located in a remote mountain village. Here he’s teaching his students the ways of channeling their ki like the way Goku and the others do it, but to no luck. His students aren’t able to achieve it and Tien instead tells them to take five. It’s at this moment that the mysterious, Yurien shows up wanting to train under Tien. But Tien refuses, which then causes Master Roshi to but in over Yurien, who basically takes her for himself and carries her away.
Photo Source: Funimation/Toei Animation/Cartoon Network
At this time, Goku finally shows up and him and Tien start to talk about how strong Tien is, the tournament of power and the fact that he open up a martial arts school. They head inside and talk it over with some tea. Elsewhere, Roshi has Yurien change her clothes into a revealing ninja outfit and then gets all creepy, touchy and grabby with her. She want’s none of it and instantly resists him, but then Roshi somehow unties her top off. I know, cringe. This sends him flying through the wall as Yurien heads outside to collect herself. She eventually runs into a few of Tien’s students and gets the perfect moment to act out her revenge on Tien!
Photo Source: Funimation/Toei Animation/Cartoon Network
As Goku and Tien are drinking tea, Goku tries to convince Tien about how if they win the tournament of power they’ll get over ten million zeni. But Tien doesn’t want that at all, being that he’s a noble monk who doesn’t care about materialistic things. However, their conversation is cut short when there’s a massive commotion happening outside. Apparently all of his students have turned into zombies and started attack the village nearby. And by zombies, I mean more of the asian-style zombies that either float or jump to get to where they need to go due to a spell and not the western style shambling corpse ones due to a virus. We cut to a commercial break here.
Photo Source: Funimation/Toei Animation/Cartoon Network
Once we’re back, we don’t pick up with Goku and others though. Instead we turn our attention to Universe 8 and see what Cabba was up to. He’s actually trying to persuade Caulifa to join him on the Universe 8’s team, but she doesn’t want nothing of it and even has a few of her gang members attack Cabba. Cabba on the other hand has the advantage and then turns into Super Sayian, saying that he’ll be able to teach her this new form if she joins him. She actually slightly aggress, due to wanting to know more about this new form.
Photo Source: Funimation/Toei Animation/Cartoon Network
We then cut back to Universe 7, as Tien, Goku, Master Roshi and even Chatzou show up in the village trying to assess the situation and find out that Yurien is blaming Tien for a past deed he did where he just left her as a child and didn’t bother to do something for her. Basically that girl has pettiness issues. So as Goku, Tien and Chatzou try to save the students by removing their tags on their faces — which causes the curses in the first place. Roshi on the other hand fights off with Yurien on the rooftops of the village, and Yurien is absolutely no match for Roshi. However Roshi’s weaknesses for pretty girls is his downfall as he catches a glimpse of Yurien’s panties and then get’s kicked in the balls for his prying eyes. This then leads to Yurien to turn Roshi into a zombie himself and orders him to attack Tien.
Photo Source: Funimation/Toei Animation/Cartoon Network
Student and Master duel for a bit, with Tien having to use four hands to stand a chance against Master Roshi, but he’s no match for his master at all and is easily beaten. This then causes Goku to step in and try to take on his master as well. Goku has a better luck against him and starts talking to Roshi, saying that he’s been hiding all this power for so long and that he’s wondering how his old master can even find the place and the time to train too. Eventually though, Goku decides to end the fight and flies up into the air to fire a Super Kamehameha at his possessed master.
Photo Source: Funimation/Toei Animation/Cartoon Network
This eventually knocks Roshi out and removes the curse tag on his forehead. At the same time, the students are also free of their curse tags. Leaving only Yurien alone on the rooftop as the whole village look up at her. Tien says that she should apologize, but she refuses and says that she’ll get stronger and come back for him. But then Tien gets the idea that she should just stay with him at his school and she can get as strong as she wants too! Yurien actually agrees with this and the episode ends with Tien and Roshi accepting Goku’s offer to join the Universe 7’s team for the Tournament Of Power.
Photo Source: Funimation/Toei Animation/Cartoon Network
As you can see, this was pretty much a filler episode, unless Yurien makes a comeback in some later episode down the line. You can effectively remove the whole Yurien story from the episode and just focus more on an expanded Cabba/Calufia story, flushing them out and just left Goku ending up at Master Roshi’s house where both Roshi and Tien would have join him. Sure we lose the fight between Roshi and Goku but bam, we get a better episode telling us more about Universe 8 alongside Cabba and Calufia!
Photo Source: Funimation/Toei Animation/Cartoon Network
The thing that made this episode be in bad taste was the whole Roshi lusting after Yurine substory. It’s creepy and doesn’t at all fit with how some of the world is in 2018. For a western audience, this was extremely cringe. Hopefully this is the last time something like that happens in Dragon Ball Super as we finally, I repeat FINALLY arrived just hours away to the start of the Tournament Of Power saga. Next up we get the long awaited match between Father and Son. Yup, it’s Goku vs Gohan!.. Also, is Yamcha still just waiting in his room for Goku to show up and invite him to the team? Poor Yamcha.
