SSJ3 Goku vs Third Eye Gomah! Dragon Ball Daima Episode 17 Review!

Things are heating up for the final battle in the Daima Saga.

With the long-lost Third Eye, Gomah attains a new level of power as he grows larger and stronger than his shorter Napoleonic stature.

Dragon Ball Episode 17 is titled, “Gomah”

The episode begins with the Z Team meeting up with Arinsu and her Majin Buu copies, Duu and Kuu.

Arinsu offers to and is so adamant in winning that she is willing to destroy the Dragon Ball if they try to take it from her, almost as if she is immediately admitting defeat.

After 17 episodes of scheming for the role of Supreme Demon King, Arinsu’s plotting makes her no different from Degesu, who only revealed his own desire for power last episode and in an act of desperation by holding baby Dende hostage.

What’s interesting is after 10 episodes of following Glorio around, the team does not know he is working for Arinsu

We only have 3 episodes left and there is no traitor reveal in sight.

It feels like this show has zero drama and it is only for the G-rated action, with minimal blood and zero deaths at all.

The fight between Goku and Duu definitely does hit the right beats.

Luffy’s Gomu Gomu no Mi powers in a more durable body sound fascinating on paper and we see that Goku really cannot penetrate through Kuu’s hide.

Although Duu lacks Buu’s diverse power set, such as turning people into food, his Body Manipulation and Mimicry are great assets in battle and can withstand the pressure-based attacks Goku and the rest are more able to deliver.

If only they brought a swordsman that could pierce through a rubber man.

However, one critique I might have for Duu’s powers is that they lack Luffy’s greatest strength: his creativity.

Yes, we cannot blame him since he was literally born yesterday and Luffy is a genius compared to him.

However, having won against a Tamagami and mimicking its Ki blasts, Duu should be able to add new tricks, especially against Super Saiyan Goku.

Either way, this fight ended in a draw and it felt like mini-Goku, even in Super Saiyan form, was close to a limit here unless it becomes a battle of endurance, in which case the more lazy and laidback Duu would either get tired faster or evolve into a more fearsome being.

Gomah interrupts the show with a spectacular entrance and we do see something more creative than a one-trick pony.

Gomah was mostly a joke villain for most of the show but he proves that impression completely wrong in his current form.

Sure, he has Jiren’s costume but he is performing quite well throughout the episode.

While we never get to see what base Gomah was capable of, at least Third Eye Gomah was able to pull off some feats by gathering the floating rocks around the First World and reconstruct it into a massive arena of spikes for a battlefield.

Every aspect of this floating island was built for Gomah to flex his magic, which seems to revolve around telekinesis as he moves the ground around and molds them to any shape, including spikes.

Gomah’s size, durability, and ki output are already leagues above not just both Vegeta and Goku but the entire team, including the First World Tamagami.

It is his magic, empowered by the Third Eye, that allows him to gain the physical power and greater flexibility of magic to both tank his foes and overwhelm them all at once.

Bro was aura farming the entire episode so let us hope his inevitable defeat looks awesome.

And the last three minutes gave us some of the best animation the show has already displayed.

Even the creation of the arena featured some good 3D animation and camera work, which would remind some fans of the recent Bleach: Thousand Year Blood War adaptation.

A rare thing for Goku, who always goes to fight one-on-one, is to let everyone join in and it seems that even Goku knows, at his current state at least, Gomah cannot be defeated alone.

Neva compels the Tamagami to join and even Arinsu was left out of the entire plot and forced to ally with her supposed pawns, which makes her villainy look too silly, unless that was the intent.

We see everyone plow through the spikes and attack Gomah as if he was some final RPG boss and Gomah even pulls off some great martial arts, which does signify that even without the eye, he does have the fighting skills to be a real threat, maybe even more than Arinsu or Degesu ever could.

We even see Goku, Vegeta, Piccolo, Shin, Glorio and the Tamagami fire their respective ki blasts all at once against Gomah and when they reach him, it seems so slow that they would hurt him but you then see his shock turn into a very slow smile as he absorbs every hit and blasts it against them, leaving everyone overwhelmed.

We get an illustration of Supreme Demon King Abura, Dabura’s predecessor, with the Third Eye looming over the Daima realm and we finally have a full idea of what the realm looks like.

It seems to work like the layers of the Earth, with the three Demon Worlds are nested one inside the other, like the layers of the Earth’s crust and mantle.

This is such a great reveal in its own right at least.

And the episode ends with Goku activating his Super Saiyan 3 form for the first time in his mini body and it is basically a chibi version of that ability but without losing the badassery.

Vegeta was the first to activate Super Saiyan 3 in Episode 12: “True Strength”, using it to defeat the Second World Tamagami.

So will Goku’s SSJ3 form prove that turning them into kids was pointless plot-wise?

As amazing as the episode’s action was, especially the tag-team with all the characters, the first half’s plot feels utterly disappointing.

This seems to be a recurring problem for Daima’s writing, especially after all the juicy lore reveals and good exploration moments that happened outside the main plot of finding the Daima Dragon Balls and rescuing Dende.

However, we once again see Toei Animation’s spectacular production on display as there is a greater sense of scale as we move through the whole battle like an immersive video game and I think that is the best way to get the most out of Daima.

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