'Dragon Ball Super' episode 70: 'Champa's Challenge! This Time We Fight With Baseball!'

To say that this episode was an improvement over last week's really isn't saying much.  After that debacle, this entry really had nowhere to go but up.  Thankfully, this aims a bit higher than "doesn't suck".

The plot hook is simple enough, Champa challenges Beerus to a game of baseball under the pretense of fostering a friendship between universes.  True to form, he has his own agenda, eat some of universe 7's delicious food.

The fact that neither the gods nor the players really understand how the game works makes for an unusual choice, but seeing as the end result is comedy, it works rather well.

Putting Goten and Vegeta on universe 6's team seemed odd at first, but it evens the player numbers and does allow some rivalries to be played with.  Goku and Vegeta is a natural one, but Vegeta's feud with Yamcha is also brought up.  Goten and Trunks also engage in some playful trash talk, but they don't really get a chance to face off the way others do.

Yamcha's role is an interesting dichotomy.  On the one hand, the episode actually does give him chances to shine.  We see that he's a very competent pitcher and he is also given the glory of scoring the winning run.  However, the episode also seems to be well aware of how the character is viewed and uses other characters to voice said opinion.  He also gets beaten up quite a bit as a result of the ensuing antics.  It's played for laughs, and succeeds on that front, but you can't help but feel bad for the guy.

If anything hurt this episode, it was the run time.  It only has 20 minutes, and thus, can only do so much.  I get why the writers didn't want to try to pitch this (ha) as a 2 or three part story arc, but at the same time, I wouldn't mind seeing it turned into a 70 minute movie.  It would give more room to play and give characters more time to do things.  A lot of characters just kind of hang around and it would have been nice to see them get a crack at participating to a greater extent.

Also, minor nitpick, but for all the squabbling, at no point does a character kick sand onto another person's shoes and pants.  That's a baseball staple.  I could have easily seen Yamcha doing that to Vegeta; or maybe have Champa and Beerus start doing that before their argument escalates into the potentially universe destroying fist fight that we see.

There are missed opportunities, but this was still funny and entertaining fare.  I enjoyed this a lot more than I did the Arale fiasco.

Next episode, the new story arc begins in earnest as somebody wants Goku dead and has hired a familiar assassin to carry out the...hit.

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