With Gohan's training reaching its end, it's time for Gohan to test his mettle against his old man to see how his magical powers fare against the powers of the gods.
It starts off as a 2 on 2 battle with Tien and Piccolo teaming with Goku and Gohan respectively. Sadly, not much is done with this as Tien is unable to do much against the Saiyans and while Piccolo uses one powerful attack (which he spends most of the match charging up,) it doesn't end up doing much in the grand scheme of things. Goku does say he barely held it off, so it could come in handy in the tournament, but it wasn't quite the game changer Piccolo might have hoped it was.
I'm torn on Tien. On the one hand, it would have been nice to see him get a better showing. On the other, the show has been criticized recently for suddenly powering everybody up so that they can keep up with Goku and Vegeta. Having one character who didn't get such a boost is a little refreshing to see in its own weird way. Then again, he's been training this whole time, so you'd think that even if he ultimately lost that he'd fare better than Krillin did. Hopefully, he's able to contribute more effectively come tournament time.
When the sparring match ends up destroying the makeshift ring, Tien and Piccolo bow out, but Goku and Gohan decide to continue the fight one on one, as Gohan wants to test his full strength against his dad's.
Gohan's full mystic power is able to fare pretty well against Goku in his super saiyan 2 form. It's a pretty even draw, but once Goku brings out the blue/kaioken form, the fight is ended quite promptly. Judging by the look on his face, Goku is still impressed. The two do have some nice bonding moments peppered throughout the episode.
Goku does note the oddity of Gohan not going super saiyan, but Gohan responds by saying that he wants to explore the mystic power and see what heights to which that can bring him. It does give him something unique that helps him stand out from all of the other super saiyans on the show. I still feel like blending the two is the way to go, though.
Much like with many of the preceding episodes, this one takes a detour to another universe, this time to universe 10. It turns out that Gowasu is having trouble coming up with ideas for contestants. After the whole Zamasu debacle, he doesn't really trust his judgment.
Thankfully, Rumshii (universe 10's pink elephant god of destruction) has taken care of the matter. We're only given the name of the team leader, Murichim. The rest remain cloaked. Going by dialogue, it seems like Rumshii put his focus on brute strength. Thus, we can conclude that they are similar to their leader in build and personality. It makes you wonder how far they're going to make it in the more tactics focused fight.
Sadly, this episode didn't do it for me. It really put all of its eggs in the Goku vs Gohan basket. The fight was well animated and well edited, but it never pulled me in the way previous fights had. The fact that there are no stakes probably hurt. On top of that, we have two Masako Nozawa voiced characters fighting, which means we have two of the same "atatatatatatatatatatat!!!" and "hhhhrrrraaaaahhhhh!!!" yells going at the same time. They do it a lot and it becomes grating really fast.
It would have been nice to see the 2 on 2 aspect played up more. It would have made for better tournament preparation (considering how important teamwork is going to be) and would have added some variety to the fight.
Next episode hints at a strategy session. That should be interesting to see. Granted, it'll be difficult, given that they don't know what they're up against, but seeing how the team partners up and what formations they create will be cool to see.
According to the narration, there's about 4 and a half hours left until the tournament. Considering how long 5 minutes took in Z, we really have no idea how many episodes that's going to be.
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