New Dragon Ball Super Chapter Features Surprise Super Saiyan 3 Cameo

Dragon Ball Super manga chapter 51 picks up form the game-changing events of the milestone 50th issue, by establishing a dark new universal order. Evil Sorcerer Moro has unleashed a gang of escaped convicts from the Galactic Patrol prison to serve as scouts, locating new planets across the universe for Moro to consume.

Moro and his gang's reign of looting planets and then murdering their inhabitants continues unabated for weeks on end, with no one able located the villains, let alone stop them. Vegeta is too busy making a voyage to planet Yardrat to learn new some new skills for battle - while Goku and the Galatic Patrol are busy trying to track Moro, and come up with a strategy for actually taking the villain down for good.

After a lot of talk, Goku comes up with a strategy of his own: leveling up his own power and recruiting a strong ally. In Goku's view, both goals can be accomplished through one person: Elite Galactic Patrol agent, Merus!

Knowing that Merus has battle power and techniques that he's not yet revealed, Goku prods the elite agent into sparring with him, in order to see just how deep Merus' skills run. The two meet in a chamber built to handle battle damage, so that nothing has to be held back. With that freedom to cut loose, Goku starts going through the scales of Super Saiyan power-up, in order to measure Merus' might. That process results in giving Dragon Ball Super fans something they rarely see in the series: Goku in his Super Saiyan 3 form!

Goku is forced to make the jump to SSJ3, after the first two levels of Super Saiyan are outmatched by Merus' speed, agility, and Jujitsu-style of combat. However, even with the massive power jump that comes with SSJ3, Goku still can't land a blow on Merus. The frustration leads Goku's naturally aggressive SSJ3 persona to explode in a power surge jump to Super Saiyan God, which proves to be too much for the Galactic Patrol's training chamber to handle. Before Goku can really mix it up with Merus, Jaco shuts the sparring session down.

Much of Dragon Ball Super has been concerned with exploring Goku and Vegeta's discovery and mastery of the Super Saiyan Godly powers, and their pathway to Ultra Instinct; it's a rare thing to see the classic Dragon Ball Z powerups make their appearance. Seeing Super Saiyan 3 return for a heated battle was pretty great - and a testament to just how strong Merus really is.

Dragon Ball Super currently airs its English dub on Adult Swim during the Toonami programming block on Saturday evenings, and is also available to stream on Funimation and Amazon Video. The Japanese-language release of the series is complete, and available to stream on FunimationNOW and Crunchyroll. The manga has chapters that can currently be read for free thanks to Viz Media, and Dragon Ball Super's big movie, Dragon Ball Super: Broly, is now available on Blu-ray and DVD.