Dragon Ball Super Breaks Down Piccolo's Unexpected Rescue

Dragon Ball Super's latest chapter continues the Galactic Patrol Prisoner arc, and while the fights in the arc have already reached a peak of intensity as Moro dealt Goku and Vegeta some pretty heavy losses, the arc is gearing up for its next and presumably more intense phase as the battle comes to Earth. A few of the escaped Galactic Patrol prisoners have come to Earth as part of Moro's search for power planets to eat, and they have come face-to-face with Earth's remaining defenders. But as much as Piccolo has kept up his training, one new enemy has taken him by surprise.

With the introduced of a new killer android, 73, in Chapter 53 of the series, Piccolo has kicked off his best battle yet. But in that same chapter, Piccolo finds himself quickly overwhelmed and surprisingly needing to be saved by Gohan.

Chapter 53 of the series sees both Piccolo and Krillin doing battle with the surprisingly skilled escapees. As the only ones left who can defend Earth now that Goku and Vegeta are off training in their own ways, Piccolo finds himself unprepared for 73's ability. After letting himself by copied by 73, the killer android ends up using all of Piccolo's techniques. This includes Piccolo's ability to shift his body around, so 73 gets stretchy arms and the like with his copy.

73's attacks are just as strong as Piccolo's would be, and while Piccolo has had a ton of experience fighting clones of himself, 73 has the android edge of infinite stamina. So while 73 has a weakness in that the copied abilities only last for 30 minutes, Piccolo realizes he won't be able to hold out that long. Just as he realizes this, the two of them fire Special Beam Cannons at one another.

Piccolo is soon overtaken by 73's cannon, and is nearly destroyed. But Gohan manages to arrive just in time to save him. The Tournament of Power saw Gohan save Piccolo on a few occasions, flipping their original dynamic, and this save even has Piccolo declaring Gohan to be the strongest fighter Earth has left. This is hopefully setting up Gohan for a big comeback in the next chapter as he along tries to protect the Earth, but it's definitely a way to further push Piccolo into the ineffective non-combatant stable that's continuing to grow in this franchise. If he keeps getting saved like this, soon he won't be much help as the enemies get stronger and stronger.

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.