Picking up from the cliffhanger that ended last week’s episode, it appears that the surviving remnants of the Frieza Force have fallen on harsh times and have decided to revive the deceased tyrant for support. Sorbet, the ersatz leader of the Frieza Force (along with his second-in-command, Tagoma) has a plan that’s set to take their army right to Earth and to seize the Dragon Balls. “Despair Redux!” is an episode that spends a lot of time setting things in place for the ensuing fallout next episode. In that sense, the offering is a little underwhelming, but it still deserves points for just how much new material it brings to the table.

Sorbet’s plans for the Dragon Balls end up having him collide with Pilaf and company, who have just finished painstakingly collecting the seven orbs. I’m definitely on board with the running joke that the series keeps playing on Pilaf where his Dragon Ball wishes are always being stolen away from him at the last minute. It even nicely calls back to the character’s fate in the original Dragon Ball. At this point it seems pretty obvious that the only reason Pilaf, Shu, and Mai have been brought back into the Dragon Ball fold is so that they can be the universe’s perpetual punching bags. In spite of this, the team manages to have a rather uplifting ending. Mai and Shu still sneak in wishes for premium ice cream (complete with an ice pack to keep it cool—Shenron’s a sweetie) and one million zeni, with this all culminating in a celebration of friendship between the underdogs. It’d a good thing that they have no idea that they’ve helped bring back a genocidal megalomaniac.

Also, would it be the worst if Goten and Trunks took Shu and Mai into the Hyperbolic Time Chamber for a few days and actually tried to turn them into fighters or something more practical? Maybe I’m just getting too caught up in the prospect of what a Fusion Dance-d hybrid of Shu and Mai (Shumai?) would look like.

On the topic of the Dragon Balls, Dragon Ball Super has made some interesting adjustments to Shenron by giving him touches of personality in the smallest ways. Earlier we saw that he’s legitimately intimidated by Beerus and here he actually weighs in regarding the worthlessness of trying to revive Frieza. It’s some appreciated attention to detail that the series remembers the state that Frieza’s body was left in last it was seen. Shenron didn’t anticipate these guys having a regeneration chamber though.

Frieza’s resurrection is reserved for the final minutes of the episode, with the rest of the runtime comfortably coasting on the dread and tension that it tries to cultivate. A few opportunities take advantage of using humor to cut through all of this. Piccolo on babysitting duty is a strange little scene, but one that I’m grateful is in here. The depiction of the Hell that Frieza is stuck in is also really wonderful and creative. It’s also a much more interesting depiction of the purgatory dimension than what Dragon Ball GT provides, too. This seems like a Hell that’s specifically catered to driving Frieza insane.