During this time Goku Black also faces off against Super Saiyan Future Trunks, which is a nice way to throw the audience a bone. This battle is still merely a tease for what’s to come, but it’s at least some example of the power behind both of these characters. This fight does not disappoint and the rage that Future Trunks experiences turns this into an especially brutal fight.

The whole point of the scene is to illustrate that Trunks is vastly inferior to Goku Black’s tremendous strength. That being said, it would have been nice to see Future Trunks turn Super Saiyan 3 or throw out some sort of new tricks. It’s been a while since we’ve last seen him and such an increase in power wouldn’t be unbelievable.

On the topic of Goku Black, it’s so encouraging to see how much Schemmel has upped his game in regards to his work with this character. Some early glimpses of Schemmel’s interpretation of the villain could be seen with his recent voice work in the freshly released Dragon Ball video game, Dragon Ball FighterZ. There his take on Goku Black leaves a little to be desired and Schemmel gives Goku Black an inexplicable British accent to some degree.

It helps to remember that Schemmel had no context for the character at this point (as well as his work in Xenoverse) other than “evil Goku.” Schemmel’s grasp on the character is now much stronger since he’s actually seen the storyline and read the scripts. The voice actor seems to take this role quite seriously and is determined to make him as intimidating and vindictive as he needs to be. Goku Black is ruthless. He taunts Trunks over the death of everyone he holds dear and Schemmel is able to bring out this side of the character just as well as he can hit the jovial highs and innocence of regular Goku.

The casting of Schemmel here is fine—and frankly it make sense—but it honestly feels like the show has spoiled its audience to some degree with its recent casting of Brian Drummond as Duplicate Vegeta. The use of Peter Kelamis or Kirby Morrow as Goku Black would have been an ambitious, albeit fascinating direction. It’s hard to begrudge the show against not indulging in this sort of “fan fiction” where two Goku voice actors could actually square off against each other, but the show literally did this exact thing a few episodes back.