Crunchyroll's Wildest Rom-Com Just Delivered the Best Dragon Ball Parody I've Ever Seen

Warning: Contains spoilers for The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You episode #18.Crunchyroll’s The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love Youjust delivered a flawless Dragon Ballparody that must be seen to be believed. 100 Girlfriends always finding the most outlandish ways to poke fun at stories in and out of its genre, and that’s consistently left it as one of the funniest anime a person can watch in recent years.

Beyond general jokes and lampshade hanging, much of the comedy in the 100 Girlfriends anime comes from its anime parodies, and episode #18 was the best example of that. With episode #18 covering the Rentaro Family’s baseball game, there were, naturally, numerous references to baseball and sports manga, most notably the Doraemon spinoff Dorabase, but beyond all that, 100 Girlfriends episode #18 delivered what’s probably the best Dragon Ball parody in recent years. It was great to see as a Dragon Ball fan, and more than that, it was another showing of why 100 Girlfriends’ comedy is so great.

What Makes 100 Girlfriends' Dragon Ball Parody So Great

How 100 Girlfriends Created The Perfect Dragon Ball Parody

For 100 Girlfriends, it wasn’t just that they had the Rentaro Family going Super Saiyan, which is where Dragon Ball parodies typically start and end, but the entire scene was kicked off with a legally distinct rendition of “Cha-La Head-Cha-La” and Karane pronouncing an attack with the same intonation as the Kamehameha, and it even concluded with a parody of Dragon Ball’s iconic eyecatcher with the Love God dressed as Master Roshi. 100 Girlfriends put far more work into their Dragon Ball parody than most anime do, and the entire scene greatly stands out because of it.

The Love God's Japanese voice actor, Shigeru Chiba, also voices Pilaf in Dragon Ball, which adds extra comedy to the scene.

The scene would have been plenty funny on its own even if it came from nowhere, but the Rentaro Family all turned into Super Saiyans—or rather, Super GFaiyans—was because they were furious at how the other team made Shizuka cry, so The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You’s Dragon Ball parody works as well as it does because the anime had it centered around the story’s emotional core. That element sells the parody far better than if it was purely random, and it’s a big part of why it was so fun to watch.

100 Girlfriends Continues To Be The Best Parody Series In Modern Anime

Why The Comedy In 100 Girlfriends Is So Great

Iku smiles after kissing Rentaro — 100-Girlfriends-Episode-18-Iku-Smile

Not only does 100 Girlfriends seemingly have no limits with what it will lampoon and poke fun at either visually or verbally, but whenever it does so, it will put as much effort into the joke as possible to make it as big as can be, as seen with the recent Dragon Ball parody and many other jokes before and after it. The extreme lengths to which The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You takes its comedy to greater heights than any other anime currently running, and it only gets better with each passing episode.

What best sells it all, of course, is the heart behind it all. Underneath the anime’s goofiness and fanservice is a genuinely heartwarming story of friendship and romance, so The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You’s parody elements work as well as they do because they’re always perfectly complemented by the anime’s genuinely heartfelt writing. That duality has always made The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You one of Crunchyroll’s best romcoms, and if the Dragon Ball parody is anything to go on, it’s only going to get better from here.

The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You releases new episodes Sundays on Crunchyroll.