Château de L'Amour

Welcome to Château de L'Amour, my humble little fan-shrine to Ribrianne, also known as Brianne de Chateau, from Dragon Ball Super! While Ribrianne is not quite my favourite character or possibly even in my top 10, I did enjoy her role in Dragon Ball Super a lot. Seeing as she is one of the most, if not the most unfairly maligned character in the entire Dragon Ball franchise, I wanted to create a pretty little space here in order to go over why I think she's one of the best new characters in Dragon Ball Super, and maybe even change a few people's minds.

The name of this page is French for "Chateau of Love", a graceful reference to Ribrianne's last name and her Big Amour attack.

A Defence of Ribrianne

For all of the vitriol that Ribrianne has received, many fans would be surprised to learn that she was one of the few new characters introduced in the Universe Survival arc that was designed by the original Dragon Ball creator Akira Toriyama himself. Out of the approximately 94 characters introduced over the course of the plot arc, only Ribrianne, Jiren, Toppo, Dyspo, Caulifla, Sidra, and Quitela came directly from Toriyama, along with Helles and Vermoud, who were co-designed with DBS manga author Toyotaro.

What is quite surprising is that while Ribrianne's transformed design did come from Toriyama, it was Toei Animation that came up with the idea of making her a Mahou Shoujo (Magical Girl) with a base form resembling a conventionally attractive young woman. Since Mahou Shoujo characters are known for transforming into more attractive (and scantily clad) versions of their regular selves, I felt it was genuine Toriyama-esque subversive humour to have Ribrianne instead transform into what appears to be a cross between a teletubby and an obese aunt.

Indeed, the uproarious adulation from everyone except the warriors of Universe 7, towards Ribrianne's physical appearance when she first displays her transformation during the Tournament of Power, felt something straight out of a Toriyama-written script. The entire episode this event occurred in, episode 102, was in my opinion one of the greatest episodes in Dragon Ball Super and the entire Dragon Ball franchise in general.

Now, not every episode of Super had writers as sublime and talented as the one who penned episode 102's script, and Ribrianne was often reduced to being a one-note character who does nothing but run around spamming heart-shaped Ki blasts and screaming the word "love" over and over. Many people pan her for this, which I find very unfair. Toppo is universally viewed as being one of the best characters that Super introduced, and the elder walrus himself often received the same treatment as well, being reduced to nothing more than "the man who does nothing but pose while screaming JUSTICE!!"

The aforementioned transformation scene aside, Ribrianne had a number of exquisite scenes that are worth mentioning:

I have a suspicion that the people who bash Ribrianne are largely the same sort that never watched the original Dragonball and consider the Boo arc to be some sort of accidental abomination that has no place in Dragon Ball, instead of the return to the status quo that it actually was. Dragon Ball was never supposed to be a serious or gritty manga/anime, so much as a goofy children's story where the mob boss terrorising a town turns out to be a anthromorphic bunny who turns people into carrots, and a slob makes into the quarter-finals of an international martial arts tournament by using his complete lack of hygiene to defeat his opponents.

I adore the more serious portions of Dragon Ball at least as much as anyone else, but they represent only a part of the entire story, and indeed only a tiny minority of Toriyama's total body of writings. When looking at Toriyama's other works, such as Dr. Slump and Neko Majin, I daresay that there is not a single new character in Dragon Ball Super that is anywhere near as genuinely Toriyama-esque as Ribrianne.

Ribrianne's Potential and Future

Although Ribrianne did not appear to ever display as much power as even regular SSj Goku, it's important to note that she ostensibly comes from a much different background than the stronger characters. Jiren and Son Goku are the most powerful mortals in the multiverse largely because they were spurred into constantly growing stronger by an endless onslaught of hardships and threats. Both originally started as pitifully weak children and were forced to constantly grow more powerful to ensure their continued survival and the survival of those they care about.

Ribrianne, at least from the surface glance we've had of her, appears to have had no such history. Indeed, in spite of not having any access to Dragon Balls back at home to resurrect any fallen loved ones or fix any other problems in Universe 2, she professed that her desired wish from the Super Dragon Balls was to become a goddess of love beloved by all of the universes. Moreover, judging by the scenes that were shown of Universe 2 and their sibling world, Universe 11, the two couldn't be any more different.

Indeed, while the planets seen in Universe 11 resemble something out of a futuristic utopia, the universe appears to be in such a state of perpetual unrest that even with two God of Destruction level levianthans, Jiren and Toppo, patrolling the universe, the rest of the Pride Trooper forces are still necessary to maintain order. Conversely, Universe 2 is such a utopian paradise that the gods felt perfectly confident with sharing the news of the possible forthcoming erasure of the entire universe with its people, knowing that even such a cataclysm wouldn't be enough to drive them to violence.

After witnessing just how obscenely powerful the titans of Universes 6, 7, and 11 are in comparison to them, and how easily their entire world can be lost forever, it's likely that Ribrianne and co will begin training far more seriously than they previously had.

Beyond being the strongest mortal in the sibling world of the one housing the strongest mortal in the multiverse, it should be noted that Ribrianne was repeatedly said to be a "goddess" of love. It is not yet known what this means power-wise, but since love is stated to be the form of power or Ki that Ribrianne relies on, and the higher gods are largely the most powerful beings in the multiverse, this could mean Ribrianne has extraordinary potential for getting stronger.

While this can be chalked up to coincidence, it's worth noting that, as mentioned earlier, the final technique that Ribrianne used in the Tournament of Power, where she used her Ki to generate a colossal version of herself, was ostensibly the exact same final technique that Son Goku used against Moro in the manga after he mastered Ultra Instinct. Since Goku was apparently only able to utilise this technique after fully achieving the fabled state of the gods, this would imply that it takes a very high mastery of Ki control in order to use, and that Ribrianne may be far more skilled in those arts than she appears to be.

I have heard that Ribrianne is far more popular in Dragon Ball's homeland of Japan than she is in the West, so I will continue to hold faith that she will return as a more powerful and important character in the future. The fact that she was included in Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 (before even the ultra-popular Toppo, may I add!) gives me a lot of hope, as does the fact that she was apparently liked enough to be made one of the absolute best characters in the game's entire roster.

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