Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero Was the Most Poorly Marketed Dragon Ball Movie in Years, and Toei Has No Excuse

There is no argument in my mind that Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero has been the most poorly marketed Dragon Ball property in quite some time, and I would dare say in years. I want to lay out actual, factual reasons why Toei's handling of this movie is unacceptable and, to be honest, kind of infuriating.

Resurrection F, although it was probably the weakest of the four recent movies, was promoted much better. Battle of Gods was also promoted well, though it took longer to reach international shores because there was a different perspective on the series at the time. But when you compare Super Hero's marketing to Dragon Ball Super: Broly, there is simply no comparison.

I like Super Hero, which is exactly why Toei's marketing frustrates me

I want to get this out of the way first. Obviously I love Dragon Ball and I want Dragon Ball to do well. Calling me a hater for raising this makes no sense considering I actually like Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero.

You have to look at this from the perspective of somebody who is a fan of Dragon Ball but who can clearly see, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that this franchise has not been taken to its fullest potential by the people who are making it. It hasn't, and it has been years since Broly.

Broly reached the world within weeks while Super Hero took 11 to 12

Dragon Ball Super: Broly was set to be released in December 2018 in Japan, and it came out then. The United States, Latin America and most of North America got it in January, so it came out everywhere else within three to four weeks of the Japanese release.

With Super Hero, it feels like Toei Animation is going backwards. They decided to release the film not three weeks, not four weeks, not even five or six weeks after the Japanese release, but over two months later. It was literally 11 to 12 weeks after the Japanese version came out.

To me that is mind-blowing in an era where the internet is in everyone's pocket. The plot, the spoilers and the characters had been out for weeks for anyone who wanted to look. You are not going to be able to stop spoilers and leaks nowadays, because the internet has changed the game. It's not like how it was back in the 90s.

The Broly hype cycle was everything Super Hero's was not

For Broly, the Japanese and English trailers came out at the same time for the second and third trailers, and even for the first full trailer, not counting the teaser. We had multiple conventions featuring the cast talking about the film, a red carpet premiere in LA, tons of hype, and weekly articles on the Dragon Ball websites. We were getting new information all the time. It was probably the best time to be a Dragon Ball fan in this modern era.

For Super Hero, Toei chose to mismarket the film not only in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Latin America and everywhere else, but even in Japan. There was virtually no hype for this film in North America in circles outside the Dragon Ball fandom.

Friends of mine who know what I cover, and who are not hardcore Dragon Ball fans, kept sending me screenshots of the Super Hero poster at the movie theater, saying this is a new movie and it's coming out. People were finding out about this film not through word of mouth and not through good marketing, but because they went to see another movie, whether Thor or whatever else was out, and saw the poster. Why didn't they know about it in the past three, four or five months, or in the past year?

Toei waited to announce international dates while Marvel promotes films years out

Why did Japan decide to wait to announce the international release dates until the Japanese version of the film came out? Why not announce everything as early as possible? Marvel could promote movies that weren't coming out until 2025 and TV shows that haven't even been finished, and yet the people at the top of Toei Animation are, as I put it, "still stuck in the 1800s."

The last time I remember anime coming close to being truly mainstream was the late 90s, during the first anime boom with Sailor Moon, Dragon Ball Z and Pokemon. Nothing was more hyped as far as anime movies go than the first two Pokemon films. Those movies are still the highest grossing Japanese animated films in North America. They are not the highest grossing in Japan, but when it comes to revenue from the US, those two are the top two.

Number three is Dragon Ball Super: Broly. That means we were on a trajectory for Toei to finally understand that this franchise is global, and that you have to get your movies into theaters as fast as possible to avoid leaks and to get as many eyeballs on your product as possible.

Even Dragon Ball fans outside the hardcore sphere did not know Super Hero was coming

Up until very recently there was almost no marketing for Super Hero unless you were on the internet and dialed into the Dragon Ball fandom, watching Dragon Ball content creators or following Reddit and Facebook. But there are people in the outside world who aren't really in our community, who are still Dragon Ball fans, and who had no idea this movie was coming out. How can your marketing be so bad that Dragon Ball fans outside the hardcore sphere don't even know?

Fans had been dying to see more Dragon Ball animation since Broly. Toei made so much money from Broly because of how well it was promoted and how much people wanted more after Dragon Ball Super. Then, three years later, they gave a half-hearted attempt to Super Hero.

I also want to debunk a few things. Even though One Piece eclipses Dragon Ball's current popularity in Japan and some Southeast Asian countries, internationally, in Latin America, India and North America, there are, and I am using the word deliberately, billions of Dragon Ball fans worldwide. One Piece has not really hit that level. There's something about Dragon Ball that people have gravitated to for many years.

One Piece Film: Red got the care Super Hero did not

The reason I bring up One Piece is that, looking at the marketing behind One Piece Film: Red, which was just coming out in Japan, and Super Hero from just the Japanese perspective, there was so much more tender love and care put into Film: Red. There was better promotion, and they had a Japanese pop singer sing the song. You could feel that Toei wanted it to be a success.

With Super Hero, it felt like they don't care, or don't understand what they have on their hands, or maybe they overestimate the popularity of Dragon Ball without realizing that everything has to be marketed. Even though Film: Red was doing very well in Japan, I don't think it hit the levels anime can reach outside Japan.

Since the early Pokemon movies, when was the last time you saw a commercial for an anime movie, and I don't mean on cartoon blocks like Toonami, but in theaters or during other TV shows like action or sci fi series? I cannot even remember. Anime is a niche product, but it has become even more niche because these companies never really seem to push it. Demon Slayer, Dragon Ball, One Piece, even One-Punch Man could be so much bigger if they were promoted alongside contemporary Western products. Why weren't we seeing ads for this film on streaming websites like Netflix? With the movie two weeks out, there was barely any promotion, and I was flabbergasted by it.

Gohan's popularity on his own is a reason to push harder, not less

There were a lot of fan theories about why this film was not performing as well as Broly. Obviously a film called Dragon Ball Super: Broly with Goku, Vegeta and Broly at the centre is going to do well no matter what. People have said Gohan and Piccolo might not be as popular, and that's a very valid point.

However, Gohan by himself is so popular that Akio Iyoku suggested to Toriyama that he be put in the film. It was supposed to be a Piccolo story, and Toriyama added Gohan. So even Shueisha knows how popular characters like Gohan are. If you know they are popular outside Japan, why not push it harder outside Japan?

Instead they did the bare minimum. They showed up at San Diego Comic-Con and we got a couple of little IGN spots, because I feel Toei is stuck decades ago and still thinks IGN is credible when almost nobody I know of trusts IGN. Their mentality is "so antiquated," and the way I see it, in Japan, Japan comes first and everybody else is secondary. So even with millions of fans in various countries, they were not going to promote this as much as they should elsewhere.

The pandemic is no excuse for how Super Hero was promoted

People also talked about the pandemic. Listen, it was 2022, not 2020 or 2021. We had vaccinations, many restrictions had been lifted, and Japan itself, although it took a bit longer, had lifted many of its restrictions. We saw movies like Spider-Man: No Way Home break records months earlier, when the pandemic was fresher than it was then. You cannot blame that.

One thing I can't stand is excuses. Some would say I'm the Dragon Ball fan, somebody who loves this thing more than a lot of other people, and even I am telling you not to make excuses for Dragon Ball. This film was so poorly promoted that there was no hype for it outside a few weeks here and there on our channels and on the internet. The mainstream fan had no idea it was even coming out, and that's sad and basically a recipe for disaster. It's not because of Covid, not because of summer. It's a dropped ball.

Anime could be much bigger if Japanese companies pushed it

My frustration is not about whether the movie does well. I don't work for Toei and I don't have any stock in Toei. If it flops, it is what it is, and if it does well, it is what it is. What irritates me is that there are fans who want more Dragon Ball and don't even know it's coming out. They should know.

Why can't these companies promote anime like other things get promoted? Maybe not on the level of Marvel or Star Wars, but they could at least make an effort and put a little more money into advertising. There is a strange mentality about only promoting things in their own country, and yet even in Japan, Super Hero didn't get major promotion anywhere close to what Dragon Ball Super got. If you know Broly, Goku and Vegeta are not the centerpieces of this film, shouldn't you try even harder to push it?

We hadn't had new Dragon Ball animation since Broly, and a lot of people who love Dragon Ball don't read the Dragon Ball Super manga because it isn't interesting to them; they prefer an anime or a movie. Here was a new story, and they didn't really push it. It shows that this franchise, and not just Dragon Ball but all anime, could be so much bigger if these Japanese companies would actually push it like it's a big deal.

Was Toei's marketing to blame for Super Hero's lack of buzz outside the fandom, or did the absence of Goku, Vegeta and Broly at the centre matter more?