Dragon Ball Super's Manga Was Just Retelling Its Own Movie, and Even I Was Bored

I have been a huge Dragon Ball fan since I was a little kid, and I want to talk about the state of Dragon Ball as of spring 2023. In my opinion, Dragon Ball had not really been in a good spot since last summer, and I want to walk through exactly why.

Dragon Ball Has Been in a Rough Spot Since Last Summer's Frieza Cliffhanger

Last summer we got the new movie, Dragon Ball Super: Superhero, and we also got an interesting cliffhanger in the manga where Frieza returned after not being seen for several arcs. He took out Ultra Instinct Goku and the Saiyan prince who fights alongside him, took the Heeters with him, and went back into space. That was the cliffhanger.

After that, the manga took a three month break. When it came back, we got three months of the Superhero prequel story, and to me that was mid. Most of it felt kind of pointless to be honest.

Three Months of a Trunks High School Story That Led Nowhere

The prequel arc gave us three months of Trunks in high school, a slice of life story. They did okay with it, but I thought most of it was kind of pointless. On the positive side, it introduced Dr. Hedo early and gave Krillin more to do.

The Superhero Manga Was Retelling the Movie Instead of Adding New Scenes

Once the manga reached the actual Dragon Ball Super: Superhero adaptation, I expected it to add tons of new scenes, things like Goku recruiting Broly, the creation of the Gammas, and the conception of Cell Max. We got none of that in the first two chapters. For most of those chapters, we were literally getting a scene by scene retelling of the movie.

There was some cool stuff in chapter 92, including a fight that was basically not in the movie itself, though it had appeared in the trailer. But outside of that, all we had left was basically a retelling of the movie. If you were expecting big new reveals in that chapter, they did not show up, and there was no adult Gotenks and no major changes.

Toei Poured Its Energy Into One Piece While Barely Promoting Dragon Ball

Here we have a multi-billion dollar property, one of the biggest international franchises Toei has, maybe the biggest. Instead of giving us something new and interesting, Shueisha and Toei were giving us a retelling of a movie that had just come out. About 90 percent of Dragon Ball fans had already seen that movie, and the story, while fun, was not captivating or interesting enough to justify a scene by scene redo. They had a chance to do something cool here, and they did very few cool things. Krillin getting beaten up by a bee was fine, and one fight scene was fine, but there was not much else.

As a Dragon Ball fan, I was totally disgusted with the way Shueisha and Toei had treated Dragon Ball. This is a property that is popular in America, Canada, Australia, most of South America, Mexico, and Europe, the biggest international franchise Toei has. Instead, they spent all their time hyping up One Piece. I have nothing against One Piece, and whoever is working at Toei Animation and Shueisha to push it is doing a great job, because Toei hammers out One Piece material all the time. But with Dragon Ball, they barely promoted this movie, and now they were retelling it instead of giving us something new after the Black Frieza reveal.

Toei Targeted Fan Creators Like Team Four Star While Underselling Its Own Movie

That Black Frieza story did eventually come. I know we were probably going past the end of Z eventually. But at the time, the fandom was bored, and even as a hardcore Dragon Ball fan, I was bored too. Not only were Toei and Shueisha wasting our time and Toriyama's time by stretching this out instead of speeding through it and moving on to something new, but on top of that, Toei chose to go after and try to blacklist Team Four Star and shut them down. Toei Animation and Shueisha would go to anime conventions and copyright claim artists so fans could not even have official fan manga or make money off their own art.

Instead of giving us something new, they went after content creators constantly. They went after TotallyNotMark, they went after me, and they went after other creators, even though we were all following the rules. I do not care that Japan has different copyright laws around this. The fandom is what was keeping Dragon Ball Super alive. People on Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram were doing a better job of hyping up Superhero than Toei was.

Home Releases Still Had Green Tint and No Proper Remaster

They would not even give us a good home release of the movie, because it had a green tint. When fans emailed Toei Animation to say the 4K release had a green tint and asked them to fix it, the response was that it was supposed to be that way, even though fans knew it was not supposed to look like that.

They would not give us a good home release of Dragon Ball Z and GT either. No proper remaster, and they would not use the original broadcast audio, despite the entire Dragon Ball Z and GT audio having been found by fans. So it was not just the new material being mishandled, the old stuff was too. That is why fans pirate, going to torrent sites and downloading the movies and the anime, because there was no proper home release being offered. If they gave us a release with multiple languages, remastered and color corrected the right way, I would buy it, and many of us would buy it.

No New Anime in Sight, and the Manga's Own Comparisons Were Not Flattering

Instead of giving us Black Frieza, they gave us three months of Trunks in high school crushing on someone older than him in a young woman's body, and then a manga retelling of the movie, which was going to be less interesting because there was no new story content and the fights were rendered in single panels. It is not CGI, but it is still fights in single panels.

Could they have been planning a new anime? I am done talking about the Dragon Ball anime. There is no point in talking about it anymore. And even the manga was not interesting at that point. The Granolah arc had a ton of problems, but that arc was far better than the Superhero prequel arc by comparison, and it was at least new stuff. Ultra Ego Vegeta was new, cool material. Instead we were now redoing stuff we had just seen a few months earlier, and Dragon Ball fans were bored. I cannot even blame them.

Wasted Momentum, and a Suggestion: Hire a New Writer and Let Toriyama Spot Check

I now feel like they took way too long to produce a new anime and way too long to keep us hyped. The Superhero movie was fun, the Broly movie was fun, I am not saying they were bad, even though some feel that way. But the momentum coming off the Broly movie, off Toei, and off the Black Frieza reveal had not been capitalized on. I am sure that when we actually got to the new arc, we would all have fun again, but at that point Dragon Ball was basically Goku in the healing tank on Namek, waiting to come out to fight Frieza.

I am saying that as one of the most hardcore Dragon Ball fan content creators out there, someone who has proven time and again that I love this franchise. Even I was saying it was a waste of time, and the more time gets wasted, the more interest gets lost. Instead of bringing the Dragon Ball anime back, they brought back Digimon, which I enjoyed as a kid, but it was not drawing the ratings Super did or getting the hype Super got. If Toriyama did not want to write new stuff, my suggestion was to hire a different writer, like they did for Battle of Gods, and have Toriyama spot check it. Instead we got a manga retelling a movie that had come out a few months earlier and that you could watch online any minute. Why would I want to read the manga if I could just watch the movie? Dragon Ball fans wanted something new and something good.