Dragon Ball Super review: not Z's equal, but a fan's career

In 2021, three years had passed since the Dragon Ball Super anime ended, and the manga was still going. Looking back, I don't think Dragon Ball Super was on the level of Dragon Ball Z or the original Dragon Ball. Not even close. But Dragon Ball Super changed my life, and both of those things are true for me.

The April 2015 announcement of Dragon Ball Super made fans' dreams come true

Dragon Ball Super was officially announced in April 2015, when word came that Dragon Ball would have an anime coming back. So many dreams of so many people came true, mine included. People did not get enough Dragon Ball through Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Ball GT. It wasn't enough. People love these characters. They love Goku, they love Vegeta, they love Gohan, they love everybody else, and they wanted more of the characters and of the world Toriyama created.

I remember the hype when Super was announced. It started by retelling the first two modern movies, Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods and Resurrection F. Then came the Universe 6 arc, which began in 2016. There was so much hype going into it. We were all going nuts at that time, because it was the first new Dragon Ball story told in TV form since GT. Everything else had been movies and retellings of the movies.

I remember the Universe 6 arc being a lot of fun, although it was simple. I remember the appearance of the Grand Priest, and I remember how hyped it all was.

The Future Trunks arc took Dragon Ball into Forbes, and the clickbait followed

Then came the Future Trunks arc, and that's when things started going crazy. It wasn't until the Trunks arc that Dragon Ball started getting mainstream coverage. All of us who covered Dragon Ball were talking about Super, and so were Facebook pages and Instagram pages. But Forbes magazine did a story about the Trunks arc. I remember seeing it pop up and thinking, "What is Dragon Ball doing in Forbes?" It's Forbes. What do they care?

That's when we started seeing a big influx of clickbait websites covering Dragon Ball, and doing a very sloppy job of it with their bad theories and bad information. It got really bad. I've done many debunks of articles from these websites over the years, because they obviously don't care about Dragon Ball. It wasn't until it started getting popular that people started to hop on board.

Longtime fans stayed with Dragon Ball through the years when there was little new

All of us, by contrast, stayed Dragon Ball fans even after it ended. Dragon Ball ended in 97, and Dragon Ball GT and the English dub ended around 2004. We had a couple of movies in 06, but that was it. It was over. It had been over a decade. Many of us kept playing the games and kept up with some of the news, but there wasn't much news.

Then Super came along. I had started covering Dragon Ball about a month before Super was announced, and I was very lucky, because I was small then. When Super was announced, I was able to be a guy who got news out fast and accurate, and I produced content that was different from what many people around back then were making. I was very proud of that. Since then, many others have come along, and they've come and they've gone. People move on, people stay, audiences come and go, and that's always interesting, not only in Dragon Ball but in the wider world.

I don't think Dragon Ball Super came close to Dragon Ball Z, but some moments did

When I look back on Dragon Ball Super, I don't think it was on the level of Dragon Ball Z or Dragon Ball. I don't think it was even close to that level. There were aspects of Super, whether the storytelling, the music or the animation, that to me didn't feel like old school Dragon Ball.

With that said, there were moments of Dragon Ball Super that I think were comparable to the old stuff. Goku becoming Ultra Instinct. Some of the Goku Black material. Some of the Goku moments with Nozawa or Sean Schemmel, depending on which version you saw, screaming their hearts out. There were many things that reminded us of the old days.

Super leaned on nostalgia bait while it expanded the Dragon Ball lore

They also did a good job, though some would say not a good job, of hammering us over the head with nostalgia bait. They brought back Frieza. They brought back Trunks. They even brought back Broly for the movie and rebooted him. They had Kale, who was like an old Broly but a female version. They introduced female Saiyans. They did an evil Goku. All this fan service that people, including myself, never thought they would do, they did, and it became very much about pandering to the old fans.

At the same time, they expanded on the lore of Dragon Ball, which I did appreciate. We now have 12 universes. We have different factions, like the Pride Troopers and the Trio de Dangers. We have the magical girl group from Universe 2, led by Ribrianne. There are many different groups all around.

Then there's the Galactic Patrol, which was introduced in the Jaco the Galactic Patrolman manga in 2013, I think it was. Jaco became part of Dragon Ball Super with the Moro arc, and he was a big part of it, because Goku and Vegeta joined up with the Galactic Patrol and fought against Moro. That whole story arc began with that, and it was a crazy ride.

Dragon Ball Super opened doors I never thought I could walk through

No matter what my views are on Dragon Ball Super looking back, and it doesn't compare to the old stuff, Super allowed me to do many things I never thought I could do. It allowed me to host conventions and panels, and to interview so many different people, whether voice actors or people I respect in the real world.

Dragon Ball Super gave me friends on multiple continents. I've got friends in Australia. I've got friends in Japan, including people who work on Dragon Ball Super. I've got friends in Europe, in the UK, all over Germany, in the United States and in South America, and even a couple from Africa. That's every continent except Antarctica.

It also gave me the ability to do what I love for a living, which I'm still doing, thankfully, knock on wood. Even without a Super anime, I was still able to make this my living, producing content about the manga and about the old stuff. I got to meet so many people I would never have met if it weren't for Dragon Ball, people who gravitated toward my work and I toward them, who went on to become real life friends. Those who don't live locally have come to visit me, and I've hung out with others in different parts of the world.

I've traveled the world. I went to California for the Dragon Ball Super: Broly premiere. I've been to Chicago. I've been to Texas, and went to Dallas for the first time. I went to Japan. It was all because of Dragon Ball. I would never have done those things if I still worked in IT, being miserable for 10 years like I was.

Dragon Ball Super changed my life, and it was worth it

Ultimately, Dragon Ball Super changed my life. We can criticize the content, we can criticize Toriyama, we can criticize the production, but let's be honest: most people in this fandom probably wouldn't be here had it not been for Dragon Ball Super. It reignited interest in this franchise. Yes, it wasn't great. Super did not make us feel those things as much as the old stuff did. But it did a lot for me, and I thank Dragon Ball Super.

I miss those days, even though health wise it killed me. I miss doing spoilers at four in the morning. I miss getting hyped up for an episode on Saturday night, even though it killed my Saturday nights. I miss reacting live to what we had just seen, and theorizing and speculating on what was going to happen. The manga does that, but not the same way the anime did every week.

By 2021, I felt I was a better person mentally, emotionally and physically than I was when Super began, and I was even more ready to see how things evolve and to do it all over again. Any new Dragon Ball animation will end, whether it runs for a year or for three years like Super did, and that's okay, because it's a memory we can all share. When we all get older, we can know we made friends because of this.

I was able to put together a convention with other people, and it ran for two years. There was controversy around the second year, but it doesn't matter. We did it. I did it for the Dragon Ball fans. I sacrificed sleep that whole weekend to make sure I was there for everything, and it was worth it. That's the truth: Dragon Ball Super was worth it.