Dragon Ball Daima

Episodes 1-2

I haven't been the biggest fan of the Super era of Dragon Ball. I liked the movies a lot (sans Resurrection F, which I thought was let down by the fact that it couldn't decide on how seriously to take Freeza) but a lot of the TV anime felt somewhere between filler and fanfiction. I'm of the mindset that Dragon Ball never needed any sequels and Battle of Gods should have been a one-time deal although it would have been much crueler for Dragon Ball's final time on the silver screen to be Dragonball: Evolution. I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy some of it but, it's given me a bit of franchise fatigue.

Due to his untimely passing, there's no real way of knowing exactly how Akira Toriyama felt about the overall direction Dragon Ball was going in. Still, it's hard not to suspect he might have started feeling mixed about it. Having recently gone through all of the pre-Saiyan Dragon Ball stuff a couple of years back, I think there was a charm to that era that a lot of the later manga arcs never quite managed to replicate, so when this series got announced and was on record as the most involved and passionate that Toriyama had been about a new Dragon Ball project in years, I was pretty excited for the possibility that this could be a return to form for the lighter side of the franchise.

That preamble is to say that I had high expectations going into this. So far, I'm happy to report that Daima totally rules, and is the most genuinely pumped I've been about a new Dragon Ball thing in quite a while. While the first episode is largely dedicated to setting up our new antagonists, and why they'd go through the effort of turning Goku and friends back into munchkins, the second gives a much better idea of what we can expect from all this. It's mostly a lot of comedy. This episode sets some clear stakes for the foreseeable future as King Gomah kidnaps Baby Dende to use as a hostage, and the gang gets a new ally in the form of a demon named Glorio, who seems incredibly suspicious. The overall tone here is pretty light. A lot of this is just the characters having decidedly mixed reactions about their transformation with Krillin and Vegeta being among the most concerned while Bulma and Master Roshi (who looks like a hipster version of Krillin now, and I hate the fact that I will never be able to unsee this) are ecstatic about getting to relive their youth, and it's pretty funny.

I also like a lot of the fun this is having with established Dragon Ball lore. While having Namekians like Piccolo turning out to have originated from the Demon Realm would feel like something of a retcon, it's easy to forget that as far as early Dragon Ball was concerned, King Piccolo and his minions were basically just a bunch of ancient demons, and the stuff about them being aliens came much later, so if anything this is just bringing things back full circle. I especially got a kick out of seeing this take the whole “three wishes” rule for using the Dragon Balls that's been established since the Namek saga and bending it over its knee by revealing that Shenron's only been doing that as a special service for repeat customers like Goku and the gang. He's not handing out any freebies to new clients like King Gomah, which is why he only gets one, and it's the funniest way Toriyama could have retconned that for a punchline. It's also great to see Goku reunited with his Power Pole (yes I know the proper noun here is Nyonbio, but I grew up on the Funimation dub so I could never call it anything else in my head) for the first time in several decades. I'm pretty excited to see how he'll use it for some of the upcoming fights since a lot of the promotion surrounding this suggested that it would get a little more creative with the combat than what we're used to.

I'm having a fun time and while there is always the possibility this could turn into another Dragon Ball GT and shrinking Goku back into being pint-sized could be a terrible mistake, it feels charming enough so far that I don't feel like that's worth worrying about until the series gives a reason to think otherwise. For now, this feels like the breath of fresh air that the franchise needed when it comes to capturing the energy of what made a lot of early Dragon Ball so incredibly fun. As long as it can maintain that, it'll make for a more than worthy addition to the Dragon Ball canon.

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Dragon Ball Daima is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.