Dragon Ball Super – Part 1 Review
Dragon Ball Super is the fourth Dragon Ball TV series, airing a full 18 years after Dragon Ball GT, though it’s actually set in between Episodes 273 and 274 of Dragon Ball Z (a nice confusing sentence to start us off!) It really came about because of two “revival” DBZ films, Battle of Gods and Resurrection F, released in 2013 and 2015 respectively, being such big hits around the world. The two films were based on a long brief by Akira Toriyama himself, and that same brief is what is used for the first two arcs of the anime…
Before we get to the second re-telling of the Battle of Gods film I’ve reviewed for this site (the other being the Dragon Ball Super manga, which was actually created after the TV series began airing, but was released here in the UK first…) the first few episodes of Super stay true to the idea of this continuing on after the Buu arc of DBZ as they’re pure comedy filler. I don’t mean the traditional “filling time so the anime doesn’t catch up with the manga” filler, because both the anime and manga of Super are being created alongside each other by different teams, but still very much in the vein of a cool-down period between bigger arcs. It was a … brave move, I guess? Launching the show with an episode mostly about Goku being a farmer, followed by an episode devoted to Vegeta having to take his family to a theme park… it’s an odd way to kick the show off.
God of Destruction Beerus (or Beers, if you use the original Japanese with subtitles track, a more accurate translation, but I’m so used to Beerus that it seemed weird to read…) and his attendant Whis do appear in these first few episodes, briefly, before we start re-adapting the Battle of Gods brief. Eventually we get into it, with Beerus arriving on King Kai’s planet and taking out Goku with ease, then we get to the comedy scenes at Bulma’s birthday party on Earth, which now take place on a large cruise ship rather than at Capsule Corporation. We see Goten and Trunks befriend Pilaf, Shu and Mai from the original Dragon Ball series, who have at some point become children and are once again on the lookout for Dragon Balls. A nice nod to the early years of the show, but the trio do get on your nerves the more screen time they get, and they get a lot of screen time…
Vegeta’s now infamous Bingo dance is sadly still exclusive to the Battle of Gods film; instead he becomes a chef in an attempt to calm the God of Destruction down, and there is a funny scene where Beerus challenges Oolong of all people to a game of rock-paper-scissors for the fate of the Earth. Eventually Bulma gets slapped away by Beerus and Vegeta flies into a rage and receives the first nonsensical power up of the series (first of many!) before Goku arrives and we actually get the titular Battle of Gods as the former Kakarot gets turned into a Super Saiyan God and battles Beerus from Episode 10 to Episode 14… Yep, that’s right, once again FUNimation’s strict “13 episodes in the set” rule has meant that the Battle of Gods arc is one episode away from finishing as this set ends. sigh I wish they would be a bit more loose with episode counts…
It’s funny, watching Dragon Ball Super weekly and reviewing it every six weeks, looking back at these first thirteen episodes really hits home how far the show has come. The animation seen on these discs is average at best and pretty damn poor at worst (though Goku’s transformation into a Super Saiyan God is well done, if overly dramatic…) and the soundtrack is mostly forgettable. It also focuses way more on Toriyama-style silly comedy, which is his bread and butter for those who have only watched the Z portion of the franchise. Comparing that to what’s airing now and has aired in the last year, not only has the animation improved many, manyfold, but the stories have also slowly shifted into more Z-like action-based stories. It’s like Dragon Ball Super is a new version of the original manga, which started off all gags and ended up more action-focused.
All the voices from both the Japanese and the US version of Dragon Ball Kai return here, although on the Japanese side the voice actor for King Kai / the narrator, Joji Yanami, is on his last vocal legs, completely unable to raise his voice to match the animated panic during several scenes. It’s tough to listen to, and it’s not surprising that he does indeed get replaced by the time he next appears.
“Chōzetsu☆Dynamic!” by Kazuya Yoshii is your opening theme, and will continue to be for many sets to come. The ending to Episodes 1 – 12 is “Hello Hello Hello” by Good Morning America, where as Episode 13 has “Starring Star” by Key Talk. Extras include a couple of features looking at returning English voice actors and how they’re all happy to return to the Dragon Ball universe, plus textless opening and endings, and trailers.
So, Dragon Ball Super – Part 1 is actually quite an odd thing to recommend. If you want to follow Super from start to finish, then obviously jump to it! If you already own the Battle of Gods and Resurrection F films on Blu-ray then you can skip this and Part 2; the new Toriyama material won’t start until the Part 3 Blu-ray and frankly the film versions of these stories are quicker to the point and have better animation (obviously!). Of course if you want to watch some admittedly harmless and sometimes funny comedy “filler” episodes then this set does at least offer you something new to enjoy!
