Dragon Ball Daima

After saving the world from the destructive might of Majin Buu, Gokuu Son and his allies look forward to a well-earned rest. However, unbeknownst to them, their battle was recorded and observed by Gomah, an evil being who assumes the title of King in the Demon Realm, filling the void left behind with the death of former ruler Dabura.

At Gomah's side is Degesu, the younger brother of Higashi no Kaioshin, a being who lords over the universe. Jealous of his brother's power, Degesu works alongside Gomah to steal Earth's Dragon Balls and preemptively subdue any potential future enemies. Calling upon the power of the legendary dragon Shenron, Gomah wishes for Gokuu and his friends to be reverted into children, intending to rob them of the limitless power that defeated Buu. With Earth's greatest warriors shrunken down, Gomah abducts Dende, the planet's acting god.

But Gokuu refuses to be set back by his new body, working to master his younger form to fight as proficiently as he could as an adult. Joined by Kaioshin and Glorio—a mysterious but seemingly rebellious demon—Gokuu pursues Gomah to the Demon Realm in order to rescue Dende and restore his friends to their natural ages.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Son, Gokuu Main

Nozawa, Masako Japanese

Vegeta Main

Mino, Yudai Japanese

Higashi no Kaioshin Main

Kobayashi, Yumiko Japanese

Panzy Main

Fairouz Ai Japanese

Glorio Main

Uchiyama, Kouki Japanese

Son, Gohan Supporting

Nozawa, Masako Japanese

Piccolo Supporting

Yamaguchi, Tomohiro Japanese

Trunks Supporting

Yonaga, Tsubasa Japanese

Bulma Supporting

Nakahara, Mai Japanese

Muten-Roushi Supporting

Kanemitsu, Nobuaki Japanese

Kunihiro, Mamoru Producer

Hirokawa, Taku Producer

Yashima, Yoshitaka Director

Komaki, Aya Director

Reviews

Nov 2, 2024

literaturenerd

Recommended

Preliminary (4/? eps)

4 episodes in and Dragon Ball Daima is simply the best thing to happen to this franchise since Battle of Gods. I've been a huge fan of the series since 1998, so I know my Dragon Ball. We were all absolutely devastated to hear of Toriyama sensei's passing, so I'm very glad that this series can serve as the sendoff that he deserved. He entertained me every week when I was a dumb little kid. He entertained millions of us all around the world. Now I can watch this with my little nephews and see their eyes light up as they experience the fun of ... Dragon Ball for the first time.

I'm not sure exactly where to start, so let's look at the plot. Essentially, Daima is Toriyama's attempt to fix the disaster that was Dragon Ball GT. This was a bold idea and one that nobody saw coming. We all assumed that DB Super would continue and wrap up the Moro Arc and Granolah, and Black Freeza. I'm honestly so freaking glad it didn't. Toyotaro seems like a nice guy, and I have nothing against the man personally, but most of Super just felt like bad fanfiction from the early 2000s. In fact, there was an old fan comic about a HUGE tournament for the fate of the multiverse that was very much like the Tournament of Power, only better written. Fucking Jiren. You know a character is bad when even a Patrick Seitz performance can't save him. This is the man who threw his back out carrying Hetalia into cultural relevance! Then the Goku Black Arc just masterfully captured everything wrong with Super. You have awful writing that's so riddled with plot holes that it's horrendous even by fanfiction standards. You have "fanservice" moments that exist only to make the audience think of specific cool moments from DBZ. I hate to bring out the term "member berry" but SO much of Super was just that. You have vertical power creep simply for the sake of it combined with asspulls like Future Trunks now being 10 million times stronger than Majin Buu because he channeled the small amount of ki that was left on an almost entirely dead planet. Super had a very particular idea of what DB fans want to see. They assumed that we want new transformations, stronger powers, and ever greater threats. There is indeed a small group of DB fans who do want that shit. They want DB to be the journey of Goku becoming the strongest character in the history of fiction. They jizz themselves at the thought of Super Ultra Instinct SSJ Lvl 8 in which Goku punches out Yog Sothoth and solos the reality transcending Elder Gods that exist outside the multiverse. That's really not what I want out of DB, largely because that's not the kind of thing Toriyama was good at writing. His talent didn't lie in creating the most insanely OP characters ever conceived. He was a gag mangaka who wrote Dr Slump. He was essentially a modern-day clown or traveling performer who entertained children with ridiculous stories and silly jokes about poop on a stick. His editors were constantly trying to force him to be more serious and write what we now consider "battle shonen" but it was never actually his strong suit. Daima completely allows Toriyama to be Toriyama. It's a smaller scale story with a childlike sense of adventure and funny gags.

Next, I want to look at the animation. I'm speechless. I can't believe this is Toei! DB Super at least half the time looked SO bad it was getting memed on every week. Characters would never stay on-model. The animation in the first 2 Arcs would sometimes drop to about 3 frames per second. It was embarrassingly bad. Toriyama himself had to call Toei and personally complain about how fucking atrocious it was! Daima on the other hand looks outstanding. I know the first 4 episodes are being strung together to get a theatrical release, which is probably why they look "movie quality". I could be proven wrong, but I don't think there's any way that Toei can afford to keep up this level of quality.

The new OP fucking SLAPS! I don't have anything else for this paragraph. I just wanted y'all to know.

We are introduced to several new characters in Daima. None of them are stronger than Majin Buu in raw power...and that's perfectly fine! Gomah of course feels a bit like Pilaf, but he's not just a complete rip-off. He brings his own style of goofy humor. Toriyama is able to do some actual world building and lore expansion. I'm actually interested to find more about the Supreme Kai's brother. I want to know more about the Demon World and its inhabitants. There's finally a sense of wonder and adventure again. It's finally free from the curse of "New strong guy shows up who is way stronger than the last strong guy and now Goku must get even stronger than the new guy and beat him up." I've laughed at least once in each of the first 4 episodes. Every episode so far is oozing with charm. I've seen some people complain that Daima is sanitized compared to the original Dragon Ball and this is true to a degree. However, Toriyama was a grandfather when he wrote this. Of course, he's not going to write the exact same way he wrote when he was in his 20s. Young Toriyama made sexual assault into a running gag, not because he was edgy but because he himself was always a bit childish. He wasn't at a point where he was mature enough to think "is this appropriate?" or "would I want my kids to read this?". He just wrote down whatever gags he personally found funny. This was also the 1980s in which nobody outside of Japan was reading manga and manga comedy was still absolutely dominated by the legacy of Go Nagai. Naked superheroines grinding their vagina into bad guys' faces until they pass out. A wealthy teenage girl with huge muscles forcing her young male butler to hold up a container while she pisses gallons into it and laughs at him for being embarrassed about the whole situation. Hitler reveals he became a genocidal dictator solely because he was being cucked by shredded, Chad Rabbis. THAT Go Nagai. It was a time of very little censorship or editorial oversight in which one absolute MAD MAN wrote literally whatever he fucking wanted and that set the bar for manga comedy. We no longer live in the 1980s and we can't expect manga humor to be exactly the same as it was then.

Daima is creative, charming, shockingly competent, reverses the worst errors that Super made, and is just a good time. In the era of JJK and Chainsaw Man, I never expected DB of all franchises to come back and challenge for the Shonen title belt, but here we are. Go watch Daima. That is all.

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Nov 1, 2024

BloggermanArt

Recommended

Preliminary (4/? eps)

Remember the OG Dragon Ball? Remember how that was more martial arts focused and less focused on beams and transformations? I have only watched 4 episodes, but I'm liking it very much so far. It feels like the OG Dragon Ball without too much nonsense. It's an adventure again in an unfamiliar world with new characters. This something I missed in Dragon Ball Z and in Dragon Ball Super. The animation is amazing. Its fluid and the fight scenes are nice to look at, because its martial arts focused again. The sound is a delight as well. Its a new world so their are a ... lot of crazy things happening, and you will hear that as well. Not to mention that the intro and ending songs are amazing. I can't wait for the next episodes. I recommend this show, even if you aren't a huge Dragon Ball fan

Reviewer’s Rating: 9

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Nov 25, 2024

AppleDragon91

Mixed Feelings

Preliminary (5/? eps)

Spoiler

its not a review because only 5 episodes aired which is too few to form a review, this is just my thought. and no its not negative because it has many good things in it and its not bad or boring or anything, its just that its pacing is too slow and the episodes feel like filler. stalling, stalling, and stalling, this is basically whats happening. first 2 episodes were the indructoction but once we got to episode 3 which was nothing but a transitional episode with alot of exposition.

they go into a bar gets into a fight with thugs and they steal their ... plane, fair enough, what now? episodes 4 and 5 are about getting new planes just so they would crash immidiatly so they can stall the series much more. first its a flying flower that cant even fly. we spended half of an episode in a store getting it and it immdiatly crashed, then episode 5 we meet pansy and yes pansy is cool, we meet the king, we have finally some advancement in the plot. we get a new plane and then what happns? it crash, immdiatly. so we got overall 3 flying tools 2 that crashed and 1 that was stolen. why? why do you have to stall the show like this? and next episode there is some kind of bull monster they meet. monster of the week type of nonesense. feel like black star dragon saga from gt all over again.

the fight scenes we got by now are just goku beating like 30 guys at the same time, its maybe well animated but its boring because the fights has no stakes. those demons are even weaker then tambourine in dragon ball. goku dosent even need to go ssj. he did for like 1 second and was back to base form. he litterly flicker them with his finger just like how beerus did to him.

so now they are going to fight the tamagamis to get the demon realm dragon balls, fair enough, the tamagamis were said to be strongests beings in the demon realm. but guess what? even with the ship they said it gonna take them 4 days. now that its crashed? we are going to see ALOT of pointless filler and monster of the week kind of nonesne. i do predict that EVENTUALLY there will be a climax with some big stakes and fights but i think it will happen in the very end of the season. at least we know vegeta gonna be there soon so at least we will have that.

but seriously. dont write the demon realm people to be that weak and then it wont be that boring like it is now.

EDIT: ok so i'm updating my "review" we had 7 episodes so far and beraly anything happend. now, people compared it to dragon ball, problem is, dragon ball was 153 episodes. this one is 20 episodes, not 22, not 24, 20. so that means if we are in the next episode in 8 we are reaching 10 episodes soon, half way trough, so only now in episode 8 goku fight the first tamagami, and we have 2 more in 2 different demon worlds all together, we still bearly had any scenes with the vilians aside from the first episode. we had episodes like episode 6 who was nothing but going into a cave to make a gag joke with some monster. that was the entire episode 6, yeah, goku foght with glorio, so what? we all knew goku is far stronger.

goku and vegeta and the rest dident even met yet, episode 7 was nothing but going from place to place. the biggest thing that happend in it was supreme kai removing pansy's collar, thats it. are you kidding me? if this is a 20 episodes show you seriously have no time to wase with those filler episodes. litterly nothing happens in the show!, it has the pacing of a snail!, its been 3 ships that they replaced already.

you know what that means? this all dragging gonna effect the second half of the show big time, its gonna be rushed. seriously get things moving already!

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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	Poll: do you believe this is only 20 episodes total? deg - Nov 15	33 replies	by swbf »» 6 hours ago
	Poll: Dragon Ball Daima Episode 11 Discussion ( 1 2 ) Stark700 - Dec 20	57 replies	by closet_-_weeb »» Yesterday, 11:54 AM
	Poll: Dragon Ball Daima Episode 4 Discussion ( 1 2 3 ) Stark700 - Nov 1	101 replies	by Subzzin_Eu »» Dec 22, 11:32 PM
	Poll: Dragon Ball Daima Episode 10 Discussion ( 1 2 ) Stark700 - Dec 13	55 replies	by Treyv0n »» Dec 22, 12:01 PM
	Poll: Dragon Ball Daima Episode 9 Discussion ( 1 2 ) Stark700 - Dec 6	77 replies	by Stormy_77 »» Dec 21, 11:48 PM