Let’s make this clear right from the start. Daima was a cashgrab that nobody wanted and few watched. It was made just to canonize Super Saiyan 4, the same way the Brolly movie was made to canonize the filler villain. Toriyama in general spent his last years in rehashing old ideas, making the line from the opening song “here comes a brand new story” to be deceptive.
Daima is part of Toriyama’s attempt to incorporate a lot of non-canon ideas into canon, but since he is not a good writer he did a crappy job. Not only Daima contradicts pretty much everything that has been canon
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for decades, it doesn’t even fit with the Super continuity. The way the Potara earrings work changed, the origin of the Dragonballs and Majin Buu changed, and Piccolo doesn’t even know how to speak Namekian anymore! It also has no explanation for why Goku never uses Super Saiyan 4 in Super, or why Kaioshin is not fused again. It will piss off anyone who still thinks Dragonball is consistent with its rules. Not that it ever was or it matters at this point.
Although Daima expands the lore by delving into the demon realm and the origin of the Namekians, that doesn’t mean a thing because no one gives a shit about the setting. A dozen universes were introduced in Super, they were left completely unexplored, and nobody complained when the Tournament of Power began. Because Dragonball is all about the fighting, not exploration. It is not One Piece or Tower of God; it’s Goku changing hair colors and exchanging energy beams with a villain. Plus, there have been so many fanfic stories over the decades, to the point the canon lore doesn’t matter anymore. Heck, Xenoverse and Sparkling Zero are nothing but ‘what if’ scenarios, yet nobody complains about the breaching of canon. Heck, not even Daima cares.
What matters the most is if people wanted Daima, and the answer is, they didn’t. When it was first announced everyone quickly yelled “We want Moro!” meaning they wanted the next arc of Super to be adapted. Daima, like GT, is a cashgrab, and if it had never been made, nobody would miss a thing. Not even calling it a sendoff or a passion project of Toriyama is enough to excuse its existence. No one cares about anything else the late mangaka made, from Dragon Quest to Blue Dragon, to even the very recent Sand Land. And they certainly don’t care about silly gag comedies that involve Muppet Baby-like versions of characters from the battle manga they love. Let’s be honest, people only care about Dragonball, even if Toriyama isn’t involved. Quick reminder that all he was doing with Super was giving Toyotaro, the succeeding mangaka, vague concepts and plot threads and was then letting him do as he pleased. The result was a complete mess of unbaked ideas and bad writing.
The fans didn’t wait 10 minutes before calling Daima a GT 2.0, which in many ways it is. Once again, Goku is back to being a kid through a wish from the dragon and travels to distant lands in a spaceship to undo it. Despite many others becoming babies along with him, the premise did not change. On the side of lies, the shills of this cashgrab were insisting it’s not a rehash. It’s more like a return to the style of the original series, when Goku was still a kid and there was a lot of adventure instead of constant Super Saiyan transformations and energy beams. This was quickly proven to be a lie, since not only Daima is chockfull of transformations and energy beams, it also doesn’t feel like the original series in the slightest. Back then Goku and the gang were far more violent and sexually deprived compared to the sanitized versions they had post Z. Remember how kid Goku killed and ate his enemies? When he sexually molested every girl he was coming across with his pat-pat move? That’s not here. We got the adventure aspect and the design of Goku, but not the personality he had as a kid or the type of comedy the original show was using. The jokes were in general too sanitized. Even if you liked the vulgar Dr. Slump type of comedy Dragonball used to have at first, this is not a return to that kind of humor. It’s safe and inoffensive, making it dull and unmemorable.
The shills obviously refused to admit that, and insisted you shouldn’t let your hatred of GT to get in the way (in case you didn’t know, nobody liked anything in that show aside from Super Saiyan 4, because it was boring). The shills eventually backpedaled when Super Saiyan 4 got rehashed and sang a different tune. Oh, it actually is a rehash and you should watch it because you love GT!
The rehashed transformation was nothing but memberberries, but it became an instant hook regardless. Too bad it happened in the finale. The rest of the show was a chore to watch and the idea to rehash Goku becoming a kid didn’t sit well with the audience. Narrative-wise it was done to depower him, but aesthetic-wise the Muppet Babies / Tiny Toons type of designs didn’t look nice. It’s the adult forms everyone liked, not the chibi ones. How do you switch from buffed adults who only care about punching each other to baby food without eye rolling? It’s like seeing Rambo become a My Little Pony. Your average Dragonball fan only cares about action and transformations, not a bunch of brats doing goofy things. No wonder the show lost 80% of its audience just from that. It also didn’t matter in the long-run, since the only opponent that posed a challenge was the final villain. Everyone else was a cakewalk, even with Goku being a much weaker kid.
Everyone else becoming kids didn’t matter either, since Toriyama didn’t do anything with it. It was there just as a joke for the first episodes and then didn’t play a role for the rest of the series. It could be argued that it was done to make the show more accessible to children viewers, but it didn’t work since not many were watching the show, and those who did were all 40 year old diehard fans waiting to see epic fights. They eventually got them.
Even then, though, the fights are just a hollow spectacle. They don’t have the epicness of Z, since everyone looks dumb and the threats are barely felt. Nothing is at stake in this show, since the good guys don’t mind being kids. In fact, they love it! On top of that, there is no time limit that would lead to Earth blowing up like in GT. Basically, there is no tension, pressure of time, or stakes in general.
Despite that, the vast majority of viewers/readers were pleased, even if they were aware that they were essentially being given garbage. Because none of them cares about the quality of the story, and they certainly don’t care about who wrote it. They just wanna see adult Goku changing hair colors and exchanging energy beams with a villain. They don’t want to see Rugrats versions of Goten and Trunks rolling on the floor and laughing.
If I haven’t said a single word about other characters beyond Goku so far, it’s because they were largely left underused. Daima is still the Goku show, with Vegeta being the jealous boyfriend. Despite featuring around a hundred named characters, everyone beyond those two is just there to offer exposition or gasp at how strong Goku and Vegeta are. Most of the older cast is left on Earth where you never see them again after the first episodes. Gohan in specific doesn’t even exist, further proving how much Toriyama regretted making him the new protagonist for a while. Others like Piccolo, Bulma and Shin come along for the heck of it, without offering a thing to the plot. New characters like Glorio and Panzy were initially important for taking the main characters to other places with their airship, and explaining the situation of the demon world, but once Goku began flying again he didn’t need them anymore, and he sure didn’t care about the world he was in. On the villain side, we get Gomah, who is basically Pilaf with a clown head, a completely unthreatening gag character. His two lieutenants, Arinsu and Degesu, seemed to have a hidden agenda that would complicate things, but it never went anywhere and the plot remained fairly silly and straightforward.
In fact, the plot was so silly and straightforward it became completely forgettable. There was nothing interesting going on while the gang was traveling in the demon world. The challenges were so easy to overcome, Toriyama had to artificially make some situations to seem more dangerous than they actually were. There were instances where the audience was supposed to believe Super Saiyans who can blow up planets with a finger couldn’t deal with a big child, or normal solders with laser guns. Such moments were not only insulting the audience, they were also clearly done to stretch a fairly simple mission to five times its natural duration. Just how many episodes were wasted on their airship breaking down and them having to walk? How many minutes of every episode were wasted on characters that don’t shut up and explain everything, even when something is obvious? 80% the show was a complete chore to watch. On top of that, there were plot points that were dropped entirely, such as the fusion bugs that were constantly mentioned, made everyone to expect fusion, and it never happened.
The highlights ended up being the major battles with the guardian robots and the big bad, but even those had to be artificially made to seem harder than they actually were. One of the robots was given a power up out of nowhere, just so we can have a fan service moment with Vegeta turning Super Saiyan 3. And Gomah finds this completely broken eye that instantly turns him from a nobody to someone more powerful than a Super Saiyan 3. The tradition of people gaining power ups with no effort, and devaluing the earlier arcs when training and never giving up were pivotal, continues. Basically, there is no build up to the highlights, the power ups feel unearned, and the battles end up being superficial because of it. I kept thinking all they have to do is shoot the big bad with a laser gun and be done with it.
In case it wasn’t obvious yet, I do not recommend Daima. It was a complete waste of time and an insult to old fans that care about anything other than transformations. I place it even lower than GT, which was also a cashgrab but came out when people were starving for more Dragonball. GT also came out during the 90s when options were limited to what was airing on TV. That is not the case today; you can watch anything you want, from any year, and at any time of the day you fancy. And who would turn his head towards Daima when Sparkling Zero came out at the same time, with every character of every arc and a hundred what-if stories? There is also Multiverse, the best fanfic, that has many times surpassed the official material. Do those two have the best writing? Hell, no! But that is not what fans of the series want. They are pleased with seeing Goku changing hair colors and exchanging energy beams with a villain. Therefore, who gives a dime about Daima when you have so many better alternatives? As the ratings have proved, not many.
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Mar 6, 2025
Dragon Ball Daima
(Anime)
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Let’s make this clear right from the start. Daima was a cashgrab that nobody wanted and few watched. It was made just to canonize Super Saiyan 4, the same way the Brolly movie was made to canonize the filler villain. Toriyama in general spent his last years in rehashing old ideas, making the line from the opening song “here comes a brand new story” to be deceptive.
Daima is part of Toriyama’s attempt to incorporate a lot of non-canon ideas into canon, but since he is not a good writer he did a crappy job. Not only Daima contradicts pretty much everything that has been canon ... 
Sep 23, 2022
The main creators of Serial Experiments Lain, Ryuutaro Nakamura, Chiaki Konaka, and Yoshitoshi Abe teamed up again to weave a new story. The title "Despera" is taken from a prose poem by Jun Tsuji, a Taisho-era Dadaist poet.
Despera is set in Japan in 1922, in the Taisho period, and depicts a mysterious girl called Ain, reminiscent of Lain, who’s obsessed with technology and creates weird devices, Takeshita who uses a machine that can see the future and sells the information of future events to fund Ain’s inventions, and various historical figures and buildings from the period. There’s a mystical aura throughout the novel thanks to ... 
Aug 22, 2017
Uchiage Hanabi
(Anime)
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A seemengly cashgrab.
First of all lets talk about the visuals, it looks pretty. Its well animated as expected from Shaft, with stunning backgrounds and bright colours. For music, the duet did an ok job. Now the problem is the characters designs, which are reminiscent of the Monogatari franchise, suggesting that Shaft is trying to play it safe. The video doesn't tell us much about the story but we clearly see that it's a romance with some sort of contrived magical object. All in all i wouldn't expect much from this new movie,especially because of previous movies failures with the pretty colours being the only redeemable quality. |
