Israeli newspaper Haaretz recently featured an editorial entitled, “This sadistic series is loved by kids, probably because that’s how they view the world.”

“Dragon Ball Super” has no low volume. The characters don’t stop threatening each other with death, annihilation, destruction and skewering. They are cruel and sadistic. The stress is on the levels of a heart attack. The children have already figured out where they live.

In the editorial, author Rogel Alpher notes that, while magic and heroism have been included in children’s content before, “[t]hey just have never been vulgar and so noisy.” Alpher notes how it is, “as if [the characters] suffer from some muscle disease, or they drank five cups of double espresso within five minutes.” He continues, “[t]he characters don’t stop threatening each other with death, annihilation, destruction and skewering. They’re cruel, even sadistic at times.” Continuing on about the series’ origin, Alpher states, “[b]ecause it was created in Japan, in anime tradition, all characters have enlarged eyes but with empty expressions.” Alpher concludes that children see a reflection of the real world — “[a]n exhausting and demanding world” — in Dragon Ball Super.

Alpher apparently has a knack for this kind of hyperbolic and flowery analysis; he once wrote regarding a particular television actress that she had a “dumb expression on her face”, “like she’s a zombie”, “[has] a condescending butt-face of models” and that “she has no ounce of talent”.

Dragon Ball Super began last year in Israel, airing daily and repeating in batches of 26 episodes on Nickelodeon. The series continued this month with the “Future Trunks arc” of the series.

Big thanks to @guybigel for the heads-up along with the extensive translation and background work!

We look forward to eventually including this as a part of our “Press Archive” — following our rough, completely arbitrary content guidelines — and encourage international readers/visitors/fans to submit links and translations of their own!