Was Dragon Ball Super a good anime?

Discussion specifically regarding the "Dragon Ball Super" TV series premiering July 2015 in Japan, including individual threads for each episode.

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super michael
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Was Dragon Ball Super a good anime?

Post by super michael » Tue Nov 01, 2022 9:41 am

Just as the topic title says, do you think Dragon Ball Super was a good anime or bad?

In my opinion Dragon Ball Super anime had some great episode, however there was too many awful episode.
  • Some character in DBS like Goku and Chi Chi was too annoying at certain time and down right brainless.
  • Power gains and training method was just terrible their writing.
  • Some gags wasn't even funny at all.
  • Some characters not being allowed to train, fight and help in anyway was annoying. Especially characters that was asleep when it mattered.
  • Sometimes animation looked really bad.
  • Censored blood was bad in DBS. Characters could get holes and lose limbs, but no blood at all
My opinion is DBS Anime wasn't good. It is inferior compared to DB/DBZ.

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Re: Was Dragon Ball Super a good anime?

Post by Trouser » Tue Nov 01, 2022 4:38 pm

It's writting was all over the place and it had many stupid and boring moments. It wasn't a good anime. Only Slice of Life moments and Goku Black Arc, the first half of it, was really good. But cons wins over pros.
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Re: Was Dragon Ball Super a good anime?

Post by capsulecorp » Tue Nov 01, 2022 8:06 pm

I have returned to the Arale episode and some of the well-animated bits of the TOP a few times, but that's about it. Loads of potential but, in general, the Dragon Ball Super anime just feels like an advertisement for the movies.

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Re: Was Dragon Ball Super a good anime?

Post by Cipher » Tue Nov 01, 2022 11:36 pm

It did its job of bringing kids on board and getting eyes onto new Dragon Ball content.

But no, not by most standards. I think it’s a series that sometimes manages to be fun (how often and to what level depending on your personal stance) in spite of itself.

As its own work, the show suffers constant visual breakdowns due to its short-sighted schedule, and the revolving door of show directors and seemingly little guiding creative material keeps its characters and even basic elements of its world (how strong are Goku and Vegeta in even the most general sense?) from feeling consistent. There are points where one hand doesn’t seem to know what the other is doing, creatively (the focus on and abandonment of Goku’s culpability in the Tournament of Power—the odd structure and repeated beats on the tournament itself, etc). It’s distracting.

As a fan, the haphazard characterization and tone also keeps it from really feeling in line with the manga/original run for me, though that won’t be something that’s present for all viewers. It is another lens through which I’d say, “No, probably not” though.

Not like there isn’t anything enjoyable in it, and not like anyone’s wrong for enjoying it on the whole.

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Re: Was Dragon Ball Super a good anime?

Post by batistabus » Wed Nov 02, 2022 12:43 am

The best thing I can say about it is that it wasn't boring. In that sense, it's much better than GT. Otherwise, I just found it to be low quality in every sense except for the (Japanese, I haven't watched the dub) voice cast.

Toriyama's outline is visible, but it does not shine. For me, the high point of the series was the Future Trunks arc. The Tournament of Power was a narrative mess, but at least I could look forward to 1 or 2 cuts of solid animation per episode, and episode 131 is the best of the series (also the ToP opening slaps). The U6 tournament had impressively poor presentation, and the film retelling should not exist.

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Re: Was Dragon Ball Super a good anime?

Post by theherodjl » Wed Nov 02, 2022 5:00 am

The slow pacing was the only part of DBS that I genuinely did not care for. The ToP in particular lasted way too long to believably remain within the threshold of 48 minutes even with the excuse of super speed; there was just way too much talking going on and various characters doing things aside from the ol' "characters disappearing and reappearing quickly in different places while trading blows"-shtick that DB is known for.
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Re: Was Dragon Ball Super a good anime?

Post by Cipher » Wed Nov 02, 2022 8:26 am

batistabus wrote: Wed Nov 02, 2022 12:43 am The best thing I can say about it is that it wasn't boring. In that sense, it's much better than GT. Otherwise, I just found it to be low quality in every sense except for the (Japanese, I haven't watched the dub) voice cast.
Super might make for more exciting highlight viewing, but as dull as GT gets in a few spots, I find its consistent atmosphere and quicker story movement make it way more tempting to binge a few episodes. Super’s pretty sluggish, though it might just be my general dislike for its writing that tires me out when I try to go back for full episodes. Still, even in its action highlights, it’s full of dull commentary cutaways in the style of a simultaneous manga adaptation (which is weird because it wasn’t).

I also don’t know if there’s anything in GT I find as dull as Super’s worst comedy and filler episodes.

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Re: Was Dragon Ball Super a good anime?

Post by Lord Beerus » Wed Nov 02, 2022 1:37 pm

In my opinion, no.

It suffered too much from a constant change of creative direction, which in itself was due to the lack of pre-production for the series, which often lead to the characterization of the cast being so schizophrenic, as well as not having any kind consistent understanding of how strong characters were from one episode to the next, creating this unbelievably distraction when attempting to get invested in the personal growth of any given character.

This isn't even mentioning how much the animation was subpar for 2/3 of the entire run, again, due to a lack of planning on the part of Toei, which made for some quite uncomfortable viewing for episodes that often needed a higher quality of animation to elevate the script for certain instances.

I honestly look back at the Super anime and think that if Toei spent an additional 6 months planning out the narrative and organizing who would be the series director and who would animate certain episodes, I think the anime would be overall a very worthwhile watch. Instead, it is more of an anime you have to carefully comb through to find the pieces that are worth a revisit.

In short, the anime was a mess from a writing standpoint for large chunks of its runtime and it largely relied on spectacle to cover up its very overt haphazard composition.

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Re: Was Dragon Ball Super a good anime?

Post by GokuHater » Sat Nov 05, 2022 6:38 am

As far as anime goes, Super is a very medicore shonen anime. Without context it,s a fairly entertaining watch with some good scenes and episodes here and there but nothing special.
It starts out weak with the animation problems and episodes being boringly paced (Ulong vs Beerus anyone?)

The duo of Goku and Vegeta is an okay set of protagonists but you don't really feel much of their growth as a shonen should contain (off course there is training and new forms but it pales to comparison to some og DB training).

As far as a continuation to the original saga it also doesn't bode so well.
Off course it is better than nothing and having some new characters and world building (god's, universes, god ki).

An idiot shonen character is already done to death and isn't nothing new, however pitty that Goku was put in such a role. Many of us remember Goku - even if a bit of an idiot - as a wise and experienced fighter, mentor figure, intelligent tactician. Seeing this new fighting obsessed man child leaves a bad taste.

So many of the iconic dragon ball tropes we love and which stick to mind for many years are almost never to be found.
Goku's fair rage? Only briefly in Zamasu arc.
Ground breaking epic transformations? Only UI in ToP.
New, original villain? Only Zamasu. (And that's by DB as in anime overall such villain is also done to death).

And if they try to recreate epic moments they do it without any context or "soul" which make them very shallow.
Piccolo saving Gohan in RoF,
Gohan saving Piccolo in ToP,
Vegeta "sacrifice" in ToP,
Blue evolution transformation.

Super unfortunately, while entertaining, fails to make me feel anything and that's a pity as it could very much with some more polish and production value.

Mind you, I am talking only about the anime, as I feel movies and the manga are somewhat different.

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Re: Was Dragon Ball Super a good anime?

Post by SupremeKai25 » Sat Nov 05, 2022 6:48 am

It made me and millions of other people tune in to watch every episode on Sunday, so Yes, it was. It did its job of generating money and internet traffic around the franchise. And it did so flawlessly, given how sometimes streaming sites would literally break because there were too many people trying to watch the new episode.

Any other metric of "good anime" is highly subjective so I'm just taking into consideration an objective fact: from the perspective of the producers, it was "good"; because it achieved its primary function of generating money and traffic around the franchise.

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Re: Was Dragon Ball Super a good anime?

Post by Super Saiyan Swagger » Sun Nov 06, 2022 7:02 am

I liked it. It stumbled at the beginning with the retellings, but even those arcs had stand-out episodes like Vegeta trying to convince Whis to train him. It got a lot better as it progressed and the Future Trunks arc has gone down as one of my favourite arcs in the entire franchise.

It’s by no means a bad anime. It’s just bogged down by its lacklustre animation early on, inconsistent writing and a final tournament that does overstay its welcome a bit.

Watching it week to week is an experience I really miss. I hope that if and when it comes back they’ve learned from their previous mistakes and make it the best show possible.

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Re: Was Dragon Ball Super a good anime?

Post by Zekken » Mon Nov 07, 2022 8:34 am

No it wasnt, only good arc was Goku Black, as that one had proper set up build up and execution ( I dont mind the ending too much)

They couldnt grasp the heights of DBZ from saiyan to buu saga.

Universe 6 tourney had too little.... I wouldnt say substance cuz that was never toriyamas fortè but it lacked enough consequence. Only really thing to propel the plot was introduction of Super Dragon balls, Zeno and inroducing us to a new universe. But all the characters in that new universe served little to no relevance in the story of the 131 episodes. Frost and Magetta only served to later act as buffer fighters in the TOP, and if u werent gonna have Cabba be more relevant than just buying Kale & Califla time you could have at least given him an interesting character journey to reach super saiyan. Hit should have been more relevant in the end or at least contributed to developing our main characters. Like A16 in DBZ.

In the tournament of power they should simply just have developed Jiren more, too many episodes spent on recruiting inconsequential fighters for the Z team(not all of them needed full episodes) could have been spent on JIren or Kale and Caulifla

Comparing DBS to current anime standards its arcs, except for Goku Black, simply do not develop our characters and does not feel as consequential even as DBZ did.
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Re: Was Dragon Ball Super a good anime?

Post by ZombieVito » Mon Nov 07, 2022 12:46 pm

It's my favorite anime. Although I don't watch much anime.

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Re: Was Dragon Ball Super a good anime?

Post by JulieYBM » Mon Nov 07, 2022 1:03 pm

Overall? No, but the series did have bright spots like Tomioka Atsuhiro and King Ryuu scripted episodes, the anime-original episodes and the inclusion of Kale, Caulifla and Ribrianne.

The production issues and the clear lack of vision from within Toei thanks to the gutless manner in which producers likely hamstrung the production with its time and other creative restrictions really harmed the overall series. Chioka Masatoshi's lack of personal involvement as a storyboard artists or episode director really goes to show how bad things were and his unceremonious departure from the series is even more damning.
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Re: Was Dragon Ball Super a good anime?

Post by Thani » Mon Nov 07, 2022 1:05 pm

I'm just gonna say that most people here are correct about Super being widly inconsistent since it traded hands so often... But as far as consistency in character portrayal goes, to me, it's not like the manga did any better. So overall I prefer the anime, I don't think it was a "good" anime subjectively, but I can appreciate it for what it tried to be.
JulieYBM wrote: Mon Nov 07, 2022 1:03 pm Overall? No, but the series did have bright spots like Tomioka Atsuhiro and King Ryuu scripted episodes, the anime-original episodes and the inclusion of Kale, Caulifla and Ribrianne.

The production issues and the clear lack of vision from within Toei thanks to the gutless manner in which producers likely hamstrung the production with its time and other creative restrictions really harmed the overall series. Chioka Masatoshi's lack of personal involvement as a storyboard artists or episode director really goes to show how bad things were and his unceremonious departure from the series is even more damning.
All of this, really.

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Re: Was Dragon Ball Super a good anime?

Post by Koitsukai » Mon Nov 07, 2022 1:17 pm

This question has only two answers, yes or no, and I think in this case, there are gray areas.
It wasn't great, it wasn't Z or DB. It isn't Saint Seiya or Death Note, but it also isn't Saint Seiya Omega or ENTER AWFUL ANIME.

It had a bad production, bad planning, bad ideas like retelling in a poor manner movies we've already seen. The animation took 30 episodes to kick in, and it took the exciting situations 40 episodes to arrive, and for the actually good animation we had to wait 90 episodes. There were long breaks between each arc, as well, and at times the need for an actual official storyline was too big, the wait was excruciating more than once.
After that, it's a pretty decent show, the FT arc has its flaws but it's enjoyable, the animation is kinda subpar still but not awful, and some filler episodes between arcs are boring to the point of no return.
The preparation for the ToP was too long, as long as the ToP, and the ToP had really boring episodes, mostly at first. After the special, that was around episode 109 (15 episodes after the ToP began), the show got intense and fucking awesome.
There were some cool thngs, some slice of life episodes are definitely good, but other episodes weren't even phoned in.

Overall, it's an ok anime to me, maybe calling it a not-bad anime fits better. It doesn't suck and it relies solely on two arcs: Zamasu arc and the last 20 episodes of the ToP. I guess I really liked those 20 episodes and the Zamau arc. They do balance the scale for me.

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Re: Was Dragon Ball Super a good anime?

Post by Majin Buu » Mon Nov 07, 2022 4:01 pm

I finally decided to start watching the anime earlier this year and have been making my way through it over the past few months. With only 9 episodes of the Tournament of Power left, I feel I can weigh in on this:

It's a mixed bag, just like GT was. There's been points in the Tournament of Power where everything is working well enough that I feel it borders on being good, and I thought the Future arc was ok at best (I wasn't expecting to come out of this having a higher opinion of the ToP than the Future arc since the latter was the one I was most intrigued by); but there's been so much I don't like about the anime as a whole that I can't call it good. Pacing and characterization are two of this series' biggest issues.

In contrast, I saw SuperHero while I was making my way through the series and at this point I can say that I enjoyed SuperHero far more than the entirety of the anime (I still have yet to see Broly so I can't say how that compares yet, that's coming once I finish the ToP) as there was only one or two things I didn't like about SuperHero.

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Re: Was Dragon Ball Super a good anime?

Post by ClutchBangstrip » Mon Nov 07, 2022 5:19 pm

It's a difficult question for people like me. As someone who's just a DB fan and not really a general anime fan, anymore.

I don't watch animated or drawn fiction for anything beyond action or comedy. So to me, Dragon Ball Super's high points are unrivaled. Several episodes have packed stadiums and caused sites to crash. A lot of episodes had me and my family out of our seats, from adults to toddlers. So that's magnificent.

On the other hand, Super had far too many low points. Especially considering the amount of money the franchise makes. I own every episode or film of Dragon Ball before Super. That said, I feel there are too many poorly drawn and animated episodes compared to the amount of profit the franchise makes. I could never see myself paying money to rewatch Super again, like I've done with the OGDB and Z. Now the films are amazing but the actual show? Hell, I 'll be honest, I can just barely tolerate the drops in art and animation of the OGDB and Z.

I guess I have to say Super's... just barely good, at best. It's good enough to rewatch awesome clips on YT, but I don't think I'd ever rewatch the series again. Especially since, to me, the more recent manga is better than anything in the former show.

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Re: Was Dragon Ball Super a good anime?

Post by Civic » Tue Nov 08, 2022 12:12 am

I don't watch anime outside of Dragon Ball so I guess I can't really comment on its quality of being anime. I don't think it's as bad as everyone else says, there are some genuinely great moments and impressive fights, but I don't think it comes close to what DBZ was able to do. Definitely better than GT though.

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Re: Was Dragon Ball Super a good anime?

Post by PurestEvil » Tue Nov 08, 2022 5:01 pm

It's more mediocre than good. Many of its outstandingly good moments are balanced out with irritatingly bad moments.
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