Is it easy to follow what's happening without seeing the earlier episodes?

[Ringworm128]

I want to start watching Super ASAP but I was wondering if it's easy to follow starting from where it is now. If I were to watch a new episode would it make sense, or is it best if I go back and watch the first 50+ episodes?

From what I gather it goes something like this.
Repeat of BOG
Repeat of ROF
Tournament arc where characters like Hit and Cabba are introduced
Black arc, where Future Trunks timeline is destroyed by Black.

[Sonicjamareiz]

If you haven't already watch the movies BoG and RoF Then watch DBS episodes 28-41 is the U6 Tournament arc. If you want you can skip episodes 42-46 thats just a filler arc 47 and up is the Future Trunks arc.

[Boo Machine]

If you start from the newest episode then yes, you might be a little lost since there is a bit of mystery going on.

But it's not a terribly long catch up game. I think you can get away with watching the Battle of gods and Ressurection of F movies in place of the first 27 episodes. You would miss some funny filler but it's not super necessary if you would rather catch up quickly. Then you can start from episode 28 where the newer stuff begins.

[Jinzoningen MULE]

You shouldn't start at the latest episode. Watch the movies, tournament, then Future Trunks Arc.

[GodKaio-Ken]

If you've seen BoG and RoF movies you can honestly start at the Future Trunks Arc IF you don't mind some small confusion. You probably won't miss too much a quick reading of the forums wouldn't fix until you went back to watch U6 Tournament Arc.

[Anime Kitten]

Either watch Battle of Gods and Resurrection 'F', then the entirety of Super starting in Episode 28, or do what I did, which is watch every single episode like they're meant to be.

[Miracles]

Why yes it is...They seem to recap a lot anyway.

[Cipher]

I don't think so. You need to watch the earlier episodes to not understand how Pilaf, Mai and Shuu became children again.

[Grimlock]

You shouldn't start at the latest episode. Watch the movies, tournament, then Future Trunks Arc.

Yes. This is the perfect way to start watching Dragon Ball Super. From episode 28 to 41, then 47 to the latest one. You'll know everything you need to know. But keep in mind that the anime is the Toei version of the things. If you read the manga, then it's Toyotaro version. DO NOT EVEN think in trying to merge both versions, ever!

[Jinzoningen MULE]

You shouldn't start at the latest episode. Watch the movies, tournament, then Future Trunks Arc.

Yes. This is the perfect way to start watching Dragon Ball Super. From episode 28 to 41, then 47 to the latest one. You'll know everything you need to know. But keep in mind that the anime is the Toei version of the things. If you read the manga, then it's Toyotaro version. DO NOT EVEN think in trying to merge both versions, ever!

Absolutely, 2 totally separate continuities, they will not mix.

[Gig]

I don't think so. You need to watch the earlier episodes to not understand how Pilaf, Mai and Shuu became children again.

IIRC, the anime series has never stated why, how and when Pilaf, Mai and Shuu have become children again. They simply appeared this way since the first episodes, with no explaination. Knowing that these guys spent their entire life searching for the Dragon Balls, one might guess that once they found them and used them for this purpose, instead of for becoming kings of the world. They have become friends with Trunks -while secretely still have dreams of conquest-, so they are always around Bulma's home at the moment, where they can eat as they wish.

In the movies, instead, they briefly stated that they needed youth to rule the world (I don't remember if they actually said or showed they used Dragon Balls... they briefly showed Pilaf on a cliff, with a sky similar to a Dragon summon maybe... I don't remember exactly).
Also in the movies, there were brief references to Kid Mai and Kid Trunks may have a relationship, while such references were not in Super's "retellings"... then Future Trunks showed up and things become a bit weird (Kid Mai having a crush for Future Trunks, and Kid Trunks becoming a bit gelous).

The time when they made their wish is unknown. Considering that Mai returned young also in Future Trunks' timeline (otherwise, at the time of Black, she should have been 60+!), one might guess they returned young before the attack of Androids/Cyborgs (when Piccolo got killed, dragonballs disappeared in that timeline), but considering their current age seems similar to Kid Trunks, that would imply they returned newborns! maybe the wish happened in different ages in the two timelines? Who knows...

I don't know how that's managed in the manga.

However, while probably the best thing is to view all the series since the beginning (although in the first two arcs there are some parts too slow and hence a bit boring), you may skip the first two arcs and see the movies instead (although the movies to have some differences from the retellings), and start from U6 arc. Maybe you may even start directly from FT arc, but lately (ep 57-58) it has recalled a few things from U6 arc, so you may appreciate it more if knowing it (also, U6 arc has some nice moments).

I had some time, so I just summed up the whole show for you, up to right before the beginning of the Future Trunks arc (VERY HUGE SPOILERS ALERT - It's divided by arcs, so you can read only the parts about the arcs you don't plan to watch):
[spoiler]Battle of Gods Arc
- Beerus, God of Destruction, awakes after years of sleep. Having he had a prophetic dream about a certain "super saiyan god", he goes with his attendant (and martial arts teacher) Whis to find the Saiyans, because he wants a challenging match.
- He beats SSJ3 Goku with ABSOLUTELY no effort. None of the Saiyans knows about this "SSG", and Majin Boo irritates Beerus, so he's going to destroy Earth.
- Before he does that, Dragon Balls are used to know about SSG, and the dragon tells that 5 pure-hearted saiyans have to put their spirit to another one. They do the ritual (including Pan from Videl's womb) and Goku becomes SSG (red hair): Beerus will spare Earth if Goku wins. Being introduced the concept of "God ki", which cannot be sensed by mortals (this concept opens to some inconsistences, IMHO, I would have not introduced a such thing, but I'm not Toei).
- SSG Goku fights with Beerus. When the time of the transformation ends, Goku is still able to keep up with Beerus, it looks like the strenght of SSG has somehow blendend within him. At the end, he still loses but Beerus spares the Earth thanks to the nice fight and the delicious food that he can eat there (he fakes falling asleep to do not have to admit he changed his mind).
- Mr Satan takes the glory of beating a god, and for that is challenged by some aliens in a quite funny filler episode.

Resurrection of Frieza Arc
- Vegeta and Goku go training with Whis, who also teaches them a new way to use ki.
- Sorbet, current commander of Frieza army, being the army extremely weakened after Frieza's death, goes to Earth and uses Dragon Balls to revive Frieza. But he's still in pieces and they have to put him together in a last generation regenerative chamber.
- Frieza takes the lead of his army again and trains for a few months. He never trained before.
- Frieza goes to Earth in search for revenge.
- Jaco, the galactic patrolman (which has his own Toriyama manga), warns Bulma about this. Z fighters beat Frieza army, but Frieza has become way too strong for them. Piccolo is killed, although he will be revived with Namekian Dragon Balls completely offscreen at the end of the arc (badly managed IMHO).
- Bulma finally manages to contact Whis, so Goku and Vegeta return to Earth.
- Goku fights Frieza, first in normal form... then they FINALLY decide to go all-out and show us two new transformations: Super Saiyan God Super Saiyan (later simpy named Super Saiyan Blue) and Golden Frieza.
- Golden Frieza is somewhat stronger than Goku and takes the upper hand, but in the end he goes out of stamina. Goku takes the upper hand, but lowers his guard and Sorbet hits him, wounding him.
- Vegeta takes his place and turns SSB: he learned how to use God ki even without ever making the SSG ritual! He easily beats a exhaust Frieza, killiing also Sorbet in the process, and Frieza even loses his golden form. Just before Vegeta kills Frieza, Frieza suddenly makes the Earth explode.
- Whis saves Goku and other Z fighters, then rewinds time (he can rewind time 3 minutes) and Goku kills Frieza just in time to save Earth.

Universe 6 Tournament Arc
- Vegeta and Goku return training on Beerus planet.
- Champa (brother of Beerus and god of destruction of Universe 6) and Vados (Sister of whis), reach the planet. They are gathering the Super Dragon Balls, with them they may express a wish without any limitation. Champa may use them to swap U6 and U7 Earths (while in U7 Earth -Goku & Co.- there are delicious foods, U6 Earthlings did self-extint due to wars). So they set-up a tournament to decide who will use the Super Dragon Balls.
- Since one of the super dragon balls is still missing, Bulma and Jaco go to Zuno, the sage who knows everything, to know about the Super Dragon Balls (each one is big like two-three times the Earth. They spread across U6 and U7), but they wasted some of the allowed number of questions and would need 7 years for an appointment, so they don't know the location of the last one.
- The tournament occurs in an empty planet placed between U6 and U7. U6 team is Goku, Piccolo, Vegeta and Monaka (a small pink guy who Beerus says is stronger than Goku). Majin buu does not fight because he falls asleep during an initial test.
- U6 fighters are Botamo (a bear-like being which does not receive damage from hits), Frost (U6 Frieza counterpart), Magetta (a metal-man with boiling lava inside him), Cabba (a saiyan from Universe 6, where saiyans are good and still have a planet, but do not know about Super Saiyan), and Hit (a legendary assassin, who is more than 1000 years old).
- Without entering in the detail of all matches, at the end it's Goku vs Hit. Some aspects of the match do make little sense, but there are a few VERY cool moments. Hit has got a "time-skip" technique, which he manages to improve during the fight. Goku uses Kaio-ken after many years (unlike yellow Super Saiyan, the blue one allows to use also Kaio-ken). At the end, it looks like that Hit will very likely win, but Champa and Beerus starts arguing and Goku quits the match by jumping out of the ring, also considering his Kaio-ken was almost out of time. Anti-climax ending!
- The final is Monaka vs Hit. Monaka in reality is weak (Beerus uses him just to further motivate Goku to become stronger). Hit understand this and fakes himself being sent out of the ring by Monaka. Universe 7 wins!
- Champa is upset to his figthers and wants to kill them, but suddely, the Omni-king (King of all), Zeno-sama (a small doll/child-like being), appears in the arena. Beerus and Champa are shocked, he's the highest deity, who is over all the 12 universes!
- While everyone is shocked at seeing Goku acting casually towards the omni-king, Zeno-sama says he enjoyed the tournament, and wants to make one with all 12 universes.
- Champa spares his fighters, who may be needed for the new tournament, and leaves his 6 Super Dragon Balls to Beerus, and returns to universe 6. The empty planet in reality was the final super dragon ball covered with debriefs, so Beerus and Whis can use the "language of gods" to invoke the Super Dragon, which is much larger than galaxies, and -without letting Goku & Co. know- ask him to restore universe 6 Earth and humanity. So Champa now can taste Earth's delicious food too, but owes a favour to Beerus.

Monaka Arc
- Monaka in reality is a space express delivery driver, and does a delivery to the party that Bulma organized following U7 victory.
- Everyone there discovers that in reality he's weak, but Beerus does not want Goku to know, fearing that may somehow demotivate him. So, when Goku arrives at the party, Beerus wears a "Monaka costume" made by Mr Satan to promote his own gym, and fights Goku while pretending to be Monaka in a sparring match. Goku seems very dumb to do not notice it's a costume, however the episode has some funny moments.

- A few days after, Goku loses control of his ki, due to its overuse with the Kaiokien x10 in the tournament, causing some mess. He needs some rest without using ki. Spending some days at Gohan's home, he enjoys staying with the small Pan. We learn that Pan is secretly already capable of flying, and she will give some hard time to the Pilaf gang and their robot. Nice episode, although I don't get the reason Pilaf was planning against Goku & Co. at this time of the story.

- Some time after, Goku has recovered control of his ki and goes training to North Kaio's planet.
- Goten and Trunks get stuck inside Monaka's space van, but don't want to break it to get out, to avoid troubles to Monaka. So they end up in an alien planet, Potaufeu.
- In that planet there is only one inhabitant, and he's chased by some bad aliens, who seek for the "superhuman water" which is rumored gives incredible strenght to people.
- Bulma asks her sister Tights to call Jaco, and forces him and Vegeta to go rescuing Goten and Trunks. IIRC this is the only time Tights has been seen in the show so far (other than a brief flashback with a kid Bulma)... it looks like she's a recurring character in the Jaco manga instead.
- On the alien planet, the bad guys have turned pink and the kids are running from them, Vegeta quickly attacks them, but -except their boss- they turn into a liquid which briefly swallows Vegeta and then takes his appearance, but pink.
- Vegeta tries to use a ki attack, but it desn't work. The eneny has stolen all his strenght and has copied all his knowledge.
- The kids and the others run away, and then the inhabitant of the planet explains that the superhuman water is just a rumor; instead the copy-water is a weapon developed by his people which went out of control so his people had to sacrifice themselfs to seal it before it spreaded to the galaxy. It was meant to protect them from outer enemies, but since it takes the appearance of who it swallowed, outer people thought that they were the same ones just becoming stronger, starting the rumor of the miracle superhuman water.... so it brought more enemies to the planet, and copied them, inheriting their evil. Those who are copied start to disappear after some time, and then die in some minutes. The only way to save Vegeta is to beat Copy-Vegeta before he disappears!
- They try to beat Copy-Vegeta with SSJ3 Gotenks, but he's absolutely useless (excessively outmatched by base-copy-Vegeta, making fans' power level debates a mess!). North Kaio notices Gotenk's ki and so Goku teleports on the planet.
- Vegeta has started disappearing, so the inhabitant of the planet gives him the seal of the superhuman water to chew (it looks like a pacifier), to give him some more time. Reference to GT's Baby-Vegeta!
- Copy-Vegeta can go SSB, too... so it looks like Goku will not be able to beat him in time. Accidentally, Monaka steps over the "core" of the superhuman water (a sort of crystal which was inside the body of the copy of the boss of the evil aliens, which had turned to liquid form after Copy-Vegeta hit him due to not wanting to follow anyone's orders), so Copy-Vegeta is weakened and Goku manages to destroy him, saving the real Vegeta. The evil water is then sealed again.

Then it starts Future Trunks arc..[/spoiler]

Note: I have no time to re-read this very long post, please forgive me if there are errors!!!

[Baggie_Saiyan]

Avoid the retellings like the plague. Waste of time. You literally can watch episode 28 off of "F" movie and everything will flow fine.

The only thing the retellings did was fix minor continuity changes nothing major worth slogging 27 episode for not to mention the retellings are riddlied with horrible animation and art.

Watch the movies then everything from 28 onwards. Every telling you to skip the "filler" arc. Don't it's pretty good!

[Bullza]

If you're in that much of a rush then I'd suggest

- Watch the Battle of Gods movie
- Watch the Resurrection F Movie
- Watch episodes 28-41 of the Universe 6 saga
- Skip episodes 42-46 of the Potaufeu saga which was just filler
- Watch episodes 47 onwards

[Cipher]

IIRC, the anime series has never stated why, how and when Pilaf, Mai and Shuu have become children again. They simply appeared this way since the first episodes, with no explaination.

You might want to reread my post.

[Gig]

IIRC, the anime series has never stated why, how and when Pilaf, Mai and Shuu have become children again. They simply appeared this way since the first episodes, with no explaination.

You might want to reread my post.

Cannot you be more precise? That does simply say "in the first episodes"...

[dbgtFO]

IIRC, the anime series has never stated why, how and when Pilaf, Mai and Shuu have become children again. They simply appeared this way since the first episodes, with no explaination.

You might want to reread my post.

Cannot you be more precise? That does simply say "in the first episodes"...

I think you might have misunderstood.
He specifically posted

I don't think so. You need to watch the earlier episodes to not understand how Pilaf, Mai and Shuu became children again.

I went overboard emphasizing "not" here, as that's what you misunderstood.
The earlier episodes do not make you understand how Pilaf and co. became kids again, which is exactly what you rebutted him with, thus you were actually agreeing with him.

[Gig]

Ah ah ah ah!
I really missed that "not"!

[Alee9977]

Watch the movies and then start from episode 28, but the tournament begins in 32. The Black arc starts in episode 47 although they show us a little in episode 46.
There are some filler episodes between BoG arc and Freeza arc if you want to watch them, they show a little of Goku and Vegeta's training and a hint of how they achieve Super Saiyan Blue.

[Gig]

I have to correct myself (it's not possible to modify that post now). In my sum up of the series, I mentioned that Tights appeared to call Jaco to go to planet Potafeu... that was in the previous arc instead, when calling Jaco to go to Zuno.

About Pilaf & Co... I have just read the manga up to chapter 15 (LOL about how they avoided Resurrection of F arc, just mentioning what happened a few times)... and Pilaf gang does just suddenly appear in che U6 torunament arc, travelling in the space with the others (while in the anime, they did not go to the tournament). And then, in the future Trunks arc, they are studying with young Trunks, like in the anime. No explanation is given about why they are children now... and not even about how and when they become friends with Kid Trunks!!!

[Mazingerdestro]

BOG FNF and then episode 28.
After episode 28 everything goes super (haha) fast.
During the recent arc only we see a slower pace at some points.
Still the battles are short in general. Longest battles don't keep more than 1,5 episodes (without filler of them talking)

Also unfortunately the "I have read the manga" excuse doesn't apply here because in general it is a different experience.
The manga is in general the optimal choice but still the anime has it's moments. Sometimes you need the pace to go
slower and the characters talking. Toyotaro is literally adding 5-10 episodes in terms of story in 1 chapter sometimes