"Dragon Ball Super (Manga)" Official Discussion Thread

[Zephyr]

Dragon Ball is certainly one of my main interests, a contender for #1, and I definitely don't feel any hunger for more new content from the series.

[Jack Bz]

I'm keen for another Super manga arc because I do have quite a big curiosity on what a Toyotaro Super arc will look like with absolutely 0 Toriyama input. I don't have high hopes for it but I certainly want him to have a shot.

[JulieYBM]

I'm sure everyone has other interests outside of Dragon Ball. And I'm just as sure some people's favourite interest is Dragon Ball, which would naturally make them more eager and impatient to see new content. It's fine if it's not your main interest, but obviously Dragon Ball means a lot to a lot of people.

That's kind of my point of criticism, though. People are acting impatient, which I think it kind of ridiculous, given we've had far longer dry spells than, what, three years—since the end of the Granola arc—before?

[IntangibleFancy]

I'm sure everyone has other interests outside of Dragon Ball. And I'm just as sure some people's favourite interest is Dragon Ball, which would naturally make them more eager and impatient to see new content. It's fine if it's not your main interest, but obviously Dragon Ball means a lot to a lot of people.

That's kind of my point of criticism, though. People are acting impatient, which I think it kind of ridiculous, given we've had far longer dry spells than, what, three years—since the end of the Granola arc—before?

I believe the longest dry spell we had was late 97 to 02, before the first Budokai came out. After that period we got a mostly steady stream of games, and then Kai came.

I think most of the people wanting more content were born after that drought. Plus, what makes this drought different than that one from 1997 was that back then franchise as a whole was pretty much done at that point. Now we have two arcs done and ready to be adapted, we have on-going live service games that need new content or else they’ll be stuck milking the same things over and over, and we’ve got Akio and whoever else is at the Dragon Room with him and Toyotaro who have expressed multiple times that they want to do more with the franchise.

Also, may be an unpopular opinion, but I stand by my opinion that Super needs a remake from the U6 arc upwards. I wouldn’t take it over a new anime, but I’d take it over nothing. The more you look at everything we’ve gotten since the anime, and how Toei’s treated One Piece since then, even the good parts of it start to show their age.

[JulieYBM]

I'm sure everyone has other interests outside of Dragon Ball. And I'm just as sure some people's favourite interest is Dragon Ball, which would naturally make them more eager and impatient to see new content. It's fine if it's not your main interest, but obviously Dragon Ball means a lot to a lot of people.

That's kind of my point of criticism, though. People are acting impatient, which I think it kind of ridiculous, given we've had far longer dry spells than, what, three years—since the end of the Granola arc—before?

I believe the longest dry spell we had was the late 97 to 02, before the first Budokai came out. After that period we got a mostly steady stream of games, and then Kai came.

I think most of the people wanting more content were born after that drought. Plus, what makes this drought different than that one from 1997 was that back then franchise as a whole was pretty much done at that point. Now we have two arcs done and ready to be adapted, we have on-going live service games that need new content or else they’ll be stuck milking the same things over and over, and we’ve got Akio and whoever else is at the Dragon Room with him and Toyotaro who have expressed multiple times that they want to do more with the franchise.

Also, may be an unpopular opinion, but I stand by my opinion that Super needs a remake from the U6 arc upwards. I wouldn’t take it over a new anime, but I’d take it over nothing. The more you look at everything we’ve gotten since the anime, and how Toei’s treated One Piece since then, even the good parts of it start to show their age.

I would 100% love to see Hatano Morio and Tomioka Atsuhiro spearhead a tighter, properly handled retelling of the Universe 6 and Zamasu arcs, while Nagamine Tatsuya and Tomioka got a second crack at the Tournament of Power. As-is, I think the scripts are pretty good without needing to adapt from the manga-telling, but cutting some fat here-and-there would absolutely improve the pacing and make for a far better experience—unless they found new material to coax out of the story in a longer format, of course.

[YamiGoku]

For me the biggest problem was Daima, if Daima wasn't the complete shit it was, people (like me) wont be as eager to have more Dragon ball right now, but because nobody cares about Daima (because it was shit) it feels like this franchise hasn't had anything relevant in 4ever.

[PhantomSaiyan]

For me the biggest problem was Daima, if Daima wasn't the complete shit it was, people (like me) wont be as eager to have more Dragon ball right now, but because nobody cares about Daima (because it was shit) it feels like this franchise hasn't had anything relevant in 4ever.

You're entitled to your opinion and all, but it's by no means as objective as you're making it out to be.

Some people love Daima, some people think it's shit, some people think it's somewhere in between.

I think the reason it feels like we haven't had anything substantial for a while is because Daima was short, it came and it was over before we even realized, so even people who enjoyed it were left wanting more

[Yuji]

I thought Daima was serviceable enough but it didn’t excite me nowhere near any of Super's movies or arcs on a week-by-week basis, even in the "hype moments and aura" ending.

[JulieYBM]

This is me being a broken record, but I rewatched Dragon Ball Super #77-89 shortly after Dragon Ball Daima ended and I am once again reminding people: that is how you engage an audience in a story. It's painful that that Tournament of Power had such a bad production, because those scripts are easily Dragon Ball's best and absolutely deserved to be elevated even more by a production crew that wasn't drowing to death.

[YamiGoku]

For me the biggest problem was Daima, if Daima wasn't the complete shit it was, people (like me) wont be as eager to have more Dragon ball right now, but because nobody cares about Daima (because it was shit) it feels like this franchise hasn't had anything relevant in 4ever.

entitled to your opinion and all, but it's by no means as objective as you're making it out to be.

Some people love Daima, some people think it's shit, some people think it's somewhere in between.

I think the reason it feels like we haven't had anything substantial for a while is because Daima was short, it came and it was over before we even realized, so even people who enjoyed it were left wanting more

You're right, the "shit" part is my opinion (I hate Daima), and some my like it, but I dont think people dont care because it was short (people care about movies after all), i think Daima from the get go isn't popular with the most large side of the fandom, the kid thing made a lot of casuals don't care, but for me the biggest problem with Daima is that it did nothing with 20 episodes, 20 episodes is a lot of time to tell a story and do the hype Dragon ball stuff, but Daima love to waste time and rushed all the "good stuff", but even the supposed hype moments at the end did 0 for me and I think a lot of people are on the same boat.


If Daima was better more people would have watch it and talk about it, but to me the fact that we had a new DB series just a few months ago and none online seems to care speaks of how much of a failure Daima is, it was such a failure is almost like it never happened.

[Mr Baggins]

Oh, for fucks sake. This again?

I find Dragon Ball Daima easily more engaging than even the best arcs of the Super manga, let alone any singular episode in the Super anime. Anyone saying "it did nothing for 20 episodes" is patently incorrect and paid no attention to the story, btw.

Why are we even derailing the Super manga topic over Daima?

I think the reason it feels like we haven't had anything substantial for a while is because Daima was short, it came and it was over before we even realized, so even people who enjoyed it were left wanting more

I actually appreciate that we were bookended with something lower key, so I couldn't say that would apply to myself.

But your assessment is largely correct. Dragon Ball fans are typically more accustomed to longer-form serializations, so when they're suddenly left with a shorter one it's a bit of a system shock even though 20 episodes is a perfectly standard affair in any other franchise and even Toriyama's non-DB stuff.

All things must end, though. It's just something that people are going to have to come to grips with eventually.

[JulieYBM]

Just ignore YamiGoku, they just repeat the same lifeless bellyaching over-and-over again.

Anyhoo, when the Dragon Ball Super comic returns, I hope there's a ton of character drama. Hell, give Vegeta and Gokuu a legitimate reason to fight each other brutally to the death, for old time's sakes. Their sparring in Super and Daima is awful.

[Zephyr]

I believe the longest dry spell we had was late 97 to 02, before the first Budokai came out. After that period we got a mostly steady stream of games, and then Kai came.

I think most of the people wanting more content were born after that drought. Plus, what makes this drought different than that one from 1997 was that back then franchise as a whole was pretty much done at that point. Now we have two arcs done and ready to be adapted, we have on-going live service games that need new content or else they’ll be stuck milking the same things over and over, and we’ve got Akio and whoever else is at the Dragon Room with him and Toyotaro who have expressed multiple times that they want to do more with the franchise.

I don't understand. Budokai ended the dry spell....even though that was also just recycling old content? If that's the case, then these ongoing live service games should be sufficient to disqualify the current period from being a dry spell. And then there's Kai which was very much recycling old content. An anime adaptation of those manga arcs would also entail recycling content, in a way, since we've already read that material. Sure, you could argue that Kai and a Super manga adaptation constitute giving old content new life, but you could say the same thing about new games retelling existing stories, with new mechanics, visuals, background music, etc. I think you could also say the same about Dragon Ball SD.

[Basaku]

I'm keen for another Super manga arc because I do have quite a big curiosity on what a Toyotaro Super arc will look like with absolutely 0 Toriyama input. I don't have high hopes for it but I certainly want him to have a shot.

Sure, but I don't even think that would be the next arc, which was literally about to begin after the post-Superhero filler stuff. Which means it must've been already discussed/agreed upon with Toriyama prior anyway, at least to a small degree. We know that Toriyama was still working, in contact and still correcting Toyo's stuff even up until the last chapter.

Post-EOZ is more likely to be completly void of any Toriyama input but even that could be based on some napkin notes/earlier suggestions and discussions.

[Bardock God of Time]

Even if the manga never continues, it'd be a shame if the Moro & Granola arcs never get animated.

I do think there is potential in a Black Frieza arc like Beerus needing to go at 100% to fight Black Frieza. (Because for all we know Frieza could've gone back to that Hyperbolic Timechamber dimension for another decade)

[funrush]

I don't think it would be that different without Toriyama AT FIRST. Any stories I've heard about the creative process make it seem like Toriyama had some level of involvement in the arc's premise/concept but Toyotaro was doing most of the actual writing and then Toriyama would do some corrections at the end. So continuing would lose some of Toriyama's magic touch that made it in via those corrections but probably still generally be like the rest of the Super manga has been.

There's bound to be some drawings he had sitting around that they can use design-wise and I'm sure Toriyama and Toyotaro had conversations about potential stories. Black Freeza arc has to get made, it would be insane IMO to let the franchise end with Space Hitler being the strongest being of Universe 7, that's some shit that needs to get addressed before you can say the story is over.

Now after a couple arcs when there's really like no remnants of Toriyama design-wise or story-wise is when things will start to really feel different on a deeper level and when that happens we'll have to reassess if it should keep going. But for now at least one last hurrah arc of Goku/Vegeta/Broly/Gohan/Piccolo vs. Black Freeza feels necessary and I would be down for even more than that. We just got 5 characters on the same power level so this could truly be an ensemble show again like it was during the Android arc instead of just the Goku and Vegeta show. I wanna see an arc or two of that before they really close the book on this franchise.

[Koitsukai]

The manga went on hiatus almost 2 years prior Akira's demise. That's a lot of time to come up with at least blueprints of how to deal with Black Freeza.
But we have no idea when Akira's health started to decline, maybe the hiatus was because of that, because he wasn't able to provide feedback anymore.
It's so odd what happenes behind these curtains that the guessing game is pointless. The manga (and the mangaka) went on hiatus only to come back to retell the newest movie... they paid the artist to do something "old" instead of something new.

[JulieYBM]

The manga went on hiatus almost 2 years prior Akira's demise. That's a lot of time to come up with at least blueprints of how to deal with Black Freeza.
But we have no idea when Akira's health started to decline, maybe the hiatus was because of that, because he wasn't able to provide feedback anymore.
It's so odd what happenes behind these curtains that the guessing game is pointless. The manga (and the mangaka) went on hiatus only to come back to retell the newest movie... they paid the artist to do something "old" instead of something new.

Toriyama Akira passed away on March 01, 2024. The Dragon Ball Super comic went on hiatus with Chapter #103 being the last chapter released on March 21, 2024. Chapter #104 was released on February 20, 2025, but it was a one-shot set before the events of the Super Hero arc. Chapter #104 adapted discarded ideas meant to set up the Super Hero arc, but were not adapted from the film.

[Koitsukai]

The manga went on hiatus almost 2 years prior Akira's demise. That's a lot of time to come up with at least blueprints of how to deal with Black Freeza.
But we have no idea when Akira's health started to decline, maybe the hiatus was because of that, because he wasn't able to provide feedback anymore.
It's so odd what happenes behind these curtains that the guessing game is pointless. The manga (and the mangaka) went on hiatus only to come back to retell the newest movie... they paid the artist to do something "old" instead of something new.

Toriyama Akira passed away on March 01, 2024. The Dragon Ball Super comic went on hiatus with Chapter #103 being the last chapter released on March 21, 2024. Chapter #104 was released on February 20, 2025, but it was a one-shot set before the events of the Super Hero arc. Chapter #104 adapted discarded ideas meant to set up the Super Hero arc, but were not adapted from the film.

I meant the main story hiatus, the first one, after the Granola arc.
That was August '22, almost two years went by until Akira passed away. If we take into account that the hiatus was probably planned before it went into effect (maybe not, maybe it was a last-minute decision), it might've been 2 full years from one thing to the other.

[dbs fanboy]

Ngl, but I'd be really satisfied of the DB online Lore was adapted to Super in order to end it all.

But you know, build up into them, before Goku and Vegeta have their final battle in space, actually show Goku contemplating his mortality.

That would be fun.