Thoughts on the "Mini" Character Designs

[The Monkey King]

Personally I think that this is the worst Goku and co have ever looked by far.

These bobble-head character designs are ugly, uncreative eyesores.

Piccolo literally looks like a real life person wearing a Piccolo mascot costume.

The show can have all the sakuga and great animation it wants but it doesn't really excite me when Goku himself is hard to look at.

It's especially jarring since the show starts with an amazing series of Buu saga flashbacks when the characters had their grown up, muscular serious, martial artists appearance, then we're introduced to the new adult Daima designs which also look good, we even got a cool sparring match with Adult Goku and Vegeta.

Then all of a sudden it's like the show says "well I hope you enjoyed that! It's time for these character to look like garbage!" when they shrink into their mini forms.

It's not even nostalgia bait since the characters don't look like they did when they were children.

Mini Roshi looking like Saitama is kinda funny though

[Yuji]

I think it's a missed opportunity.

The wish specified they've been turned into kids but they just look like chibi versions of themselves. That, coupled with the Mini title, made a lot of folks think they weren't actually children before the series dropped.

Almost all of the characters have a child design, yet the only ones that look any different are Gyumao, Mr. Satan and Roshi, even though the likelihood they'll appear often is very little.

Bulma has a plethora of hair styles to choose from. Goku himself never looked this skinny, his proportions are literally so awful that in the good fight scenes, he has similar proportions to his 15yo self from the Daimao arc. Piccolo and Vegeta had child designs, too.

It doesn't really make sense how Boo is a child, but if they were to turn him into one, they could use Pure Boo's design with Mr. Boo's cape and gloves, as it would be a unique remix on a beloved design.

As it stands, they all just look boring. I could be watching an animated SD and not notice a difference.

[dbgtFO]

I saw someone comparing Gt kid Goku with Daima kid Goku and the difference was stark. Granted that was one of the better looking GT episodes and not one of the many examples from a Last House animated episode, but still. In Daima the artstyle has been consistent from episode to episode, so that's a huge plus.

I will agree that they don't look the best like that. In particular the wide faces make them look so bad. I think they are using Toriyama's modern designs for child characters, where they really look a lot different to how he used to draw child Goku. Even at the end of original run of the manga, he was drawing a very good child Goku albeit with the more angular design he had gotten used to.

[TechExpert2021]

They're... mid, I guess. I think most of the "Mini" character designs are a hit or miss. But Pu'erh and Oolong's Mini designs look so ugly.

There is one already instance in which Vegeta is a kid and I believe that was in the DBZ Bardock TV special (I may be wrong, though). They should've based the design of Mini Vegeta on Kid Vegeta's design.

And we haven't seen Son Gohan's Mini design yet. I may be wrong on this as I'm not caught up on Daima.

[AliTheZombie13]

Fat Kid Goku Supremacy.
There, I said it.

[JulieYBM]

I think my major issue is more so that they go for a sort of 'modern Toriyama' aesthetic and not for just letting someone else come up with the designs. Heck, I would have been okay with just copying his old 1980's style.

The outfits and hair styles are pretty boring, too. I wish Blooma and Chi-Chi got to have more than just one kind of hairstyle. I feel like they're not really getting to have fun with their hair in these modern series. The designs for the women in general are just very plain.

[Koitsukai]

I wanted them to go back to their original chibi designs. They were so cute, Fat Krilin, Fat Goku, Fat Piccolo Jr... but I find these ones cute, too.

I also think Gohan isn't going to appear because Kid Gohan is such a fresh design in our eyes that they wouldn't get away with a non-DBZ looking Kid Gohan. I was really hoping to see Kid Videl, though.

[StaticMania]

Was it always just an artistic choice from the animators to design the character in a way that's...more "accurate" to design of kid Goku from the original series?

Since Toriyama wasn't involved...in the original anime or that time travel special. They just chose to keep Goku looking like his ol' chubby stout self.

---

I don't think any of them look bad. They're just nothing special...I'm not really sure it would even make a difference, because a lot of the characters didn't have child designs. It'd just be expected.

[Ronin]

I also think Gohan isn't going to appear because Kid Gohan is such a fresh design in our eyes that they wouldn't get away with a non-DBZ looking Kid Gohan. I was really hoping to see Kid Videl, though.

I've thought about this too, but Goku original kid design isn't the same either, so I dunno why Gohan should be any different. It'd be a shame if he doesn't appear because I wanna see mini Gohan together with mini Goku. As for his design, they could make him look very similar to kid Gohan, but just change his hair. His hair changed a lot as a kid anyway. I found a picture that looks a lot like something that could work in Daima. He has long hair in this picture, but the way his hair is flowing backwards looks a lot like his hair as an adult. Just imagine that little extra part on the side isn't there and with different clothes obviously.

[Chuquita]

Part of what bothers me about the mini designs is a lack of cohesion. Ox King gets a brand new outfit, but Chi-Chi keeps the same thing she was wearing before the wish, and then Goku gets a new pair of boots with nothing else changing?

It all feels very not much thought went into this part or whoever created these designs only got creative with whichever characters they felt like getting creative with, design-wise.

I would also have preferred rounder, original db Goku for his mini design, but I can headcanon his skinny design here as he's supposed to be younger than at the start of the manga so maybe he didn't gain that weight for another couple years.

[Jack Bz]

I am really enjoying Daima but yeah, the character designs for the child characters are for sure my least favourite thing about it. Goku looks basically fine, but I really wish Bulma, Chi Chi, Vegeta and Piccolo looked different and actually like when they were kids. Very weak stuff. It kinda feels like they just have a different art style instead of being kids.

[Rory]

I think they're really hit and miss. Some are way too close to their adult counterparts and are pretty uninteresting as a result.
Vegeta's for example, would be really easy to fix - Get rid of the widow's peak (maybe just have a slight dip to show that it'll become one later) and get rid of them visible temples. There, same character, but you've removed the visible signs of age. No need for anything drastically different.
Others like Kuririn and Roshi being bald are just silly, I don't need to explain anything there. Then you have Satan, who looks fantastic!
Just a real mixed bag.

[dragonballhero]

Oh, thank KAMI. I was wondering if I was the only one who wasn't big on the de-aged designs for the cast on this show.

Honestly, my thoughts on them are the same as a lot of you (Bobble-headed designs that can REALLY throw a guy off, some characters honestly look rather uninspired upon their de-aging, and others who have younger designs already established didn't get them back for this show).

For real, I don't care what anyone tells me. After this show, I've gained an even DEEPER appreciation for Goku's de-aged design in Dragon Ball GT now, ESPECIALLY in the video games.

By the way, I'm pretty sure some of you have already pointed this out, but does anyone else find it odd how some folks like Vegeta, Piccolo, Chi-Chi and Bulma retained their adult designs following their de-aging, but folks like Krillin and the Ox-King look TOTALLY different?

Like, for someone like Vegeta? This is ESPECIALLY odd given how Katsuyoshi Nakatsuru is the character designer for Daima, yet Vegeta DOESN'T retain his bangs from the Bardock special.

All in all, I'm starting to realize just how inconsistent this de-aging worked on a physical sense...

[Jord]

I would have like a more consistent approach to that deaging looks. Some of them look like bobblehead versions of their adult selves like another poster mentioned, others look like younger versions and another group of characters just took a random approach.

To me, it would look best if they actually all looked like younger versions of themselves, bringing back some classic designs.

[AliTheZombie13]

The world weeps for the hair bangs that Chichi lost as a child/young woman.

[jjbgood]

As much as I want to like Daima, I still can't get to grips with the children's designs.
Those skinny bodies with unnaturally thin limbs are just ugly to me and I'm not just referring to Daima but to Toriyama's artstyle since Super.
I have the utmost respect for Toriyama's work and I can actually find something I like in each of his different artstyles from the 80s and 90s - no matter when, it was just never ugly. But then Dragon Ball Super came along and I've rarely seen a redesign of an old character that I liked. Toriyama basically just said at some point “They all have to look like Slenderman” and that's what they went with.
Like I said, no personal attack on the sensei, but I just don't like his modern style. Since Daima is modeled on that, I don't warm to it. I'd rather the characters looked like they did “back then” when we saw them as kids.

[Metalwario64]

Fat Kid Goku Supremacy.
There, I said it.

Legit I hate the anorexic bobblehead look Toriyama started giving the child characters after some time after the series ended. Slightly chubby Goku was way cuter and as the series went on his proportions changing so he could still look cute but also intimidating when needed. Gohan looked young, reasonably proportioned and then a bit beefy until his growth spurt in the Cell Games arc to show his strength growth was just a much better aesthetic.

[MisteryOne]

They are awful. Even as someone who did love Toriyama's modern art, his children designs were horrendous. Their proportions are just too messed up. Just look at the initial Daima trailer before Toriyama corrected Goku's design. It looks so much better.

Glorio looks incredibly out of place with them, and he is also a Toriyama design. I just don't get it. I guess I wasn't that bothered in Minus and Broly because you don't expect all the time with children characters that don't look like children. Goku and Vegeta's heads look even worse because of the big hairstyles. Speaking of hairstyles, I don't get why Krillin is bald again. That's not how it worked, it wasn't a natural thing. It's also not consistent with Roshi still being bald too...Like what are they going for? It clearly not nostalgia.

If they were just, as other media suggest, "Mini" versions, I could get behind it. But they are specifically deaged versions of the characters. Yet instead, they look like a completely different artstyle and again look out of place in Daima itself.

Not a dealbreaker for me, but I can understand why it may be for other people.

[Mr Baggins]

I'm ambivalent. While I don't hate them and find them largely inoffensive, they're hardly the reason I'm drawn to the show. I like Goku's gi, but that's obviously irrespective of whether it's worn by his adult or mini self.

Aesthetically, the main appeal for me is just Toriyama's modern artstyle in general.

[Saiya6Cit]

Fat Kid Goku Supremacy.
There, I said it.

Would you please elaborate on that?


The new designs are ok with me. They were made like that to appeal younger generations. They are not my favorite, but in my opinion they don't look bad.

In 2022 I designed a SD/Chibi/Funko-style super saiyan, based on a friend's OC and my character a saiyan-jedi called Saiya6Cit and I liked te results. It is hard to think a pointy haired SSJ can look cute, but everything looks cute with those proportions

This was it: https://www.deviantart.com/saiya6cit/ar ... -927261682