Dragon Ball Daima Review
A fun fan service experience
WARNING: THIS ARTICLE MAY CONTAIN Spoilers from the Dragon Ball Daima show and other previous Dragon Ball properties. There may be discussions of violence. CONSIDER WHEN AND WHERE IT WOULD BE APPROPRIATE TO READ THIS PIECE.
Rewriting The Grand Tour
Goku is a kid again (for the third time)
Seemingly pulled out of a long hidden notebook of revised story plots, fans of the long running Dragon Ball franchise were suddenly treated to a brand new series recently with brand new stories featuring the beloved muscle-head goofball Goku and his cast of misfit fighters.
I grew up with Dragon Ball during its heyday of popularity in not only the west, but the entire world so I understand just how huge it is to receive the last original Akira Toriyama piece of material to ever exist prior to his untimely passing. Almost thirty years after the franchise first ended with the conclusion of Dragon Ball GT, Daima seeks to right the wrongs of the final chapter of the original trilogy. Was GT really that bad that it needed a redemption series and does Daima actually improve upon the “turned back into a child” plot point? I think it runs much deeper than that.
Daima just wrapped up its series run with the conclusion of episode 20 and can be streamed in its entirety on Netflix.
Where to begin is the right question to ask when it comes to this chapter of Goku’s life. From a canon event standpoint, this series takes place directly after the events of Dragon Ball Z’s final arc, the Majin Buu saga. That opens up a huge can of worms for continuity issues as if memory serves correctly for the creative team, there already was a brand new canon sequel to the uber-popular franchise called Dragon Ball Super that arrived onto the scene in 2015 to replace GT in the timeline.
Since it was announced that Daima would be canon in the Dragon Ball universe, that would mean this show would not only act as a direct sequel to Dragon Ball Z, but also serve as a prequel to Dragon Ball Super.
Familiar Yet Different
Immediately into the new show, Goku and the rest of the Z fighters are magically wished back into children by a short king villain. If that sounds familiar, it’s because that's the same exact inciting incident that launched Dragon Ball GT’s plot. As by design, Daima moves much quicker than GT and the main selling point to the show is to bring Goku back to his adventuring and collecting roots from the original Dragon Ball series. The main differentiator of this de-aging plot is that in Daima, the entire cast of Z fighters (oddly aside from Gohan and Videl) join Goku in reverting back to their child bodies.
Without going too much into the plot of Daima, all you need to really know is that Goku has to travel to the Demon Realm in order to rescue Dende who has been taken captive. It’s a whole new world to explore with their own set of Dragon Balls to gather which Goku and his new friends Panzy, Glorio, and the returning Supreme Kai, need to overcome trials in order to gain their bodies back. It’s not that complicated and Daima has minimal story to tell even by Dragon Ball storytelling standards.
Supreme Kai also plays a pivotal role in this series as he serves as a conduit to exploring the origins of his kin as well as a deeper dive into what made Majin Buu so dangerous. It turns out there’s a whole backstory behind the creation of Buu and the word Majin has way more correlation to the Demon World than simply connecting to Bibiddi and Babbidi.
Demons in the Demon Realm
One thing Daima does better than its predecessors ever did was fleshing out character races and class hierarchies. The closest thing of that level of detail in meticulously describing the circumstances of a race like the Majin or Glinds, was ironically in GT with the backstory for Baby’s grudge against the Saiyans.
Dragon Ball has never been a sophisticated anime that worries about continuity. Afterall, this is the same franchise where the creator completely forgot about certain characters (ehm, Launch). That’s why it was a surprise to me how much effort the writers took to develop and flesh out the Demon Realm and its inhabitants.
It’s very difficult not to compare Goku’s journey in Daima to that in GT (we will talk about that later). The obvious similarities are there, but I felt that Daima truly harnessed the bewilderment of going on a fresh adventure that the franchise all but abandoned with the start of the Saiyan Saga in DBZ.
Once upon a time, Dragon Ball was about hunting for magical wish granting orbs while developing friendships and learning lessons along the way. The flow of battles were dictated by technique and not transformations and an unmeasurable power level mechanic that would plague later iterations of the franchise. You used to actually see punches thrown and kicks landing when Goku and friends were fighting with mere humans.
This is something that I instantly noticed within the first handful of episodes. While the show tries to explain why little Goku needed to find his old power pole due to his short wingspan, it honestly was a weak explanation to lower the group's untenable flashy strength. Goten and Trunks were legitimate children even when fused as Gotenks and they went toe to toe with Super Buu. It’s silly to even fathom that a martial arts master like Goku and Vegeta would struggle with something basic like flying once shrunk down to size.
I can forgive all of that gaslighting logic as soon as the action scenes began. Not only is the animation crisp and vibrant, but you are actually able to see what’s happening. Gone are the long filler fights that are lazily animated with punches and kicks that are lightning fast that they’re a blur to viewers. If you’re a fan of DBZ, you know exactly what I’m talking about. Daima shows every punch that lands across the cheek, every slight dodge of a kick, and it does it in style. This is probably the best if not one of the best animated Dragon Ball properties ever made. Once again, Daima fights feel more like ones that would happen if this were a modernized original Dragon Ball. It’s an entirely different ballgame than DBZ.
Goku fights a Tamagami
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Another thing that Daima does extremely well is to invoke nostalgia for kid Goku’s adventures through the use of its theme song. 1980’s and 90’s Dragon Ball properties all had fundamentally engaging OP’s that would leave an impression on viewers.
Whether it be “CHA-LA HEAD-CHA-LA” or “Dan Dan Kokoro Hikareteku” from GT, these were theme songs that you instantly recall and remember the great adventures you witnessed in front of the television. Daima continues and actually lives up to this prestigious anime legacy with its own memorable OP, “ Jaka Jaan”. Upon first listen, it’s a bit too slow for a shounen show known for popularizing insanely fast combat scenes.
However, over time, the song grows on you as if it were a long lost friend recollecting fond memories together with. It then hit me that like almost all the other aspects of Daima, its theme song is also an homage to GT’s legendary track. “Dan Dan Kokoro Hikareteku” was a somewhat somber yet hopeful finale to a beloved franchise. The emotions the song evoked was that of a goodbye song. I felt the exact same emotions with Daima’s theme.
It wouldn't be a modern Dragon Ball show if there wasn’t a brand new Super Saiyan transformation. Now, you might be asking how there would be a new transformation when we already have a series set down the line that introduced Super Saiyan Blue, Super Saiyan God, and Ultra Instinct? By that logic, we should have seen all the transformations up to current times right?
Well, to put it bluntly, no one really knows what’s going on, including the creators. From a story perspective contained within the confines of this short 20 episode adventure, I’d say I was highly excited to see the brand new Super Saiyan 4 transformation that Goku makes officially canon to the DBZ universe. It’s a slightly modified version of the original one that we got in GT all those years ago, but the redesign has plenty of its own characteristics to stand on.
The more shocking transformation was the revelation that Goku’s longtime rival was able to master the transformation into the prestigious Super Saiyan 3. Seeing Vegeta rock the no-eyebrow mullet power-up as both a child and adult is fan service to the max seeing as this was one level he did skip in GT.
It’s also highly illogical and ruins what little continuity the Dragon Ball universe could cohesively piece together in the future. For years now, Dragon Ball has gotten more complicated and complex with its ever growing explanations of new power-ups. It’s bizarre that since the events of Daima happened prior to those in Super that none of the characters ever mention Super Saiyan 4 Goku or Super Saiyan 3 Vegeta ever again. You have Dende, Bulma, Piccolo, and Vegeta all witness these things happening in this show.
Yet it’s as if everyone forgot about their time in the Demon World when they returned to Earth for Super, except that they didn’t. Daima ends with the group flying off on a shopping trip to return home merrily and nonchalantly talking about their secret transformations. It just makes no sense at all.
What’s In The Future?
When you watch Daima and envision it in a vacuum, it’s a fun ride. There’s a lot of pacing issues and many battles have basically no dialogue at all. It's a far departure from older Dragon Ball properties and their long winded exposition of their super moves. I believe the reason for this is to simply cram as much fluff as they could into a 20 episode run. We shouldn’t approach 90’s conventions in anime, but we also shouldn’t go so far of an extreme to eliminate all exposition.
Kid Goku powering up to Super Saiyan
It’s compact and concise, but once again, a bit awkward and rushed when you think about it in context. The transformations also don’t have the same build up with music and trash talking that were so epic in older shows. Every viewer remembers when Goku turned Super Saiyan, or when Vegeta did it for the first time after his epic speech about perseverance. In Daima, we get one single line from Bulma explaining that Vegeta trains a lot and that’s how he accomplished Super Saiyan 3. That’s seriously how they did it.
There also really isn’t anything seriously at stake here either. The big villain of the show, Gomah, is way more Emperor Pilaf than he is Cell. That isn’t the end of the world (literally) as this could be a soothing show for fans to watch without much stress and drama. Yet, Daima feels like a fan service piece and in many ways it is. As Akira Toriyama’s last contribution to his legendary franchise that changed so many people’s lives, Dragon Ball Daima feels more like a celebration offshoot story than a canon piece, which is ironic as it replaced GT which was a lot more similar in tone to DBZ and should have been canon.
GT did so many things to try to bring Goku back to his roots. It was an adventure show rather than a world-saving epic drama that DBZ morphed itself into in its last few arcs. There was something serene about seeing Trunks, Pan, and Goku travel to different worlds and meeting new aliens as they searched for brand new Dragon Balls. It eventually did shift back into the world-ending dire chaos plot chases, but Daima does away with all of its adversity. I never once felt like things wouldn’t work out for the Z Fighters. Gomah never felt like a real threat and his secret item that powers him was cheapened to become a punch-line. It all felt like a joke.
What’s the future of Dragon Ball? Dragon Ball Super has been on hiatus after the completion of the universe tournament arc. Daima has now completed its run and there shouldn't be any other stories set with this Kid Goku premise again.
If they jump back to producing new episodes of Super, it would be extremely forced and unnatural to now bring up these Daima transformations. It’s an awkward phase for the franchise, but that’s not to say Daima shouldn’t exist. It’s a fun show for longtime fans of Dragon Ball to fawn over some nostalgic points from the franchise, but it ultimately creates a more cloudy future for the historic series than it offers solutions.
Alex
Caught in between the conundrum of his fascination with retro and the future, Alex has a very unique taste in technology. Never one to follow trends like his millennial peers yet constantly desiring to get ahead of the curve, he sees technology like he does his other love: comic books. Always looking for the best value or a hidden gem, his collector mindset reflects on some of his favorite gadgets: the Moto X (2015), HTC U11 and the Google Pixelbook. If there’s a good tech deal out there, Alex is on the hunt!