Dragon Ball Daima Anime: First Episode Review

In tandem with the highly anticipated release of the latest entry in the Dragon Ball: Budokai Tenkaichi games, Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero, anime fans are double-fisting DBZ content with the anime premiere of its brand-new series, Dragon Ball Daima. The series, which serves as its late creator Akira Toriyama‘s final work, comes with lofty expectations for the show to live up to the industry giant’s monumental legacy. Having rolled credits on the slightly lengthier anime premiere, it is safe to say that Daima aims to harken back to the fun and humor and fun of Toriyama’s magnum opus while teasing yet another worthwhile grand tour worthy of Goku and his friends.

Right off the bat, Dragon Ball Daima wastes no time answering the question of where the new anime is placed in the ever-expansive continuity of the series. What’s more, it does so with a unique take on showing and telling. The first 10 minutes of the 31-minute premiere offer the anime equivalent of a Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode where its new villains gawk at reanimated highlights of Dragon Ball Z‘s Buu arc. Their vested interest in the Z warriors isn’t to directly challenge them as humanity’s next world-ending foes, but to get them out of the way and take advantage of the power gap in their demon realm. And what better way to do that than to copy the exact scheme Dragon Ball GT did in its pilot and use the dragon balls to turn the fearsome superpowered adults into kids?

The most enthralling part of Daima‘s premiere episode is how its sense of humor neatly complements the series’ madcap “making it up as we go along” storytelling style. We learn that the demon realm has its own dragon balls, but super-powerful warriors safeguard them to prevent abuse of wishes. This detail is fascinating, considering DBZ lore hasn’t touched on any aspect of the demon realm outside of a few instances in its Xenoverse games. Moreover, Goku and crew’s quick disposal of Buu and the Demon King Dabura led to Daima‘s villainous trio rising to power. But what’s power when you know some powerful heroes could accidentally snuff out their reign as quickly as their previous ruler? If Dragon Ball GT is any testament, their logic is sound in theory and will likely backfire spectacularly.

This inspires the trio of villains to go to Earth and commandeer Goku’s dragon balls since they seem to use them like it’s nothing. We also learn that an ancient Namekian is living in the demon realm that has the power to “nuh-uh” establish rules. Key among his power set is the ability to summon dragon balls scattered around the world and make them usable even after they turn to stone. While the aforementioned bits of lore are surprisingly inspired, given Toriyama’s penchant not to care as much for minuscule story details, Daima still maintains his titular devil-may-care philosophy not to take things too seriously. Key among them is a hilarious scene where Supreme Kai explains away their permanent fusion not being so permanent by casually mentioning they had Majin Buu vore and spit them out to split their bodies back up. Toriyama is back in full force with how unserious Daima seems to be, which is music to the ears of any DBZ fan.

Although Daima‘s premiere episode reads as Toriyama dogfooding off GT‘s attempt at writing an adventure without his direct involvement, it would be false to say that Daima is an uninspired rehash of its black sheep predecessor. If anything, Daima succeeds by being a fun-spirited dialogue with GT’s logline while sprinkling in exciting new bits of lore the series hasn’t seen since Super, and some damn fine animation thrown in the mix for good measure.

While Daima frontloading its premiere episode with crucial moments from another series would be any other self-respecting anime trying to leave a good first impression, Daima doing so promises that it can keep up with the visual feats of the past and push the envelope further. Its painstakingly recut animated fight sequences signal the feature film-esque quality of animation the show might maintain throughout the series. Each fight scene has the same clarity, crispness, and fluidity that moviegoers gawked at during the 2D animated flashback sequence at the start of Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero. The only difference is that this time, the show is, for the most part, entirely 2D-animated.

That said, as we’ve seen with the recently released Uzumaki anime, preemptively glorifying an anime of the merits of its premiere episode alone is a fool’s errand, so we’ll have to wait and see if Daima buckles under the weight of its artistic ambition.

New episodes of Dragon Ball Daima arrive Fridays on Crunchyroll.

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