Dragon Ball Super, after a 3-year journey, has finally come to an end. The sequel to one of the most influential and ragingly popular series that captured the world by storm, that made preteens scream and wish they become a super Saiyan and had them do Kamehameha waves during recess hours in school is a show that unfortunately fails to capture the magic of its predecessors and is terribly misguided as to what made Dragon Ball Z such a great show that impacted a whole generation of not only children but also shounen anime in general. Dragon Ball Super's story is flawed and is definitelyone that will not stand the test of time. The first nail in the coffin was definitely that the show was going to adapt the movies that came out fairly recently (2 years before the broadcast started), this obviously didn't sit well with the audience since the new content would take a long time to release. It didn't help that the adaptation was vastly inferior to the movies (obviously) with shameless padding and terrible animation that looked way worse than the franchise's anime debut 3 decades ago, it took a whopping 8 months for the show to get started on any new content.
Dragon Ball Super's NEW content was shamelessly unoriginal, 2 of the 3 main arcs were TOURNAMENT arcs, this obviously meant that there'd be no real effort in world-building, what a waste of potential especially since we just now learned that there were 12 universes opening various opportunities for discovery, adventure, and world-building, but now the majority of the show's narrative would be contained in a martial arts arena, SUPER INTERESTING.
One of the arcs i.e. the non-tournament arc had considerable hype surrounding it, the Black Goku arc, it had fan-favorite character Trunks make a return and to top it all off the villain was actually Goku, an evil version of him. It also finally made the show feel like as if there would be drastic consequences, real stakes were there and it certainly had a dark tone to it, there was a mystery to uncover, an intrigue as to the identity of this villain and the first parts of the arc were really good in building it up, but unfortunately the story fell flat and the villain, while interesting and empathetic to an extent became a mindless power hungry meathead who wanted world domination. It had a sloppy ending and the story was entirely self-contained with zero consequences to the world, even Trunks didn't care about his world.
Coming to characters, Super has a shockingly terrible understanding of them, the show introduced very weak characters that lack motivation and are shockingly generic, while Dragon Ball Z didn't have very complex characters, it nevertheless made them grounded and loveable, introducing characters that were very focused on their ideals, their desires, and motivations. Vegeta's pride and his insecurities led him to become Majin Vegeta and led to a fight that was extremely gratifying and even cathartic, it gave him closure to his insecurities, his insecurities were erased and thus he went on to sacrifice himself to save the world i.e. his son Trunks. Gohan too had a similarly interesting character arc. The reason I'm talking about this is because DBS has severely stunted character growth and hasn't established their driving motivation, all characters are either forgettable or are the same as when they started out. The show is just mindless fighting offering no insight as to the character's ideals with nothing more than a desire to "save their world".
Hit is merely reactionary and doesn't have any will of his own making for a very uninteresting character, but honestly, he is by far the best new character of Super which is saying something. And Jiren, ooohhh boii, definitely the worst main antagonist of the franchise if not in shounen history. First of all, he is such an incoherent character, he started off as this self-righteous and almost majestic villain that I'd argue had some depth to him and then BAM he has a backstory that is extremely derivative, shockingly generic and very insulting to the character, because almost instantly he becomes "evil" and says generic evil things like "strength is absolute", "lament your weakness", "friends are useless" and it just totally destroys him and really insults the viewer's intelligence because Jiren finally becomes a generic villain that makes Goku look good rather than someone who was calm, calculating, self-righteous and pursued something "beyond strength". It doesn't help that his design is mediocre and that he looks like Buu in the final episodes.
While Super's stories and characters are mediocre at best and insulting at worst, power scaling is something Super seemingly throws out the window making even the notion of Gods ultimately pointless because even normal people like Trunks, Kale and Caulifla master it within minutes to a day and that is insulting and makes for poor, unlikeable characters. I still can't shake off the fact that Goku, someone who has fought the God of Destruction on equal footing and is trained by the even stronger Angel Whis struggles to pummel a Super Saiyan 2 (at best) fusion. It sickens me that that fight even happened for as long as it did.
Dragon Ball Super's animation has had a rocky ride, it ranges from shockingly terrible to amazing. There are many standout fight scenes in the show that make these characters move in kinetic and dynamic ways that really make the fights very entertaining to watch however they are few and far in between, most of the show is sloppily done. This show has had a terrible production run, it had no manga to follow so all the stories, character designs and other technicalities had to be made by the animation team themselves which I assume amounted to many problems while making the show and I assume would result in a troubling and hectic production.
Honestly, Dragon Ball Super's only redeeming aspect is the fight scenes, they are well done and beautifully choreographed, Ultra Instinct was well done. However there's one really troubling problem here too, it's the overuse of effects, at times the auras just drown out the characters and it honestly looks like 2 balls of fire clashing rather than actual people fighting, it is really annoying since it covers actual real animation.
So far there's been a lot of bad things said about this show and while it has been poorly handled it is not without good moments, I actually think that the filler in this show is really entertaining and dramatic and should not be missed because it gives insight into each character's personality and is overall really fun and light-hearted, it had heartwarming moments too. Character interactions are funny and really well handled with a good sense of humor and ridiculous plot lines. It somehow feels good to see the lives of the people who were once part of the main cast, be it Gohan's acting career and cheating scandal, or the baseball match between U6 and U7, it's all fun to watch and weirdly heartwarming.
I honestly enjoyed Dragon Ball Super at its best, but there is no denying that this is a flawed show that relies more on hype transformations rather than focusing on fleshing out characters, it's really a pity because the Dragon Ball franchise is something I've loved and cherished for a very long time and resulted in some of my best childhood memories, when Goku first went Super Saiyan I was ecstatic, when Goku fought Majin Vegeta I was shocked and saddened, when Gohan went Super Saiyan 2 I was severely moved by how he let go of his emotions and hesitations to be able to protect his friends, these moments were severely lacking in Super, any semblance of character driven narratives or transformations were entirely non-existent and it's a pity because Super could have easily built on Z's foundation, build on its characters, introduce new and intriguing ones but unfortunately all it learnt was that transformations generate hype and result in selling more merchandise and it has kind of butchered the franchise in my opinion.
I know that there are diehard fans of this show who don't mind shallow and mindless fights that need no context but that's not what Dragon Ball was to me and it surely shouldn't have been what Super focused on, it could have learnt and become better and surpassed it, Dragon Ball Z defined shounen, it inspired legendary shows like One Piece and Boku No Hero Academia that built on its formula and pushed shounen forward as a genre but unfortunately Super is severely misguided as to what makes Dragon Ball Z such a generation and genre defining series and has succumbed to using insulting plot devices that make for shallow characters and generic stories.
I will never give up on Dragon Ball as a franchise, it's something that I hold close to my heart, I am saddened by how Super has tarnished the franchise but it'd take more than that to destroy Dragon Ball. Here's hoping to a great movie and to an all but confirmed eventual series.
