Dragon Ball Daima Is A Fitting Send-Off To A Legendary Series and Creator
In the decades since Goku first unleashed his signature Kamehameha, Dragon Ball has demonstrated a rare kind of cross-cultural staying power, from its original explosion of popularity in Japan to government-sponsored watch parties in Mexico. There are plenty of reasons why it has continued to resonate with so many: the way it blends martial arts action with wrestling style comebacks, a distinctive art style that mixes bulbous sci-fi contraptions and allusions to Journey to the West, its iconic power-ups, its humor, its charm. Like any work, it’s not free of problems, but perhaps what’s kept the series alive over the years is that, much like its dumb, strong, and kind protagonist, it never throws in the towel; Goku may get battered and bruised, but our spikey haired hero keeps getting up.
The latest entry in the series, Dragon Ball Daima, inherits all these elements, a breezy 20-episode escapade set between the events of Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Ball Super. But while it was initially intended to be just another installment in this long-running journey, it took on an unexpected air of importance and finality when series creator Akira Toriyama suddenly passed away on March 1st of last year, becoming one of the final projects he worked on. It’s a small consolation next to living in a Toriyama-less world, but the silver lining with Daima is that it ended up a delightful love letter which ties together the different eras of Dragon Ball with an easygoing grin.
If the original Dragon Ball anime, where Goku is still a kid, is more defined by a freewheeling sense of adventure, and Dragon Ball Z is more about our adult hero punching an assortment of imperialism-loving space aliens into next week, Daima incorporates elements of both. Hell, it even heavily references the now non-canonical Dragon Ball GT, sharing a similar setup: Goku and friends are transformed back into children as they explore the Demon Realm to find three Dragon Balls.
Turning the members of the Dragon Team into kids does a couple of things for the story. For starters, since Goku is a child again, he can’t bat away every minor problem with the flick of his Super Saiyan wrist. Without de-powering him in this way, there could have been a bit of a “Superman problem” where our protagonist would be so souped up after blasting Majin Buu that it would be tough to introduce a new hyper-important big bad without stepping on Dragon Ball Super’s toes or causing power-scaling obsessed bros to blow a gasket.
However, the more interesting thing happening here is that by making Goku look like he did back in the day, it serves as a natural bridge towards structuring the series like the original run of the manga, which was much more about going on adventures rather than bulking up for the next existential threat. Here, Goku and company explore the layers of the Demon Realm, finding all sorts of out-of-this-world sights. They come across a place where the air is as thick as molasses, requiring them to relearn how to fight as they’re assailed by strange creatures. There’s a land of giants inhabited by massive hamsters, foreboding floating castles, townspeople that need saving, and a talking interdimensional goldfish; it’s pretty rad.
While the overarching goal is to find the Dragon Balls and beat up Demon King Dabura (the cackling villain who turned them into eight-year-olds to begin with), the story has an episodic slant as they zoom between realms, meeting and helping the locals along the way, like Panzy, a young mechanic with knowledge of the Demon Realm. Basically, even though this entire show could fit within a single DBZ training arc, it still has room for spontaneity, as Goku punches space cops in one episode and fights massive sea monsters in the next.