Dragon Ball Super

There isn't much good I can say about this other than that it has okay fight scenes to be honest.

When you start Dragon Ball Super it feels like you've missed a whole load of story. Besides from the beginning, the rest of the story feels rushed and unfinished, it jumps from one arc immediately into the next, which isn't bad in its own right but it takes time to realize what's going on. It really could benefit from some filler in between so you can actually realize what just happened.

Overall the story is unclear because it jumps from one thing immediately into the next leaving no time to comprehend what is happening. But I mean it's fight scenes are good, right?

The Dragon Ball Super manga story is based on outlines done by Akira Toriyama, the creator of Dragon Ball, much like the Super anime; Most of what the anime does, like introducing new transformations, hair colors, change in outfits are mostly done to sell merchandise and appease nostalgia seeking baboons, by coping exact scenes and retreading developments from earlier Dragon Ball series;
Toyotaro on the other hand doesn't seem to need to do this kind of thing, going more for the cool factor with break neck speed pacing, but that doesn't always seem to work.

I want to start by saying that the Dragon Ball Super manga is automatically better just by rushing through the adaptation of the Battle of Gods arc/movie and entirely skipping that horrible Fukkatsu no F arc/movie.

The one thing i would say the anime has over the manga is the comedic filler episodes, mostly from the ones right before the Tournament of Power, with the Baseball, Dr.Slump, Great Saiyaman and Pan/Pilaf episodes being one of the best of the entire Super anime.

The art of Toyotaro(aka Toyble, creator of the fan manga Dragon Ball AF) is great, he has some weird construction lines, making a few of the characters look wonky and anatomically incorrect he likes to reuse shots from the original DB manga and his own shots from Super, but they work for the most part, his main appeal comes from the fact that he apes Toriyama's 80's style mixed in with his more recent leaner designs to perfection, and even some times having a more polished work on the fact that he doesn't have the time constraints Toriyama had with the weekly publication at Shonen Jump and also having to create the story.

Battle of Gods arc (5.5/10)

Very simple arc, introducing the higher Gods and God Ki.
Much better power scaling than the anime and movie but still weird, making SSJ3Gotenks and Ultimate Gohan irrelevant for some strange reason.

Universe 6 Tournament (6.0/10)

Just a tournament arc put together in a rush, new cool characters in Monaka, Hit, Frost, Cabba, Champa and Vados, plus the God of all things, Zeno, which is way less retarded in this version.
Piccolo and Majin Buu are wasted.
Since there was no Fukkatsu no F arc, there was no teasing of Gohan's comeback and then backing down after just a couple of episodes, the manga gets a pass on this.
Very smart fight on Goku's side against Hit, using the original SSGod transformation, instead of the most useless transformation since SSJ3, the palate swap SSGSSJ or SSJBlue, that was supposed to have perfect ki control, but we learn in this arc that it drains a lot of stamina if used a number of times in a roll, the arc ends with not much happening, and everything goes by too fast, it is a bit of a letdown.

Black/Zamasu arc (4.5/10)

This is where it gets complicated, this arc started great with a lot of promise, the return of Mirai Trunks and the introduction of a fan fiction level character, Goku Black.

The introduction of Black was great, there is so much suspense and terror in what Trunks was going through, Toyotaro did an awesome job with the reveal of Black being Goku.

This arc was where I started to feel like Super could actually improve, even more so in the manga because it was changing most of what was happening in the anime, taking out stuff like the time travel plot holes, Zamasu’s ridiculous anger towards Goku, Trunks whining on every chance he had, terrible power scaling, SSJ Ikari, plus the episode where Zamasu says that it's Trunks’ fault that he is killing everyone, and even though it doesn’t make sense, the character takes that as a fact and starts moaning again, don’t even start on the Cellphone Mafuba and the Kuwabara Spirit Bomb Sword, none of that was in the manga, thank god.

The manga added a lot of backstory, seeing Trunks training with the Supreme Kai, turning SSJ2 and defeating Dabura and Babidi was great, also we got more great stuff from Gowasu and ‘Shin’ in this version, Merged Zamasu’s great range of techniques, Goku mastering SSB, I even liked Trunks’ role at the end of this arc and the multiplying Zamasus, way better than the anime.

But even if i hold this arc of the manga in so much of a higher regard than it’s anime counterpart, it still isn’t that great of a story and leaves so many characters out of the loop, wasn't this supposed to be so grand in scope, like a DBZ saga? When it's also said and done, the arc still has the same Deus Ex Machina and feels almost as contrived as it's anime counterpart.

ToP/Preview -- ??

Way more to the point then the anime, making it sometimes feel rushed, but it truly plays out like a battle royale, I don’t know how to feel about it yet.

The Dragon Ball Super Manga. No Comic has so many prayers and haters at the same time (probably).

VISUALS:

There are people on the internet who only rate Animation, artwork or writing.. Especially for the DBS Anime. There are YouTubers like "Anime Ajay" who upload Episode Breakdowns for each Super Episode that has been aired. But he looks only at the animation, the compositing, direction, storyboard and in rare cases the writing. He can rate an episode completely with the visuals, like it would be formula. And that is totally fine. I also enjoy looking at cool animated shots, hearing epic music and seeing creativity on Manga shots...

The Dragon Ball Super MANGA, which this review is actually about, got criticised for it's visuals for example by "Totally not Mark". And he had some fair points.. Toyotaro really likes to recycle shots, poses and panels from himself or Toriyama. But that is only one reason TnM hates the looks of the DBS manga. He also criticised that Toyotaro is using to many panels to present the action. And of course if you're comparing Toyotaros work for example with the Manga "Attack on Titan" (drawn by Hajime Isayama) you notice that Isayama uses way more panels and entire pages or even two pages that show one image. Another example for this is the old Dragon Ball Manga by Akira Toriyama. But there is quite a difference! Isa and Toriyama both use big panels and shots, but the amount of discribing shots in Attack on Titan is the same as in the Dragonball Super Manga by Toyotaro. Which means: Isayama put way less content in one chapter than Toyotaro, beacause of the small panels and Toriyama with his "less is more" approach.

Fact about everything with the visuals is: I didn't notice any recycled shots until TnM brought it up and I never had a problem with the small panels and often pretty full pages. Is this only a matter of your opinion or your look at things? My answer: Yeah, completely!

PLOT, CHARACTERS AND OVERALL ENJOYMENT:

...of every Arc!

Battle of Gods Arc

Maybe a bit short in the Manga. But the Anime was way too long for my taste and I can unterstand Toyotaro that everybody whos reading the Manga, already watched "Battle of Gods" or Dragon Ball Super Anime. So thats... fine.. i guess...

Revival of F Arc
Uh.... Where did it go?!
Universe 6 Tournament Arc

Pretty good writing by Toyotaros hands. The Characters are potrayed way more natural and less annoying than the anime, but it still could be funny and enjoyible. Examples for these Characters are Jaco, Bulma and Mr. Satan. The only things that weren'T that great are the emotional and dramatic scenes. Probs to the ANime Staff and voice actors for they're job! But the explanations for example Vegeta and Gokus power gap were way better and just more logical in the Manga and Gokus used his head! Woohoo!

Future Timeline Arc

I already liked the Arc in the anime but Hooray, it was better in the Manga! The story felt way more completed, Characters like Trunks way more bealivable written and Characters like Shin and Gowaso, were way more active.The story felt more polished and had some even more creative ideas. Dramatic and cool scenes have been cut from the anime, but got replaced with even cooler ones.

Really, this arc is my favourite one, written by Toyotaro.

Tournament of Power Arc

Got probably the most critisism. People who loved the Anime often said that the Manga was to rushed, characters got thrown away and it got rushed dammit!!!!
I never felt this way. This is supposed to be a 48 minutes long tournament and Toyotaro made *I think* 10 Chapters out of it.. While the Anime did OVER 9000 Episodes!!!!....Okay OVER 50 EPisodes!!!! Which is.... a bit too much..... The Manga made it short, because in the Manga the tournament isn't that big of a deal...Some characters got potrayed way better in the Manga and some didt get protayed at ALL!! The Manga really could have used some emotions and drama - it was a bit dull and not the best thing Toyotaro has ever written.


I really look forward to the Broly Movie and especially for the new Manga Arc, I got really exited.

Thanks for reading my horrifying grammatics and spelling.

Im writing this as someone who enjoyed dragonball super casually since the beginning. If you turn off your brain you might have a fun experience. However,lets be honest with ourselves Dragonball Super should be judged as what it is. It is not a serious manga that is made out of passion or love of the art or francise. It's a cashgrab rehashing a legendary manga series for profit alone. Giving them strange blue hair and a thousand transformations that become meaningless in the next arc, terrible antagonists that have overtly simplistic backstorys, weak plot threads, boring paneling.... But since the tournement of power arc something has changed. The pacing has gotten a lot better, Goku and Vegeta actually are starting to feel like actual characters and not action figures meant to sell merch, the newest antagonists actually are pretty average-solid, even the paneling and art is becoming less lazy. Especially the newest arc the "Granolah the Survivor Saga" is starting to be actually good. Like actually good not in dragonball super standards good like the moro arc but actually good. Im looking forward to that, but for now.... meh.

(***review up to chapter 66--End of the Moro Arc***)

After 1.5 years since my original review of this manga, I still highly recommend it over the anime version of Dragon Ball Super. Before, I only thought of it as a quicker, higher quality alternative to the anime, but with the addition of the Moro arc it has much more to offer. The Moro arc is the longest so far in the manga, and was able to tell its epic story with appropriate pacing since there was no need to keep up with an anime version. On top of covering the events of the anime in a more digestible format, Toyotarou's Dragon Ball Super manga now delivers what is easily my favorite story arc of the Super era.

While Toyotarou's pen game doesn't perfectly replicate Toriyama-sensei's art style, it's a close approximation. The way Toyotarou lays out his panels is very distinct from the original Dragon Ball. This is most notable in his action scenes where he uses large, jagged panels versus Toriyama-sensei's mostly rectangular panels. Toyotarou's sound effects also seem larger and more blocky, but I can't say for sure since I've only read the original manga with localized sound effects. Regardless, the characters are all consistently on model, the fight choreography is easy to follow, and every fight is imbued with a sense of speed that you just don't get in the anime version of Super.

The manga's story is largely the same as the anime (Up until the manga only Moro arc), with the differences mostly coming down to details while the overall plot stays the same. For detailed thoughts on some of these differences, see the spoiler paragraphs at the end of the review. The manga is also missing all of the anime filler. That means the bad filler like the weird goo monster that nearly beat Goku and Vegeta, as well as the filler I actually liked such as Gohan playing Saiyaman in a movie. So while we do lose some enjoyable character moments, the overall story doesn't suffer because of it.

Now that the conclusion of the Moro arc is upon us, I can safely say that this is my favorite arc of Dragon Ball Super to date. This is the only arc during which my score for the series rose consistently with every chapter, because each chapter was of overall higher quality than the arcs that came before. Because Toyotarou wasn't trying to play catch up to the anime and condense story events to move the plot along, he was able to plan out a really well paced and structured narrative.

In this arc, Toyotarou basically made his own ultimate remix of all the things he loves about Dragon Ball. He pulled plot elements and characters from all over the place and arranged them into a beautiful celebration of the entire series. Sure, that does keep some story beats from feeling totally fresh, but it all comes together to build an epic story with more believable tension than I've ever felt in Dragon Ball Super up until now. The ending is... Kinda out there, but it brings back a lot of plot threads from throughout the arc for a final payoff.

The characters of Dragon Ball are pretty much the same as always in the Super manga, especially up through the Tournament of Power where Toyotarou's hand were basically tied to the agreed upon story. In the Moro arc, he gave Vegeta some welcome character development. While it may not be a drastic change from where his character has been in Super, he gets a chance to recognize his past sins and atone for them, and learn from his history of reckless battle strategies. On the other hand, a case could be made that Toyotarou has regressed Goku's character given some of the events in the Moro arc, but I honestly don't feel like any of his actions were out of place.

So who should read Dragon Ball Super? I urge any and all Dragon Ball fans to read this manga. If you've already watch the TV anime of Super, you're probably fine without reading the same story again, but I highly recommend the Moro arc starting at chapter 42. For anyone who hasn't seen the anime, I can only suggest that you read the manga and watch the movies starting with Battle of Gods for what I consider the best possible Dragon Ball Super experience.

***SPOILER PARAGRAPHS***
Here are my thoughts on a few specific differences in the manga. In the fight against Hit, Goku sadly does not use Kaio Ken Blue, but I enjoy how he defeats Hit by predicting where he will be after a time skip and punching there. In the Goku Black arc, Goku demonstrates his old "monkey see, monkey do" talent by using Beerus's Hakai technique on Zamasu. In the finale, we're also spared from the weirdness of Zamasu fusing with the entire universe or whatever happened in the anime.

Finally, in the Tournament of Power, Goku unlocks Ultra Instinct after watching Master Roshi dodge attacks from Jiren. The anime version where Goku gets hit by his own Spirit Bomb simply has nothing to do with the mechanics of Ultra Instinct, while in the manga he learns to use it by coalescing lessons from all of his previous masters and watching Roshi perform a similar technique. It actually makes some kind of sense while the anime version makes no sense at all.

I pretty much enjoyed it (way better than anime)

the story goes on and the characters grows more, yeah some are repeated but damn Akira still got it. I liked how there are smart ways to win not all about power, and I like the new characters and power scaling it made it all fun and exciting to read

if you read it take it as a dragonball pace and see how existing and how much thought was put into it

not much I can say without spoiling but it's a must read and hopefully they make an anime that straight out the manga next time

Vague spoiler warning!

Dragon Ball Super, more specifically the manga, is by far one of the worst manga I have ever read. It has almost zero substance, yet still manages to shoot the franchise's legacy in the foot at every single opportunity, leading to an extremely frustrating experience for longtime fans of the series. I wish it was more than "good guys get new underwhelming technique, start to win, bad guys starts to get upper hand, beats good guys until we've wrung this arc dry and end it with some curveball BS", but it's not. This happens in almost every single arc, excluding the Tournament of Power (to an extent!) and it leads to a very unsatisfying conclusion every single time.

If that wasn't enough, the series continually performs character assassination on Goku and Vegeta, who have both become alzheimer's patients and forget their own character arcs every time a new arc starts. Vegeta is much more notably the worst offender of this. He goes through the same monologue he had during the Boo saga as Majin Vegeta in nearly every arc, either that or it's exchanged for a "Muh Bulma!!" version instead.

Another thing you may notice here is that this entire manga is a retread of the Super anime, and I phrased it like that because yes, this manga came AFTER the anime, and somehow manages to make all of the arcs much worse than their animated counterparts. Toyotarou, the main author and illustrator of the manga, feels the need to make small changes to each arc (which have slowly added up over time leading to characters having completely different forms in between the anime/manga) which has caused many fans to be confused as to which one is the "canon" one. Toei and Bandai Namco both promote the anime as the canon one, although you wouldn't be able to tell that because the only indicator of it is through Bandai's forgettable franchise called "Dragon Ball Heroes", which has (as far as I can tell) never acknowledged the manga's original transformations and power-ups. This is just one more reason why this manga is completely worthless.

But we can't ignore the arc that the manga is currently in, which has not been adapted by the anime. And my god, without the anime as a frame, Toyotaro has completely failed at creating a functioning plotline, leading to it feeling, as I stated previously, like it has zero substance yet also extremely frustrating to read considering the legacy of this franchise. For real though, this is one of Shonen Jump's biggest IPs, and all they can manage to scrounge up for the next entry in the Dragon Ball series is a fanfiction author? What a joke of a company.

If you like a series where the main character continually gets stronger and stronger with no possible reason other than the fact the story allows them to, this is a series for you!

Simply put, unlike the other Shonen staples, the Dragon Ball series does not know when to call it quits. The story of Dragon Ball has now gotten muddled into what is now, practically impossible to care about story arcs or contains increasingly worse and worse plot devices (such as power levels and uninteresting God-like characters) to drive its plot.

One can infer that the reason behind this is Akita Toriyama taking a back seat to the creation of this series, however; when he stopped, the series should have as well.

I can not, in good conscious, recommend this series to anyone, when there are much better series out there with more frequent releases and more interesting characters that don’t exist for the sole purpose of nostalgia.