Dragon Ball Super, the anime that ended back in 2018 after 131 episodes, is quite the subject of many debates among the fans of the franchise. There seem to be two main groups: those who hate Dragon Ball Super and claim that it doesn’t deserve one bit to be the continuation of Dragon Ball Z, and those who love the show and are fans of whatever Dragon Ball throws at them.
I’m not here to say that Dragon Ball Super is better than Dragon Ball Z or vice versa. I just want to point out that Dragon Ball Super did a few things better than Dragon Ball Z, and those aspects are worth mentioning. Without further ado, let’s cut to the chase:
More fighting in base form
Back in Dragon Ball Z, ever since Goku and Vegeta achieved the iconic Super Saiyan transformation with their hair turning yellow, they could barely even tie their shoelaces without transforming. They were eager to go Super Saiyan in every battle as if they were unable to fight in their base forms anymore.
Dragon Ball Super has the merit of giving both Goku and Vegeta more chances to shine in their base forms, although some could argue at this point that the show introduced a ridiculous number of transformations in all colors of the rainbow. The two Saiyan heroes proved to be able to fight more in their base forms than they did back in Dragon Ball Z.
The introduction of “semivillains”
Perhaps we all know the drill when it comes to Dragon Ball Z: once an opponent arrived for the Z warriors to face, he was definitely a villain eager to destroy the world, get his hands on the dragon balls to wish for bad things to happen, and so on. But in Super, we see more often how someone can fight the good guys with all he has, maybe even to the death, but still not qualify as a villain. How is that possible?
Let’s take Jiren, for instance. He was the most powerful fighter in Universe 11, where we could also see characters such as Toppo and Dyspo. They’ve all participated in the Tournament of Power along with Goku & co, which was a huge battle royale. The universes that lost all of their fighters had to be erased from existence by Zeno, the all-powerful deity. The purpose of this tournament was that Zeno needed to keep only one single universe alive in order to maintain some sort of balance in the Multiverse. Zeno is no villain, and neither is Jiren. The former had to fight for the survival of his own universe, and he did it with all he had.
The Multiverse
In Dragon Ball Z, there’s no mention of a Multiverse or of other universes. We had time travel, though, but Dragon Ball Super took it to a whole new level with the introduction of parallel universes and the Multiverse. This opens up the door for many more opportunities for Goku & co to learn new techniques, encounter new villains, and eventually find other types of dragon balls.
Dragon Ball Super didn’t even explore all the universes that exist in the Multiverse, which is great news for the future of the franchise. At some point in the show, Goku and Piccolo had to battle Frost, meaning another version of Frieza from a parallel universe.
Ultimately, both Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Ball Super have their charm and flaws. None of the two animes is perfect, and the future of the franchise already sounds interesting. In the fall of 2024, we’ll get a brand new anime known as Dragon Ball: Daima.