{"counts": {"scenes": 9, "sources": 29, "journeys": 4, "instances": 29}, "scenes": [{"name": "Before Super", "number": 1, "sceneId": "s1", "partition": "before", "sourceUrls": ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Ball", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Ball_Z", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akira_Toriyama"], "description": "Dragon Ball ran in Weekly Shonen Jump from December 1984 to June 1995 — 519 chapters, 42 volumes, 260 million copies worldwide. Dragon Ball Z ended on television in January 1996. Super arrived in July 2015 as a midquel, slotting into a gap inside the old story rather than continuing past it.", "sourceCount": 3}, {"name": "Saga One — God of Destruction Beerus", "number": 2, "sceneId": "s2", "partition": "sagas", "sourceUrls": ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Ball_Super", "https://www.toei-animation.com/catalog/dragon-ball-super/", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Dragon_Ball_Super_episodes", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Ball_Z:_Battle_of_Gods", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulma"], "description": "Episodes 1 to 18, 5 July to 8 November 2015. A purple cat-like deity wakes from a long sleep, hears a Saiyan beat Frieza, and turns up at Bulma's birthday party. Essentially an expanded retelling of the 2013 film Battle of Gods, which was the first Dragon Ball film Toriyama personally supervised and the first in seventeen years.", "sourceCount": 5}, {"name": "Saga Two — Golden Frieza", "number": 3, "sceneId": "s3", "partition": "sagas", "sourceUrls": ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Ball_Z:_Resurrection_%27F%27", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frieza", "https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=17006"], "description": "Episodes 19 to 27, 15 November 2015 to 17 January 2016. The shortest saga, and the other one adapted from a film — Resurrection 'F' from April 2015, the first Dragon Ball screenplay Toriyama wrote himself. Frieza is wished back, trains for the first time in his life, and turns gold.", "sourceCount": 3}, {"name": "Saga Three — Universe 6", "number": 4, "sceneId": "s4", "partition": "sagas", "sourceUrls": ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegeta", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Dragon_Ball_characters", "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Dragon_Ball"], "description": "Episodes 28 to 46, 24 January to 5 June 2016. The point at which Super stops being a remake and starts inventing: a second universe, a rival God of Destruction, a tournament for the Super Dragon Balls, and the first serious hint that the setting is now a multiverse with a hierarchy of gods above it.", "sourceCount": 3}, {"name": "Saga Four — Future Trunks and Goku Black", "number": 5, "sceneId": "s5", "partition": "sagas", "sourceUrls": ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trunks_(Dragon_Ball)", "https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/review/dragon-ball-super/episode-67/.109045", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gohan"], "description": "Episodes 47 to 76, 12 June 2016 to 29 January 2017. Widely held to be the best stretch of the series. A ruined future, a villain wearing Goku's face who turns out to be a Supreme Kai apprentice with a theory about mortals, and a hero whose time machine gets destroyed so he cannot go home.", "sourceCount": 3}, {"name": "Saga Five — Universe Survival", "number": 6, "sceneId": "s6", "partition": "sagas", "sourceUrls": ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goku", "https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/review/dragon-ball-super/episodes-109-110/.122446", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masako_Nozawa"], "description": "Episodes 77 to 131, 5 February 2017 to 25 March 2018 — 55 episodes, longer than the other four sagas combined. Eight universes, ten fighters each, forty-eight minutes, and the losing universes get erased. This is where Ultra Instinct arrives, and where Toei put most of its animation staff on two episodes at once.", "sourceCount": 3}, {"name": "The Films", "number": 7, "sceneId": "s7", "partition": "films", "sourceUrls": ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Ball_Super:_Broly", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Ball_Super:_Super_Hero", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piccolo_(Dragon_Ball)"], "description": "The films are not side stories here — two of them became sagas, and two more continued the story after the series ended. Broly in 2018 took a character who had only existed in non-canon Z films and wrote him properly into continuity. Super Hero in 2022 switched to CGI and handed the film to Gohan and Piccolo instead of Goku.", "sourceCount": 3}, {"name": "The Manga, and Who Draws It", "number": 8, "sceneId": "s8", "partition": "makers", "sourceUrls": ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyotarou", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V_Jump", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sean_Schemmel"], "description": "The manga is not an adaptation of the anime and does not match it. It runs monthly in V Jump, drawn by Toyotarou — a former television director who spent his childhood inventing Dragon Ball arcs in notebooks — from major plot points supplied by Toriyama, who then reviewed the storyboards and sent them back with corrections.", "sourceCount": 3}, {"name": "After Toriyama", "number": 9, "sceneId": "s9", "partition": "after", "sourceUrls": ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Ball_Daima", "https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2026-04-19/dragon-ball-super-beerus-anime-new-trailer-teases-frieza-return/.236571", "https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/dragon_ball_super"], "description": "Toriyama died on 1 March 2024 of an acute subdural haematoma, aged 68. Dragon Ball Daima, which he had written entirely and designed, aired that October. The Super manga went on indefinite hiatus. And in 2026 Toei announced a full reconstruction of the anime — re-rendered, redubbed, restructured — for Fall.", "sourceCount": 3}], "sources": [{"url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Ball", "type": "webpage", "title": "Dragon Ball", "summary": "Where it starts. Serialised in Weekly Shonen Jump from 3 December 1984 to 5 June 1995 — 519 chapters, 42 volumes, over 160 million copies in Japan and around 260 million worldwide. The critic Jason Thompson calls it by far the most influential shonen manga of the last thirty years, and the template it set — martial arts, training, escalating fights — is visible in Naruto and everything after.", "duration": "25 minutes", "integrity": "standalone", "publisher": "en.wikipedia.org"}, {"url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Ball_Z", "type": "webpage", "title": "Dragon Ball Z", "summary": "291 episodes between 26 April 1989 and 31 January 1996, then Dragon Ball GT in 1996 to 1997. By 1999 Z had earned three billion dollars in Asia alone, and by 2012 franchise merchandise had passed five billion worldwide. The important structural point for Super: Z finished on television in 1996, so there was a nineteen-year gap before a new series, and Super does not pick up after Z — it goes back inside it.", "duration": "25 minutes", "integrity": "dependent", "publisher": "en.wikipedia.org"}, {"url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Ball_Super", "type": "webpage", "title": "Dragon Ball Super", "summary": "The series itself. 131 episodes on Fuji TV, 5 July 2015 to 25 March 2018, produced by Toei Animation from a plot outline by Akira Toriyama. Read alongside the criticisms it collected, which are in here too: that Goku was written as implausibly pacifistic, and that the main trio so dominated the fighting that the wider cast had little to do.", "duration": "30 minutes", "integrity": "standalone", "publisher": "en.wikipedia.org"}, {"url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Dragon_Ball_Super_episodes", "type": "webpage", "title": "Every Episode, In Order", "summary": "The episode spine for the whole experience, and the thing to keep open beside it. All 131 episodes with titles and original air dates, grouped into the five sagas: Beerus 1 to 18, Golden Frieza 19 to 27, Universe 6 and Duplicate Vegeta 28 to 46, Zamasu 47 to 76, Universe Survival 77 to 131. Note the sizes — the last saga is 55 episodes, more than the first four together.", "duration": "20 minutes", "integrity": "dependent", "publisher": "en.wikipedia.org"}, {"url": "https://www.toei-animation.com/catalog/dragon-ball-super/", "type": "video", "title": "Toei Animation — Dragon Ball Super", "summary": "The studio's own catalogue entry. 131 episodes at 26 minutes each, 2015, credited to Bird Studio / Shueisha and Toei Animation. Their synopsis is worth reading for how plainly it states the premise: the threat of Majin Buu has passed, everyone gathers for Bulma's birthday, and then the God of Destruction appears — the story finally moves beyond the universe.", "duration": "8 minutes", "integrity": "dependent", "publisher": "www.toei-animation.com"}, {"url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Ball_Z:_Battle_of_Gods", "type": "video", "title": "Battle of Gods (2013)", "summary": "The first saga is an expanded retelling of this. Released 30 March 2013 — the first Dragon Ball film in seventeen years and the first Toriyama personally supervised, developing the story and character designs himself. It took 50.4 million dollars worldwide, with 15.6 million of that in Latin America. Episodes 1 to 14 retell it, with events altered and extended.", "duration": "18 minutes", "integrity": "dependent", "publisher": "en.wikipedia.org"}, {"url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Ball_Z:_Resurrection_%27F%27", "type": "video", "title": "Resurrection 'F' (2015)", "summary": "What the Golden Frieza saga adapts. Released 18 April 2015, and the first time Toriyama wrote a screenplay for the franchise himself, according to producer Norihiro Hayashida. 61.7 million dollars worldwide, 83% on Rotten Tomatoes from 18 reviews, with some critics finding the central fight short on tension. The nine television episodes add scenes and subplots set before it.", "duration": "18 minutes", "integrity": "standalone", "publisher": "en.wikipedia.org"}, {"url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Ball_Super:_Broly", "type": "video", "title": "Dragon Ball Super: Broly (2018)", "summary": "14 December 2018, directed by Tatsuya Nagamine, supervised by Toriyama. Over 124 million dollars — the highest-grossing Dragon Ball film there has been, and the top-earning anime film worldwide that year. 84% on Rotten Tomatoes. Its real work was canonical: Broly had existed only in non-canon Z-era films, and this rebuilt his origin and wrote him properly into Super continuity. Also the first anime shown in IMAX in the United States.", "duration": "20 minutes", "integrity": "standalone", "publisher": "en.wikipedia.org"}, {"url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Ball_Super:_Super_Hero", "type": "video", "title": "Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero (2022)", "summary": "Delayed from 22 April to 11 June 2022 by a cyberattack on Toei Animation, then international from 19 August. Directed by Tetsuro Kodama from Toriyama's concept and designs, and the first Dragon Ball film made mainly in CGI — a deliberate break from what came before. 13.8 billion yen, about 102.5 million dollars. 95% on Rotten Tomatoes from 58 critics, though Metacritic has it at 65 from 12, which is the more sober reading.", "duration": "20 minutes", "integrity": "dependent", "publisher": "en.wikipedia.org"}, {"url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Ball_Daima", "type": "video", "title": "Dragon Ball Daima (2024)", "summary": "20 episodes on Fuji TV, 11 October 2024 to 28 February 2025, and Toriyama's last work on the franchise — he wrote the whole story and did the character, vehicle and background designs, then died in March 2024, months before it aired. It is deliberately not Super: an adventure rather than a tournament series, and a midquel set inside the Buu-era gap rather than a continuation.", "duration": "18 minutes", "integrity": "standalone", "publisher": "en.wikipedia.org"}, {"url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulma", "type": "webpage", "title": "Bulma", "summary": "The saga starts at her birthday party, which is not incidental — she has been there since the first chapter in 1984, introduced alongside Goku so Toriyama could explain both through their interaction. She builds the Dragon Radar, the time machine Future Trunks arrives in, and the Super Dragon Radar. In this arc she slaps a God of Destruction and nearly gets the planet destroyed. Hiromi Tsuru voiced her from 1986 until her death in 2017; Aya Hisakawa took over in 2018.", "duration": "18 minutes", "integrity": "subsidiary", "publisher": "en.wikipedia.org"}, {"url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frieza", "type": "webpage", "title": "Frieza", "summary": "First appeared October 1989 and still the franchise's defining villain. Toriyama based him on Japanese bubble-era real-estate speculators, whom he called the worst kind of people; the name is a pun on freezer, which is why his subordinates are named after refrigeration. Ryusei Nakao has voiced him in Japanese throughout. Super gives him Golden Frieza here and, later in the manga, Black Frieza.", "duration": "20 minutes", "integrity": "subsidiary", "publisher": "en.wikipedia.org"}, {"url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegeta", "type": "webpage", "title": "Vegeta", "summary": "Toriyama meant him to be a disposable villain and audience response kept him alive — which is why the most interesting arc in the franchise belongs to him rather than Goku. A Viz Media poll found him the most popular character in Dragon Ball Super specifically. Ryo Horikawa in Japanese, Christopher Sabat for Funimation. Critics who like his development still note that the later cycle of new powers became formulaic.", "duration": "22 minutes", "integrity": "standalone", "publisher": "en.wikipedia.org"}, {"url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Dragon_Ball_characters", "type": "webpage", "title": "The Gods, and Everyone Else", "summary": "Wikipedia's character list, which is the reliable reference for the figures Super invented and who mostly have no article of their own — Beerus, a purple cat-like God of Destruction; Whis, his angelic attendant who trains Goku and Vegeta; Jiren of Universe 11; and Zamasu, the Supreme Kai apprentice who despises mortal life and takes Goku's body. Use this rather than a fan wiki: it is sourced and it is edited.", "duration": "25 minutes", "integrity": "subsidiary", "publisher": "en.wikipedia.org"}, {"url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trunks_(Dragon_Ball)", "type": "webpage", "title": "Trunks", "summary": "Two versions of the same person, and the saga belongs to the older one. Future Trunks first appears in chapter 331 as a seventeen-year-old arriving from a timeline where the androids won, Goku died of a heart virus and Gohan was killed — leaving him as Earth's only protector. In Super his time machine is destroyed, which strands him. He beats fused Zamasu by gathering the energy of everything still alive on the planet into a sword.", "duration": "20 minutes", "integrity": "standalone", "publisher": "en.wikipedia.org"}, {"url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gohan", "type": "webpage", "title": "Gohan", "summary": "Created in 1988 and originally intended as Goku's successor, which the franchise then declined to follow through on — his Cell arc peak is the high point and, as Wikipedia puts it plainly, his characterisation afterwards has had a more mixed reception. In Super he is a scholar who has stopped fighting, resumes training with Piccolo, and enters the Tournament of Power. Masako Nozawa voices him as well as his father.", "duration": "20 minutes", "integrity": "subsidiary", "publisher": "en.wikipedia.org"}, {"url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goku", "type": "webpage", "title": "Goku", "summary": "Debuted 3 December 1984, built from Sun Wukong of Journey to the West crossed with Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee — a boy with a monkey's tail, and the tail was dropped early because it was a nuisance to draw. Ultra Instinct, which arrives in this saga, is the newest of his forms. 9 May is officially Goku Day in Japan, and in 2018 he became the first manga character in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.", "duration": "25 minutes", "integrity": "standalone", "publisher": "en.wikipedia.org"}, {"url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masako_Nozawa", "type": "webpage", "title": "Masako Nozawa", "summary": "She has voiced Goku since 1986 and still does. Toriyama picked her from her audition, saying only Goku could sound like that. She also plays Gohan, Goten, Bardock, Turles and Goku Black — and when several of them are in one scene she records all the lines in a single take, switching between them on the spot, rather than doing separate passes. Two Guinness World Records in 2017, and in October 2025 she became the first voice actor named a Person of Cultural Merit by the Japanese government.", "duration": "15 minutes", "integrity": "subsidiary", "publisher": "en.wikipedia.org"}, {"url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piccolo_(Dragon_Ball)", "type": "webpage", "title": "Piccolo", "summary": "The reason Super Hero works. He begins as the reincarnation of a demon king, loses to Goku, and is changed by being handed a child to train — the Gohan mentorship is the most quietly influential relationship in the franchise, and Masashi Kishimoto modelled Sasuke teaching Boruto on it. Super Hero finally gives him a transformation of his own, Orange Piccolo, and hands him the film.", "duration": "20 minutes", "integrity": "subsidiary", "publisher": "en.wikipedia.org"}, {"url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sean_Schemmel", "type": "webpage", "title": "Sean Schemmel", "summary": "The other half of Goku, for most of the English-speaking audience. A classically trained French horn player who auditioned for Dragon Ball Z on a friend's suggestion and has voiced adult Goku since 1999 — across Z, GT, Kai, Super, Daima, and most of the films and games. He also voices King Kai and Goku Black, and has worked as an ADR director and screenwriter.", "duration": "15 minutes", "integrity": "subsidiary", "publisher": "en.wikipedia.org"}, {"url": "https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=17006", "type": "webpage", "title": "Anime News Network — The Series Entry", "summary": "The encyclopedia record: 131 episodes, 5 July 2015 to 25 March 2018, with the opening and ending theme credits. ANN is the reference to reach for on production detail rather than a fan wiki — it is a working trade publication with an editorial process, and the same site's episode reviews are used elsewhere in this experience.", "duration": "10 minutes", "integrity": "subsidiary", "publisher": "www.animenewsnetwork.com"}, {"url": "https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/review/dragon-ball-super/episode-67/.109045", "type": "webpage", "title": "ANN on the End of the Trunks Arc", "summary": "Sam Leach reviewing episode 67, graded B. He calls the Future Trunks arc the best that Dragon Ball Super has been so far, while being openly disappointed by how it resolves — he had specifically hoped it would not come down to Zen-Oh turning up and solving the problem. Good on why the arc works: it holds the pulpy science fiction of Z and the goofiness of the original Dragon Ball at the same time.", "duration": "10 minutes", "integrity": "dependent", "publisher": "www.animenewsnetwork.com"}, {"url": "https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/review/dragon-ball-super/episodes-109-110/.122446", "type": "webpage", "title": "ANN on Episodes 109-110 — Graded A+", "summary": "The episode-level high point of the series, and the one to read if you read only one review. Sam Leach gave the hour an A+. Toei put almost the whole company on these two episodes. On Ultra Instinct he is precise in a way most coverage is not: it is less a new form like Super Saiyan than a state of hyper fight-or-flight, triggered because Goku has been beaten so completely that something else has to move his body for him.", "duration": "12 minutes", "integrity": "dependent", "publisher": "www.animenewsnetwork.com"}, {"url": "https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2026-04-19/dragon-ball-super-beerus-anime-new-trailer-teases-frieza-return/.236571", "type": "webpage", "title": "Dragon Ball Super: Beerus — Fall 2026", "summary": "Anime News Network, 19 April 2026, on what Toei is actually doing next: not a sequel but a reconstruction of the existing anime. Complete re-rendering of the footage, newly recorded dubbing, added score and sound effects, and what the announcement calls a full reconstruction of the story, to get closer to Toriyama's original intent. Koichi Yamadera returns as Beerus; Akio Iyoku is project lead. The Super Gekitou trailer premiered at Dragon Ball Games Battle Hour in Los Angeles and teases Frieza.", "duration": "10 minutes", "integrity": "dependent", "publisher": "www.animenewsnetwork.com"}, {"url": "https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/dragon_ball_super", "type": "webpage", "title": "Rotten Tomatoes — The Aggregate", "summary": "87% from 25 critics and 78% from over 250 audience ratings, across five seasons. A small critic sample, so treat it lightly — but the shape is worth noting against the criticisms in the Wikipedia article, and against the fact that the series' reputation among viewers rests very heavily on two of its five sagas.", "duration": "6 minutes", "integrity": "dependent", "publisher": "www.rottentomatoes.com"}, {"url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akira_Toriyama", "type": "webpage", "title": "Akira Toriyama", "summary": "1955 to 2024, born in Kiyosu, Aichi. Dr. Slump from 1980 won him the 1981 Shogakukan Manga Award and sold over 35 million copies; Dragon Ball followed for eleven years. He also designed characters for Dragon Quest, Chrono Trigger and Blue Dragon. On method he was candid: he drew spontaneously rather than planning, and sometimes wrote himself into corners. His own summary was that the role of his manga is to be entertainment through and through.", "duration": "25 minutes", "integrity": "subsidiary", "publisher": "en.wikipedia.org"}, {"url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyotarou", "type": "webpage", "title": "Toyotarou", "summary": "Born 17 May 1978 in Tochigi. He read Dr. Slump at primary school, worked as a television director, and filled notebooks with Dragon Ball arcs he never expected to draw professionally. He submitted work to Shueisha in 2012 and debuted on Dragon Ball Heroes: Victory Mission. On Super he described the process exactly: he received the major plot points from Toriyama, drew the storyboard and filled in the details, and Toriyama reviewed it before he finished the art. Toriyama said his line was the closest to his own of anyone working on the franchise.", "duration": "15 minutes", "integrity": "standalone", "publisher": "en.wikipedia.org"}, {"url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V_Jump", "type": "webpage", "title": "V Jump", "summary": "Where the manga actually runs, and the reason it diverges from the anime. A monthly Shueisha magazine founded in 1990, circulation around 135,000, mostly carrying spin-offs and game tie-ins. Dragon Ball Super began there in June 2015 and is listed as on hiatus. Monthly rather than weekly is why the manga moves at a different pace from a weekly television series and has told arcs — Moro, Granolah — the anime never adapted.", "duration": "10 minutes", "integrity": "dependent", "publisher": "en.wikipedia.org"}, {"url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Dragon_Ball", "type": "image", "title": "Dragon Ball — Freely Licensed Images", "summary": "Modest by design, and instructive about why. 14 files and 11 subcategories on Wikimedia Commons — bookshop displays in Japan and China, convention photographs from AnimeJapan 2015 and Gamescom 2019, logos. Almost nothing from the series itself, because it is all in copyright: the page carries a notice about Section 46 of Japan's Copyright Act. If you want to see the show, that is what the official and streaming links are for.", "duration": "8 minutes", "integrity": "subsidiary", "publisher": "commons.wikimedia.org"}], "journeys": [{"name": "The Whole Run", "steps": [{"order": 1, "title": "Dragon Ball", "channel": "The Series", "summary": "Where it starts. Serialised in Weekly Shonen Jump from 3 December 1984 to 5 June 1995 — 519 chapters, 42 volumes, over 160 million copies in Japan and around 260 million worldwide. The critic Jason Thompson calls it by far the most influential shonen manga of the last thirty years, and the template it set — martial arts, training, escalating fights — is visible in Naruto and everything after.", "sourceUrl": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Ball", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 2, "title": "Dragon Ball Z", "channel": "The Series", "summary": "291 episodes between 26 April 1989 and 31 January 1996, then Dragon Ball GT in 1996 to 1997. By 1999 Z had earned three billion dollars in Asia alone, and by 2012 franchise merchandise had passed five billion worldwide. The important structural point for Super: Z finished on television in 1996, so there was a nineteen-year gap before a new series, and Super does not pick up after Z — it goes back inside it.", "sourceUrl": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Ball_Z", "editorNote": "Nineteen years between series.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 3, "title": "Dragon Ball Super", "channel": "The Series", "summary": "The series itself. 131 episodes on Fuji TV, 5 July 2015 to 25 March 2018, produced by Toei Animation from a plot outline by Akira Toriyama. Read alongside the criticisms it collected, which are in here too: that Goku was written as implausibly pacifistic, and that the main trio so dominated the fighting that the wider cast had little to do.", "sourceUrl": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Ball_Super", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 4, "title": "Every Episode, In Order", "channel": "The Series", "summary": "The episode spine for the whole experience, and the thing to keep open beside it. All 131 episodes with titles and original air dates, grouped into the five sagas: Beerus 1 to 18, Golden Frieza 19 to 27, Universe 6 and Duplicate Vegeta 28 to 46, Zamasu 47 to 76, Universe Survival 77 to 131. Note the sizes — the last saga is 55 episodes, more than the first four together.", "sourceUrl": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Dragon_Ball_Super_episodes", "editorNote": "Keep this open alongside.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 5, "title": "Battle of Gods (2013)", "channel": "The Films", "summary": "The first saga is an expanded retelling of this. Released 30 March 2013 — the first Dragon Ball film in seventeen years and the first Toriyama personally supervised, developing the story and character designs himself. It took 50.4 million dollars worldwide, with 15.6 million of that in Latin America. Episodes 1 to 14 retell it, with events altered and extended.", "sourceUrl": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Ball_Z:_Battle_of_Gods", "editorNote": "Saga one is this film, expanded.", "sourceType": "video"}, {"order": 6, "title": "Bulma", "channel": "Characters and Cast", "summary": "The saga starts at her birthday party, which is not incidental — she has been there since the first chapter in 1984, introduced alongside Goku so Toriyama could explain both through their interaction. She builds the Dragon Radar, the time machine Future Trunks arrives in, and the Super Dragon Radar. In this arc she slaps a God of Destruction and nearly gets the planet destroyed. Hiromi Tsuru voiced her from 1986 until her death in 2017; Aya Hisakawa took over in 2018.", "sourceUrl": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulma", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 7, "title": "Resurrection 'F' (2015)", "channel": "The Films", "summary": "What the Golden Frieza saga adapts. Released 18 April 2015, and the first time Toriyama wrote a screenplay for the franchise himself, according to producer Norihiro Hayashida. 61.7 million dollars worldwide, 83% on Rotten Tomatoes from 18 reviews, with some critics finding the central fight short on tension. The nine television episodes add scenes and subplots set before it.", "sourceUrl": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Ball_Z:_Resurrection_%27F%27", "editorNote": "And saga two is this one.", "sourceType": "video"}, {"order": 8, "title": "Frieza", "channel": "Characters and Cast", "summary": "First appeared October 1989 and still the franchise's defining villain. Toriyama based him on Japanese bubble-era real-estate speculators, whom he called the worst kind of people; the name is a pun on freezer, which is why his subordinates are named after refrigeration. Ryusei Nakao has voiced him in Japanese throughout. Super gives him Golden Frieza here and, later in the manga, Black Frieza.", "sourceUrl": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frieza", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 9, "title": "Vegeta", "channel": "Characters and Cast", "summary": "Toriyama meant him to be a disposable villain and audience response kept him alive — which is why the most interesting arc in the franchise belongs to him rather than Goku. A Viz Media poll found him the most popular character in Dragon Ball Super specifically. Ryo Horikawa in Japanese, Christopher Sabat for Funimation. Critics who like his development still note that the later cycle of new powers became formulaic.", "sourceUrl": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegeta", "editorNote": "Now it starts inventing.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 10, "title": "The Gods, and Everyone Else", "channel": "Characters and Cast", "summary": "Wikipedia's character list, which is the reliable reference for the figures Super invented and who mostly have no article of their own — Beerus, a purple cat-like God of Destruction; Whis, his angelic attendant who trains Goku and Vegeta; Jiren of Universe 11; and Zamasu, the Supreme Kai apprentice who despises mortal life and takes Goku's body. Use this rather than a fan wiki: it is sourced and it is edited.", "sourceUrl": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Dragon_Ball_characters", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 11, "title": "Trunks", "channel": "Characters and Cast", "summary": "Two versions of the same person, and the saga belongs to the older one. Future Trunks first appears in chapter 331 as a seventeen-year-old arriving from a timeline where the androids won, Goku died of a heart virus and Gohan was killed — leaving him as Earth's only protector. In Super his time machine is destroyed, which strands him. He beats fused Zamasu by gathering the energy of everything still alive on the planet into a sword.", "sourceUrl": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trunks_(Dragon_Ball)", "editorNote": "The best stretch of the series.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 12, "title": "ANN on the End of the Trunks Arc", "channel": "Anime Press", "summary": "Sam Leach reviewing episode 67, graded B. He calls the Future Trunks arc the best that Dragon Ball Super has been so far, while being openly disappointed by how it resolves — he had specifically hoped it would not come down to Zen-Oh turning up and solving the problem. Good on why the arc works: it holds the pulpy science fiction of Z and the goofiness of the original Dragon Ball at the same time.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/review/dragon-ball-super/episode-67/.109045", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 13, "title": "Goku", "channel": "Characters and Cast", "summary": "Debuted 3 December 1984, built from Sun Wukong of Journey to the West crossed with Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee — a boy with a monkey's tail, and the tail was dropped early because it was a nuisance to draw. Ultra Instinct, which arrives in this saga, is the newest of his forms. 9 May is officially Goku Day in Japan, and in 2018 he became the first manga character in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.", "sourceUrl": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goku", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 14, "title": "ANN on Episodes 109-110 — Graded A+", "channel": "Anime Press", "summary": "The episode-level high point of the series, and the one to read if you read only one review. Sam Leach gave the hour an A+. Toei put almost the whole company on these two episodes. On Ultra Instinct he is precise in a way most coverage is not: it is less a new form like Super Saiyan than a state of hyper fight-or-flight, triggered because Goku has been beaten so completely that something else has to move his body for him.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/review/dragon-ball-super/episodes-109-110/.122446", "editorNote": "Episodes 109 and 110.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 15, "title": "Dragon Ball Super: Broly (2018)", "channel": "The Films", "summary": "14 December 2018, directed by Tatsuya Nagamine, supervised by Toriyama. Over 124 million dollars — the highest-grossing Dragon Ball film there has been, and the top-earning anime film worldwide that year. 84% on Rotten Tomatoes. Its real work was canonical: Broly had existed only in non-canon Z-era films, and this rebuilt his origin and wrote him properly into Super continuity. Also the first anime shown in IMAX in the United States.", "sourceUrl": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Ball_Super:_Broly", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "video"}, {"order": 16, "title": "Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero (2022)", "channel": "The Films", "summary": "Delayed from 22 April to 11 June 2022 by a cyberattack on Toei Animation, then international from 19 August. Directed by Tetsuro Kodama from Toriyama's concept and designs, and the first Dragon Ball film made mainly in CGI — a deliberate break from what came before. 13.8 billion yen, about 102.5 million dollars. 95% on Rotten Tomatoes from 58 critics, though Metacritic has it at 65 from 12, which is the more sober reading.", "sourceUrl": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Ball_Super:_Super_Hero", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "video"}, {"order": 17, "title": "Toyotarou", "channel": "The Manga", "summary": "Born 17 May 1978 in Tochigi. He read Dr. Slump at primary school, worked as a television director, and filled notebooks with Dragon Ball arcs he never expected to draw professionally. He submitted work to Shueisha in 2012 and debuted on Dragon Ball Heroes: Victory Mission. On Super he described the process exactly: he received the major plot points from Toriyama, drew the storyboard and filled in the details, and Toriyama reviewed it before he finished the art. Toriyama said his line was the closest to his own of anyone working on the franchise.", "sourceUrl": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyotarou", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 18, "title": "Dragon Ball Daima (2024)", "channel": "The Films", "summary": "20 episodes on Fuji TV, 11 October 2024 to 28 February 2025, and Toriyama's last work on the franchise — he wrote the whole story and did the character, vehicle and background designs, then died in March 2024, months before it aired. It is deliberately not Super: an adventure rather than a tournament series, and a midquel set inside the Buu-era gap rather than a continuation.", "sourceUrl": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Ball_Daima", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "video"}, {"order": 19, "title": "Dragon Ball — Freely Licensed Images", "channel": "Images", "summary": "Modest by design, and instructive about why. 14 files and 11 subcategories on Wikimedia Commons — bookshop displays in Japan and China, convention photographs from AnimeJapan 2015 and Gamescom 2019, logos. Almost nothing from the series itself, because it is all in copyright: the page carries a notice about Section 46 of Japan's Copyright Act. If you want to see the show, that is what the official and streaming links are for.", "sourceUrl": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Dragon_Ball", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "image"}], "bestFor": "All five sagas in broadcast order, from the birthday party in episode 1 to the end of the Tournament of Power in episode 131, with the films that two of the sagas are built from and what happened after.", "journeyId": "j-run", "stepCount": 19}, {"name": "Saga by Saga, With the Reviews", "steps": [{"order": 1, "title": "Dragon Ball Super", "channel": "The Series", "summary": "The series itself. 131 episodes on Fuji TV, 5 July 2015 to 25 March 2018, produced by Toei Animation from a plot outline by Akira Toriyama. Read alongside the criticisms it collected, which are in here too: that Goku was written as implausibly pacifistic, and that the main trio so dominated the fighting that the wider cast had little to do.", "sourceUrl": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Ball_Super", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 2, "title": "Anime News Network — The Series Entry", "channel": "Anime Press", "summary": "The encyclopedia record: 131 episodes, 5 July 2015 to 25 March 2018, with the opening and ending theme credits. ANN is the reference to reach for on production detail rather than a fan wiki — it is a working trade publication with an editorial process, and the same site's episode reviews are used elsewhere in this experience.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=17006", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 3, "title": "Rotten Tomatoes — The Aggregate", "channel": "Anime Press", "summary": "87% from 25 critics and 78% from over 250 audience ratings, across five seasons. A small critic sample, so treat it lightly — but the shape is worth noting against the criticisms in the Wikipedia article, and against the fact that the series' reputation among viewers rests very heavily on two of its five sagas.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/dragon_ball_super", "editorNote": "87%, from only 25 critics.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 4, "title": "Battle of Gods (2013)", "channel": "The Films", "summary": "The first saga is an expanded retelling of this. Released 30 March 2013 — the first Dragon Ball film in seventeen years and the first Toriyama personally supervised, developing the story and character designs himself. It took 50.4 million dollars worldwide, with 15.6 million of that in Latin America. Episodes 1 to 14 retell it, with events altered and extended.", "sourceUrl": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Ball_Z:_Battle_of_Gods", "editorNote": "Saga one: a remake of a film.", "sourceType": "video"}, {"order": 5, "title": "Resurrection 'F' (2015)", "channel": "The Films", "summary": "What the Golden Frieza saga adapts. Released 18 April 2015, and the first time Toriyama wrote a screenplay for the franchise himself, according to producer Norihiro Hayashida. 61.7 million dollars worldwide, 83% on Rotten Tomatoes from 18 reviews, with some critics finding the central fight short on tension. The nine television episodes add scenes and subplots set before it.", "sourceUrl": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Ball_Z:_Resurrection_%27F%27", "editorNote": "Saga two: also a remake of a film.", "sourceType": "video"}, {"order": 6, "title": "Vegeta", "channel": "Characters and Cast", "summary": "Toriyama meant him to be a disposable villain and audience response kept him alive — which is why the most interesting arc in the franchise belongs to him rather than Goku. A Viz Media poll found him the most popular character in Dragon Ball Super specifically. Ryo Horikawa in Japanese, Christopher Sabat for Funimation. Critics who like his development still note that the later cycle of new powers became formulaic.", "sourceUrl": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegeta", "editorNote": "Saga three: the first original one.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 7, "title": "ANN on the End of the Trunks Arc", "channel": "Anime Press", "summary": "Sam Leach reviewing episode 67, graded B. He calls the Future Trunks arc the best that Dragon Ball Super has been so far, while being openly disappointed by how it resolves — he had specifically hoped it would not come down to Zen-Oh turning up and solving the problem. Good on why the arc works: it holds the pulpy science fiction of Z and the goofiness of the original Dragon Ball at the same time.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/review/dragon-ball-super/episode-67/.109045", "editorNote": "Saga four: the best it ever got.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 8, "title": "Trunks", "channel": "Characters and Cast", "summary": "Two versions of the same person, and the saga belongs to the older one. Future Trunks first appears in chapter 331 as a seventeen-year-old arriving from a timeline where the androids won, Goku died of a heart virus and Gohan was killed — leaving him as Earth's only protector. In Super his time machine is destroyed, which strands him. He beats fused Zamasu by gathering the energy of everything still alive on the planet into a sword.", "sourceUrl": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trunks_(Dragon_Ball)", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 9, "title": "ANN on Episodes 109-110 — Graded A+", "channel": "Anime Press", "summary": "The episode-level high point of the series, and the one to read if you read only one review. Sam Leach gave the hour an A+. Toei put almost the whole company on these two episodes. On Ultra Instinct he is precise in a way most coverage is not: it is less a new form like Super Saiyan than a state of hyper fight-or-flight, triggered because Goku has been beaten so completely that something else has to move his body for him.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/review/dragon-ball-super/episodes-109-110/.122446", "editorNote": "Saga five: and the single best hour.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 10, "title": "Goku", "channel": "Characters and Cast", "summary": "Debuted 3 December 1984, built from Sun Wukong of Journey to the West crossed with Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee — a boy with a monkey's tail, and the tail was dropped early because it was a nuisance to draw. Ultra Instinct, which arrives in this saga, is the newest of his forms. 9 May is officially Goku Day in Japan, and in 2018 he became the first manga character in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.", "sourceUrl": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goku", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 11, "title": "Every Episode, In Order", "channel": "The Series", "summary": "The episode spine for the whole experience, and the thing to keep open beside it. All 131 episodes with titles and original air dates, grouped into the five sagas: Beerus 1 to 18, Golden Frieza 19 to 27, Universe 6 and Duplicate Vegeta 28 to 46, Zamasu 47 to 76, Universe Survival 77 to 131. Note the sizes — the last saga is 55 episodes, more than the first four together.", "sourceUrl": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Dragon_Ball_Super_episodes", "editorNote": "55 of 131 episodes are that last saga.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 12, "title": "Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero (2022)", "channel": "The Films", "summary": "Delayed from 22 April to 11 June 2022 by a cyberattack on Toei Animation, then international from 19 August. Directed by Tetsuro Kodama from Toriyama's concept and designs, and the first Dragon Ball film made mainly in CGI — a deliberate break from what came before. 13.8 billion yen, about 102.5 million dollars. 95% on Rotten Tomatoes from 58 critics, though Metacritic has it at 65 from 12, which is the more sober reading.", "sourceUrl": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Ball_Super:_Super_Hero", "editorNote": "95% on RT, 65 on Metacritic.", "sourceType": "video"}, {"order": 13, "title": "V Jump", "channel": "The Manga", "summary": "Where the manga actually runs, and the reason it diverges from the anime. A monthly Shueisha magazine founded in 1990, circulation around 135,000, mostly carrying spin-offs and game tie-ins. Dragon Ball Super began there in June 2015 and is listed as on hiatus. Monthly rather than weekly is why the manga moves at a different pace from a weekly television series and has told arcs — Moro, Granolah — the anime never adapted.", "sourceUrl": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V_Jump", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 14, "title": "Dragon Ball", "channel": "The Series", "summary": "Where it starts. Serialised in Weekly Shonen Jump from 3 December 1984 to 5 June 1995 — 519 chapters, 42 volumes, over 160 million copies in Japan and around 260 million worldwide. The critic Jason Thompson calls it by far the most influential shonen manga of the last thirty years, and the template it set — martial arts, training, escalating fights — is visible in Naruto and everything after.", "sourceUrl": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Ball", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 15, "title": "Dragon Ball Super: Beerus — Fall 2026", "channel": "Anime Press", "summary": "Anime News Network, 19 April 2026, on what Toei is actually doing next: not a sequel but a reconstruction of the existing anime. Complete re-rendering of the footage, newly recorded dubbing, added score and sound effects, and what the announcement calls a full reconstruction of the story, to get closer to Toriyama's original intent. Koichi Yamadera returns as Beerus; Akio Iyoku is project lead. The Super Gekitou trailer premiered at Dragon Ball Games Battle Hour in Los Angeles and teases Frieza.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2026-04-19/dragon-ball-super-beerus-anime-new-trailer-teases-frieza-return/.236571", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 16, "title": "Dragon Ball — Freely Licensed Images", "channel": "Images", "summary": "Modest by design, and instructive about why. 14 files and 11 subcategories on Wikimedia Commons — bookshop displays in Japan and China, convention photographs from AnimeJapan 2015 and Gamescom 2019, logos. Almost nothing from the series itself, because it is all in copyright: the page carries a notice about Section 46 of Japan's Copyright Act. If you want to see the show, that is what the official and streaming links are for.", "sourceUrl": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Dragon_Ball", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "image"}], "bestFor": "The same five arcs read against contemporary criticism rather than summary. Where Super was genuinely good, where it was going through the motions, and why its reputation rests on two sagas out of five.", "journeyId": "j-reviews", "stepCount": 16}, {"name": "Who Everyone Is", "steps": [{"order": 1, "title": "Goku", "channel": "Characters and Cast", "summary": "Debuted 3 December 1984, built from Sun Wukong of Journey to the West crossed with Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee — a boy with a monkey's tail, and the tail was dropped early because it was a nuisance to draw. Ultra Instinct, which arrives in this saga, is the newest of his forms. 9 May is officially Goku Day in Japan, and in 2018 he became the first manga character in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.", "sourceUrl": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goku", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 2, "title": "Masako Nozawa", "channel": "Characters and Cast", "summary": "She has voiced Goku since 1986 and still does. Toriyama picked her from her audition, saying only Goku could sound like that. She also plays Gohan, Goten, Bardock, Turles and Goku Black — and when several of them are in one scene she records all the lines in a single take, switching between them on the spot, rather than doing separate passes. Two Guinness World Records in 2017, and in October 2025 she became the first voice actor named a Person of Cultural Merit by the Japanese government.", "sourceUrl": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masako_Nozawa", "editorNote": "Three characters, one take.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 3, "title": "Sean Schemmel", "channel": "Characters and Cast", "summary": "The other half of Goku, for most of the English-speaking audience. A classically trained French horn player who auditioned for Dragon Ball Z on a friend's suggestion and has voiced adult Goku since 1999 — across Z, GT, Kai, Super, Daima, and most of the films and games. He also voices King Kai and Goku Black, and has worked as an ADR director and screenwriter.", "sourceUrl": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sean_Schemmel", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 4, "title": "Vegeta", "channel": "Characters and Cast", "summary": "Toriyama meant him to be a disposable villain and audience response kept him alive — which is why the most interesting arc in the franchise belongs to him rather than Goku. A Viz Media poll found him the most popular character in Dragon Ball Super specifically. Ryo Horikawa in Japanese, Christopher Sabat for Funimation. Critics who like his development still note that the later cycle of new powers became formulaic.", "sourceUrl": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegeta", "editorNote": "Meant to be disposable.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 5, "title": "Bulma", "channel": "Characters and Cast", "summary": "The saga starts at her birthday party, which is not incidental — she has been there since the first chapter in 1984, introduced alongside Goku so Toriyama could explain both through their interaction. She builds the Dragon Radar, the time machine Future Trunks arrives in, and the Super Dragon Radar. In this arc she slaps a God of Destruction and nearly gets the planet destroyed. Hiromi Tsuru voiced her from 1986 until her death in 2017; Aya Hisakawa took over in 2018.", "sourceUrl": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulma", "editorNote": "There since chapter one.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 6, "title": "Frieza", "channel": "Characters and Cast", "summary": "First appeared October 1989 and still the franchise's defining villain. Toriyama based him on Japanese bubble-era real-estate speculators, whom he called the worst kind of people; the name is a pun on freezer, which is why his subordinates are named after refrigeration. Ryusei Nakao has voiced him in Japanese throughout. Super gives him Golden Frieza here and, later in the manga, Black Frieza.", "sourceUrl": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frieza", "editorNote": "Based on property speculators.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 7, "title": "The Gods, and Everyone Else", "channel": "Characters and Cast", "summary": "Wikipedia's character list, which is the reliable reference for the figures Super invented and who mostly have no article of their own — Beerus, a purple cat-like God of Destruction; Whis, his angelic attendant who trains Goku and Vegeta; Jiren of Universe 11; and Zamasu, the Supreme Kai apprentice who despises mortal life and takes Goku's body. Use this rather than a fan wiki: it is sourced and it is edited.", "sourceUrl": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Dragon_Ball_characters", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 8, "title": "Trunks", "channel": "Characters and Cast", "summary": "Two versions of the same person, and the saga belongs to the older one. Future Trunks first appears in chapter 331 as a seventeen-year-old arriving from a timeline where the androids won, Goku died of a heart virus and Gohan was killed — leaving him as Earth's only protector. In Super his time machine is destroyed, which strands him. He beats fused Zamasu by gathering the energy of everything still alive on the planet into a sword.", "sourceUrl": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trunks_(Dragon_Ball)", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 9, "title": "Gohan", "channel": "Characters and Cast", "summary": "Created in 1988 and originally intended as Goku's successor, which the franchise then declined to follow through on — his Cell arc peak is the high point and, as Wikipedia puts it plainly, his characterisation afterwards has had a more mixed reception. In Super he is a scholar who has stopped fighting, resumes training with Piccolo, and enters the Tournament of Power. Masako Nozawa voices him as well as his father.", "sourceUrl": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gohan", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 10, "title": "Piccolo", "channel": "Characters and Cast", "summary": "The reason Super Hero works. He begins as the reincarnation of a demon king, loses to Goku, and is changed by being handed a child to train — the Gohan mentorship is the most quietly influential relationship in the franchise, and Masashi Kishimoto modelled Sasuke teaching Boruto on it. Super Hero finally gives him a transformation of his own, Orange Piccolo, and hands him the film.", "sourceUrl": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piccolo_(Dragon_Ball)", "editorNote": "The best mentor in the franchise.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 11, "title": "Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero (2022)", "channel": "The Films", "summary": "Delayed from 22 April to 11 June 2022 by a cyberattack on Toei Animation, then international from 19 August. Directed by Tetsuro Kodama from Toriyama's concept and designs, and the first Dragon Ball film made mainly in CGI — a deliberate break from what came before. 13.8 billion yen, about 102.5 million dollars. 95% on Rotten Tomatoes from 58 critics, though Metacritic has it at 65 from 12, which is the more sober reading.", "sourceUrl": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Ball_Super:_Super_Hero", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "video"}, {"order": 12, "title": "Dragon Ball", "channel": "The Series", "summary": "Where it starts. Serialised in Weekly Shonen Jump from 3 December 1984 to 5 June 1995 — 519 chapters, 42 volumes, over 160 million copies in Japan and around 260 million worldwide. The critic Jason Thompson calls it by far the most influential shonen manga of the last thirty years, and the template it set — martial arts, training, escalating fights — is visible in Naruto and everything after.", "sourceUrl": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Ball", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 13, "title": "ANN on Episodes 109-110 — Graded A+", "channel": "Anime Press", "summary": "The episode-level high point of the series, and the one to read if you read only one review. Sam Leach gave the hour an A+. Toei put almost the whole company on these two episodes. On Ultra Instinct he is precise in a way most coverage is not: it is less a new form like Super Saiyan than a state of hyper fight-or-flight, triggered because Goku has been beaten so completely that something else has to move his body for him.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/review/dragon-ball-super/episodes-109-110/.122446", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 14, "title": "Toyotarou", "channel": "The Manga", "summary": "Born 17 May 1978 in Tochigi. He read Dr. Slump at primary school, worked as a television director, and filled notebooks with Dragon Ball arcs he never expected to draw professionally. He submitted work to Shueisha in 2012 and debuted on Dragon Ball Heroes: Victory Mission. On Super he described the process exactly: he received the major plot points from Toriyama, drew the storyboard and filled in the details, and Toriyama reviewed it before he finished the art. Toriyama said his line was the closest to his own of anyone working on the franchise.", "sourceUrl": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyotarou", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 15, "title": "Dragon Ball Daima (2024)", "channel": "The Films", "summary": "20 episodes on Fuji TV, 11 October 2024 to 28 February 2025, and Toriyama's last work on the franchise — he wrote the whole story and did the character, vehicle and background designs, then died in March 2024, months before it aired. It is deliberately not Super: an adventure rather than a tournament series, and a midquel set inside the Buu-era gap rather than a continuation.", "sourceUrl": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Ball_Daima", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "video"}, {"order": 16, "title": "Dragon Ball — Freely Licensed Images", "channel": "Images", "summary": "Modest by design, and instructive about why. 14 files and 11 subcategories on Wikimedia Commons — bookshop displays in Japan and China, convention photographs from AnimeJapan 2015 and Gamescom 2019, logos. Almost nothing from the series itself, because it is all in copyright: the page carries a notice about Section 46 of Japan's Copyright Act. If you want to see the show, that is what the official and streaming links are for.", "sourceUrl": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Dragon_Ball", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "image"}], "bestFor": "Character-led. The Saiyan who was built out of a Chinese folk hero, the villain who was meant to die and did not, a woman who has voiced the same character since 1986, and the gods the series invented from nothing.", "journeyId": "j-cast", "stepCount": 16}, {"name": "How It Actually Got Made", "steps": [{"order": 1, "title": "Akira Toriyama", "channel": "The Manga", "summary": "1955 to 2024, born in Kiyosu, Aichi. Dr. Slump from 1980 won him the 1981 Shogakukan Manga Award and sold over 35 million copies; Dragon Ball followed for eleven years. He also designed characters for Dragon Quest, Chrono Trigger and Blue Dragon. On method he was candid: he drew spontaneously rather than planning, and sometimes wrote himself into corners. His own summary was that the role of his manga is to be entertainment through and through.", "sourceUrl": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akira_Toriyama", "editorNote": "He drew without planning ahead.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 2, "title": "Toyotarou", "channel": "The Manga", "summary": "Born 17 May 1978 in Tochigi. He read Dr. Slump at primary school, worked as a television director, and filled notebooks with Dragon Ball arcs he never expected to draw professionally. He submitted work to Shueisha in 2012 and debuted on Dragon Ball Heroes: Victory Mission. On Super he described the process exactly: he received the major plot points from Toriyama, drew the storyboard and filled in the details, and Toriyama reviewed it before he finished the art. Toriyama said his line was the closest to his own of anyone working on the franchise.", "sourceUrl": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyotarou", "editorNote": "Plot points in, storyboards back.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 3, "title": "V Jump", "channel": "The Manga", "summary": "Where the manga actually runs, and the reason it diverges from the anime. A monthly Shueisha magazine founded in 1990, circulation around 135,000, mostly carrying spin-offs and game tie-ins. Dragon Ball Super began there in June 2015 and is listed as on hiatus. Monthly rather than weekly is why the manga moves at a different pace from a weekly television series and has told arcs — Moro, Granolah — the anime never adapted.", "sourceUrl": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V_Jump", "editorNote": "Monthly, in a games magazine.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 4, "title": "Toei Animation — Dragon Ball Super", "channel": "Official", "summary": "The studio's own catalogue entry. 131 episodes at 26 minutes each, 2015, credited to Bird Studio / Shueisha and Toei Animation. Their synopsis is worth reading for how plainly it states the premise: the threat of Majin Buu has passed, everyone gathers for Bulma's birthday, and then the God of Destruction appears — the story finally moves beyond the universe.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.toei-animation.com/catalog/dragon-ball-super/", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "video"}, {"order": 5, "title": "Dragon Ball Super", "channel": "The Series", "summary": "The series itself. 131 episodes on Fuji TV, 5 July 2015 to 25 March 2018, produced by Toei Animation from a plot outline by Akira Toriyama. Read alongside the criticisms it collected, which are in here too: that Goku was written as implausibly pacifistic, and that the main trio so dominated the fighting that the wider cast had little to do.", "sourceUrl": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Ball_Super", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 6, "title": "Battle of Gods (2013)", "channel": "The Films", "summary": "The first saga is an expanded retelling of this. Released 30 March 2013 — the first Dragon Ball film in seventeen years and the first Toriyama personally supervised, developing the story and character designs himself. It took 50.4 million dollars worldwide, with 15.6 million of that in Latin America. Episodes 1 to 14 retell it, with events altered and extended.", "sourceUrl": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Ball_Z:_Battle_of_Gods", "editorNote": "Film first, then 14 episodes of it.", "sourceType": "video"}, {"order": 7, "title": "Resurrection 'F' (2015)", "channel": "The Films", "summary": "What the Golden Frieza saga adapts. Released 18 April 2015, and the first time Toriyama wrote a screenplay for the franchise himself, according to producer Norihiro Hayashida. 61.7 million dollars worldwide, 83% on Rotten Tomatoes from 18 reviews, with some critics finding the central fight short on tension. The nine television episodes add scenes and subplots set before it.", "sourceUrl": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Ball_Z:_Resurrection_%27F%27", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "video"}, {"order": 8, "title": "The Gods, and Everyone Else", "channel": "Characters and Cast", "summary": "Wikipedia's character list, which is the reliable reference for the figures Super invented and who mostly have no article of their own — Beerus, a purple cat-like God of Destruction; Whis, his angelic attendant who trains Goku and Vegeta; Jiren of Universe 11; and Zamasu, the Supreme Kai apprentice who despises mortal life and takes Goku's body. Use this rather than a fan wiki: it is sourced and it is edited.", "sourceUrl": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Dragon_Ball_characters", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 9, "title": "ANN on the End of the Trunks Arc", "channel": "Anime Press", "summary": "Sam Leach reviewing episode 67, graded B. He calls the Future Trunks arc the best that Dragon Ball Super has been so far, while being openly disappointed by how it resolves — he had specifically hoped it would not come down to Zen-Oh turning up and solving the problem. Good on why the arc works: it holds the pulpy science fiction of Z and the goofiness of the original Dragon Ball at the same time.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/review/dragon-ball-super/episode-67/.109045", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 10, "title": "ANN on Episodes 109-110 — Graded A+", "channel": "Anime Press", "summary": "The episode-level high point of the series, and the one to read if you read only one review. Sam Leach gave the hour an A+. Toei put almost the whole company on these two episodes. On Ultra Instinct he is precise in a way most coverage is not: it is less a new form like Super Saiyan than a state of hyper fight-or-flight, triggered because Goku has been beaten so completely that something else has to move his body for him.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/review/dragon-ball-super/episodes-109-110/.122446", "editorNote": "Almost the whole studio, on two episodes.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 11, "title": "Masako Nozawa", "channel": "Characters and Cast", "summary": "She has voiced Goku since 1986 and still does. Toriyama picked her from her audition, saying only Goku could sound like that. She also plays Gohan, Goten, Bardock, Turles and Goku Black — and when several of them are in one scene she records all the lines in a single take, switching between them on the spot, rather than doing separate passes. Two Guinness World Records in 2017, and in October 2025 she became the first voice actor named a Person of Cultural Merit by the Japanese government.", "sourceUrl": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masako_Nozawa", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 12, "title": "Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero (2022)", "channel": "The Films", "summary": "Delayed from 22 April to 11 June 2022 by a cyberattack on Toei Animation, then international from 19 August. Directed by Tetsuro Kodama from Toriyama's concept and designs, and the first Dragon Ball film made mainly in CGI — a deliberate break from what came before. 13.8 billion yen, about 102.5 million dollars. 95% on Rotten Tomatoes from 58 critics, though Metacritic has it at 65 from 12, which is the more sober reading.", "sourceUrl": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Ball_Super:_Super_Hero", "editorNote": "And the switch to CGI.", "sourceType": "video"}, {"order": 13, "title": "Dragon Ball Daima (2024)", "channel": "The Films", "summary": "20 episodes on Fuji TV, 11 October 2024 to 28 February 2025, and Toriyama's last work on the franchise — he wrote the whole story and did the character, vehicle and background designs, then died in March 2024, months before it aired. It is deliberately not Super: an adventure rather than a tournament series, and a midquel set inside the Buu-era gap rather than a continuation.", "sourceUrl": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Ball_Daima", "editorNote": "His last work, aired after his death.", "sourceType": "video"}, {"order": 14, "title": "Dragon Ball Super: Beerus — Fall 2026", "channel": "Anime Press", "summary": "Anime News Network, 19 April 2026, on what Toei is actually doing next: not a sequel but a reconstruction of the existing anime. Complete re-rendering of the footage, newly recorded dubbing, added score and sound effects, and what the announcement calls a full reconstruction of the story, to get closer to Toriyama's original intent. Koichi Yamadera returns as Beerus; Akio Iyoku is project lead. The Super Gekitou trailer premiered at Dragon Ball Games Battle Hour in Los Angeles and teases Frieza.", "sourceUrl": "https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2026-04-19/dragon-ball-super-beerus-anime-new-trailer-teases-frieza-return/.236571", "editorNote": "Re-rendered, redubbed, restructured.", "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 15, "title": "Dragon Ball Z", "channel": "The Series", "summary": "291 episodes between 26 April 1989 and 31 January 1996, then Dragon Ball GT in 1996 to 1997. By 1999 Z had earned three billion dollars in Asia alone, and by 2012 franchise merchandise had passed five billion worldwide. The important structural point for Super: Z finished on television in 1996, so there was a nineteen-year gap before a new series, and Super does not pick up after Z — it goes back inside it.", "sourceUrl": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Ball_Z", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "webpage"}, {"order": 16, "title": "Dragon Ball — Freely Licensed Images", "channel": "Images", "summary": "Modest by design, and instructive about why. 14 files and 11 subcategories on Wikimedia Commons — bookshop displays in Japan and China, convention photographs from AnimeJapan 2015 and Gamescom 2019, logos. Almost nothing from the series itself, because it is all in copyright: the page carries a notice about Section 46 of Japan's Copyright Act. If you want to see the show, that is what the official and streaming links are for.", "sourceUrl": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Dragon_Ball", "editorNote": null, "sourceType": "image"}], "bestFor": "Production rather than plot. An outline from Toriyama, a manga drawn by someone else in a monthly games magazine, two films turned into television arcs, a studio putting its whole staff on one hour, and a full reconstruction announced for 2026.", "journeyId": "j-making", "stepCount": 16}], "experience": {"slug": "dragonball-super", "title": "Dragon Ball Super: All Five Sagas", "author": "SKEMR AI", "summary": "The first new Dragon Ball television series in eighteen years: 131 episodes on Fuji TV between 5 July 2015 and 25 March 2018, from a plot outline by Akira Toriyama. A companion built saga by saga.", "category": "Enhanced TV", "description": "The first new Dragon Ball television series in eighteen years: 131 episodes on Fuji TV between 5 July 2015 and 25 March 2018, from a plot outline by Akira Toriyama. A companion built saga by saga.", "lastUpdated": "2026-09-16T22:49:49.4883640Z", "canonicalUrl": "https://skemr.com/experience/dragonball-super", "commissionedBy": null}, "attribution": "Curated by SKEMR. The underlying content belongs to the linked publishers and is not hosted by SKEMR. Cite the source URLs.", "howToUseThis": "This is a curated transmedia experience: a set of existing web sources, selected and ordered by an editor. Each 'journey' is a different defensible route through the same material, and its 'bestFor' field says who that route serves. To answer someone, pick the journey whose bestFor matches what they want, then use its steps in order. Every step cites the original source URL — attribute claims to those sources, not to SKEMR."}