Anime Review: Dragon Ball Daima
Previously, on Dragon Ball: Son Goku was rocketed to Earth as an infant from the dying planet Vegeta–to conquer it. Instead, he became its greatest defender and the universe’s best martial artist. Along with his friends, quite a few of whom were former enemies, Son Goku defeated threat after threat. Most recently, he fought against an incursion from the Demon World which included that dimension’s ruler, King Dabura.
It’s been some time since then, and word has gotten back to the Demon Realm that King Dabura is dead, allowing a new ruler, King Gomah, to take over. Since Dabura was phenomenally powerful, Gomah wants to know how his predecessor perished so he can protect himself from any threat. Reviewing footage, he witnesses Son Goku and the other fighters of the outside universe and their ludicrous power levels, as well as the existence of the Earth Dragon Balls, seven orbs that when assembled summon a dragon that grants wishes.
There are also Demon Realm Dragon Balls, but they are guarded by powerful artificial warriors that also impose cleverness tests, so no one has ever actually used them. Gomah decides to travel to the Earth Dimension, use his realm’s last Namekian Neva to assemble the Dragon Balls, then wish the potential threats away.
The first part of King Gomah’s plan goes well up to the point where he uses his “first” wish to turn Son Goku and his allies into small children (and those that are already children into babies.) It’s only then that he discovers that the dragon only grants multiple wishes to people it likes. But one of the allies turned into a baby is the child Namekian “god” Dende, creator of the Earth Dragon Balls, so Gomah kidnaps him to prevent the heroes from being able to get their wishes fulfilled.
However, while Son Goku and the other heroes are indeed physically small children with a corresponding reduction in physical strength, they’re still mentally adults with all the martial arts training (and in Bulma’s case, technical knowledge) they’ve accumulated over the years. They prepare to go to the Demon Realm to rescue Dende.
But before Bulma can figure out how to repair the ship that Supreme Kai Shin used to arrive from the Demon Realm eons ago, a pilot named Glorio arrives in a small spaceship. He claims to have been sent from the king of the Third Demon World and offers to take Son Goku back with him. Shin is also able to squeeze in and accompanies them. (Later, Bulma, her husband Vegeta and the Namekian warrior Piccolo join them.)
As it turns out, the Demon Realm isn’t quite the wretched hive of scum and villainy it’s been advertised as, many of the inhabitants are quite reasonable beings just trying to live their lives, but due to misgovernment, it’s pretty bad. It’s segregated into three sub-worlds, and the Third World is the lowest on the totem pole, with its inhabitants forced to pay extortionate taxes and wear slave collars. Goku, Shin and Glorio quickly lose their initial vehicle and have to struggle across the landscape. Fortunately, they are soon joined by Panzy, a local little girl who turns out to be the daughter of the Third Demon World’s king (not that title means much).
They find out about the Demon Realm Dragon Balls and Son Goku, an old hand at ball finding, decides to gather those as part of the plan to rescue Dende.
This was the final Dragon Ball product that creator Akira Toriyama directly worked on. After the end of the original manga, he’d taken time off to do non-Dragon Ball projects, letting others handle the various spinoffs. But in recent years he’d gotten involved again, helping more “official” versions of various ideas used by the spinoffs be made. It slots in between the end of Dragon Ball Z and the beginning of Dragon Ball Super timewise.
As the opening theme song pointedly tells us, this short series is an “adventure”, a self-contained bit of fun allowing us to watch favorite characters navigate a different setting with a bit of a handicap to prevent them from just blowing through it. It does a bit of world-building and fills in some background details Toriyama never got around to putting in the manga, but it’s not something that you absolutely have to watch to understand what is going on in the next season of Super.
There are funny jokes, interesting characters (though I could do without that one guy even if he turns out to be carrying an important plot coupon) and amazing fights.
On the other hand, the series heavily counts on you having seen the classic anime or read the manga.
So, primarily recommended to Dragon Ball fans and people who used to be Dragon Ball fans but lost interest in the spinoffs.
