Written by Matthew Raab
In January, the Dragon Ball Genkidamatsuri event was held ito cap off celebrations for the 40th anniversary of the series in 2025. Alongside an anime adaptation of the Galactic Patrol arc from the Dragon Ball Super manga, also announced was a partial remaster of the Super anime, titled Dragon Ball Super: Beerus, which started airing on October 11th.
It’s no secret among not only Dragon Ball fans, but any anime fan present on the internet in 2015, that the original run of Dragon Ball Super didn’t have the best animation throughout its first few story arcs. Adaptations of the Battle of Gods and Resurrection: F movies saw infamously rushed and sloppy fights as time constraints were supposedly being placed on the anime industry, leaving products looking almost unfinished.
Super: Beerus will comprise of the first three story arcs from Super: Battle of Gods, the Resurrection of Frieza and the Universe 6 Tournament. It seeks to condense Super’s filler episodes alongside remastering the animations much like Dragon Ball Z Kai does, as well as retool the narrative to be more faithful to the Super manga. So far, only three episodes have been released for Battle of Gods, and it is already off to a great start.
The Battle of Gods arc sees Goku (Masako Nozawa, Gegege no Kitaro) and friends enjoying peace following his defeat of Majin Buu at the end of Dragon Ball Z. However, an ancient threat emerges: The God of Destruction Beerus (Koichi Yamadera, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex) awakens from his multi-century slumber. A playful-yet-fearsome deity, he has a short fuse and sets his sights on Earth in search of the Super Saiyan God from his dream. To save his planet from destruction once again, Goku must protect Earth from Beerus by finding the Super Saiyan God before he gets bored.
The first episode, “The God Who Destroys,” condenses Super’s first few episodes into the meat and potatoes of the story. A stunning new sequence where Goku’s afterimage training against his fearsome foes from Z ensues, refamiliarizing fans with the battle-hungry Saiyan as he desperately seeks to avoid his work. This awakens Beerus, who begins a crash course of wanton destruction, blowing up several planets from being dissatisfied or inconvenienced.
Interspersed between the God of Destruction’s search to remember his dream are scenes of Goku and Vegeta (Ryo Horikawa, Saint Seiya) training individually, preparing for an unimaginable (and unknown to them) threat and setting up for the godly clashes that went on to define Super’s story. Leaving out excesses such as Vegeta’s family vacation, or the forced re-introduction of the Pilaf Gang, allows the narrative to focus on what is important at hand, much to its benefit.
“The God of Destruction Heads to the Planet of the Kai” addresses the widely panned fifth episode of Super’s initial run, one of the most notable offenses in the series in terms of animation. Beerus learns about the Super Saiyan God, and in finding out about Goku’s Super Saiyan power as well, he heads to King Kai’s (Joji Yanami, Cyborg 009) planet to investigate for himself, with Goku wanting to see his true power. What was an awkwardly stiff fight with nauseating individual frames is now stunningly fluid and far more detailed, giving much more justice to Goku and Beerus’s spar as well as the reintroduction of Super Saiyan 2 and 3. Goku’s ignorance of Beerus’s true power, and how much control of the fight Beerus has the entire time, is emphasized even more to create a much more compelling fight, addressing every concern from the original episode.
Dragon Ball Super: Beerus has 19 episodes slated for its airing, stretching all the way into early 2027. So far, its first two episodes have condensed the content of Super’s first five episodes into them. The series is currently available to stream on Hulu and Crunchyroll, the latter of which crashes with every new episode, just as Super did during its initial run.
