So fun fact, Dragonball Z was the first anime I ever watched so naturally everything related to the series has a special place in my heart. When I first heard of Dragonball Daima I had mixed reactions to it because the story is about how Goku and the rest of the Z fighters were turned into children and they have to venture into the demon world to defeat the person who made the wish responsible. The trailers gave it a Dragonball GT feel which wasn’t the best Dragonball content but because I love the series so much I went into this with an open mind.

Our story is about how Gomah, the new king of the demon world, decides to wish that Goku and friends would turn into children using the earth Dragonballs. With no way to undo the wish our heroes venture to the demon world where they plan to use their dragonballs to help bring things back to normal. The problem is the demon world is split into three separate sections and each one contains a dragonball guarded by the unbeaten Tamagami.

The adventure aspect is interesting as being children again really gives a nice power drop to make all of the threats in the demon world feel credible. Plus as they venture we get fun scenes like Goku in a bar fight and Vegeta fighting in a club. I really enjoy how they made the demon world an opportunity to see all kinds of new scenarios. Plus the cast features a handful of new characters like Glorio that join the party and really add a fun dynamic. While this adventure aspect is fun it does have a pretty annoying flaw. With how the demon world is set up a plane is required to be able to go anywhere. We get so many issues with the planes it actually gets old. It feels like every couple of episodes a plane is either stolen or destroyed. It’s clearly an element meant to extend the story and I’m all for that. The problem is using a similar method to do this every single time gets stale fast.

The adventure part of the story is also entertaining because we get a lot of lore dropped. We learn about the origins of the supreme kai, another retconned origin of the nameks, some added lore for the majin race and a lot of information on the demon world itself. Plus exploring the demon world and all it contains was a lot of fun. It was great finding out more about these characters and I enjoy how much it added to building the world of the entire franchise.

I also really like where this takes place continuity wise as it’s after the events of Dragonball Z and before the start of Dragonball Super. So the original trio of super saiyan forms are the strongest here and it was nice to see them get some love. Especially since we really stopped seeing most of them once we got into Super. Now I know the spoilers are all over the internet but I won’t be specific as I don’t talk about them myself. What I will say is we also get some forms that we’ve known about for quite some time but they were never seen on any media of the “canon” continuity of Dragonball. So much like how the new Broly movie established a canon version of the character, Daima does something similar with saiyan forms.

While most of the show is all about adventuring in the demon world with occasional fights we do eventually get to the fights at the end where victory resolves the entire conflict. All of the fight scenes are beautifully animated but the ones towards the end take things to a whole different level. I was in awe with how entertaining the fights were and I like how they managed to make Gomah a credible threat.

I also enjoyed that this show had a very jovial tone to it. I think because it takes place earlier than Super it’s harder to take something like this completely seriously as we’ve already seen what takes place after. This works in this show’s favor to focus on a more lighthearted adventure where we get to explore the demon world. There were a lot of moments that made me smile and laugh and it was a surprisingly relaxing viewing experience.

Now there is one thing I will say that I absolutely was frustrated by and it’s somewhat of a spoiler on something that doesn’t happen. While I loved seeing all of the transformations throughout the season a new type of fusion was hinted at. I got really excited for this for nothing as it was never used. Fusion is one of my favorite methods of transformation in the series and so when a new method in the demon world was shown I was excited to see where it would go and it just didn’t go anywhere. I’m not upset solely on there being no fusion. I’m upset at how it was teased with no follow through.

So overall Dragonball Daima is a lighthearted series that uses a jovial tone to tell the story of an adventure into demon world. The lore drops are fun even if it comes with massive retcons, but it’s not a flawless story. It’s dependent on reoccurring problems to extend the story and teases a new fusion only to not do anything with it. This is a flaw but not one that overpowers the beautiful animation and how multiple forms asked for by fans were finally made canon for the first time.