Here's What the New 'Dragon Ball' Anime Will Be About

The news that the Dragon Ball franchise is getting a new anime series sent the fandom into full [...]

Dragon Ball Heroes Anime Series Story Arc

The news that the Dragon Ball franchise is getting a new anime series sent the fandom into full excitement overload - that is, until they learned the actual details surrounding this new series.

As it turns out, the new anime is a PR title, meant to promote the Dragon Ball Heroes arcade/card game that's popular in Japan. While some fans are scrambling to learn what Dragon Ball Heroes is all about, other fans are wondering how the game is being translated to anime.

Here's what we know what know so far:

Dragon Ball Heroes' original sagas (told with cut-scenes in anime style) have included an alternate version of the manga/anime's "Universal Survival Saga", as well as this new "Prison Planet" arc, both of which will be the basis for the PR anime.

Dragon Ball Super fans know the setup of the Universal Survival saga, namely tournament held by the Grand Zenos with the strongest fighters from throughout the multiverse. It saw Goku go Ultra Instinct for an epic fight against new fan-fav fighter Jiren of Universe 11. Heroes even spoiled the final Goku/Freeza tag-team battle against Jiren, months before the anime reached that point!

"Prison Planet" sees video game villain and demon king successor Fu conducting some experiment, capturing Future Trunks and imprisoning him on the Prison Planet. Using the Dragon Balls, Fu brings about this a new Evil Saiyan character in a straight jacket, who has dark energy powers and fight techniques. Goku, Vegeta, Future Trunks, Cooler and Goku: Xeno (the GT SSJ4 version) all must team up to defeat this new threat, and gather the Dragon Balls from various prisoners, to wish themselves off the prison planet.

Clearly this new anime will be far outside the normal canon - but then again, that's kind of the entire purpose of Dragon Ball Heroes! In many ways, the game is like a outlet for Dragon Ball fan fiction, or the outlandish "What Ifs?" that fans love to discuss (like SSB Goku battling SSJ4 Goku). Now that it's getting the anime treatment, it will be just one step closer to entering fan consideration to be adapted into official canon (or not).

Since we expect the next official Dragon Ball anime series to streamline the growing canon in a big way, who knows? Maybe the events and characters of the DBH PR anime will become part of a future anime series story arc.

Dragon Ball Legends mobile game is expected to be released sometime this summer. Dragon Ball Super currently airs its English dub on Adult Swim during the Toonami programming block Saturday evenings at 9:30 p.m. It is also available to stream on FunimationNOW and Amazon Video. The Japanese language release of the series is complete, and available to stream on FunimationNOW, VRV, and Crunchyroll.

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