‘Dragon Ball’: Monica Rial Talks Series’ Expanding Female Heroes

The Dragon Ball franchise has been expanded upon in a number of ways over its tenure, but the series has seen a greater roster of female heroes and villains enter the fray. The stars of the series have noted this as well, and the English voice behind Bulma, Monica Rial, is all for it.

Speaking with ComicBook.com, Rial opened up about the series’ expanded roster of female heroes and she’s in full support of the positive direction the series seems to be going in.

First, she talked about some of her wishes for Bulma, “Let Bulma be. Maybe she doesn’t need to be just the housewife. Let one of these ladies not end up at home with the kiddos. Let her go do her thing.” Rial’s noticed how the roster has changed in the Tournament of Power too, “Then we saw Kale and Caulifla, and I’m like, ‘Oh okay.’ Now, they’re getting on the women empowerment train, and I’m all for it.”

It’s a much different picture for women than in the series past as well, “We’ve seen a lot of Videl, and Chi Chi has been around and she’s been in that naggy capacity going after Goten constantly.” Expanding on this further, Rial “feel[s] like in the future we’re probably going to see more women come along” and loves the idea. Pointing out that “Angels are women, and they’re not just men.”

The evolution of the women in the Dragon Ball franchise is an exciting prospect for Rial especially, “Kale and Caulifla obviously have the brawn. Bulma is just terrifying because she’s incredibly intelligent, and knows how to manipulate people really well. I do like the idea of having all of this influx of femininity, and recognizing that a strong woman does not look like one thing.”

But what’s even more exciting is the variety of the strong women coming to the series, “…strong women are very different, and they can come in these different ages in the past speaking. And I feel like that’s where it’s moving towards, and that to me as a fan especially is really exciting.”

Fans will undoubtedly be as excited as Rial to see more strong women added to the Dragon Ball roster of characters, and now that the franchise is 12 universes strong, there will be plenty of opportunity for more nuanced women in the series in the future.

Dragon Ball Super currently airs its English dub on Adult Swim during the Toonami programming block Saturday evenings at 11:00 p.m. It is also available to stream on Funimation and Amazon Video. The Japanese language release of the series is complete, and available to stream on FunimationNOW and Crunchyroll. The manga has chapters that can currently be read for free thanks to Viz Media. Dragon Ball Super: Broly is currently in theaters as well.

If you wanted to catch up with the English dub of the series, there’s actually a pretty nifty way to do so. You can currently stream the first 91 episodes of the dub on FunimationNOW, which brings the series from the beginning all the way to when the the universes began gathering their fighters for the Tournament of Power. It’s not too far off from where the Toonami run of the series is at currently.

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