When it comes to the streaming wars, the anime medium remains a significant player for many of the platforms out there. While outlets like Crunchyroll and HIDIVE specialize in housing anime, other services like Hulu, Disney+, Amazon Prime, and Netflix house old and new anime properties to carve out a niche for themselves. In a surprise twist, Netflix in North America recently took the opportunity to feature one of the biggest movies in the Dragon Ball world, and in doing so, has garnered some surprising results. Even twelve years following its premiere, the Battle of Gods is still shattering records.
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Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods hit Netflix earlier this month, on December 16th, allowing the platform’s subscribers to check out the film that brought back the Z-Fighters after years out of the spotlight. While not titled “Dragon Ball Super,” the movie acted as a bridge from the conclusion of Dragon Ball Z to the start of this brand new chapter. According to Netflix, the Toei Animation film sits at number six for the “Top 10 Non-English Movies” for the time period between December 15th and December 21st. During this stretch, Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods gained 1.8 million views, showing that there is still serious interest in diving into the world of Son Goku.
The Background of Battle of Gods
Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods reintroduced Goku and the Z-Fighters following the death of Kid Buu, seeing the God of Destruction Beerus coming to Earth to threaten the planet. The events of the movie were adapted for the Dragon Ball Super television series, although a few changes were made to Goku’s fight against the God of Destruction. Following the release of the film, series creator Akira Toriyama had discussed how the shonen franchise returned as something of a response to the controversial live-action adaptation, Dragon Ball Evolution. In an interview with the outlet Kanzenshuu, Toriyama didn’t pull any punches when it came to his displeasure with the live-action film.
“By the way, the battle scenes in the second half [of Battle of Gods] are particularly overwhelming! I was moved because the presentation exceeded my expectations. While I had expected, “It probably won’t be any good,” it was greatly different from a certain country’s live-action movie, which really was no good. Just as you’d expect, Japan’s animation is superb! Also, at the time of the Hollywood movie, the live-action Dragon Ball, the script had too little of a grasp on the world and its characteristics, and on top of that, it had a conventional content that I couldn’t find interesting, so I cautioned them, and suggested changes; but in spite of that, they seemed to have a strange confidence, and didn’t really listen to me. What came out in the end was a movie I couldn’t really call a Dragon Ball that lived up to my expectations.”
What do you think of Beerus’ introduction continuing to see big gains in the streaming world? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!
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