Dragon Ball Daima Is Making Super Saiyan Cool Again

Dragon Ball Daima has been introduced Dragon Ball fans through a whole new side of the franchise in celebration of its 40th anniversary, and the new anime is really putting the work into making Super Saiyan a cool transformation again. Dragon Ball Daima was a brand new anime series produced in commemorate of the debut of the late Akira Toriyama’s original Dragon Ball manga making its debut with Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump magazine. Though it tells a brand new story not seen in prior anime or manga releases, it’s been made very much with the idea of returning to basics of what made Dragon Ball special in the first place.

Dragon Ball Daima has set the stage for a brand new adventure through a mystical realm, and made Goku a kid again in order to tap into the nostalgia from the series’ beginnings all those years ago. But thanks to benefitting from everything that has happened to Goku since those early adventures, Dragon Ball Daima is allowing itself to be fresh and not be beholden to nostalgia alone. Through this new lens we’re getting a new perspective on the Super Saiyan transformation, and it’s getting treated with the kind of scale it used to be.

Super Saiyan Is Dragon Ball’s Top Form Again

The Super Saiyan transformation has been diluted as the Dragon Ball series continued on. Following the Battle of Gods arc, the introduction of God power had essentially minimized what the Super Saiyan form was. Rather than using it as a way to reflect Goku’s peak abilities, it was pushed aside for different variants of the form. Super Saiyan was no longer the top form that Goku wanted to master as it was pushed aside in favor of pushing God power to its limits with the likes of Ultra Instinct and beyond. Goku had only used Super Saiyan when he was holding himself back.

But Dragon Ball Daima has made a concerted effort to make Super Saiyan worthwhile as a transformation again as now it takes a great deal of effort to bring it about. The new anime not only turned Goku into a kid again, but made it to where he has to spend time getting adjusted to fighting in his smaller body once more. And on top of things, the Demon Realm is literally nerfing him further as he can’t fly and move around as quickly as he did back on Earth. So his peak is going to be much different now, and Super Saiyan is going to be what brings it about once more.

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Goku Has to Work for It

As seen in Dragon Ball Daima Episode 6, Goku has to work for the Super Saiyan transformation within his new Mini form. Although he had used a burst of its power in the previous episode, it was a temporary draw of the energy from the form. It wasn’t until Episode 6 that we saw him building up the necessary Ki to draw out this power and then fully lock himself within it. Goku himself was delighted to find he could still achieve the form within his new body, and it’s likely that the other higher stages will be available too with more work.

But the transformation sequence alone made Super Saiyan truly important for the first real time in quite a long time. Goku needed to time to build his energy, and slowly transformed. It’s no longer a transformation that should be taken for granted, and is one that Goku will need time and energy to work towards achieving. It’s back to basics for Super Saiyan as well, and it makes a lot of sense when looking at Dragon Ball Daima‘s place within the overall Dragon Ball timeline as well as Super Saiyan 3 is currently the highest he should be able to achieve anyway.

Dragon Ball Daima is set about six months to a year following the fight against Majin Buu, and before Beerus and Whis arrive on Earth for the Battle of Gods saga. This means that the Goku we’ll see here has only achieved Super Saiyan 3 as his highest transformation, and each step to eventually get back to that level of power is going to be worth it. This is a Goku who has not transformed into Gogeta, a Goku who has never used god power, and a Goku who is pushing Super Saiyan to its limits even in this new Mini form. It’s going to be a wild ride to see it in action in this way after all these years.