Dragon Ball: How Bad Animation Ruined Its Best Spin-Off

Super Dragon Ball Heroes isn’t normally considered “better” than the main story of the Z-Fighters in Dragon Ball Super, but for many fans, it helped scratch an itch. Since 2017, the main television series focusing on Goku and company has been out of commission, and Heroes was able to give fans battles and characters that they otherwise might have never seen. Unfortunately, with the arrival of the Meteor Mission, the latest season of the spin-off series, Heroes has missed a beat and lost what helped make the side story a guilty pleasure.

In the earlier episodes of Super Dragon Ball Heroes, and for many of the trailers attached to the original arcade game, Toei Animation created stories that might have had battles that were hard to believe, but the animation was on par with Dragon Ball Super’s television series. There have been fights in the series, such as the legendary battle between Goku and the villain Hearts, that created some jaw-dropping scenes for any Dragon Ball property. While Meteor Mission is attempting to use graphics that are similar to the Arcade Game, it, unfortunately, loses a lot of what helped make Heroes a worthy “filler” for Super’s absence. 

Meteor Mission Fails To Fly High

Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero made the controversial decision to portray the shonen franchise in a CG-style for the first time, but the fluidity of the fights and the story itself were able to placate many anime fans’ worries about the leap. Meteor Mission isn’t able to say the same, as the animation feels extremely stiff and isn’t able to capture many of the story beats and emotions that would be necessary to convey the threat of “Majin Ozotto”. 

Super Dragon Ball Heroes has been the definition of “fan service” during its time as both a television series and an arcade game in Japan. Seeing movie heroes and villains, original characters, and new transformations that would otherwise never appear in Dragon Ball Super proper was a major feather in it caps, especially when all these elements had stellar animation working in their benefit. Without that same aesthetic, Meteor Mission feels hollow and loses a lot of the appeal of what made Heroes work for shonen fans in the first place. 

Do you think Heroes might leave behind the CG animation once Meteor Mission comes to an end? Feel free to let us know in the comments or hit me up directly @EVComedy to talk all things comics, anime, and the world of the Z-Fighters.