Toonami Executive Explains Dragon Ball Super’s Quality Problem

Dragon Ball Super‘s English dub run has been at the center of a strange controversy lately as the last few episodes to have premiered on Toonami have suffered a noticeable dip in visual fidelity. After fans questioned Adult Swim about why some of the scenes had a notable framerate dip, Toonami’s executives quickly responded and have now explained what was really going on.

SVP and Creative Director of Adult Swim, and Toonami co-creator, Jason DeMarco responded to the fan inquiries on Twitter and not only gave fans a detailed explanation of the issue, but also gives fans hope that the issue will be fixed going forward.

As DeMarco explains that the framerate issue stems from the Harding Test, which tests television series for photosensitive epilepsy provocative images. The last few episodes of the series have failed that test, “Every show, commercial, etc is run through this test to make sure it doesn’t have flashing frames that could trigger folks with epilepsy. The last few eps of DBS have had fight scenes that are cut to about one frame per edit in some places- they evidently fail the Harding Test.”

As DeMarco elaborates, the standard fixes for this test didn’t make a big splash on the radar, “Our program edit folks, who do these tests, normally just slow the cuts down in these scenes to about four frames per second. In the case of these DBS eps, it made the fight scenes look insanely slow. Program edit does this routinely, so they didn’t even think to notify us.”

For fans hoping for a fix, DeMarco does state that these fixes have been adjusted and look much better in comparison, “…we asked program edit if there was any way they could slow these scenes down LESS. So from now on, they will he slowed (if they fail the test) to two frames a second, down from one. We tested it and it looks WAY better.”

DeMarco notes that these fixes will kick in beginning with the next episode premiere of the series, so hopefully is works out for everyone. Though these broadcast fixes are usually done all the time (Japan notably dims the screen when bright lights are on the screen), this was the first notable adjustment. But Toonami, like always, listens to the fans and has already made major strides to address the issue.

Dragon Ball Super currently airs its English dub on Adult Swim during the Toonami programming block on Saturday evenings. 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, and Dragon Ball Super’s big movie, Dragon Ball Super: Broly, is now available on Blu-ray and DVD.