Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero Star Reacts to Gohan’s Long Overdue Come-Up

August 25, 2022, 5:43pm

Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero is now out in theaters worldwide, and by now it’s no secret that the film’s primary goal (and success) is giving Gohan a much-needed update in both powers and purpose for the Dragon Ball Super era. Fans have overwhelmingly agreed that one of Dragon Ball Super‘s most obvious shortcomings has been the way the series sidelined Gohan (and to lesser extent Piccolo) when Goku’s son’s rise in power was very clearly a major focus of Dragon Ball Z.

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Well, fans can feel how they want about Gohan’s status in Dragon Ball – but it’s a whole different matter (financial and otherwise) for Gohan’s English Dub voice actor, Kyle Herbert.

Speaking with ComicBook.com during a promotional event for Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero, Kyle Herbert explained how he feels about the way the film finally makes good on Gohan’s long-overdue update in powers:

“I had a deep wish that we were going to see Gohan finally have his day because it has literally been decades since the Majin Blu saga,” Herbert explains. “The world has seen what happened to Gohan as he trained and that all was going to go somewhere but then it all took a left turn as Gohan became very different.”

That’s a pretty diplomatic way of putting it. As Herbert indicates, everything that Akira Toriyama set up for Gohan in Dragon Ball Z was definitely “going to go somewhere.” But that “left turn” wasn’t so much that Gohan “became very different”: it was that Dragon Ball Super chose not to make him a major part of the story anymore. The reasoning for the decision has always been somewhat elusive – although the vast difference in Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero’s box office reception in Japan (lower) and overseas (highest ever) may help explain why Toei has kept Goku and Vegeta the main focuses of the franchise.

Still, Kyle Herbert echoes the thoughts of a lot of fans when he says that Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero is bringing Gohan full-circle back to exactly where he needs to be:

“He’s definitely still grown as a character, as a father, and as a husband. Obviously, he’s very smart and all of that, so he’s very a three-dimensional character, but to bring it full circle to what he was in the Cell saga and everything? That’s pretty exciting to see.”