Dragon Ball Super has tried its best to live up to the massive influence of its previous series in Dragon Ball Z, but one of the big complaints that fans have with the new iteration is that it has had to tone back some of its big battles when it comes to the amount of violence that the Akira Toriyama franchise was known for. We wanted to take the opportunity to break down what the diminishing of violence means for Dragon Ball Super and whether or not making the anime appeal to a larger audience potentially makes the sequel not as great as its predecessor.
To be clear, there has been plenty of violence in Dragon Ball Super, as characters have been disintegrated, impaled, and otherwise beat to a pulp as has been made famous by the adventures of Goku, Vegeta, and the rest of the Z Fighters. What seems to be lacking from Dragon Ball Super’s anime is blood, with many characters being punched, kicked, and otherwise destroyed but not dropping any of the red liquid during some of the biggest scenes in the Shonen series. Specifically, during the Tournament of Power, when Freeza was relentlessly beaten by the God of Destruction in training in Toppo, he didn’t shed any blood throughout the encounter.
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Does this ultimately matter to the anime series though? Yes and no. Taking out blood from the equation does play down the fights a bit when it comes to some of these knock down drag out fights, and it takes away some of the impact from these battles, especially when death in Dragon Ball is already something that isn’t taken seriously throughout the Shonen series. While the battles of Dragon Ball Super are still some of the best in the franchise as a whole, we can only imagine that they would be perhaps more impactful if they were able to include more gut wrenching scenes.
In Dragon Ball Z, scenes throughout the Saiyan Saga, Freeza Saga, and Android Saga specifically resonated that much more as even though heroes could be wished back to life, the dark moments were made that much more important thanks to the violence.
The Moro Arc in Dragon Ball Super has had its fair share of violence, with Moro recently impaling Goku through the chest, but it will be interesting to see how this arc is translated into the anime.
Do you think Super suffers from a lack of violence overall that Dragon Ball Z had more of? Feel free to let us know in the comments or hit me up directly on Twitter @EVComedy to talk all things comics, anime, and the world of Dragon Ball!
