‘Dragonball: Evolution’ Helped Revive The ‘Dragon Ball’ Anime

These it’s more important than ever to remember a fundamental fact of the universe: it’s often darkest just before the dawn. Fans of Dragon Ball should understand this concept better than most, as they owe the franchise’s worst installment for ultimately creating the brand resurgence that we’ve seen with Dragon Ball Super in last year or so.

In fact, it was the total bastardization of the Dragon Ball characters and lore in the 2009 live-action Hollywood film Dragonball: Evolution that compelled series creator Akira Toriyama to once again involve himself in the creation of Dragon Ball content. As Toriyama described in the opening comment of the 30th Anniversary Dragon Ball Super History Book:

“Dragon Ball once became a thing of the past to me, but after that, I got angry about the live action movie, re-wrote an entire movie script, and now I’m complaining about the quality of the new TV anime, so it seems that DB has grown on me much that I can’t leave it alone.”

The comment refers to Toriyama returning to help shape the script for the 2013 film (and inspiration for Dragon Ball Super) Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods after seeing what had happened with Dragonball: Evolution. Toriyama was famously unhappy with what Battle of the Gods was originally supposed to be, reshaping the story entirely. He was also unhappy with some of the later series animation quality, and also made his voice heard on that front.

Again: this is just a hearty reminder that we should all be more zen about the ebb and flow of life: bad things may happen, but better things can grow out of them. If there was no Dragonball: Evolution, then Toriyama may still be coasting on laurels, and things would be nowhere near as hype for Dragon Ball as they are today! By the same token: while Dragon Ball hype is big right now, there’s still a Dragonball: Evolution sequel script still out there, lurking.

Dragon Ball Super airs on Crunchyroll Saturday evenings at 7:15 p.m. CST. Adult Swim airs the English dub during its Toonami block Saturday evenings at 9:30 p.m, and is now available to stream on FunimationNOW and Amazon Video.