Remember When 'Dragon Ball Super's Animator Tackled Spider-Man?

Dragon Ball Super has brought the franchise love on a global scale, but those involved with making [...]

By Kofi Outlaw

Dragon Ball Super has brought the franchise love on a global scale, but those involved with making that show a success don't have resumes that are exactly 100% spotless.

Case in point: Dragon Ball fans have dug up an example of what happened when one of the series' most famous animators and character designers got to try his hand at the Marvel Universe. As you will see below, that little switch in subject matter resulted in this abomination that is supposed to be Spider-Man:

This image is taken from the 2014 - 2015 anime series Marvel Disk Wars: The Avengers. It was produced by Toei Animation and Disney Japan, to tie-in with Bandai's Marvel merchandise. One of the most notable character designers on the creative team was none other than Tadayoshi Yamamuro. Yamamuro is one of the iconic faces of the Dragon Ball franchise; he was a major stylistic influence on Dragon Ball Z (those iconic character designs from the "Android/Cell Saga") as well as the original Dragon Ball Z: Broly movie. He's also been very active in some Dragon Ball Super (including the "Resurrection F" movie), as well as the current Dragon Ball Heroes anime.

As you can see in the discussion thread for this tweet, fans are not shy about voicing the opinion that this artwork in Disk Wars is representative of a general decline in the quality of Yamamuro's work over time. Fans are pretty merciless about trolling this version of Spider-Man, mocking his bulkier design with claims that Peter Parker has been hitting the steroids hard, to saying he brought out his extra-padded costume for the fight. The quality (or lack thereof) of Yamamuro's current works is debatable, but there is no debate that his style is iconic and, and has been a major influence on the genre.

If you want to know more about Marvel Disk Wars: The Avengers, the premise of the show is pretty much what you would expect from an anime:

Synopsis: "With help from Japan's Dr. Nozomu Akatsuki, Tony Stark aka Iron Man develops a new device called the Digital Identity Securement Kit, known as DISKs for short,[7] designed to help the cause of stopping and detaining villains. However, whilst presenting the DISK project on the Raft, the villainous Loki appears and uses the very same DISKs to launch a breakout of all the captured villains, trapping Captain America, Iron Man, Hulk, Thor and Wasp inside DISKs as well. Nozomu's sons, Akira and Hikaru, along with three other children, Edward, Chris, and Jessica, come to possess these DISKs and obtain biocodes, allowing them to bring out these superheroes for a short period of time.[8] Teaming up with the Avengers, the group travel across the world to search for DISKs before they fall into the wrong hands."

Dragon Ball Super: Broly will hit Japanese theaters in December, and is expected to arrive in the U.S. on January 16, 2019. Dragon Ball Super is currently airing its English dub on Adult Swim during the Toonami programming block Saturday evenings at 9:30 p.m. ET. 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 Funimation, VRV, and Crunchyroll.

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