Toei announced at its Special Dragon Ball panel at the San Diego Comic-Con virtual event that the second anime film in the Dragon Ball Super franchise will be titled Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero. As the name suggests, the film will have a focus on the “superhero” aspect.

The staff teased that the film will utilize different technology to display visual expression. New characters will also appear in the film. Original creator Akira Toriyama is in charge of the screenplay and character design.

Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero is scheduled to open in Japanese theaters in 2022. The release schedule may differ depending on each country and region.

Source: ANN

Dragon Ball Super Part 9 includes Episodes 105-117 of the Dragon Ball Super anime series. Audio options for this release include the original Japanese audio with English subtitles and the English dub.

Dragon Ball Super Part 9
English Publisher: FUNimation Entertainment
Format: Blu-ray
Release Date: October 8, 2019

The set opens with an episode that focuses on Master Roshi. It was awesome to see him act like the awesome martial artist that won the Tenkaichi Tournament all the way back in the first Dragon Ball anime series. I was always a little disappointed that Master Roshi was basically demoted to comic relief in Dragon Ball Z, and never truly used his martial arts. Luckily, the more recent films and the Dragon Ball Super anime has allowed Roshi to remind the audience that there was a reason why he was once Goku and Kuririn’s teacher.

Gohan and Piccolo are targeted by a sniper and his partner (Prum and Harmira). Luckily, Goku, Vegeta, and Tien are able to lend a hand, because it really is a team effort to fight these two. Unfortunately for Tien, he is knocked out of the ring at the end of the fight, but at least he could take one of the two enemies out with him.

We get a couple of battles with Ribrianne, one of the “magical girl” fighters from the 2nd Universe. Can I say just how annoying Ribrianne is? She’s constantly saying she’s fighting for love, but she’s always angry and yelling when doing so. Where’s the love there? But, both of the battles we see with Ribrianne are important, because the first one requires Goku to use a Genki Dama, and what happens here unleashes “Autonomous Ultra Instinct,” which gives Goku a new power-up that is a legendary deity technique. The second battle Ribrianne has is with No. 18 (with help from No. 17). At least this second battle allows us to finally be rid of Ribrianne. I’m sorry, but the fighters from the 2nd universe, as well as their God of Destruction, are just so annoying. Heles, their God, looks like she’s copying Cleopatra’s look and “beautiful” shows up in just about every sentence she says.

Goku also has an important fight with both Caulifla and Kale. The two female Saiyans level up, with Kale once again getting ridiculously strong. At first, she can’t control her power again, but this time, Caulifla is able to get through to her. While it was kind of interesting at first to watch Goku fighting the two female Saiyans from the 6th universe, I felt that their battle ended up being a little too drawn out. It ended up taking place over the course of four episodes, and the fight was stretched out with some ridiculous powering up. Not surprisingly, Goku ends up activating the Autonomous Ultra Instinct again, and utilizing it to help knock both Caulifla and Kale (who have merged to become Kefla through wearing Potara earrings). I couldn’t help but notice that these two are just about as cocky as Gotenks is. It seems like when Saiyans fuse together, the fusion makes them more cocky in addition to becoming stronger.

Over the course of these episodes, Roshi, Tien, Caulifla, Kale, Cabba, Hit, Frost, Ribrianne, as well as a few other fighters I don’t remember, are all knocked out of the competition. The amount of fighters has dwindled more going into the remaining episodes of the series, so I can only imagine just how much more intense the fights are going to get. I should also mention that at the end of each episode, there’s a countdown as to how many more minutes are remaining in the tournament. For the most part, it seems like each episode in this set covers about two minutes of fighting time in the show. With 14 episodes remaining, I expect that the amount of elapsed fighting time will likely slow down in order to stretch out the story a little more.

Overall, I did enjoy the episodes included in this set. However, my main gripe is that the Goku vs. Caulifla and Kale fight ran a little too long. I understand the intent was to show Caulifla and Kale’s growth as fighters, but I think this fight could have been scaled back a little bit in order to help it feel a little less stretched out.

When it comes to this release, the Blu-ray video is 1080p High Definition 16:9 (HD Native), and the audio is Dolby TrueHD: English 5.1 and Dolby TrueHD: Japanese 2.0. I have no complaints with the video or audio quality of this release.

The major bonus feature on this set is a “Dragon Ball Super: Twitter Q&A with Sarah Widenheft and Dawn Bennett” (the English voice actors for Kale and Zeno). This feature ran for about nine minutes, and the two women answer questions that were asked on Twitter. It’s an OK bonus feature, although there were a couple of times when Tweets that weren’t questions were included. But the interactions between the two voice actors were good, and they did have amusing things to say sometimes. Overall, though, it’s not bad for what it is. Other bonus features include a textless opening song and a textless closing song.

If you’re a fan of the Dragon Ball franchise and want to own all the episodes and films, then you’ll need to add Dragon Ball Super Part 9 to your anime home video library.

Additional posts about Dragon Ball:

• Anime Blu-ray Review: Dragon Ball Super Part 8

Dragon Ball Super Part 8 includes Episodes 92-104 of the Dragon Ball Super anime series. Audio options for this release include the original Japanese audio with English subtitles and the English dub.

Dragon Ball Super Part 8
English Publisher: FUNimation Entertainment
Format: Blu-ray
Release Date: July 2, 2019

At the beginning of the set, Majin Boo is unable to compete in the Tournament of Power. Goku comes up with the crazy idea of going to Hell and asking Frieza to be their final teammate. For his idea, Goku wants to ask Uranai Baba to bring him back to life for 24 hours to fight in the tournament. It’s not surprising when the others, especially Vegeta, aren’t crazy about the idea, but after some discussion, the others reluctantly agree. When Goku talks to Frieza, he will only agree to help on one condition: that Frieza be resurrected with the Dragon Balls if the 7th Universe wins. As Goku has done up to this point, he makes the agreement without consulting the others. Spies from other universes learn of this development, and assassins are sent to take Frieza down. But not surprisingly (again), Frieza can take them down easily. As Frieza tries to take down Goku, he is saved by Whis and Beerus. Even though Frieza is already showing himself to be untrustworthy, they still accept him being on the team. But the audience sees that Frieza is planning to use the Tournament of Power to manipulate the gods to suit his own means.

At the same time, we’re seeing some of things going on in the other universes as the Tournament of Power approaches. A lot of the emphasis is on the 6th Universe. The audience gets to know the character of Caulifla a little more, and we see her and Cabba trying to help Kale become a Super Saiyan. It turns out that that the normally shy and demure Kale can turn into an extremely powerful Legendary Super Saiyan. The dynamic between Cabba, Caulifla, and Kale is interesting, and I’m glad it was decided to put more focus on them. We see a little bit going on behind the scenes with some of the other universes as well, but the 6th gets a lot of the attention.

And then the story shifts to the Tournament of Power itself, which is supposed to take a little under 50 minutes of time total. Of course, with this being a shonen anime, that roughly 50 minutes is going to be stretched out over a long number of episodes. At the end of each episode after the tournament begins, the audience is given an update on how much time is left until the tournament is over. I thought this was kind of amusing, because it reminded me of the countdown Space Battleship Yamato had for the ship to make it to Iscandar and back within one earth year.

The remaining eight episodes on the disc are part of the Tournament of Power. Because of the sheer number of participants, there’s a lot that takes place. The main thing that happens in these episodes is that two universes see all of their fighters fall out of the ring, and that those two universes are happily destroyed by the Zenos. I wasn’t surprised by the first universe that was eliminated, because it seemed like the fighters from that one were set up in earlier episodes to be cocky and thinking no one could beat them. The fight leading up to the destruction of the second universe was a little more emotionally poignant, especially since it was Gohan who sent the last member of that team out of the ring. Gohan discovers that fighter had a wife and child at home, like him, and now his opponent’s universe has been destroyed. We can see that Gohan is affected by this, but he works at shaking it off so he can focus on the upcoming battles that are still yet to be fought.

Goku also has some encounters with the Saiyans from the 6th universe, especially with Kale’s Legendary Super Saiyan form. Unfortunately, Kale doesn’t know how to control that power right at first, so she causes chaos to ensue in the immediate area. But when Kale and Caulifla find themselves being targeted by the 11th Universe for revenge because they took down a couple of their fighters, Goku ends up making a temporary alliance with them. As I watch this, it’s hard to fathom that there’s the likelihood that the 6th Universe characters won’t be around if they lose the tournament, especially with all of the development that has been placed on these characters. But considering that the ending of Dragon Ball Z makes it clear that the 7th Universe has to survive in order for that ending to occur, it does take some of the tension out of the tournament (at least for me, anyway).

Probably the only other thing of note would be the fighters from the 2nd Universe. These fighters have magical girl alter egos, and these alter egos take the magical girl stereotypes and amplify them. Who would have ever guessed that magical girls would appear anywhere in the Dragon Ball franchise? LOL!

At this point in the series, Dragon Ball Super brings the series back to the action and fighting that the franchise is known for. In a lot of ways, the Tournament of Power kind of makes me think of the Tenkaichi tournaments, but to a much larger scale with higher stakes involved.

We get yet another new ending theme that appears on this set. It wasn’t bad per se (especially since it was better than that earlier one that I absolutely hated), but I did like the ending theme that was introduced on the previous set more.

When it comes to this release, the Blu-ray video is 1080p High Definition 16:9 (HD Native), and the audio is Dolby TrueHD: English 5.1 and Dolby TrueHD: Japanese 2.0. I have no complaints with the video or audio quality of this release.

The major bonus feature on this set, which is titled, “Two Humans and an Android,” features Sonny Strait (the voice of Kuririn), Mike McFarland (Master Roshi), and Chuck Huber (the voice of Android 17). The three of them talk and interact, and it’s basically what I’ve come to expect from the “major” bonus feature that appears on each of these sets. There are also textless versions of the opening song and the closing songs, as well as trailers for other releases from FUNimation Entertainment.

If you’re a fan of the Dragon Ball franchise and want to own all the episodes and films, then you’ll need to add Dragon Ball Super Part 8 to your anime home video library.

Additional posts about Dragon Ball:

• Anime Blu-ray Review: Dragon Ball Super Part 7
• Anime Blu-ray Review: Dragon Ball Super Part 9

Dragon Ball Super Part 7 includes Episodes 79-91 of the Dragon Ball Super anime series. Audio options for this release include the original Japanese audio with English subtitles and the English dub.

Dragon Ball Super Part 7
English Publisher: FUNimation Entertainment
Format: Blu-ray
Release Date: April 2, 2019

The first four episodes in the set focus on the mini tournament between the 7th Universe and the 9th Universe so the Zeno from the alternate timeline can get to experience the excitement of a tournament before the actual Tournament of Power. The first fight is between Majin Boo and a wolf-like creature named Basil. Mr. Satan couched this to Boo as a time to play around, so Boo treats the fight as such right as first. But when Mr. Satan is injured during one of Basil’s attacks, Boo gets very upset and takes the fight seriously. In the end, Majin Boo wins the match. During this mini tournament, there are no official rules in place yet, so anything goes. I was surprised that Boo didn’t try to use his power to turn his opponent into chocolate. But I guess they need Basil for the actual Tournament of Power, so this move wouldn’t have been feasible.

The second tournament is between Gohan and Lavender, who is Basil’s brother. I knew this was going to be an interesting fight to watch, since Gohan is out of practice for fighting since he’s been focusing so much of his time on being a scholar. Lavender uses a poison to blind Gohan, and Gohan refuses to take a Senzu Bean from Shin. Instead, Gohan uses the fact he’s blinded to heighten his other senses and to use those heightened senses to fight his enemy. This is a tactic that I’m not surprised to see Gohan using. While Gohan puts up a good fight and does well, both he and Lavender collapse, so this match is declared a tie.

The final fight is between Goku and Bergamo, the brother of both Basil and Lavender. At this point, everyone knows that it was Goku’s idea for the Tournament of Power, so he has become enemy number one among the universes who are at risk of being eliminated (the ones who have Mortal Levels below 7). Bergamo makes a deal with the Zenos: if he wins, the tournament penalty at the main tournament will be rescinded. Bergamo is a formidable foe, especially with his ability to absorb an opponent’s attack in order to increase his size and power. But even with this ability, Goku finds a way to defeat him. However, after this win, a fighter from the 11th Universe challenges Goku to battle. Even though this fight was not part of the mini tournament, the Zenos let it happen. It gets to be a good fight, but the Grand Minister ends it because either one of them could have been killed.

The remaining episodes in the set focus on Goku trying to convince enough people in his circle to participate in the Tournament of Power in order to have the required 10 members for the 7th Universe’s team. The first person he tries to recruit is Vegeta, but he keeps saying he can’t participate because Bulma is very pregnant and could give birth at any time. Well, Whis decides to make things easier on everyone by using his time warp ability to speed up the birth of the child. I’ve got to say, that Bulma’s delivery of her baby girl was probably the easiest labor in history. LOL! But with the birth of Bra, this frees Vegeta up to participate in the upcoming tournament.

Next, Goku and Gohan go to visit Kuririn and No. 18 to convince the two of them to participate. No. 18 doesn’t want to participate, but Goku convinces her by telling her a lie that there’s a 10 million zeni prize for each winning participant. Well, this makes No. 18’s greedy heart happy, so she becomes more than eager to participate. Gohan, meanwhile, challenges Kuririn to a sparring match in order to test Kuririn’s power, since Gohan has been put in charge of coming up with strategy for the tournament.

After this, Gohan goes to recruit Piccolo, who has already learned about the tournament from Goku. He readily agrees to participate, but also spends time training Gohan. Since Gohan has spent more time focusing on being a scholar instead of fighting, Gohan isn’t utilizing his power to its fullest extent. Piccolo takes on the task of trying to help Gohan rediscover his strength and his abilities in the short amount of time they have before the tournament.

Goku, meanwhile, goes to see Dende to try to locate where No. 17, the twin brother of No. 18, is. The only lead No. 18 could give was that her brother is now working at a wildlife reserve, but she has no idea where it’s at. Fortunately, Dende locates him and takes Goku to that location. It was interesting to see No. 17 again and to find out how much he’s changed since we saw him in Dragon Ball Z. No. 17 and Goku had never met in person prior to this point, so all No. 17 knows about him is what Dr. Gero told him for his mission. The two have a sparring march, although No. 17 stops it in the middle in order to prevent the island from being destroyed. After the match, No. 17 refuses Goku’s invitation to participate in the Tournament of Power. But after the two of them work together to stop a group of space poachers, No. 17 agrees to join the team for the tournament.

Goku then tracks down Tien, who is now teaching martial arts at a dojo, and Master Roshi is there serving as an honorary instructor. A former student of the Crane School that Tien once studied at is taking out revenge against Tien, using paper talismans to control his students. Goku, Tien, and Roshi must work together to stop the students from destroying the nearby village. Tien agrees to be on the team for the tournament after Goku tells him about the ten million zeni prize, because he thinks the money could be used to repair the village that his students damaged.

There was one thing about the recruitment sections of the storyline that kind of bothered me. We never once saw Goku use Instantaneous Movement, even though time was of the essence for recruiting the team members for the tournament. It almost felt as if the writers forgot that this ability existed, but then it was mentioned in a line of dialogue said by Yamcha, so the writers did remember that it existed… but they just seemed to forget that they could have utilized it to help add a sense of urgency to the recruitment process.

Everything seems to be going great as the participants train for the upcoming tournament. However, right near the end of the set, Mr. Satan calls and says that Majin Boo has fallen into a deep sleep and won’t be available to fight. Unfortunately, this means that the team is now short a member, and the set ends before they can come up with a solution to fill the hole left by Majin Boo.

While most of these episodes focus on Goku recruiting the members for the 7th Universe’s team., we also get some scenes of some of the other universes and what they’re doing. It was nice to see some setup happening for the teams from the other universes, but it makes sense to focus on Goku and his team, since they are the main characters of the franchise. But it was kind of fun with the 7th Universe’s recruiting to see where some of the characters have ended up, like Tien and No. 17. Since there’s now the issue with replacing Majin Boo, I suspect it’s going to take a few more episodes before the Tournament of Power finally gets going. But hopefully that will be sooner rather than later.

We get a new ending theme that appears on this set. I actually liked it quite a bit. Musically, it’s not something I would have expected for the Dragon Ball franchise, but it works.

When it comes to this release, the Blu-ray video is 1080p High Definition 16:9 (HD Native), and the audio is Dolby TrueHD: English 5.1 and Dolby TrueHD: Japanese 2.0. I have no complaints with the video or audio quality of this release.

The major bonus feature on this release runs for about 15 minutes, and it features voice actor Chuck Huber and production crew member Rawly Pickens answering questions submitted by Twitter users. This was an OK bonus feature, but I don’t think it was a strong as the voice actor interviews that have appeared on previous Dragon Ball Super sets. Outside of this, there are also textless versions of the opening song and the closing songs, as well as trailers for other releases from FUNimation Entertainment.

If you’re a fan of the Dragon Ball franchise and want to own all the episodes and films, then you’ll need to add Dragon Ball Super Part 7 to your anime home video library.

Additional posts about Dragon Ball:

• Anime Blu-ray Review: Dragon Ball Super Part 6
• Anime Blu-ray Review: Dragon Ball Super Part 8

Toei Animation has officially confirmed that it is developing a second anime film in the Dragon Ball Super franchise with a planned release in 2022. Toei Animation Europe had briefly listed a new film in the franchise earlier in the week.

Original creator Akira Toriyama is in charge of the screenplay and character design. Aside from story composition and character design, he is also writing lines of dialogue for the film.

Toriyama shared a message to fans:

An all new movie since “Dragon Ball Super: Broly” is currently in the making!
Just like the previous movie, I’m heavily leading the story and dialogue production for another amazing film.
I really shouldn’t talk too much about the plot yet, but be prepared for some extreme and entertaining bouts, which may feature an unexpected character.

We’ll be charting through some unexplored territory in terms of the visual aesthetics to give the audience an amazing ride, so I hope everybody will look forward to the new movie!

The film will be the 21st anime film in the overall Dragon Ball franchise.

Source: ANN

Dragon Ball Super Part 5 includes Episodes 53-65 of the Dragon Ball Super anime series. Audio options for this release include the original Japanese audio with English subtitles and the English dub.

Dragon Ball Super Part 5
English Publisher: FUNimation Entertainment
Format: Blu-ray
Release Date: October 2, 2018

All of the episodes included on this set continue the arc about Goku Black, which is commonly referred to as the “Future” Trunks Saga. The set opens with Beerus, Whis, and Goku visiting the Supreme Kai of the Tenth Universe, Gowasu. They also meet his apprentice, Zamasu. Goku challenges Zamasu to a sparring match, which Gowasu allows. Zamasu is surprised that he’s outmatched by a mere mortal like Goku, and Beerus and Whis sense that Zamasu’s ki is similar to Goku Black’s. Unfortunately, this visit only strengthens Zamasu’s anti-mortal ideology. The first episode also has a great scene of Future Trunks learning that in this timeline, Android 18 is married to Kuririn and that they have a child together. Trunks’ reaction is priceless, and I can’t blame Android 18 for teasing him about it.

Meanwhile, Gowasu decides to temporarily promote Zamasu to Supreme Kai in the hopes that this will help him reconsider his views on mortals. They use a Time Ring to observe the progress of a new race on Planet Babari. Unfortunately, Gowasu is unable to change Zamasu’s mind, and Zamasu kills a Babari that attacks them (which goes against Gowasu’s teachings). Unfortunately, Gowasu doesn’t realize at this point that what he’s doing now is going to give Zamasu the tools and knowledge he needs to be able to pull off his plans and affect the timeline that Future Trunks comes from.

We get a short reprieve from this storyline when Zeno, the Omni-King, summons Goku to see him. From what we learned in Dragon Ball Super Part 4, it’s not surprising that Beerus freaks out when the summons is received. But both he and Whis instruct Goku not to say anything about Goku Black or about time traveling. If Zeno finds out about the time traveling, he could become quite upset. It turns out Zeno’s summoned Goku because he wanted a friend to play with when he feels like he wants to have fun. Goku promises to bring someone better to play with next time, but as we learn later, Goku didn’t have anyone in mind… he just said it so they could get on with the Goku Black situation. Oh boy… hopefully Goku can figure something out.

Future Trunks, Goku, and Vegeta take the repaired time machine to Future Trunks’ timeline, and not surprisingly, the freedom fighters mistake Goku for Goku Black. Fortunately, Future Trunks is able to explain the situation to the freedom fighters. In addition to Future Mai, we discover that Future Yajirobe is part of the group as well. I don’t know about anyone else, but I didn’t think the beard and moustache complimented him all that well. Yes, Yajirobe is older, so he isn’t going to look like he did when he was younger, but there’s just something about that beard and moustache that aren’t entirely working for me. Oh well. But there’s one point in the episodes that are set in Future Trunks’ timeline that we get to see Yajirobe act like the coward that we knew him as back in both Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z. At least that hadn’t changed.

Goku Black makes an appearance, along with Zamasu, who says he is Goku Black’s partner. Zamasu is now immortal, which makes things difficult, especially when combined with Goku Black’s strength. Just as things look dire, Future Yajirobe whisks Future Trunks, Goku, and Vegeta to a safer location, and then those three use the time machine to return to the present.

We see the Zamasu in the current Tenth Universe start to formulate his plan, which includes forcing Master Zuno to tell him about the Super Dragon Balls. After coming up with some theories, Shin takes Beerus, Whis, and Goku to the Tenth Universe to determine if their theory is sound. Beerus manages to destroy Zamasu after realizing that he’s going to murder Gowasu, but as we learn with another trip to the alternate timeline (which includes Bulma this time), Beerus’ actions didn’t prevent what happened in Future Trunks’ timeline. Truths are revealed, which show that the theory Whis and the others came up with wasn’t entirely accurate. After nearly being destroyed in the alternate timeline, the group returns once again to the present.

Realizing that they don’t have any way to destroy Zamasu, Piccolo brings up the Mafuba to trap him inside a container. For viewers who have seen the first Dragon Ball anime, they will recognize this as the technique that Roshi used to contain Piccolo’s predecessor. I thought this was a wonderful throwback to the early days of the franchise, and it also makes sense to use this on an opponent who’s immortal like Zamasu. Goku trains with Roshi to learn how to do the technique, but he makes the mistake of not getting the charm from Roshi before heading back to the alternate timeline. Oops!

The end of the set sees Future Trunks figuring out the Mafuba technique and using it on Zamasu. Unfortunately, it ultimately fails due to not having the necessary charm to seal the container. Zamasu is so shaken by this event, that he and Goku Black use their Potara earrings to merge into an immensely powerful being. The battle with this new being is just getting started when the set ends. There’s definitely a reason to continue on with Dragon Ball Super Part 6 if you’ve become invested in this storyline. A lot takes place for this storyline during this set, and it appears that we’re getting pretty close to the end of it. I suspect that there should only be a small handful of episodes on the next set in order to finish it off.

Another new ending theme was introduced near the end of this set, and I have to say that I liked this one even less than the ending theme that was introduced on the previous set. Musically, I thought it didn’t work as an ending theme, and reading the lyrics for the song in the subtitles, I was like, “How does this even fit in with Dragon Ball Super?” At this point, unless something can beat it, I think this ending theme is the worst one to be released for the entire Dragon Ball franchise.

When it comes to this release, the Blu-ray video is 1080p High Definition 16:9 (HD Native), and the audio is Dolby TrueHD: English 5.1 and Dolby TrueHD: Japanese 2.0. I have no complaints with the video or audio quality of this release.

The only bonus feature that’s truly worth anything is “Coffee Break with Mai and Trunks.” In this feature, Eric Vale (the voice of Future Trunks) and Colleen Clinkenbeard (the voice of Future Mai) are talking to each other about these episodes at a coffee shop. While it was an interesting idea, I don’’ think it worked as well in its execution as it could have. In the end, I was just kind of “meh” about this one. Outside of that, the only other bonus features are a textless version of the opening, textless versions of both of the ending themes that appeared in this set, and trailers for other releases from FUNimation Entertainment.

If you’re a fan of the Dragon Ball franchise and want to own all the episodes and films, then you’ll need to add Dragon Ball Super Part 5 to your anime home video library.

Additional posts about Dragon Ball:

• Anime Blu-ray Review: Dragon Ball Super Part 4
• Anime Blu-ray Review: Dragon Ball Super Part 6