The Dragon Ball Super manga has greatly diverged from how it initially adapted films in its early chapters, and how the series is currently covering the events of Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero proves that the manga should have never deviated from that original formula. Although things could still change for the better, the latest arc has yet to justify this frustrating shift, even in regard to some of the more exciting deviations.
The manga itself didn’t actually start with any original material. The series began by immediately adapting events from the film Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods, which debuted a few years earlier. The manga succeeded in condensing the overall story into a nice, neat package of only four 19-page chapters. Even more impressive, the entirety of Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection ‘F’ was summarized in a single cell in chapter #5 of Dragon Ball Super by story writer Akira Toriyama and artist Toyotarou.
Dragon Ball Super’s Earlier Movie Plots Were Quick
Dragon Ball Super greatly altered this approach for the vast majority of its ongoing Super Hero saga. As of chapter #91, the adaptation of the Super Hero film has run for seven 45-page chapters, and Gohan has yet to transform into his Beast form and fight alongside Orange Piccolo. This is already four times longer than the manga’s original adaptation of Battle of the Gods, with little to show for it. Although there have been some minor retcons, none of them justify the more than seven months the series has spent retelling a story fans already watched.
Dragon Ball Super’s Manga Just Erased Super Hero’s Best Moment
Though the Dragon Ball Super manga gave Krillin a chance to be a hero, it did so at the cost of killing Pan’s moment to shine from the movie.
Not surprisingly, the best retcon so far is only effective because of how it complements the three manga-exclusive chapters that serve as a prequel to the Super Hero adaptation. Beginning at the end of Dragon Ball Super chapter #96, chapter #97 sees Goten and Trunks fight Cell Max as Saiyaman X-1 and X-2 when they only fused into Gotenks in the original film. This retcon serves as a great call back to the prequel manga-only chapters that debuted X-1 and X-2, especially since it upgrades an attack they used alone originally by performing the same move against Cell Max with the two Gamma droids. While an effective way to justify the prequel, it’s a relatively short moment in an overwhelming amount of repeated scenes that has yet to validate the need for the actual post-prequel story itself. There needs to be more of a return.
Dragon Ball Super Can Still Salvage Super Hero With One change
The question now is why Dragon Ball Super couldn’t expedite the delivery of the Super Hero saga, especially when compared to the adaptations of Battle of the Gods and Resurrection ‘F’. Ironically, there are moments where the manga’s version of Super Hero completely skips or skims over movie material, making it more confusing when subsequent scenes match the film frame by frame. Super straight up skipped over the vast majority of Resurrection ‘F,’ too, so there’s no reason why it couldn’t have skipped every scene without Trunks and Goten to get to their transformations into X-1 and X-2 more quickly when battling Cell Max. Hopefully, Dragon Ball Super‘s delivery of Beast Gohan will be so fresh and original that the wait will have been worth it, but that doesn’t feel likely, at least for now.
