Greetings Ladies and Gents! It is I, The Shaman of Animation back again with another installment of Shaman's Thoughts: One try-hard's attempt at being an intellectual. Yesterday morning I woke up, got ready for work and in doing so, I checked my phone, to see what's going on in my Twitter circle and I see tweets about Dragon Ball Heroes getting an anime adaptation; and upon further research entailing a 2 minute Google Search, this is confirmed happening, and I couldn't be more excited.
To the uniformed: Dragon Ball Heroes is a popular Japanese trading card arcade game released in 2010 that's been given ports to the Nintendo 3DS over the years. Fans in the US may have caught wind of it because of the short animated previews released to promote the game making their way to YouTube.
If the video up above (And the first picture of this post) is any proof, Heroes got more and more insane in the 8 years it's been around. It's created its own lore separate from "canon" Dragon Ball with its own story lines, original characters, and arguably the most noticeable, or notorious thing depending on who you ask, every Saiyan that's ever existed in Dragon Ball going Super Saiyan 3.
Now from what I got from the article I read on comicbook.com, this series is going to be a PR Anime: meaning that it's going to be a short one that's purpose is to promote the game and its latest arcs. So, going in to this, we probably shouldn't be expecting this to be a huge thing. But even so, if you have an idea as to what Dragon Ball Heroes is, there's still enough reason to look forward to this.
To me, Dragon Ball Heroes getting an anime, no matter how short, is something that I feel's been a long time coming. I remember back in the days before Battle of Gods people would take the animated clips promoting the game and spreading rumors that it was The New Dragon Ball series "Dragon Ball Hoshi!" And as the years have gone by and there have been clips showing Super Saiyan 4 Gohan, Future Trunks and Vegeta fusing, and new evil Dragon Balls, there's been a clamoring for Heroes to have more of a presence outside of Japan. And despite claims that people want the game to come to The West, they really mean they want 20 minutes of stuff like this:
This announcement also temporarily remedies one of my pet peeves with modern Dragon Ball, especially in the case of Super and that is Fanservice that retroactively hurts the overall story and characters of Dragon Ball. A prime example of this would be the character of Bardock. To me, the thing that made Bardock cool was that he was a nobody fighting a hopeless battle in an act of defiance. Then in 2011, there was the episode of Bardock special where instead of dying he goes back in time, becomes a Super Saiyan and kills Frieza's maybe ancestor. It's a special that does something really cool in Bardock turning Super Saiyan but also muddies what made that character stand out in the fandom.
Another example is Future Trunks, a character who after destroying The Androids and stopping Cell in his timeline got his happy ending. He successfully went back in time and stopped Goku's death and the threat of the Androids. Then in Super, they bring him back to the main timeline for an arc, resulting in him getting an asspull power up and then the destruction of his timeline. I repeat, he was brought back in the fold to stop a new threat to his timeline in Goku Black/Zamasu, and he FAILED. Which makes me ask: Why did you bring him back if you were going to give him a horrible ending?
And finally there's Vegeta. Now the Saiyan Prince has made some progression in Super's run as a father and as a husband. But the biggest regression for the character comes from his dynamic with Goku. By the end of The Buu Arc, when Goku's fighting Kid Buu, Vegeta admits that no matter how hard he trained, Goku would always be number one; and he was okay with that. Then comes episode 2 of Dragon Ball Super where Vegeta goes right back to having to beat Goku, because apparently Vegeta is only interesting when he's trying to play catch up with Goku.
The point I was trying to make in those last 3 paragraphs is with giving characters new power ups and bringing them back to certain points in their development you may make fans happy, but you're also undermining the progression made. This is something I don't think will be a problem with the Heroes anime because Heroes itself exists in its own bubble, you can do whatever you want without thinking of continuity. So say if you want Super Saiyan 4 vs Super Saiyan Blue, if you've got an in-story reason for it, you're good to go.
No matter how brief it may be, a Dragon Ball Heroes anime is one that I am very much looking forward to. With the anime going to adapt the Prison Planet arc (Again, first picture of this post), there's potential for a lot of cool stuff happening; and who knows? As of the time I write this, the Super Manga is currently in The Universal Survival Arc and there's no immediate plans for Super after the new movie, so who's to say if this anime proves successful, the may get Toyotaro or someone else to do a new Dragon Ball Heroes manga? The possibilities for this are endless and I am eager to see where this goes.
But those are my thoughts on the matter folks. If you enjoyed this and you want to see more of my scatterbrained opinions, check the link below to find my Twitter where it is the best place to stay aware of when I update here on this blog. Also below, you will find links to The Outer Rejects YouTube channels, a Let's Play/Review group that I am a part of. We're currently in the middle of a huge update and will have more on it very soon.
Til next time folks, I'm The Shaman of Animation.
Take Care...
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