Super Dragon Ball Heroes

Episodes of 15 min where the things are too fast. There are many fails in this, the plot is very undeveloped and it has bad animation. I am a truly Dragon Ball fan, but this show is bad.

This anime has a really dull story with uninteresting characters, but like the title says, this anime is only meant to be an advertisement for the Super Dragon Ball Heroes arcade game.

As "Dragon Ball Super" temporarily ended with the Tournament of Power arc in March, fans were elated when news came of a new anime to hold them over until the main show returned. As pure filler fluff and glorified advertisement for the currently Japan-exclusive arcade game of the same title, "Super Dragon Ball Heroes" does its job but ends up being kind of a detriment to the rest of the franchise as it basically spoils us.

Whereas the main Dragon Ball anime shows have time to flesh characters and conflicts out, SDBH's episodes are very condensed but somehow never seem to really cover very much. Episodes are overstuffed with characters, transformations and explosive energy blasting to promote events that happen in the game, but it all rarely serves any purpose beyond that; it's just fan-pleasing guff riddled with plot holes and inconsistencies. Luckily, the manga expands and fills in gaps. Remember that fetch quest for the Special Dragon Balls that Fu mentions in the first episode? The manga covers that and more, featuring more zany stuff like Hatchiyack fighting Majin Ozotto over a Ball.

Watch in teeth-pulling awe as Vegito in Super Saiyan Blue (the most powerful one) boosted with Kaio-ken can't beat the bland Evil Saiyan Cumber's base form. The most funnily egregious example of a useless character, though, is Cooler, who joins the heroes' side with Future Trunks (who is similarly useless here), suddenly gains a snazzy new -- and 100% original -- transformation, throws a single punch, and spends every episode after standing on the sidelines doing sweet F-A. Combined with cameos from the various Super Saiyan forms, fusions, Ultra Instinct and so on, SDBH starts to feel like stuffing yourself on your nan's delicious cake until you feel sick. This is what I'd call high-cholesterol Dragon Ball.

The animation and art style, overseen by Yamamuro, are bland, flat and unimpactful but at least consistent. The action often feels far slower than it should be. The fights are almost all boringly choreographed and samey with this lazy formula: punch-punch-punch, energy blasts, character flies out of dust, Kamehameha beam-struggle. Yawn.

The show, as of this review, has covered two separate story arcs: the Prison Planet Saga and the Universe Conflict Saga. This recent arc has actually been a big improvement over its predecessor so far as it has a more interesting (but still insane) story, higher stakes and better animation. It's actually starting to explore concepts that I would like to see implemented into the canon story of "Dragon Ball Super" (Goku training under the Grand Priest? Sign me up, lol). Let's hope this keeps up.

First and foremost understanding what Super Dragonball Heroes is goes a long way to understanding why it has a fairly shallow and short story and run time. It's a promo anime for the game, not an actual series. Think of it as a fever dream of all things dragonball, nothing really makes sense but it looks cool, you're certain there are a lot if things out of place, and you're likely just waiting for Beerus to wake up and find out you've been in his head the whole time as the punchline to the series.

It's not amazing, but given that it's basically glorified advertising for a game I wouldn't expect a whole lot in the way of deep development. Great if you're just wanting to watch something flashy while on break at work, not so much if you're expecting it to be a sequel to DBS.

The main point of the episodes is to get you hyped up to play the Dragon Ball Heroes arcade/card game that are popular in Japan. To that end the DB-H episodes are fights between varying heroes with little in the way of dialogue or explanation. Also since they have to fill a 15 minute slot and there are several weeks between videos, the fights often start and end rather quickly. Its not a frieza-saga yelling for 5 episodes to power up match.