For 90s kids, Akira Toriyama’s Dragon Ball was one of our first steps into anime and manga. It was Dragon Ball Z on Toonami that was The Show back in the day, and the franchise has gone on in the years since to produce countless games, spinoff anime, and films. With the upcoming Super Hero movie serving as the first film in four years, Toei Animation is going all out to make sure that this movie is a big deal.
Super Hero follows Piccolo (Toshio Furukawa in Japanese, Christopher Sabat in English) and Gohan (Masako Nozawa/Kyle Hebert) as they save the world from a new version of the Red Ribbon Army, a criminal organization that first popped up when Gohan’s father, Goku (Nozawa/Sean Schemmel) was a kid back in the original Dragon Ball, and who later returned in DBZ during the “Androids Saga.” With the film having released in Japan earlier this month, and set to hit other territories sometime in the next months, Toei has released a video of the film’s opening that gives a condensed version of the Ribbon story that’s run across the franchise over the years. Bur rather than simply present that footage as it originally was, Toei recreated it to fit the style of the film’s 3D animation.
If you’ve played Dragon Ball FighterZ, the film’s art style of mixing 2D with CGI will feel familiar, and it just looks awesome. Seeing the Androids and Cell in cleaner, crisper animation, even just for a moment, may bring back some memories. Beyond the movie meant to follow Super Hero, it’s clear what anime future awaits Dragon Ball, but here’s hoping that the next series, whenever it comes out, has equally gorgeous animation.
Thanks to Crunchyroll, Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero will hit theaters around the world later this summer.
[via Comic Book]
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