Fans have anxiously awaited new episodes of Dragon Ball Super, but only some are aware that in its place, a newer anime called Super Dragon Ball Heroes has been releasing since 2018. The franchise’s story has continued in movies and manga with several intense arcs involving new transformations and universe-threatening foes. Super Dragon Ball Heroes also takes place after the Tournament of Power but is difficult to recommend for a few reasons.
Merchandising is how a lot of the world’s most popular franchises make most of their money, and Dragon Ball is no exception. The wildly successful trading card game Super Dragon Ball Heroes is incredibly popular in many places in the world. The original anime of the same name was created solely to promote it.
The Super Dragon Ball Heroes anime is a series released online sporadically, with episodes lasting around 10 minutes each. Its storylines involve time travel, demons, and characters from different Dragon Ball installments butting heads in events that are not canon to Dragon Ball Super‘s storyline. On paper, SDBH sounds like an exciting series, but its main problem is that it tries to make everything epic, which results in nothing feeling epic.
How To Watch Super Dragon Ball Heroes
Episodes of Super Dragon Ball Heroes Are Not Released On Television
Since 2018, episodes of the Super Dragon Ball Heroes anime have been released online unevenly, but on an average of one episode a month. Three seasons have released fifty-four episodes, most of which are available to watch for free with subtitles on the official Super Dragon Ball Heroes YouTube channel. Because the anime is strictly made to promote the card games and video games based on them, which are more popular in Japan, SDBH has yet to be released with an English dub officially.
Most of the newer Dragon Ball anime series has been produced with 2D animation, similar to Dragon Ball Super, but its most recent episodes that are part of the new Demon Invader Arc are animated with questionable 3D animation. A fourth season brings back one of Dragon Ball‘s craziest villains, and the series so far has covered arcs that make the Tournament of Power seem tame in scope.
Heroes Storylines Give Fans Everything They Thought They Wanted
Universal Rifts Allow Multiple Versions of Characters To Interact
Video games based on the Dragon Ball Heroes card game feature over-the-top storylines that use tears in the universe and time travel to justify several incarnations of popular characters interacting with each other. Those storylines have been adapted into mangas and the Super Dragon Ball Heroes anime. The manga has adapted more stories, but the anime features many surprising inclusions and team-ups, including characters from the movies, Dragon Ball GT, Super, and several original characters that completely ignore how power scaling works.
The first arc introduces characters like Zeno Goku and Super Saiyan 4 Goku, who join the DBS canon’s Goku in a convoluted trap with mysterious new foes like the monstrous Saiyan Cumber and the demonically mischievous Fu. Things escalate at a breakneck speed, and planet-breaking battles are a constant in a series that gives its character and events almost no room to breathe. The SDBH anime provides franchise fans with the nonstop battles they always thought they wanted. But it doesn’t take long to realize there is truth in the phrase “Be careful what you wish for.”
Why It’s Difficult To Recommend The Dragon Ball Heroes Anime
The Anime’s Pacing May Surpass Goku’s Instant Transmission
Dragon Ball Z is one of the best anime of all time, despite its faults. Several sections suffer from pacing issues and attempts at humor that don’t always hit as hard as the franchise’s villains. The SDBH anime is devoid of any slow pacing and almost no comedy, and it’s surprising how much it makes viewers miss the things they thought they disliked from DBZ. Tension is continuously rising in the new series, which creates a need for moments for the plot to build and the characters to develop.
Fan-favorite characters show up with no explanation, and the biggest attacks the franchise has seen fail to do any meaningful damage to the cast. These intense situations happen almost every minute in the fast-paced series, making it difficult for the plot to create meaningful tension. The storylines are based on a card game where random characters from multiple points of the franchise fight, and watching the battles animated feels like the equivalent of bashing action figures together.
Things Super Dragon Ball Heroes Does Right
While Flawed, The Anime Can Be Entertaining
Because the Super Dragon Ball Heroes anime is not canon to the franchise’s main storyline, the events, characters, and locations it explores do not officially add to the worldbuilding or lore of the beloved property. This is a shame because the web anime expands on certain mysteries that fans want to see explored in Dragon Ball series’. If they were handled with the thought and care that DBS‘s stories, like the Moro and Granolah arcs, SDBH might be taken more seriously.
Super Dragon Ball Heroes sets itself apart from most of DBS‘s anime arcs by weaving a new, albeit thin, overarching plot that intriguingly connects to past arcs. In the arcs released so far, SDBH has explored plot threads that fans are eagerly anticipating in Dragon Ball Super‘s manga when it returns. The web anime has expanded on the multiverse and introduced characters from the future, such as an older Pan, time patrol agents, and the long-teased demon realm. These aspects of the Dragon Ball universe could pique the interest of even the most skeptical fans, encouraging them to try SDBH.
The pacing of the ongoing SDBH anime and its method of storytelling may consistently confuse viewers on what is going on in the episodes, but even so, there are more than a few moments that stand out against the rest. Most notably, episode #13 of SDBH gets shared on X by users like @Burcol often for its incredible animation and direction. The particular sequence shows Goku battling Hearts, a villain who seeks to replace Dragon Ball‘s strongest character, the Omni-King Zeno. Unfortunately, there are not many more scenes like it in the promotional anime.
More Dragon Ball Is On The Way
SDBH May Hold Some Fans Over Till Daima Releases
New Super Dragon Ball Heroes episodes will continue adapting the Demon Invader Saga, which features the cosmic threat Majin Ozotto, the red-haired Xeno Trunks, and plenty of surprises. Fans hungry for more anime adventures featuring Goku can check out SDBH, but those anxious to see the final series Akira Toriyama worked on don’t need to wait long for Dragon Ball Daima to release in the Fall of 2024. Still, Super Dragon Ball Heroes has now technically been running longer than Dragon Ball Super‘s anime did, and it has the potential to entertain some hardcore fans until the next series releases.
Sources: astraryu, Super Dragon Ball Heroes, WALKINGAPPLEZZ/YouTube, Burcol/X,
