If anything Dragon Ball Super is basically fanfiction. Drawn by a former fan manga author Toyotaro.
So what is the story of Dragon Ball Super? If you read a handful of Dragon Ball fanfiction, you can predict most of what happens. First we get the Bills arc which is a movie retelling told in a way better paced matter. Seeing how short it is you can tell that most the movie was just a waste of time and the manga is cutting most of it.
In short it is about an oversensitive destroyer god who likes food a little too much and wants to fight Super Saiyan God, a red pallet swap of a Saiyan's base form. #OGTransformationDoNotSteal
The achievement of the form was also lazy. Just holding hands with other Saiyans that are "pure" hearted. They could have done the ritual on each other which wasn't established not to be possible. That would have saved them a lot of trouble later on.
Apparently they fought Frieza off screen and got a new power up right after Super Saiyan God also off screen. You have to watch Revival of F to fill the gaps and you don't really miss much not seeing it. But the manga did a terrible job in introducing Super Saiyan Blue to the reader which is short Super Saiyan God Super Saiyan. It is another pallet swap power up but this time of an actual Super Saiyan from.
We see a pointless Tournament which only exist to introduce the Super Dragon Balls which are always collected off screen and set up another Tournament. The fights in the Tournament were better than in the anime, but still not interesting. The fight against the final boss was pretty underwhelming.
The Future Trunks arc takes place in the future timeline. An Evil Goku referred as Black is causing chaos and is somehow related to a Kaioshin from Universe 10. That arc gets immediately ruined by the introduction of the Zeno Button meaning no matter how strong the enemy is, there is no tension since Goku can use the button at any point.
Nothing in that arc really affects the story of Dragon Ball Super and can be skipped honestly. Just like in the anime.
Tournament of Power is by far the worst arc in the franchise. Goku is shown to be the dumbest character forgetting everything he learned over the course of the series and being a complete asshole. It also set up Vegeta's role in the series. Someone obsessed with Kakarot and they keep taking turns fighting. Then Vegeta would be beaten up and has to realize that either:
- "Only Kakarot can save us"
- "We need to work together, Kakarot."
Like in the anime and movies Goku and Vegeta keep doing the same mistakes which even apply to the arcs I won't cover.
If you read Toyotaro's fan manga, you will see several similarities to his original work. The difference being that Super isn't as engaging as Dragon Ball Toyble AF. And the panelling isn't as good. There is also many times Toyotaro traces scenes or recreates scenes for the sake of "homages". Homages are fine if they aren't done every chapter.
Fanservice in general is plenty in Super and it ain't good. We get Vegito but with the cost of ruining what made him special. We get female Super Saiyans under the cost of ruining the efforts of established characters.
We see Roshi fight again in exchange of ruining the power scaling and breaking the rules of the series. That is why fights in Dragon Ball Super can't be taken seriously. Nothing makes sense and anyone can be stronger than anyone through "off screen training". They become literally as strong as the writers want. And while that can be said about any series, if it doesn't seem believable, then it isn't well done. That is the difference between a well-told story and a badly told one.
One last criticism are the transformation power ups. They are all pallet swaps so far:
- Golden Frieza: Final Form Frieza but Gold
- Super Saiyan God: Base form Saiyan with reddish pink hair
- Super Saiyan Blue: Blue haired Super Saiyan
- Super Saiyan Rose: Pink haired Super Saiyan
- Ultra Instinct: White Haired Super Saiyan God
and it will go on more and more.
Overall it is impossible for me to recommend this to anyone unless you are desperate for more Dragon Ball.
