Dragon Ball: Daima Receives Release Date, Synopsis, & Teaser Footage At NYCC

As far as long-running franchises go, few can say they've been going on for as long as "Dragon Ball." Having actively created new content for nearly four decades, Akira Toriyama's beloved shōnen series has gone through many permutations over the years, and not all of them have been received with the same level of enthusiasm as others.

Now, the franchise is set to return for more with a new series called "Dragon Ball Daima," which was announced at New York Comic Con. Set to include "original work, story, and character design" by Toriyama himself, it's safe to say that the next branch of the famed anime will be in well-practiced hands. However, the premise may have audiences shuddering at the memory of "Dragon Ball GT," a series that was roundly rejected by many fans.

The seemingly more light-hearted "Dragon Ball Daima" appears to reimagine most of the main cast members as children — a premise that is at least familiar for Goku. Can the newest story from Toriyama skip making those "GT" mistakes all over again, though?

The release date for "Dragon Ball Daima" is currently set for the fall anime season in 2024, which puts it roughly a year off. This could be due to animation that looks a little sharper than what we're used to from the older "Dragon Ball" series. While "Dragon Ball Super" already looks good, this new spin seems to be using more CG animation than its predecessor, putting it more in line with the most recent movie. How fans of the more traditional animation that comprises most of the franchise will appreciate this change is likely subject to how frequently it's used and how well it melds with the standard animation.

As for how long we can expect "Daima" to run for, that will probably largely depend on how popular it is. Still, few have a reputation in the anime and manga industry on the same level as Akira Toriyama, so chances are that we're in for a lot of episodes with these younger and cuter versions of our favorite "Dragon Ball" heroes and villains. After all, Toriyama is not exactly known for the brevity of his storytelling, and his stories only seem to get longer when they make the jump from the page to the screen.

While fans could be forgiven for thinking that "Dragon Ball Daima" might simply be a cute spin-off of a popular anime in the vein of "Attack on Titan: Junior High," it looks like this could actually be canonical to the central mythology of the franchise. In the newly available "Daima" footage, the characters from the series all seem to all know each other and interact with one another from the start — as if they remember their lives and events from prior "Dragon Ball" sagas.

Considering that Shenron appears early on in the trailer with the Dragon Balls, seemingly granting someone's wish, it looks like this will be a part of the ongoing continuity. However, what wish would lead to something like this and who might've asked for it in the first place both remain a mystery.

We also see two overseers looking at multiple timelines of the "Dragon Ball" universe, adding more credence to the idea that this series is connected to the main continuity. Furthermore, as the adult characters have morphed to kids, their own kids look to have changed into babies, at least if Trunks' brief appearance is any indication. Still, the inclusion of Frieza at the end of the trailer shows that there will indeed be some of those classic epic battles that the franchise is known for.

As you can see, there is indeed a trailer, and strangely, Buu is in it. Not only is the character who shows up as the final villain in "Dragon Ball Z" in the trailer, but he seems to be one of the only characters who is carrying over with his original design rather than being shrunk down like the chibi-style versions of the other characters.

With all of the above information in mind, it seems like we can safely surmise that this story might take place after the events of "Dragon Ball Super." Now that multiverses are all the rage, this could mean that Akira Toriyama is taking a page out of Western playbooks and mixing and mashing multiple versions of his characters in "Daima."

As for what the word "Daima" means, we found multiple translations online, but they all seem to share common words like "constant," "forever," and "everlasting," which could offer further clues into what the focus of the new series will be. Either way, though, Akira Toriyama's legions of fans will likely show up for this continuation of the franchise in the same way they have in the past.