I was fortunate enough to catch the debut of Dragon Ball Daima and thought I should write a short, spoiler free review for those who still haven't watched it.
From a visual standpoint this is the best a TV show centered around Dragon Ball has ever looked (excluding movies like DBS Broly of course). Chief animation supervisor of this episode, Chikashi Kubota, who formerly worked on Space Dandy, OPM and Mob Psycho really respects the franchise and that is shown from the get go. I believe he animates most of the early battle animation between some of the main characters and I loved the minimalistic shading, idiosyncratic animation style and beautiful impact frames. Ken Otsuka and Miyako Tsuji also come in for some impactful moments here and there. Those were the three main animators I was able to pick out from style alone, but I am sure I missed a lot too. There ARE SOME 3D CGI parts here and there, but they are very minimal and not distracting at all. It is still mostly a 2D production unlike Super Hero the movie.
Naoyuki wada , the director of cinematography went all out to keep the aesthetic consistent with the setting, you have no trouble telling the realms apart through their visual signature. The script is simple and sets up future episodes without too much difficulty, there are a lot of good slice of life moments and the voice acting (I have only heard the japanese one so far) was really good. Specially most of the new characters sport fantastic voice acting and couple that with the amazing , expressive character animation, its a solid combo.
I think this is a truly fitting way to pay tribute to Akira Toriyama, truly the best production a Dragon Ball TV series has ever had.
