It’s difficult to accept change when you can’t reconcile long-standing feelings with your current reality. Trust me, I was like most critics when the news first came out in October 2023 Daima from the Dragon Ballupcoming release. It was difficult to swallow after five and a half years of waiting Super Dragon Ballthe epic Tournament of Power has ended and we are back to weekly gameplay Dragon Ball the anime episodes were supposed to be with Goku and his gang as kids…again! However, after reluctantly watching the first few episodes, I quickly realized that I was wrong, as were all of you.
In 2025, the coolest thing to do is shit Dragon Ball series and for good reason. Fight animations are not as carefully choreographed as they are today Attack on Titan Or Jujutsu Kaisen, and the animators usually hide this fact by making it seem like they’re fighting too speedy for us to even properly understand the action. A lot Super Dragon Ball focused on constantly changing power dynamics between transformations, which lowered the tension by simply introducing a random transformation (Super Saiyan Blue Evolved? WTF?). Goku is an idiot, Gohan is annoyingly weakened, and Vegeta just loses everything. Here’s why Always shuts down all this noise.
In just 15 beautifully animated episodes, the newest series is back Dragon Ball franchise to its roots. Goku’s Super Saiyan transformation was a goosebump-inducing rarity, a testament to the legendary status of his power. Only the fifth episode Always that Goku briefly undergoes a golden transformation to dispatch King Kadan’s soldiers, and only returned to this form a few times over the course of the next 10 episodes. Instead, the series prioritized hand-to-hand combat (with some Power Pole action thrown in) to ground the fantastic feats in some form of reality. The anime also surprised everyone when Vegeta revealed his Super Saiyan 3 transformation in episode 12 to win the Dragon Ball from Tamagami number two. In this one moment, not only was the file’s main flaw completely rewritten Dragon Ball series (Vgeta actually allowed Kakarot and Gotenks to go through SSJ3, but not him?), but he made it clear that Dragon Ball The canon was open to revision in Always.
The fight choreography is also some of the best the series has seen since Broly’s masterful duel with Goku and Vegeta in Dragon Ball Super: Broly movie from 2018. Goku dodges Tamagami Number Three’s ki blasts only to deliver destabilizing kicks to his legs, and performs backflips in the air to avoid Tamagami’s Thor-like hammer strike before breaking the hilt with his power staff in one move that literally made me cry my eyes out. Fights in Always feel like they have real stakes and aren’t just throwaways to fill time and keep people entertained with dazzling ki blasts.
The story also does a great job of developing Dragon Ball Z the arcs we love, without going into polarization Super Dragon Ball stories. Let the record show Super Dragon Ball is wildly underrated, and the Tournament of Power is probably the greatest storyline in the entire story Dragon Ball. That being said, Super did delve into gods controlling everything at times. The combined Zamasu vs. Blue Vegito was too amazing to be solved by the newly introduced Zeno, God of Everything, simply wiping the evil one from existence. Daima from the Dragon Ball Picking up right after the fan-favorite Buu saga and expanding on it without negating what happened in it was extremely successful.
Sure, Goku is still an idiot and isn’t as stoic as he was when he fought Cell or Frieza Dragon Ball Z Most episodes focus more on exploration than combat. However, with the introduction of fascinating characters like Glorio, Doctor Arinsu, and Panzy, traveling through the newly discovered Demon Worlds no longer feels like a chore and more like an excavation in Dragon Ball a past that has been right under our noses all this time. We may only have one more month left Always in front of him season finalethat’s why I’m asking all of you, lovers and haters, to honestly watch this fantastic series and then honestly look in the mirror, because it’s time to admit Always is exactly what Dragon Ball franchise needed and deserved.
