Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero

ドラゴンボール超スーパーヒーロー

8.0(1)

OtakuDen

7.6(92,261)

MAL Score

Ranked #1809

Popularity #1784

Action
Adventure
Fantasy
Martial Arts

Episodes: 1
Duration: 1 hr 39 min
Aired: Jun 11, 2022
Status: Finished Airing

Synopsis

Years after his father’s defeat at the hands of a young Son Gokuu, Magenta sets his sights on revenge against Gokuu’s loved ones. Determined to rebuild the fallen Red Ribbon Army, he recruits Dr. Hedo—the grandson of Dr. Gero—and steers him into creating a new generation of “superhero” androids. By convincing Hedo that Earth’s strongest defenders are actually alien threats, Magenta turns the scientist’s ambitions toward eliminating Gokuu.

With Gokuu and Vegeta training offworld, Piccolo steps in to mentor Pan, Gokuu’s young granddaughter, echoing the role he once played for her father, Gohan. Now focused on academics and far removed from his fighting days, Gohan is pulled back into battle when Gamma 1 and Gamma 2—Hedo’s latest androids—appear and disrupt their peace. As the Gammas pursue what they believe is justice, a darker plan takes shape within Red Ribbon’s headquarters, forcing Piccolo and Gohan to act decisively to protect Pan and defend Earth from a looming mechanical threat.

Otaku Consensus

With mid-7 reception across MAL (7.59 from 90,909 votes) and AniList (76/100), Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero lands as a confident crowd-pleaser rather than a franchise peak: Tetsurou Kodama’s brisk direction and Toei Animation’s full-CGI action give Piccolo and Gohan a more character-forward showcase than the usual Saiyan arms race. Its strongest asset is the Akira Toriyama-designed superhero/android flavor, while the most common sticking point is the CG pipeline itself, especially for viewers who prefer Dragon Ball’s hand-drawn impact and heavier physical texture.

Why You Should Watch

If you want Dragon Ball that spends its power fantasy on character history instead of another Goku ladder climb, this is the franchise entry to queue. It scratches the same itch as Dragon Ball Z’s punch-first training-room comedy and My Hero Academia’s cape-and-code hero theater, but compresses both into a single theatrical burst with no tournament bracket or recap sprawl. The hook is specific: Piccolo and Gohan get tactical, funny, adult-coded material inside a Toei Animation CG martial-arts spectacle, while the Gamma androids bring clean superhero poses and cyborg design language to the Red Ribbon legacy. Viewers curious about full-CGI Dragon Ball will get the clearest test case of the format’s speed, camera freedom, and occasional plasticity.

Key Characters

P
Piccolo
Piccolo is the film’s real center of gravity, carrying scenes through tactical calm, deadpan timing, and a mentor energy that makes his long history with the Son family feel active rather than nostalgic.
G
Gohan
Gohan remains compelling because his strength is never just a power level; fans read him as a character split between intellectual adulthood and a combat inheritance he cannot fully outgrow.
P
Pan
Pan gives the film its generational spark, turning old-school Piccolo training dynamics into something lighter, more playful, and pointedly tied to Dragon Ball’s family legacy.
G
Gamma 1 and Gamma 2
Gamma 1 and Gamma 2 stand out as androids built around superhero performance, with henshin-style posing and moral self-image making them more than another pair of numbered weapons.

What Makes It Stand Out

1
Toei Animation commits to a full-CGI feature approach rather than using CG only for isolated effects, with Jae-Hun Jeong credited as CG Director. That makes the film a major franchise test of whether Dragon Ball’s elastic fights can survive a 3D production pipeline.
2
The movie’s structure shifts attention away from the franchise’s default Goku-and-Vegeta escalation loop and puts Piccolo and Gohan in the driver’s seat. That choice gives the action a different rhythm: more surveillance, misdirection, mentoring, and delayed release than the standard duel-to-transformation build.
3
AniList’s high-confidence tags tell you exactly what flavor this entry leans into: Superhero at 96%, Super Power at 95%, Full CGI at 93%, Martial Arts at 88%, Henshin at 88%, and Cyborg at 88%. It is Dragon Ball filtered through tokusatsu hero language as much as through classic battle shounen.
4
The design credits underline how engineered the film’s tech aesthetic is: Akira Toriyama handled original character design, Hidemitsu Masui is credited for mechanical design, and Shouhei Tamura for prop design. That division matters in a movie where android bodies, uniforms, gadgets, and vehicles carry much of the visual identity.
5
Its one-episode listing reflects its theatrical-film format, so the pacing is closer to a contained event than a TV arc. At roughly a single sitting, it offers modern Dragon Ball spectacle without the long-form arc padding that can define the series experience.

Fun Facts & Trivia

Fun fact 1: Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero aired on June 11, 2022 and is cataloged as a finished, single-episode anime film rather than a TV season or OVA run.
Fun fact 2: Akira Toriyama is credited both as the original creator and for original character design, keeping the new superhero and android silhouettes tied directly to the franchise’s founding visual language.
Fun fact 3: The visual pipeline lists Nobuhito Sue as Art Director, Rumiko Nagai for Color Design, and Yuri Tamura for Editing, highlighting how the film’s CG look still depended on traditional anime production departments beyond the 3D team.
Fun fact 4: Mutsuhiro Nishimura handled sound effects, a key credit for a Dragon Ball film where impacts, energy releases, mechanical movement, and transformation beats carry as much identity as the music.
Fun fact 5: Its database footprint is notably balanced: on MyAnimeList it holds a 7.59 score from 90,909 votes with rank #1804 and popularity #1799, while AniList lists 1,297 favorites alongside a 76/100 score.