Dragon Ball Daima is NOT Dragon Ball GT

Forgive the oversight! I completely forgot to mention the wonderful Mix who did the incredible compositing for these drawings, bringing them as close as possible to the real deal. Check him out! twitter.com/MixtheSkele

My only real criticism for Daima at this point is that it missed a great opportunity to put the new generation to the forefront of the story. It would have been great if everyone got aged down while Goten, Trunks, Marin, Bulla(?) and Pan all retained their original ages, giving them (or at least Goten and Trunks) a chance to mature a bit or just simply take charge with the support of the now younger adult cast. Goten and Trunks are severely lacking in any sort of prominent spotlight and Daima could have been a chance to rectify that.

I just want the Moro saga with the shintani style

I will say this, I kinda wish we got more diverse ages for the main cast. Goku, Krillin, Chichi and 18 being roughly the same apparent age is fine but I wished Bulma, Yamcha, and some of the others were a bit closer to their original ages in Dragonball, at least from a design standpoint. Plus I really wish Roshi was an adult man cause it makes me think of that one episode of Futurama with the Fountain of Youth. "With my last breath, I curse YAMCHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"

"Are we really going to sit here and act like classic dragon ball doesnt exist?" Yes mark. Most of the fandom does. Some of them dont even need to pretend!

You can't help but be disappointed when Super's best arc(Moro) might never be animated and if they do by then Nozawa will be dead(87 years old now).

You can say that Daimai isn't GT 2.0, but it has the same fundamental flaw that GT had; it's trying to recapture the spirit of OG Dragon Ball by transforming Goku (and friends) into children. But here's the problem with that - Goku is not a child anymore, he's a 50-something y/o man. He married his sweet heart, raised a family, been all over the Earth, been to space, been to the after life, been to the realm of the Gods. You can't recapture the spirit of a bright-eyed boy adventuring through the world and marveling at how large and wondrous it is anymore, because Goku has literally done it all.

Just a small counterpoint: writer's have been living by the phrase "give the audience the thing they didn't know they wanted" for decades now, like it's the most profound bit of writing advice that's ever existed. And I think a lot of pop entertainment writers have, kind of unintentionally, interpreted that bit of advice pretty simplistically and dogmatically, that it's led to a general homoginizing trend in the approach to writing in popular fiction that essentially boils down to a Vince Russo esque "swerve for the sake of a swerve" style of writing. It's risky trying to come up with something the audience didn't know they wanted (and the results of whiffing on those attempts can really turn off an audience), and you're not always going to bat a thousand when you do that. Where it gets really detrimental is when you're always trying to do the unexpected and taking risks to give the audience something they didn't know they wanted because you're high on your own hype and always trying to be the smartest guy in the room, and those kinds of writers end up finding 10 things they didn't know the audience would never, ever want for everything they did that was something the audience didn't know they wanted. It's why I hate that phrase - so many creators just accept it as this universal truth they always need to be striving for and employing it dogmatically. I felt like every month in the 2000s some flash in the pan comics writer the audience ultimately turned on down the road was quoting it in a Wizard magazine puff piece interview where the interviewer was basically blowing the writer telling them how clever and awesome they were. For the most part, you should just be focusing on giving them the thing YOU are confident the audience wants, and sometimes it's going to be something they wouldn't expect they'd like, and other times it's going to be the obvious thing that you and the readers know is cool. If you don't, you're not gonna last very long because you only get to waste so many opportunities giving the audience the thing they didn't know they never wanted because they never thought anybody would be dumb enough to try to force such a bad idea to work until you came along and tried to give it to them like a hack-who-doesn't-know-they're-a-hack trying to impress their peers with how clever they think they are with a stupid swerve.

My personal issues for this upcoming series stems from my own indifference of the "aging down" while maintaining the adult's memories trope in both Western and Eastern media and by extension, isekais tend to dive into this quite a bit. While this does seem like it'll go beyond the scope of constant gags about it, the concept was something I seldomly enjoyed. That being said, I'm still open to watching the series as it's Dragon Ball to give it a fair chance on whether I'd like it or not.

My only issue with Daima is that they could've taken the series in this new direction while keeping the characters as adults.

While im hearing some of your defenses there are some core issues with Daima: A) A good LOOKING anime =/= a good story. OG DB far in apart looks the worst in terms of quality compared to what would come later, but is still widely regarded some of if not the best work in the series. DB was good cause of its characters and story, and of some of the crude humor intermixed. Super Hero left a lot of people disappointed despite how good looking it is, yet most people would say Battle of Gods (which has that shiny art style that is so hated) is one of the best as examples B) Just cause Goku is a kid equally doesn't mean this show is gonna be GT anymore than it is gonna be the OG DB. The main issue with Super WASNT an inconsistent quality of art style and animation (While definetly an issue), but the characterization of a Goku and the rest of the gang that came after Z as well as some of the villains and arcs being laughably generic. C) Making everyone kids completely reverts their progression. This is especially true for Goten and Trunks, who are basically babies now, but its bigger than that. Part of what made DB great was watching Goku and the gang grow up and eventually build a family, hell thats what some of the best Shonens follow in a nutshell (Naruto and Bleach at least). Them being kids is a reset button on progression which is probably the worst way to continue content for your franchise. If you wanted to recapture the magic of DB, why not just remaster the quality of the original show to celebrate its anniversary? rather than just re-tread on its already done ideas. Most people ive seen talk about the last two movies really enjoyed the original DB scenes remade for the call backs in their films, so why not just remaster the Goat rather than Emulate it? D) Daima basically highlights the main issue with Modern DB, it started with ROF and came back with DBS Broly and then Super Hero: Its obsession with rehashing old ideas. Not concepts, not designs (Sometimes at least) but entire arcs and characters. DBS SH was probably the most blatant example as the villain, Beast transformation, the overal plot and even some of the shots from the fight itself is a blatant rehash of the Android and Cell Sagas. I wouldnt be surprised if in 2-3 years we get a movie about Buu being a villain again. What Super Hero is to Cell Saga is what Daima is to OG DB. E) When people say they want a continuation of DBS, it isnt just about the DBS Manga. YES most people want to see the Manga events adapted into the anime the same way the Manga adapted the Anime when it came out. However, it comes from a genuine desire to see the series continue one way or another. Daima is extremely disappointing because as far as im aware; it takes place before Super. So any hopes of it maybe being a filler arc prior to the real DBS series or somehow being a tie in are basically thrown out right off the rip. You also have to take into account that Toriyama has been blue balling his fanbase with new movies every few years. So naturally we have been expecting the anime to EVENTUALLY return especially with the manga adapting the Movie events into its cannon. Toriyama could've continued DBS in his own unique way without adapting any of the manga if he so chose, but with Daima he chose to do neither valid option and instead do what is basically a soft reboot. Which much like the common criticism, isn't what DB fans have ever asked for, and as such he and his fans cannot blame the rest of the community for not accepting or welcoming Daima. F) Because this series comes before Super, and is supposedly non cannon to Super, none of what happens in it really matters. It reeks of filler, and all things like it. As a fan, you cant be expected to accept Daima and its ideas off the back of the last 5 years of building up hype towards a canonical continuation of the anime only to be given what is essentially a slap in the face. I really don't know why Toriyama would think DB fans would've accepted this without controversy knowing damn well we wanted DBS to continue and he's been sorta continuing it every few years. I mean the initial reaction to this is exactly what id expect given the fact most people dont like GT and the main plot that starts GT is "Someone made a wish to turn Goku into a kid" and granted theres more to GT but that doesn't change how similar it is conceptually. G) Initial impressions are everything. A lot of people will avoid watching this just like Heros and GT just because of the initial impression. On the opposite side, a lot of people are gonna watch this just because its DB and it "looks pretty" because as DB fans we have been starved of animated content. 2 individual movies over the course of 5 years cant make up for what having a series week by week will ever do. If the anime had actually ended when it did, Daima would be more acceptable. But since Toriyama has gone out of his way to continue the story through movies, we wont be happy till we get a proper ending. - You cant have Legacy of Goku without GT being completed, and you cant have Battle of Gods without Z being complete either. So making an entirely different show that doesnt continue the story left hanging but with the same characters of said story, is a dick move. Especially since that time, effort, and money could be better spent on something more concrete that is more likely to succeed, its better both for fans and for business' to just continue Super rather than invest in something you cant be sure people are gonna like, especially given the response to the show already. H) Toriyama went through the trouble of bringing new core characters to the series; Revamp Broly, Cheelai, Gamma 1 and 2, and DR Hedo. They are gonna be reoccurring characters in the story just like Beerus and Whis were when they were introduced. However he has yet to actually capitalize on the interest he's built in them by not continuing DBS. So it begs the question; why introduce them at all? why not just treat them like the original Broly or other Z movie villains who are one offs that either die or have to leave the universe for one reason or another like in the case of Tapion? Moreover what was the point of giving Gohan and Piccolo new transformations if he's not gonna capitalize on the interest in those Legacy characters? That's the other problem, we can assume he is 100% going to continue the series at SOME point, but Daima is gonna hinder and delay that one way or another. At least if there was no show we would know that the hiatus time was spent on that show, but if DBS returns with "budget issues" the same way it had when it first launched, we will know exactly why. Even if it DOESNT have this issue, it would still beg the question of why delay it at all when we've already waited so long. Bleach had legit reasons as to why it couldn't return for 12 years, and why it was canceled in the first place. DB does not have such excuses and we have almost waited half of that time. Daima is basically a conglomerate of the issues with Modern Dragon Ball, but also mixed with the issues of how Toriyama has treated his fanbase over the last 5 years. To reiterate what I said earlier, Daima would be acceptable when Super was actually finished, but not a moment sooner. Maybe it'll be good, great even, but at the cost of the story he left behind and it wont change the fact that none of it adds anything to previously established story we got in Super. If Toriyama wanted this to go over well he should've shelved this idea for later on when he actually finished Super. IF this series does surprisingly well, then what? make another Daima? further ignore DBS Anime return? or shelve the return of Daima for when you finish DBS? either way the order is nonsensical. Finishing Super would allow him to have the freedom to do whatever he wants with the franchise with less controversy, the same way GT has a fanbase when Z was finished despite it not being officially cannon, or DB AF when GT was finished and so on. Battle of Gods was the same way when it came out, it was free to make changes to the larger world of DB because Z had finished and GT was never cannon. Harry Potter did the same thing with the Fantastic Beast Trilogy. Daima could've been the GT or Fantastic Beasts for fans when they wanted more content when the series was well and truely over, rather than being an interruption. Daima being where it is doesn't help itself either, as itll likely be overshadowed by the DBS prior and the DBS that comes later, much like how CoD Ghosts is forgotten but not Cod Black Ops 2 or 3. Itll likely have its fanbase, but it'll likely be a much smaller fanbase than if it were allowed room to breathe without having the expectation of DBS suffocating it

Toyria doesnt understand fans want fights and shit sees dragon ball heros being so much fights but 75% of the fans ignore it exist as it been running for years at this point

Tbh I’m just really happy to see Toriyama this hands on

As someone who would like to see Super return following the manga arcs, I'm hoping Daima is a good time. It has potential to be really dynamic with the fights.

As a fan of OG dragon ball, I am both excited and nervous for this change. I am hoping it leads to the same fun adventurous and epic storytelling that series had. I'm not expecting the tournament arcs from then, but I would love for something the gives the same feel as King piccolo, or hell even the lead up through the red ribbon army. The animation alone gives me faith that this will be at the very least entertaining. Will it be good? We'll have to see.

The thing that worries me the most about this is that they're effectively "starting over", but are they keeping all the same voice actors? At this point, Goku's Japanese VA is 87! Hopefully this is a short series that is 26 episodes at most. Otherwise, they're going to have to resort to necromancy to keep these characters voiced going forward.

Me personally, I just feel deflated by the prospect of Daima doing an entirely new story that'll probably be far removed from the other stuff that Super set up that's been dangling for years now with no significant payoff. To this day since the T.O.P ended, there hasn't been a single character or story aside from maybe the games that's seriously explored the other universes and their untapped possibilities. But who knows, maybe leaving those threads to dangle is for the better, it just kinda sucks to not see any follow-through before switching gears

I know this won't happen, but I wish Stephanie Nadolny would reprise her role as Kid Goku in Daima.

My issue is it feels like an unnecessary regression instead of further progression

My biggest concern is actually that I'm struggling to see the logical reasoning behind babyfying everyone in the first place if they all keep their memories and powers, and how they're going to find logic in keeping Pan, Goten, Trunks, and even Gohan around when their parents were aged back to a point before they ever had children. If everyone who can fight back has been aged back to allow someone to take over the world by making them weaker and unaware, à la Experiment 151 from Lilo and Stitch, then leaving the main cast with their powers and wits doesn't really make sense. If it was a set age reversal for the main cast overall, then not only should certain characters cease to exist, but other characters who have lived for far longer (Roshi) or whose age has little effect on their physical appearance (Piccolo) shouldn't become the same as others and should stay relatively older or at least bigger. The main issue right now for me though, is that this was clearly something done specifically to the main cast, as the teaser trailer shows human adults being confused in the background at 2:20. So why, if everyone else only got turned into children with all their adult knowledge, would the younger characters get turned into mindless babies..? My best guess is to create some character conflicts and give a reason for certain characters to have to stay behind and look after them, which in most circumstances is considered lazy writing.