Dragonball Super manga Volume 1 (Chapter 1)

By Mark Rodriguez

With the upcoming Dragonball Super: Broly movie on the horizon and the American dub FINALLY catching up to the Universal Survival Arc, I got my hands on the Dragonball Super manga. Akira Toriyama managed to get someone else to draw the manga this time, a successor of sorts named Toyotarou. What surprised me the most was how rushed and condensed everything seems. There was actually a separate manga based on the Resurrection F movie, so it kinda makes sense for the manga to skip that arc, but there were other things that surprised me. Let's check out the first volume.

Note- the manga summary and my thoughts are based on how the manga is shown. This is kind of assuming you know about Goku and DBZ so I won't be using too many explanations unless the story itself does so.

In a nutshell though, Dragonball and Dragonball Z is the story of Goku and his friends who are usually either training to become stronger for the next big tournament, collecting the 7 Dragonballs that grant wishes before the bad guys do, or trying to save the world from destruction from powerful enemies like Freeza, Cell and Majin Buu. While Dragonball focused more on the Dragonballs, tournaments and comedy, Dragonball Z was more focused on fighting powerful villains and more and more transformations.

Chapter 1- God of Destruction's Premonition

The first volume begins with a flashback page of when Goku used the Super Genki Dama to defeat Majin Buu with the help of Vegeta and Mr. Satan. A few years later, Goku has gotten a job as a farmer. Goten flies in to visit with some food and Goku lets his son ride the tractor while he eats. Goku powers up to Super Saiyan and does some training as he envisions himself fighting against Freeza, Cell and even Majin Buu. As he trains with his eyes closed, Goku senses that Goten is about to fall over the side of the hill with the tractor and he quickly catches both.

Goku tells Goten that he's training, since you never know when someone else more powerful might show up. Chichi doesn't let him train since they need money, and Goten tells him that even Gyu Mao (Chichi's dad) is broke now. Regardless, Goku would rather slack off on work and train somewhere like Kaioh Sama's planet. Just then Mr. Satan arrives.

Elsewhere on another planet, Lord Beerus, the God of Destruction is enjoying a meal prepared by the planet's inhabitants. They were really trying to poison him, but it didn't work. Beerus has had enough and prepares to destroy their planet. The aliens bring up their weapons as a last ditch effort but the planet explodes. Beerus tells his assistant Whis that the planet exploding reminded him of a premonition he had.

Back on Earth, Mr. Satan says he was given 100 million zeni (the currency in Dragon World) due to defeating Majin Buu, but he feels the money really belongs to Goku. Goku doesn't want the money and says Satan also helped in the fight back then. Goten says with that much money he wouldn't have to work anymore and Chichi would let him train with Kaioh Sama. In that case, Goku accepts the money.

Beerus says he saw something called the Super Saiyan God in his premonition, but can't remember too much about it. Whis says he should go home for some rest and he agrees. Meanwhile on Kaioshinkai, Kaiohshin notices that a planet has vanished and Elder Kaioshin shows concern.

The bonus page shows Satan also having offered the money to Vegeta beforehand, who tells him to go away since they have enough.

My Thoughts- 

This was a short and simple chapter that shows where Goku and his family are before Beerus enters their lives. Beerus pretty much kickstarts this new series as he introduces new gods, new god forms and the concepts of other universes that will last throughout the story. While this chapter is short, I figured it would be best to make each chapter its own article because while Volume 1 only has 9 chapters, the later volumes have 4 or so. This would make the reviews extremely long and you shouldn't have to wade through all that. 

As most of you would know, the first few manga chapters re-adapt the important parts of  the Dragonball Z Battle of Gods movie. In case you're wondering why it was still called DBZ (as well as the following Resurrection F movie), it's because it was before the idea of a new anime series called Super came to be. While in many cases the manga comes first, in this case the DBZ movies and some of the Super anime came before the manga. This will lead to a bunch of changes between the manga and the anime, mostly because for a while the manga will have the benefit of hindsight. Also this entire series takes place during the 10 year time skip between the defeat of Majin Buu and the 28th Tenkaichi Budokai where Goku first meets Uub which ends the original Dragonball Z story.

I have to say, I did like seeing the cameos of the former villains, particularly Cell since he doesn't return to this series in the way Freeza does.