Popverse's top stories

• John Boyega says if he were to produce Star Wars, it would've been different - and at Florida Supercon 2025, he told us how
• What to Watch October 2025: Halloween is just around the corner, and Netflix's Monster: The Ed Gein Story, Prime Video's Hazbin Hotel, and HBO's IT: Welcome to Derry are just a few ways to stream and scream
• Demon Slayer has given Sony a box office win when they needed it the most

It isn’t just the new animation style that sets Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero apart from what had come before. Aside from the obvious change to a 3D animation style, the production team wanted to focus on smaller details to give Dragon Ball a more fashionable and modern look. According to producer Norihiro Hayashida, the central design philosophy for the most recent Dragon Ball movie was the concept of “pop”.

During the Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero panel at New York Comic Con 2021, Dragon Ball editor Akio Iyoku explained that the design team focused heavily on the small details in the movie. “Beyond the character designs themselves, we were very particular, very detailed in the smaller items and the accessories and things like that.

Norihiro added, “One of the themes we wanted to portray in this film was the theme of ‘pop’. I’m not sure if ‘pop’ has the same meaning in English as it does in Japanese, but in Japanese we use ‘pop’ to describe things that are fashionable, cool, beautiful. Something that’s contemporary and modern. So together with the director, we really researched some unprecedented uses of movement, colors, and textures so we could make some really sophisticated artwork for this film.”

Certainly, the duo of Gamma 1 and Gamma 2, the two antagonist-turned-hero androids from the film, embodies this idea of a more stylish, modern take on the Dragon Ball universe. Together with the 3D animation that was used, it makes Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero a movie unlike any other in the Dragon Ball universe.        

You can watch the full Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero panel here.

Each week, Popverse's resident anime expert Trent Cannon runs down the latest and, dare we say "greatest," in anime and manga in Popverse Jump. Some recent columns have included... 

• Aggretsuko vs Chainsaw Man: Two Wildly different anine with the same anti-capitalist message
• The Summer Anime season return of Kaiju No. 8, Sakamoto Days, & Dan Da Dan are forcing me to break my vow of watching less anime
• From Tomo-Chan to Oshi No Ko: How some of your favorite manga creators got their start in hentai
• Piracy is baked into anime's past, but, like Crunchyroll, we should move on from it
• Flying whales, mechs, and Miyazaki vibes: Inside Netflix's Leviathan anime with the people who made it
• How AI translations of manga continues the 'enshitification' of the medium, and why Japanese publishers are "less precious" about it
• I never wanted a Cyberpunk Edgerunners sequel, but God help me I'm going to watch it
• The Summer Hikaru Died delivers its cosmic horror at an agonizingly slow pace
• The one thing that Dan Da Dan does better than Demon Slayer ever did
• Studio Ghibli movies have never been as cozy as you think they are and that's what makes them magic