Believe it or not, there was a time when we thought the Dragon Ball franchise might be done forever following the death of Akira Toriyama. While it still remains to be seen if we’re ever going to get new Dragon Ball stories in either anime or manga form, Toei Animation is going ahead with Dragon Ball Super: Beerus, the remaster of the first arc of Dragon Ball Super, this fall. Like many fans out there, we’ve got expectations for how this new remaster could be the beginning of a new chapter for Dragon Ball.

Announced earlier in 2026, Dragon Ball Super: Beerus is an extensive remaster of the Battle of Gods arc of Dragon Ball Super. While it isn’t quite a remake of those episodes, the original announcement suggested it was more than just a quick polish to make a bit more money off the franchise. It will feature new animation, new voice recordings, and see sequences recut to change the storyline from the original.

It is that last part that really intrigues me. For me, there were three big problems with the original Dragon Ball Super anime. The first was the wildly inconsistent animation quality throughout, but particularly in the Battle of Gods and Resurrection F arcs, which seems to be one of the primary purposes of the Beerus remake. This new cut will include redrawn scenes made to bridge the gaps created by the remastered plot. How well they match the existing animation to the new scenes will be a deciding factor in how successful it is. Some of the new stuff in the Dragon Ball Kai edit was difficult to look at.

More than merely bringing the existing animation up to the standard people expect from a Dragon Ball anime, though, is the promise of fixing some of the weird story quirks of Dragon Ball Super. When Dragon Ball Super first aired, it was trying to emulate the release schedule of the original series, which was a constant churn of new episodes all year long with no breaks. This resulted in poor pacing and copious filler arcs and may have contributed to the aforementioned animation issues.

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The biggest change won’t just be cutting a lot of the filler in Dragon Ball Super; it will be finding a way to merge the events of the manga and the anime into one story. As we’ve discussed before, these two formats were created separately, with two teams taking instructions from Akira Toriyama and going in their own directions. The result was two interpretations of Dragon Ball Super, with the same events happening in different ways. Neither could make a legitimate claim to being the true “canon.”

Dragon Ball Super: Beerus is a chance to merge these two seemingly separate universes into one; like Marvel’s Secret Wars storyline but on a smaller scale. It is a chance to give us that definitive version of events and set the stage for new stories to come. Yes, getting some of the most egregious animation issues sorted, especially from the Battle of Gods and Resurrection F arcs, will help bring the visuals up to the standard that fans expect from one of the biggest and most popular anime series of all time, but sorting out the messy and uneven discrepancies between the manga and the anime will make the series as a whole clearer.

Akira Toriyama’s death throws the entire concept of canon into question for the Dragon Ball franchise going forward. Dragon Ball Super, both the anime and the manga, are likely the final chapter of his incredible legacy in the industry. Dragon Ball Super: Beerus is a chance to update its rushed visuals, but the most important thing it can do is marry the contrasting stories between the manga and anime.

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