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We’re about five Namekian minutes (or one Earth month) away from the debut of Dragon Ball Daima, the latest anime series to come from Akira Toriyama’s iconic franchise, and the latest trailer has given us the first real glimpse at the show’s plot. Aside from showing Kid Goku going Super Saiyan for the first time outside of Dragon Ball GT, it also promises to take Dragon Ball somewhere it has never gone before – the Demon Realm.

Fans of the original anime will probably remember Debura, who was briefly an antagonist during the Buu Saga. Back then, we found out that Debura was the King of the Demon Realm, and… that’s about it, really. The manga and anime did very little to expand upon this aside from saying that Bibidi and his son Babidi hide out in the Demon Realm because it is outside the purview of the Kais.

The Dragon Ball Daima trailer seems to show that, for the first time, Goku, Vegeta, and Piccolo will be going to the Demon Realm to battle whatever force has turned them all into children. Considering most of the story and even some of the episodes were written by Akira Toriyama himself before his passing earlier this year, this is the most that the Demon Realm has been explored outside of the non-canon Dragon Ball video games.

This exploration of a new area of the Dragon Ball cosmos is made even more interesting by the new anime’s title. “Daima” itself doesn’t mean anything, but the kanji they are using for the logo could be interpreted as “evil” in English. Setting the show in the Demon Realm certainly makes sense if they are looking to explore some unknown evil in the setting.

Dragon Ball Daima is due out on October 11, 2024.

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

• How Jujutsu Kaisen subverted Shonen tropes to become one of the most popular manga of all-time
• A World without Goku: How Akira Toriyama's death could make Dragon Ball Daima the end of Goku's story
• Why the finales of My Hero Academia, Jujutsu Kaisen, and One Piece feel like the end of an era in manga
• Why I don't talk about Rurouni Kenshin as an anime journalist
• The anime industry grew 22% in 2023 - here is why we think it happened
• Why is One Piece more popular now that the anime is 25 years old? We asked around and found out
• Dan Da Dan is weird, profoundly inappropriate, and the perfect anime this season
• Why One Piece's Monkey D. Luffy is the perfect anime hero for the dark times ahead