As the first canonical Dragon Ball Super was first met with equal parts excitement and caution from fans. After the poor reception of Dragon Ball GT years back you can hardly blame them, but after a bit of a rocky start, Super has really found its stride and worked its way into the hearts of long time viewers.

Taking place only a few short months after the defeat of Majin Buu, Super’s story starts with the Goku and the Z fighters enjoying much deserved peace time with their family and friends.

However, a being of terrible power has woken and aims to challenge the legendary Saiyan warrior who defeated Buu. Just like in Z, the power levels jump exponentially with the arrival of the new foe, and our heroes will have to dig deeper than ever to match the power of a God.

This series is the true successor to Dragon Ball Z and has everything fans have come to expect: Great character development, epic battles, and new powers and techniques. However, there are plenty of things about the series even some loyal fans don’t know.

From character concepts to new directions and more, here are the 15 Crazy Facts Fans Don't Know About Dragon Ball Super.

Dragonball Evolution Inspired Toriyama To Write Again

After the epic series Dragon Ball Z came to an end in 1996, you might be surprised to know that Akira Toriyama felt relieved. While the rest of us were bracing ourselves for Dragon Ball withdrawal, Toriyama was, as he put it, “happy to finally be liberated from deadline hell."

He felt that he told the story he wanted to, and was fine leaving the future of the franchise in the hands of others. Well when that happened we got the much panned Dragon Ball GT, which is disliked by the vast majority of the fandom. However, a movie would soon come out that made GT look like the Cell Saga.

Dragonball Evolution, the live action disaster, was so hated that it is partially responsible for Toriyama writing new Dragon Ball material. Toriyama stated, “Dragon Ball once became a thing of the past to me, but after that, I got angry about the live action movie, (I) re-wrote an entire movie script."

Though we can always hate on Evolution, we should also be thankful it was so bad or we might never have gotten Super.

Belmond and Marcarita were originally lovers

In the current Tournament of Power arc, the strongest fighters from 8 of the 12 universes are competing for their very survival. If a team loses, the entire universe is erased from existence by Zen-Oh. The only being spared erasure are the Angels, of which each universe has one.

Our God and Angel are Beerus and Whis, but the other universes have theirs too, and one of the memorable pairs is universe 11’s Belmond and Marcarita. Many universes contain references to other anime or pop culture, and these two are made to look like The Joker and Harley Quinn.

Originally, Toyotaro made them to be something close to a romantic couple in the manga, but in an example of Toriyama’s selective vetoes, told him that it should be changed. Toriyama felt that because the Angels are personally dispatched by Zen-Oh, their roles would be strictly business despite being able to have feelings.

We can’t argue with that logic, and it probably is for the best since the Gods of Destruction seem to have plenty of personality and gusto. It makes sense for the Angels to be a calmer, more detached guide to them

Jiren was almost introduced sooner

Jiren is currently the strongest mortal character in the multiverse of Dragon Ball Super. He’s so powerful that he is said to be on par with a God of Destruction. Whis says that he might even be able to sur one if he tried.

This claims seem wild but based on his performance thus far, they are absolutely true. Even at 20x SSB Kaioken, Goku is not even close to his power level. We are introduced to him in episode 85 but we almost saw him a bit earlier. He was originally set to debut in the Zen Exhibition Match, where some representatives of universe 11 are seen observing the battles.

Clad in a black hood alongside Belmond and Marcarita is Toppo, leader of universe 11’s team, but it was first written as Jiren. He was also slated to debut in episode 82, when Goku has a one-on-one fight with Toppo, but the idea was nixed to save his debut for episode 85, when Toppo gathers the of the Pride Troopers for the tournament

Most Of Gohan's Scenes Are Filler

Thus far, there have been 19 filler episodes of Super, and Gohan is in many of them. While the show has gotten very good, it had a few bumps along the way.  Episodes 15-17 center around the birth of Pan, Gohan and Videl's daughter, as well as a silly subplot involving Mr. Satan putting on a martial arts tournament and once again having to hide his lack of any powers.

Later on, after the mini tournament between universes 6 & 7, Gohan return with a sick Pan who has to be healed by a Dragon Ball Wish. In the same arc, he goes on to star in a film with Mr. Satan and has to take care not to let his secret identity as Great Saiyaman be revealed.

He is blackmailed into flying a co-star around the city and must dodge the pursuit of intergalactic patrolman, Jaco. Gohan is now a top member of the Universe 7 team in the tournament of power, so let’s hope we’ve seen the last of his lackluster filler adventures for a good while.

The Anime Is The Main Product, Not The Manga

 One of the big changes in Super from Z is that in the earlier series, the manga would be released first and the anime would come after, leaving the series to come up with filler episodes if they caught up. This time around the roles are reversed, as Super is the main product while the manga is the adaptation.

Before, the manga for Z would be published in Weekly Shonen Jump, but now the manga can fall behind, despite the first issue being released the same day as the anime. There are some differences between them, however. For example, the Resurrection of F storyline is completely absent in the manga because Toyotaro had already made a manga for the movie release.

Also, there is only a brief retelling of the events from the Battle of Gods movie instead of the entire epic story we got in the film. Going forward, it is impossible to tell if the manga will fall behind again, but even if it does, we can be sure of a quality product in the hands of Toyotaro and series creator Akira Toriyama

Akira Toriyama Is Not The Head Writer

Akira Toriyama has reached God-like status among anime fans as the creator of all things Dragon Ball. In the older days, countless pages of the manga were drawn by the man himself, as well as all the writing duties. Now, things are different.

Toriyama has stepped back from the trenches a bit and now only writes major parts of the arcs, while much of the detail in between are handled by his hand-picked successor, Toyotaro. The same is true for the manga adaptation. This marks the first time in the history of Dragon Ball canon that the creator doesn’t have his hands directly in everything.

Toyotaro’s role should not be misunderstood as a filler position, as he regularly involved in not just the writing and art, but also character development and major plot details. Though Toriyama still has the stroke to change almost anything, he has gone on record in saying that he has no desire to, and has full confidence in Toyotaro’s creative vision, and that his ideas make the product better.

It Is Written With A General Outline Rather Than A Detailed Plot

As previously mentioned, Toriyama personally selected Toyotaro to be his successor, and he is now considered the main writer and artist. Toriyama’s role is more limited, and his outline leaves a lot of room for creative direction from his apprentice.

Toriyama’s major plot points include the start and the ends of major arcs, such as the Battle Of Gods, Golden Frieza, and Tournament of Power, as well as calling audibles on things like character design. For example, Beerus was originally designed much different than he is seen, as a lizard-like alien, but Toriyama changed his design to a cat-like alien after his own cat made a miraculous recovery from an illness.

In the Tournament of Power, the winners and some eliminations are outlined by Toriyama, but much of the fights within and the eliminations are left to Toyotaro. This is a huge amount of work because there are dozens of fighters and even more potential matchups, but Toyotaro seems fully capable of handling it since the tournament is probably the best part of the series just far and fans are loving it.

Goku Black Is A Rehash Of A Previous Villain

Although not canon, the Dragon Ball Movies do have a place in the hearts of fans and they aren’t going to forget them anytime soon. The Third Z movie, The Tree of Might, centers around a group of evil aliens looking for a good spot to plant a tree that will drain the planet it’s planted on of its energy.

This group is lead by a Saiyan called Turles, who looks exactly like Goku. Aside from having slightly different hair and perhaps a bit of a bulkier build, Turles can for his body double. He essentially functions as a evil counterpart to Goku, and in fact was referred to by many fans as Evil Goku for a long time.

Turles isn’t the worst villain in the franchise but he has always come off as a bit creatively lazy, not to mention that there is also Goku’s father, Bardock, who also looks just like him.  When Goku Black first showed up in the series the comparisons were made right away and still persist a bit now.

Black could be considered even more of a lazy choice because he is literally Goku’s body, only possessed by the rogue Kai, Zamasu.

The animation has had occasional hiccups

The earlier episodes of Super had some problems, namely that the story of Battle of Gods was just being stretched out into a series arc out of a 90-minute movie that was released two years earlier.

However, there was one more glaring problem - the animation quality would sometimes become noticeably awful at several points. After a torrent of fan complains, former Dragon Ball producer Norihiro Hayashida was interviewed and said that the criticisms were overly harsh and that fans should be more forgiving.

He stated that “the animators responsible for those scenes are newbies who just started working at this level in the industry, which means their skills are evolving right now. Anyway, they are good animators, and I just do not understand why they get picked on to such a degree."

Maybe not the best excuse for a poor product, but at least it’s honest. The time constraints in the animation industry are reportedly more strict in Japan than the US, so perhaps they needed to outsource some of their work out of necessity, not just to save a few bucks. Things have improved a lot since; let’s hope it stays that way.

It Has The First Canonical Power Ups In 20 Years

Having new characters and villains is great and always welcome, but fans really wanted to see new power ups and transformations in Super. They weren’t disappointed either because in order to keep up with the new power levels that the main fighters like Goku and Vegeta had, pretty much everyone else needed substantial increases to be relevant.

Goku and Vegeta had the SS God and SS Blue forms from the 2 new movies, as well as the latest Goku power up called Ultra Instinct. Along the way, they both received increases while training with Whis as well. Z fighters on the lower levels also greatly increased their viability, as Krillin and Tien Shinhan drew out their full power putting them in the millions and tens of millions in power levels, respectively.

Even lowly Yamacha managed to reach full potential and bring his power level to over a million. The power ups are not limited to our heroes though, because we saw Frieza increase to the point where he might be stronger than Goku and Vegeta, and several of the new fighters from the multiverse also gained power during the tournament.