TL;DR: A sharper, funnier-yet-scarier and far prettier remake of Super’s debut, powered by a jaw-dropping Goku sequence and a Beerus with real bite. A little old footage lingers, but this is the comeback the series deserved.
Let’s be honest: Dragon Ball Super’s 2015 premiere has spent the last decade as the franchise’s favourite punching bag, right up there with Yamcha lying in a crater. Off-model faces, sleepy pacing and a God of Destruction who sometimes felt more “grumpy house cat” than cosmic apocalypse made it an easy target. Dragon Ball Super: Beerus, which premiered on October 11, 2026, is Toei’s attempt to wish all of that away with the Dragon Balls. It blends brand-new animation with remastered 2015 footage and leans hard on Toyotaro’s manga for its blueprint. The premise is the same old Saiyan story, with Earth at peace, Goku bored out of his mind and a purple god about to wake up hungry.
I expected a fresh coat of paint on a familiar house. Instead, episode one feels like a director’s cut that actually read the manual this time. The original played like a sitcom that occasionally remembered it had gods in it, while this version treats Beerus showing up as the “oh no” moment it was always supposed to be. That shift in attitude does more heavy lifting than any shiny new frame, and it changes the whole vibe from start to finish.
Goku’s imaginary boss rush is the remake’s mic drop
The big new addition is a manga-sourced sequence where Goku spars in his head against Frieza, Cell and Kid Buu, basically running a mental boss rush mode on his greatest hits. The 2015 anime skipped this entirely, which in hindsight was like cutting the tutorial that explains why the main character even wants to play. It shows a Goku who is restless, a bit bored and quietly itching for an opponent who can actually make him sweat. That itch is the engine of the entire Beerus arc, and it finally gets the setup it deserves.
It also looks absolutely fantastic. The animation here sits right alongside Dragon Ball DAIMA, which is about the highest compliment you can pay modern Toei, with movement that flows instead of stuttering through budget-saving still frames. It is the kind of sequence you rewind just to watch the punches land again, purely for science. If the rest of the season can hit even half this level, this remake stops being a curiosity and starts being the definitive version.
Beerus is now terrifying, and also very picky about his dinner
Beerus has always been entertaining, but on screen he rarely felt like a being who could end your planet before breakfast. Now he absolutely does. His intro opens with his snores rumbling across space, then follows him and Whis to a planet of boar-like aliens for a meal, where he obliterates half the world with a lazy finger tap because the food is too greasy. Somewhere, every restaurant critic with a one-star habit just felt seen. It is petty and absurd, and that is precisely why it is so creepy, because a god who destroys out of rage makes sense, but one who does it over oily cooking is a whole new level of unhinged.
The direction milks this with tight close-ups on his sharp, feline features, so even his goofy moments come with claws out. He is the cat who knocks your glass off the table while making eye contact, except the glass is a planet. Whis is still the perfect deadpan butler stirring the chaos, and the humour survives, but it now sits on top of genuine menace. This is the Beerus manga readers always pictured, and seeing him finally rendered like a proper final boss is deeply satisfying.
Faster, sharper and slightly less silly
The episode moves with real purpose. Lighter material, like Vegeta’s family training session, gets squished into quick flashback bubbles, and the Goten and Trunks shenanigans are trimmed so the spotlight stays on Goku and the incoming god. It is the anime equivalent of skipping the side quests to sprint the main story. For a weekly release, that momentum makes it far easier to binge-brain your way through.
Naturally, there is a catch. Some fans genuinely loved Super’s early slice-of-life goofiness, and they may feel those breathers got sent to the Shadow Realm for the sake of pace. The episode also still recycles re-edited 2015 footage, and while upgraded color grading and sound mixing do a solid disguise job, veterans will spot the seams. The new scenes are strong enough to steal the show, but this is a remix with a few old tracks, not a ground-up rebuild.
That opening deserves its own power level
Norihito Sumitomo’s 2015 score is still the backbone, now boosted by new pieces that crank up the big dramatic beats. The sound effects have a crunchy, 90s-era punch that makes every hit feel like it came straight out of a VHS tape in the best way. The original Japanese voice recordings carry over, so the cast sounds exactly as you remember. Nostalgia fans can relax.
Then there is the opening, which is easily the episode’s other MVP. It charts Goku’s evolution across the franchise and finishes on a Kamehameha image that openly tips its hat to Akira Toriyama’s original artwork, making it feel like a love letter with a title card attached. The ending, Vicke Blanka’s “Kanpeki no Peki,” flips the mood with playful, stylised visuals, like a dessert after a very spicy main course. Both bookends give the episode serious personality.
Where to watch Dragon Ball Super: Beerus
New episodes drop weekly in Japanese with English subtitles, and an English dub has not been confirmed yet. Crunchyroll simulcasts across a huge list of regions, including the Middle East, on Sundays, roughly an hour after the Fuji TV broadcast in Japan. US viewers can also catch it the same day on Hulu, while Netflix gets each episode six days later on Saturdays. The season runs 19 episodes across three arcs, wrapping on February 14, 2027.
Verdict
Dragon Ball Super: Beerus episode 1 is the glow-up this arc has needed for over a decade. The mental boss rush is stunning, Beerus finally feels like a god worth fearing, the pacing has real momentum and the opening is pure hype fuel. Recycled 2015 footage and trimmed comedy keep it from being a total transformation, and fans of the original’s goofier side may grumble. Still, newcomers get a cracking starting point, while veterans get the version of this story they always pictured in their heads. Consider this a strong recommendation.
