Daima’s Ending Is a Fitting Last Note on Akira Toriyama’s Vision for Dragon Ball

Dragon Ball Daima has finally come to an end. The anime’s 20-episode run delivered an ample helping of fan service by making wishful fiction from internet forums of old real, with myriad new and returning transformations. The show also served as a huge animation flex on the part of Toei Animation weekly, putting the stalwart anime in conversation with popular power fantasy series of today like Solo Leveling with its hype fights. But Daima‘s most significant accomplishment is that it is a fitting bookend to late creator Akira Toriyama‘s 40-year legacy with the series.

When Dragon Ball Daima first aired last year, the main points of contention at the forefront of every fan’s mind were where the show was placed in the series canon—and what new revelations it would cement in its wake. For those curious, the show wastes no time confirming that it occurs sometime after the Buu saga in Dragon Ball Z and technically before the events of Dragon Ball Super. Keeping things canon in Dragon Ball has never been particularly important. Shows like GT, Super, and now Daima make references and callbacks to past events, giving an impression of concurrent storytelling, but they never felt like sequels. Instead, they always ended up feeling like loose spin-offs, driven either by financial incentives on Toei’s part or Toriyama’s desire to rectify the damage caused by the live-action movie. Dragon Ball‘s charm has always been watching Toriyama playing with his ensemble of spiky-haired toys in a series of what-if scenarios. Daima is a wish fulfillment that its creator and his worldwide fans can enjoy. Plain and simple.

This isn’t to say Daima isn’t concerned with series canon. Toriyama pulls a page out of One Piece creator Eiichiro Oda’s playbook by expanding on lore bits that were either forgotten (as he was wont to do and was teased about by Oda) or hand-waved away in Z as flavor text to make villains seem imposing. Daima sees Toriyama expand on the demon realm and Majin lore while casually retconning things here and there. Not for the sake of retcons but to tell the kind of fun-loving magical adventure Goku used to galavant through in OG Dragon Ball.  Goku, Piccolo, and Vegeta get turned into kids, Goku gets his power pole back, and the trio goes on an adventure filled with early Dragon Ball comedic hijinks and a topping of Super Saiyan fan service.

The show’s finale further punctuates this point by presenting its big hero moment in an uninterrupted, dialogue-free action fest before cutting the tension from its eye-brow-furrowing drama with an unserious gag befitting of the mangaka behind Dr. Slump.

Daima‘s final episode brings a sense of satisfaction, followed by a pang of sadness, as the world asks itself: what’s next? It’s hard not to ignore that sense of emptiness watching a posthumous work reach its conclusion. Personally, it’s always been a queasy experience watching seminal series like Berserk continue after the passing of Kentaro Miura, and Dragon Ball is at an impasse where Toei Animation will weigh making more anime without Toriyama.

Rather than entertain the sacrilegious idea of Dragon Ball continuing without Toriyama, Daima should serve as its franchise finale: the end of a mega-popular series where Toriyama set aside power creep discourse that his magnum opus helped proliferate in the wider anime industry—and brought his characters on one last sprawling adventure full of jokes and earth-shattering jabs.

You can watch Dragon Ball Daima on Crunchyroll, Netflix, and Hulu.

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.