Dragon Ball Super: Beerus Brought a Strong Panel and a Stronger Super to New York Comic Con

If I had a nickel for every time I’d seen God of Destruction Beerus introduced to the Dragon Ball anime, I’d have three nickels. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened thrice. In this case though, third time is truly the charm, especially as far as the non-theatrical version of the arc goes. During one of the first major panels of New York Comic Con 2026’s first day, 3000 fans came together for the Dragon Ball Super: Beerus Special Panel, which featured news on upcoming releases related to the franchise, commentary from English dub voice actors, and, most importantly, the world premiere screening of Episode 1, three days ahead of the series’ Japan premiere on Sunday, October 11.

The Panel

I won’t go over each of the individual announcements at length here, but there were a variety of updates around the convention’s Dragon Ball booth and the franchise writ large, including updates around card games, new characters for Dragon Ball Legends and Dokkan, and a trailer for Dragon Ball Xenoverse 3 showing off the incredible amount of customization that the Xenoverse games are known for.

A pleasant surprise came in the form of a special video from Japanese voice actors Masako Nozawa (Son Goku) and Koichi Yamadera (Beerus) encouraging fans to check out the new series, with the latter of the two video messages concluding in Nozawa-san leading the full room in a group Kamehameha. During the message, Nozawa-san shared “Goku and his friends just keep getting stronger, and the story Toriyama-sensei created is truly captivating. I would be delighted if people all over the world enjoyed it” with Yamadera-san sharing “Beerus is right there in the title, so please be sure to watch Beerus in action; how cool he is, how frightening, how strong!”

English dub voice actors Jason Douglas (Beerus) and Ian Sinclair (Whis) remarked on the energy of the room and brought up the exciting possibilities stemming from additional enhancements to the future plot point of Dragon Ball Super. Depending on how faithful this new series decides to stick to the manga, entire fights could flow differently and certain characters could get a lot more attention. Vegeta, for example, performs (in my opinion) more impressively in the Goku Black arc in the manga vs the original Dragon Ball Super anime, with the anime blatantly giving Goku some of his more impressive feats. Similarly, characters like Master Roshi have impressive moments in the manga. Seeing that animated would be incredible. I would have appreciated if the panel gave a bit more time to Q&A with the voice actors about the production process of the new anime series, e.g. re-recording any scenes or making adjustments to others, perhaps at the expense of the many trailers shown.

A Very Much Improved Dragon Ball Super

Dragon Ball Super: Beerus Episode 1 was a perfect combination of the best parts of Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods, the Dragon Ball Super manga, and the original Dragon Ball Super anime. While I won’t spoil the exact sequences that came from each and which are absent compared to the original Dragon Ball Super anime, I’ll note in broad strokes how it seems Dragon Ball Super: Beerus is approaching this enhanced version of the series.

First and foremost, while it clearly is more faithful to the manga, it is not a strict adaptation of the manga. This is for the best too; the manga in my opinion made an effort to breeze through some of the earlier arcs that had already been released as both movies and an anime. In the Dragon Ball Super manga, for example, Goku and Beerus meet and have their complete first fight within the first two chapters. Battle of Gods doesn’t reach that same moment until nearly a third of the way into it’s runtime, and the original Dragon Ball Super anime takes 5 episodes to get there.

There is one particular scene from early in the manga that I thought the anime adapted in a very nice way, with excellent, smooth animation (somewhat reminiscent of the better animated segments of the Tournament of Power) that set the tone for the story both in terms of quality and chronology. Similarly, there are elements of Beerus’ introduction coming from the movie that I appreciated seeing in the anime, if for no other reason than they look cool and add to the destructive mystique about him. In both cases, and for other characters like Vegeta, the series leverages action and showing of the character rather than narration explaining who they are, which I appreciated in comparison to the first anime series.

What is most noticeable immediately from this first episode is the complete absence of (arguably) superfluous plot points from the original Dragon Ball Super anime. This, to me, was one of the more painful parts of Dragon Ball Super. While not necessarily filler given the split-canon of the anime and manga, the original anime had a lot of moments where I just simply was not invested in what was happening on screen. Sure, some elements, like the focus on Gohan and Videl’s wedding, brought forth opportunity for interactions you wouldn’t expect in a Dragon Ball series, like a slight exploration of Gohan’s guilt at not being able to shower Videl with gifts due to being nowhere as rich as her. But even those moments came alongside a lot of others I felt slowed the pace of the series too much. Some of those types of moments are absent (at least so far), and I’m ultimately fine losing them to streamline the rest of the plot. Again, as I mentioned earlier, it took 5 episodes in the original anime for Goku and Beerus to actually fight.

Dragon Ball Super: Beerus Episode 1 made it abundantly clear that much of these non-core moments are likely to be what gets adjusted as part of the series restructured narrative. I think that the trade off is fine and likely to be a welcome one for a lot of fans. Visually, the anime looks great in Episode 1, though the major fights of the series are where we’ll know if improvements to the oft derided cuts from Dragon Ball Super will have some improvements. From what I’ve seen thus far, I’m quite hopeful. Oh, and as an aside, the opening is an absolute banger.

Dragon Ball Super: Beerus premieres in Japan on Sunday, October 11. North American streaming platforms and timing will be announced separately.