Dragon Ball Daima explained

Announced in October 2023 and premiered in October 2024, Daima was the last Dragon Ball project Toriyama built from the ground up: he supplied the story, the Demon Realm setting, character designs including the new cast, and even vehicle and monster designs, the heaviest personal hand he had taken in a television series since the original manga years. He died in March 2024, months before broadcast, and the series aired as his farewell to the franchise almost exactly forty years after the manga began.

The premise deliberately rhymes with GT while differing in cause: Gomah, new king of the Demon Realm, fears the fighters who killed Buu and uses a wish to de-age them, then kidnaps the infant Dende. Goku, the Supreme Kai, and new characters Glorio and Panzy journey through the Demon Realm, which the series finally maps as three stacked worlds with their own Dragon Balls guarded by the Tamagami, answering lore questions the franchise had left open since Dabura's introduction.

Daima's timeline placement is precise and consequential: after Buu, before Battle of Gods. That makes it a second midquel alongside Super, and its revelations about Namekian origins and the Demon Realm were written to sit underneath Super rather than replace it. Its short run, twenty episodes, also makes it the most self-contained modern Dragon Ball, closer in spirit to a long film than to Z's sprawl.

For collectors Daima arrived in a different media world: streaming-first, with Japanese Blu-ray following, and a wave of figures and a Sparking Zero DLC presence rather than manga volumes. No manga adaptation exists at the time of writing, an inversion of the franchise's history that makes Daima's art books and production materials the paper collectibles of the series.