Dragon Ball Super: Beerus Episode 1 Review: The Remaster Earns the Word 'Enhanced'

Eleven years almost to the day after Dragon Ball Super first aired, a god of destruction woke up hungry all over again. Episode 1 of Dragon Ball Super: Beerus premiered October 11 on Fuji TV, and the question hanging over it was never whether Toei could clean up some old frames. It was whether an "ENHANCED" remaster could justify spending a premiere-night slot on a saga everyone already knows the ending to. Based on the episode that actually aired, the answer is a clear yes.

How the episode opens is the whole pitch

The original 2015 broadcast took its time getting to Beerus, easing viewers in through Earth, the aftermath of the Frieza arc, and a slower buildup before the god of destruction became the obvious threat. This premiere does not do that. It opens on Beerus and Whis directly, and it borrows its introduction of Beerus from the Battle of Gods movie rather than the slower television pacing of the original series. That is a small structural choice with a big effect: the episode spends its first minutes establishing exactly how dangerous and bored this character is, instead of treating him as a twist to reveal later.

It is the right call for a remaster that already knows its audience has seen this story. Nobody watching in 2026 needs the mystery box. What they need is the version of Beerus that actually feels like a planet-erasing threat from his first scene, and that is what episode 1 delivers.

What "enhanced" looks like in motion

The marketing language around this project promised a full re-render of existing footage plus new, redrawn cuts folded into old scenes, and the premiere backs that up. This is not a clip show with a fresh coat of paint on the biggest moments. The new material is distributed through scenes that already existed, smoothing over exactly the stretches that fans have complained about for a decade, the ones where the original's weekly broadcast schedule showed.

That matters because the Battle of Gods Saga has a specific reputation problem. It introduced one of the franchise's best villains in Beerus and one of its most interesting transformations in Super Saiyan God, wrapped in animation that visibly struggled to keep up with its own ambitions in 2015. Episode 1 does not reinvent what happens. It reinvents how it looks happening, and for a saga whose biggest liability was always its original presentation, that is precisely the fix it needed.

Early reaction: closer to the manga than the original was

A screening at New York Comic Con ran three days ahead of the Japan broadcast, giving the first real audience reaction a head start on the premiere itself. The verdict coming out of that screening was that episode 1 plays like a genuine combination of the best parts of the Battle of Gods movie, the Dragon Ball Super manga, and the original television anime, rather than picking one source and ignoring the others. The reaction specifically flagged the new version as more faithful to the manga's structure, while stopping short of calling it a strict panel-for-panel adaptation.

That is a meaningful distinction for a franchise that has three overlapping tellings of this exact story. The movie got the mood right but compressed the plot. The original anime had the runtime but diluted the pacing. If episode 1 is actually threading between those two problems instead of inheriting one of them, that is the clearest sign yet that this remaster is a real production effort and not a licensing-driven reissue.

The one complaint so far, and why it does not land on the episode itself

The only real criticism attached to the premiere so far is about the NYCC panel format, not the episode: attendees wanted more trailer content and got more voice cast Q&A instead. That is a convention scheduling gripe, not a verdict on the animation, the pacing, or the writing, and it is worth separating from an actual review of what aired. Judged on its own, episode 1 has not drawn the kind of criticism that typically follows a rushed or cynical remaster.

Where this leaves the Battle of Gods Saga

Beerus has nineteen episodes to cover three arcs, the original Battle of Gods stretch, Resurrection 'F', and the Champa Tournament Saga, finishing with a February 14, 2027 finale. Episode 1 suggests Toei is treating that runtime as room to fix pacing rather than room to pad. The decision to start on Beerus directly, the way new animation is integrated rather than spotlighted, and the early read that it tracks closer to the manga all point toward a staff that understood exactly what was wrong with the 2015 original and built this specifically to correct it.

For longtime fans, that is the best possible outcome for a remaster: not a victory lap, but an actual second attempt at material everyone agrees deserved a better first one. For newer viewers using this as their entry point into Dragon Ball Super, episode 1 does its job too, introducing Beerus with full menace and zero wasted setup.

Should you watch it?

Yes, whether you have seen Battle of Gods a dozen times or never touched Dragon Ball Super at all. Longtime fans get to watch the production finally catch up to the story's ambition. Newcomers get the cleanest version of this arc that has ever existed. Either way, episode 1 is the rare remaster premiere that justifies its own existence within its first few minutes, and that is not a small thing to pull off eleven years after the fact.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Dragon Ball Super: Beerus a remake or a remaster?

It is being marketed as an "ENHANCED" remaster: a full re-render of existing 2015 footage combined with newly drawn cuts folded into the same scenes, not a from-scratch remake or a new story.

Where can I watch Dragon Ball Super: Beerus?

It airs on Fuji Television in Japan starting October 11, 2026, with Netflix picking up the series in the US starting October 17.

Are you watching Beerus as a refresher or a first watch? Tell the chat which side of that line you're on.