Dragon Ball Daima Ushers in LGBTQ+ Representation With Help From the Kai

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Warning: Contains spoilers for Dragon Ball Daima episode #6.Anime have often had notoriously poor handlings of LGBTQ+ content, andDragon Ballis no exception. While it never engaged in it that often, the original series had a few notable jokes that can come across as homophobic, and while they were mostly products ofDragon Balloriginating in the 1980s, it makes for bad representation from the series, regardless.

Dragon Ballhas never had a good relationship with LGBTQ+ representation, butDragon Ball Daimahas put in the work to change that.Dragon Ball Daimaepisode #6 contained more lore on theGlinds, the demon race of Shin and the Kais, and surprisingly,Dragon Ball Daimaused the new lore surrounding Shin and the Kais to put some positive LGBTQ+ representation inDragon Ball. That’s great to see, especially when considering the franchise’s poor history with the subject, and overall, it’s something that can mean a lot for anime, as a whole.

General Blue of the Red Ribbon Army in Dragon Ball.

Dragon Ball’s Kais Are Officially LGBTQ+ Characters

InDragon Ball Daimaepisode #6, Shin went into detail about the origins of the Glinds, which led to Panzy, who had only just met Shin, to confirm that Degesu and Arinsu were his brother and sister. Shin confirmed as much, but when he spoke about Arinsu, he briefly mentioned that while he calls Arinsu his sister, Glinds technically don’t have defined genders. That means thatDragon Ball Daimaepisode #6 reveals that Glinds i.e. the Kais exist somewhere on the LGBTQ+ spectrum, with Shin’s specific wording implying they’re something along the lines of asexual, gender fluid or nonbinary.

This technically isn’t the first timeDragon Ballhas approached that sort of subject matter, however. Back inDragon Ball Z’s Namek saga, Namekians were established as a race of male-presenting asexual beings, but that was largely played off as a joke centered around Bulma being confused by Namekian biology. By comparison, Shin’s comments are played far more seriously, and because of that,Dragon Ball Daima’s reveal that the Kais don’t have defined genders isDragon Ball’s first serious attempt at adding LGBTQ+ content toDragon Ball, even if it was fairly brief in the grand scheme of things.

Supreme Kai in episode 1

Dragon Ball Daima’s LGBTQ+ Representation Makes Up For Some Of The Anime’s Worst Jokes

Why Some Of Dragon Ball’s Humor Hasn’t Aged Well

Something worth noting aboutDragon Ball Daima’s LGBTQ+ representation is that it’s a clear turnaround from some of the more negative examples in the original series. In the Red Ribbon Army saga, Bulma and Krillin derided General Blue as being gay for rejecting Bulma’s advances, and in the epilogue, Trunks fought against a stereotypical gay man in the World Martial Arts Tournament. Examples like that are both very rare and largely products of whenDragon Ballwas written, but it doesn’t change thatDragon Ballhas an unfortunate history with content that can be interpreted as homophobic in nature.

Those moments and others are what make this recent bit of LGBTQ+ representation so great to see. While those moments and others never factored that much into the larger story, they’ve still been points of criticism againstDragon Ballfor some, and because of that,Dragon Ball Daimaintroducing positive LGBTQ+ representation with Shin and the Kais can be seen as the franchise making a more honest effort at representation after historically being bad at it. Whether that was intentional or a coincidence is unclear, but it’s still great to see something like that so late into the franchise, regardless.

Why Dragon Ball’s LGBTQ+ Representation Is A Big Deal

Dragon Ball Daima’s LGBTQ+ representation was a major surprise, and it was a big deal to see, as well.Dragon Ballis one of the biggest anime franchises in the world, if not the biggest, and it’s long since reached the point where even the smallest things that happen with it reach countless people worldwide. Because of that,a franchise as massive asDragon Ballintroducing positive LGBTQ+ representation through the Kais can be seen as a major turning point forLGBTQ+ representation in anime, and anything that can do that is always great to have, no matter the medium.

Anime is still only slowly becoming more open to LGBTQ+ representation outside of demographic-based stories likeyaoiandyuristories, so even withDragon Ballbeing as big as it is, it’s unlikely to invoke major change anytime soon. However, the fact that there’s positive representation at all is still great to see, soDragon Ball Daima’s LGBTQ+ representation is nothing but a net positive for representation in anime, despite being small in the grand scheme of things, and this will surely go down as one of the things that madeDragon Ball Daimasuch a special series to watch.