Dragon Ball Daima Viewer Survey Results: Part 2
Part 2 of my Dragon Ball Daima Viewer Survey results are here! How did fans rate Daima, and did they share it with others? Learn what the data from 1,182 fans tells us!
Topics in Part 2 include:
- Viewer Daima series rating
- How many episodes they watched
- If they engaged in repeat viewings
- Recommended it or not
- Watched it alone or with others (and with whom)
If you missed Part 1, go read it now, where I covered:
- Which language of Daima the viewers watched
- Where they watched it
Let’s dive in. And be sure to read the final section for a surprise insight!
Dragon Ball Daima Series Rating
How would you rate Dragon Ball Daima overall?
Participants were asked to give Daima a rating from a range of 1 to 5.
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 52 | 103 | 272 | 439 | 315 |
| 4.40% | 8.71% | 23.01% | 37.14% | 26.65% |
Out of 1,182 votes, the average rating for Daima was 3.73.
The most common selection was 4, with 37.14% of votes.
The next most common was 5, with 26.65% of votes.
Combined, the 4s and 5s comprise 63.79% of votes.
This means that the majority of fans rated the show from good to great.
Speaking of the kids in particular, from ages 1 to 15 (Gen Alpha), not a single participant rated Daima with a 1 or 2. And 5 was the most common rating. So every child enjoyed watching Daima.
Ages 16 and up had a wide range of opinions, with most giving it a 4, then 5, and then 3, 2, and 1, in that order. There was almost no difference in the ratio of votes for the two age ranges of 16–28 (Gen Z) and 29–44 (Millennials).
Overall, most people felt Daima was a good but flawed show.
Other Daima Ratings
For comparison’s sake, let’s look at other places where fans rated Daima.
I collected this data on April 9, 2025.
Crunchyroll:
Crunchyroll’s website and app allows viewers to rate the anime that they watch. Out of 61,208 ratings, Dragon Ball Daima has an average rating of 4.7 out of 5. And 88% of these are 5-star ratings. So Crunchyroll’s rating is much higher than in my survey, in quantity and average value.
The Crunchryoll.com page for Daima is for both the Sub and Dub. First in the Japanese language with subtitles in English, Español (América Latina), Español (España), and Português (Brasil), and for the later-released English dub. But my survey also had these options, so the much higher rating is rather astounding.
IMDb:
IMDb gave Daima an average of 7.9 out of 10, from 16,000 votes.
11,000 of those votes gave it a perfect 10, of which 5,100 of those came from India. This shows a massive bias on the part of Indian fans at best, and at worst a purposeful ratings boost campaign from fans who rated it higher in order to inflate the score. So the results are suspect.
But what’s cool is that they have a “Ratings by Episode” section in addition to the overall series rating.
Here we can see that Episode 8 was the highest rated in the first 10 episodes, at 9.0. And Episodes 12, 17, 18, 19, and 20 were all rated at 9.0 or above.
This aligns with my own sentiments about the best episodes, and the written sentiments I heard from people who took this survey, so I’m inclined to agree that these specific Episode ratings are at least more genuine—albeit still possibly inflated.
MyAnimeList:
MyAnimeList (MAL) is a popular platform for fans to rate and recommend their favorite shows. Daima received a 7.67 out of 10 rating, out of 42,553 user votes. And out of 49 reviews, 25 “Recommended” it, 13 had “Mixed Feelings”, and 11 said “Not Recommended”.
Anime News Network:
Anime News Network (ANN) has a ratings section on almost every anime, from 1 to 10. On Daima’s page, it received a rating of 7.09 out of 10, out of 42 votes, giving it a “Good” rating.
Amazon Japan:
In Japan, on Amazon.co.jp, we see that it has a 3 out of 5 stars, out of 321 ratings.
Contrary to what you might think, the Japanese viewers here rated it worse than international fans.
Google:
Google’s search results page gave Daima a 4.3 rating, out of 843 votes.
Rotten Tomatoes:
Rotten Tomatoes gives Daima a 100% rating, but that is straight-up nonsense and you should ignore it. This site is notorious for bias.
Other Platforms:
Unfortunately, the other major streaming platforms don’t provide ratings that are accessible to me in the United States or without a membership, such as Hulu and HBO Max.
Caveats:
A few caveats to consider that may suggest that these ratings on some platforms are inaccurate.
First, there’s completion bias. Most viewers won’t rate a show until they finish it, and most viewers who finish a show did so because they liked it enough to not quit watching it. This means the shows with the most ratings tend to have higher-than-average ratings.
Second, anime fans are passionate, and some of them want more people to watch their favorite shows or are overly protective of their opinions. As a result, they tend to rate things higher in general. And it’s common for fans to run social campaigns in order to artificially boost the ratings of a particular show.
Why do that? Their goal is for the show to be rated higher, receive more exposure on each platform, and for more people to watch it. The opposite effect—review bombs—are a less common response and balancing measure to these inflated scores.
Third, Crunchyroll gives out awards for the highest-rated anime and fan favorites each year, and fans want their show to get picked as a finalist for the awards, so I suspect Crunchyroll’s massive difference in score compared to other sites is due to something like such a campaign. But I have no proof of foul play.
The end result is inaccurate ratings.
Cumulative Ratings:
My Survey: 3.73/5
Crunchyroll: 4.7/5
IMDb: 7.9/10 (= 3.95/5)
MyAnimeList: 7.67/10 (= 3.835/10)
Anime News network: 7.09/10 (= 3.545/5)
Amazon Prime Japan: 3/5
Google: 4.3/5
When we combine these averages together, we get a combined unweighted average rating of 3.87. Even if you remove Crunchyroll, it’s still a 3.73 average.
Conclusion: There will always be people who love or hate a show, or who review-boost or a bomb a show for whatever reason, but the overall sentiment from 122,149 votes across 7 different platforms is that Daima is an above-average show.
The ratings on other platforms are in line with my own, at 3.73, which strengthens the result of my survey.
Viewer Opinions
Why did people rate Daima the way they did?
I received 728 written statements from participants who filled in the optional field at the end of the survey that asked for their opinion of the show.
Many people filled up the full 5,000-character limit of the field with passionate and detailed essay-like opinions. I’ll spare you those for now, but they’ll be available later.
Here are some examples of their sentiments–with one paragraph per opinion.
Positive:
“Daima was a story that felt like an author having fun with the world he created. This series had “Toriyama” written all over it, from the gags, to the designs, to even the character dynamics and story. It was glorious. Thank you for this final gift, [Toriyama-sensei].”
“Really awesome show with fantastic animation! I want to see more Dragon Ball, whether Dragon Ball Super comes back (in manga or anime), or if Daima gets a Season 2 (that would be fun). I would like to watch Dragon Ball forever!!! Thank you, Akira Toriyama, for telling the greatest story ever—and rest in peace.”
“Dragon Ball Daima was exactly what I wanted, a return to a mystical, fun and mysterious adventure that had me wanting more with each episode. The only unfortunate thing I can think of, is that the anime has made fans and casual enjoyers slightly confused and left with more questions after its airing. Questions that we will never get to know the answers to, as Akira Toriyama has passed on. I hope fans and everyone that watches got/get the same feeling I did while watching, as it gave me back that Joy, Excitement, and Suspense that very few anime and even recent Dragon Ball IPs have not left me with fully. I can say without a doubt that aside from a few episodes, Dragon Ball Super never left me with Suspense or a sense of “Mystery” of what might happen next. Daima however, has made me feel like a kid again, just like the series itself forces the group into, haha. Thank you, Akira Toriyama.”
Mixed:
“It had good animation but it would’ve been better if they weren’t kids. I had many friends who disliked Daima’s premise because they got turned into kids again.”
“Daima had a lot of charm going in, and it’s undoubtedly the best-looking Dragon Ball series that’s ever existed, but the script, the pacing, and the exposition just weren’t well executed at all. This show needed another pass by the editor. The gag at the end of the final episode was peak Toriyama. So at least it stuck the landing.”
“Dragon Ball Daima was a love letter to the series. It was beautifully done, with great ideas, fun and endearing characters, incredible battles, and world building. However, it has pacing issues, 20 episodes wasn’t nearly enough to reach its full potential, and it failed to tie off loose ends. Despite many unanswered questions, you could feel Toriyama’s hand in Dragon Ball Daima and I’m grateful for it.”
“As someone who grew up with Dragon Ball and is in my early 20s, Super Saiyan 4 means a lot to me. While Daima kept me entertained week to week, after the great visuals, a lot of the series was doing what has been done before but worse. I still like it, but wish there was more done.”
Negative:
“The show was a huge miss. Dragon Ball’s main asset is the writing. This show’s writing was plain bad.”
“It is simply outrageous that after so many years, they deliver something as weak as Dragon Ball Daima. Instead of expanding the story and bringing intense and epic fights, they chose to turn everything into a dull, childish adventure with no weight and no impact. The plot is not engaging, and the villains are completely generic. They even make the villains from Dragon Ball GT look much better! At least they were real villains! They have no presence, are not real threats, and the narrative is shallow, with no depth whatsoever. Everything is way too predictable. Vegeta’s SSJ3 transformation and Goku’s SSJ4 are poorly executed, rushed for cheap fan service, and that SSJ4 looks horrendous! The animation may be beautiful, but what’s the point if everything else is poorly done? Every episode only confirms that this was a huge disappointment. Dragon Ball deserved—and still deserves—something much better!”
“Upon its announcement, I was very skeptical because it sounded like it was retreading GT. After episode 1 aired, I really didn’t like it, but pushed through. Overall, it was mostly okay up until Super Saiyan 4 was shown. Personally, I can’t stand this much nostalgia-pandering anymore. The past 7 whole years of official Dragon Ball animated content are all littered with nothing but nostalgia pandering. Broly, Cell, GT; at this point it’s just too much.”
“It’s so sad that this little series, which promised to sell us dreams, turned out to be a marketing product designed to sell us merchandise thanks to our dreams.”
How Many Episodes Watched?
Respondents were asked to select how many episodes of Daima they watched, choosing one option.
| 1 | 2 to 5 | 6 to 10 | 11 to 15 | 16 to 20 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 17 | 30 | 20 | 25 | 1090 |
| 1.44% | 2.54% | 1.69% | 2.12% | 92.22% |
1,092 (92.22%) respondents watched 16 to 20 episodes.
Almost everybody who watched the show completed it.
My thinking at the time of creating the survey was that if you made it to 16 episodes, you would for certain watch all 20—and I still think that’s an accurate presumption.
This is because anime fans are more invested in their shows than fans of other forms of entertainment. Miles Atherton, media analyst and author of Anime by the Numbers wrote that “Anime is a sticker form of media. … Anime fan engagement is outsized relative to viewership. From a Netflix subscription retention and acquisition standpoint, it’s not unreasonable to consider anime as 70% more valuable pound-for-pound compared to other Netflix media.”
This may explain why almost all Daima viewers watched the entire series, even when they didn’t like it.
But in hindsight, I wish that I had modified the 5th choice of “16 to 20” to “16 to 19” and then added a 6th option for “20”, as I did for “1”. Then I’d know for certain that they finished it.
Among those who did not complete the series, keep in mind that some participants could have just started watching it.
Likewise, this survey was also taken by people watching the English dub, who could not have seen the complete series yet because by the time of the survey’s start date on March 24, only 11 episodes had been released. And as we saw in Part 1 of the results, 165 people selected English as a choice alongside other languages. So among these participants, some may have seen less than the full 20 episodes by March 24.
Conclusion: Almost all Dragon Ball fans completed the Daima series. Even the fans who hated the series and are the most critical of different aspects of the show finished it. As valid as their complaints may be, they stuck around to find out what happened next, right to the end.
Watch a Single Episode More than Once?
Did fans watch a single episode multiple times?
| Yes | No |
|---|---|
| 668 | 514 |
| 56.51% | 43.49% |
Yes, 668 (56.51%) participants watched a single episode more than once.
I chose not to ask which episodes they watched multiple times because I didn’t want to slow the participant down.
But based on the collective data and opinions fans sent to me, fans seemed to favor the more action-oriented episodes, such as Episodes 8, 12, and 16-20.
So I would conjecture that these are the episodes that most fans watched multiple times.
And we see an overlap here with these being the highest rated episodes on IMDb.
This would track with other Dragon Ball series in the franchise, where fans will watch the same fight scenes again and again.
Tell Others to Watch Daima?
Did people who watched Daima tell others to watch it?
| Yes | No |
|---|---|
| 862 | 320 |
| 72.93% | 27.07% |
Yes, 862 (72.93%) participants told others to watch it.
This suggests a high level of satisfaction with the series overall, in that they enjoyed it enough to tell others to watch it.
But do keep in mind that this question does not ask, ‘At what point did you tell others to watch it?’ With options such as, ‘Before the show came out’, ‘While watching it’, and ‘After completing it’.
Nor does it answer ‘Why did you recommend it?’
All I wanted to know was, in general, did people recommend it?
It turns out that they did.
Watch Daima Alone or With Others?
Did the people who watched Daima watch it alone or with others?
| Alone | Others |
|---|---|
| 858 | 324 |
| 72.59% | 27.41% |
858 (72.59%) participants watched Daima alone.
This an interesting result, in that it’s the approximate same value as the amount of people who recommended it to others.
So we could conjecture that most Daima viewers watched it alone and then told others to watch it.
Among the 324 (27.41%) participants who watched it with others, who did they watch it with?
Respondents were asked to select all that applied.
| Children / nieces / nephews | Friends | Parents | Siblings / extended family | Colleagues | Spouse / partner / significant other |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 27 | 148 | 22 | 90 | 7 | 17 |
| 8.33% | 45.68% | 6.79% | 27.78% | 2.16% | 5.25% |
These are some of the most interesting results of this survey.
On February 11, 2025, Dragon Ball Daima’s Executive Producer, Akio Iyoku said in an interview on the Japanese pop culture site Mantan-Web:
“We wanted parents to feel encouraged to watch with their kids, so we paid close attention to the presentation.”
Also, he said that Daima was intended for adults who grew up with the series, and as a show that they can watch with their children—to pass Dragon Ball onto the next generation.
But as we see, only 27 (8.33%) participants who watched it with someone else watched it with their children, nieces, or nephews.
Instead, most people watched it with their friends, at 148 (45.68%) and siblings / extended family, at 90 (27.78%), for a combined 238 (73.45%) out of 324.
As you’ll see in the later demographics section of this survey, 1,143 (96.70%) participants were aged 16 to 44, which is the target demographic for Daima. Yet only 2.28% of total respondents watched it with kids (27 divided by 1,182).
This tells us that the Dragon Ball Daima producers failed at their goal of making a show that most fans would watch with kids.
That said, I did receive a few anecdotes from fans who watched it with their kids, and both the parents and kids enjoyed it a great deal—as we saw in the high ratings slant of children, with the majority giving it a rating of 5 out of 5.
Adults Without Kids
So why didn’t more adults watch Daima with kids?
The first factor to consider is that Millennials (29-44) and Gen Z (16 to 28) have fewer kids compared to previous generations—or none.
The percentage of childless adults varies from country to country, but due to poor global socio-economic conditions, about 25% of Millennials and Gen Z across the world cannot afford to have kids. And others don’t have kids by choice, such as out of environmental concerns, reduced optimism about the future, or what have you. Global birth rates have declined to the lowest point in 40 years. So overall, there are fewer kids for adults to watch Daima with.
Second, to watch Daima, you’ll probably want to have watched some other Dragon Ball series first, or the entire franchise, since Daima builds on everything that came before it. But kids haven’t had as much time to watch the other series, so this might limit the number of kids who would jump into Daima as a starting point.
The odd thing about this low result of adults watching with kids is that the sentiment data you’ll see later shows that most respondents felt Daima was not intended for adults. The Daima producers said it was, but the adults who watched it felt it wasn’t. Yet the kids weren’t the ones watching it—the adults were—and they weren’t watching it with kids.
This data reveals a major failure by the Daima producers, in that they made a show for kids, but targeted it at adults.
This does not detract from the enjoyment of Daima by any age group, but the data shows that older fans did like it less than kids on average.
So it seems like an odd business choice by the producers. A mismatch of their product with their target demographic?
Conclusion of Part 2
Given the above data and mistargeting of Daima’s audience, it’s a wonder that so many adult fans enjoyed the series as much as they did.
We see that most participants were older, watched it alone, and didn’t feel like the show was made for them, yet they still completed it and rated it highly.
What can we attribute this to?
Perhaps Akira Toriyama’s charm, the great animation, fan’s undying love for all things Dragon Ball, a desire to watch new serialized adventures with Goku and his friends, or a multitude of other factors.
Whatever it is, the end is result is a “Daima Wonderlaaaaand!”
I’d love to hear your reaction of these results down below or on my social media @derekpadula.
Come back next week for Part 3, where we’ll explore how viewers felt about the 10 Sentiment Statements about the show.