In this Nov. 22, 2018 file photo, a balloon depicting Goku, from the "Dragon Ball" manga series, makes its way down Sixth Avenue during the 92nd annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York. "Dragon Ball” is a revered anime that has influenced pop culture for years, earning praise from the likes of Michael B. Jordan, Ronda Rousey and Chris Brown, showing up in end zone celebrations. Associated Press file photo

Fans of the “Dragon Ball” series have been left in a bit of a lull since the end of the most recent series, “Daima,” which aired in 2025.

While Son Goku and his friends’ trip to the demon realm was an enjoyable side story experience, set between the end of “Dragon Ball Z” and the beginning of “Dragon Ball Super,” ever since the passing of series creator Akira Toriyama in March 2024, one question has lingered on every fan’s mind — when was the “Super” anime going to resume?

The series concluded in March 2018 with the end of the “Universe Survival” arc, but the manga continued until Toriyama’s death with Toyotarou providing illustration. The series has been on indefinite hiatus since.

That all changed last weekend during the Dragon Ball

Genkidamatsuri event in Japan, where it was announced that fans will not only receive a remastered and recut version of the original arc to “Super” which was first a movie, “Battle of Gods,” now being made into a multi-part television miniseries, but also production is set to begin soon on the first of the manga arcs that have not yet been adapted for anime, the Galactic Patrol arc.

The arc, taking place after the events of the movie “Dragon Ball Super: Broly,” involves the evil wizard, Moro The Planet-Eater, who escapes from prison and regains his lost powers, threatening the universe with his ability to absorb life energy from planets and people alike.

While fans should expect to see the remade “Battle of Gods” sometime this fall, don’t expect to see the Galactic Patrol arc anytime before this time next year, and even then, don’t expect “Super” to return in a perpetual weekly format.

Though it hasn’t been outright stated for a fact yet, this move to only announce this one arc hints that “Dragon Ball,” like “One Piece” did very recently, is moving to a seasonal format.

This will allow the show to be done in a way that lets production staff put out a quality product while also allowing time for the manga to continue to remain ahead of the anime.

Because we need to briefly address the elephant(s) in the room.

First, we do not know as of now that because Toei Animation is re-making “Battle of Gods,” the rest of the series will receive a similar treatment. This could very well end up being just a one-off thing the studio does as a teaser before going back into the main series in early 2027.

But the other thing to keep in mind is that we have not heard anything about when the manga is returning. By the time these new series are released, it will be well past the second anniversary of Toriyama’s passing and moving toward the third.

And while there’s no particular rush, and entirely understandable for the delay, the story did end on a bit of a cliffhanger with Frieza surpassing our heroes in power with a new black form.

So hopefully this won’t be the only good news “Dragon Ball” fans hear moving into the rest of 2026.

Oh, George…

Author George R.R. Martin did a profile a couple of weeks ago for “The Hollywood Reporter,” in which he admitted that his forthcoming “A Song of Ice and Fire” novel, “The Winds of Winter,” is still not finished, although he swears he’s still writing and that the end of his story is going to be better than the one HBO managed to botch nearly eight years ago.

“I have to write more Dunk and Egg,” Martin said. “There’s supposed to be another ‘Fire and Blood’ book, too. I do think if I can just get some of these other things off my back, I could finish ‘The Winds of Winter’ pretty soon. It’s been made clear to me that ‘Winds’ is the priority, but … I don’t know. Sometimes I’m not in the mood for that.”

I wrote in a previous column about Martin and the issue of “Winds” that it was time for him to fish or cut bait, and that still stands now.

Martin wrote a blog last year about fans lamenting the wait, and during a panel at WorldCon last August, a fan suggested that Martin get Brandon Sanderson, who famously wrote the final three installments of Robert Jordan’s “The Wheel of Time,” to finish the series because “you’re not going to be around for much longer.”

While that probably wasn’t the appropriate time to ask something like that (the fan was promptly booed by many in the audience), the point remains that Martin isn’t getting any younger, and the book is still long overdue from the viewpoint of many fans and, most likely, his publishers — Bantam Spectra and Voyager Books

(HarperCollins).

But despite that, and despite the fact that he claims that nothing matters more to him in this world than finishing his books, Martin claims that sometimes he’s just “not in the mood” to work on his projects.

The Reporter piece also gets into his method of writing — and rewriting — his work and the fact that he’s still deciding in real time how the story’s ending will play out, including characters that may or may not die, painting the picture of a mess of epic proportions, and that’s with a whole other book, “A Dream of Spring,” still in the wings waiting to be started, along with the other series Martin mentioned he’s still working on.

As Josh Rosenberg wrote for Esquire, “he just has the worst case of writers’ block I’ve ever seen.”

Or another massive “Merense knot.”

Digital content coordinator and copy editor Dan Isenberg can be reached at disenberg@altoonamirror.com or on X @TheseDanTweets.