On today's chart 140K views since yesterday

Totally Not Mark traces Dragon Ball's digital effects to 1993

His animation-history essay starts with scanned cels and Photoshop, long before fully 3D fighters entered the picture.

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Totally Not Mark Story of November 6, 2026Trari Newsroom

Why this story? One of the most watched videos since yesterday, with 140,384 views.

Dragon Ball had CGI in 1993

Things we can learn from the video

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0:34Mark traces early digital effects to scanned cels adjusted in Photoshop for the 1993 Broly film.
4:52Fusion Reborn combines complex transformation effects with blue-screen compositing for layered scenes.
9:26Battle of Gods and Resurrection 'F' introduce conspicuous 3D character models alongside more mobile cameras.
13:13Dragon Ball Super: Broly blends 2D and 3D animation under director Tatsuya Nagamine.
14:47Super Hero uses corrections by 2D artists on iPads to give its 3D animation a hand-drawn appearance.
16:44Mark argues that thoughtful CGI integration can benefit intricate designs such as Shenron.

Photoshop in a Dragon Ball movie in 1993 sounds like the sort of detail that deserves a rewind. Totally Not Mark makes it the starting point of a history lesson about computer graphics hiding in a famously hand-drawn franchise.

"Yeah, I repeat, Photoshop in a Dragon Ball movie in 1993," says Mark Fitzpatrick, explaining how director Shigeyasu Yamauchi used digitally adjusted scans of animation cels in Broly - The Legendary Super Saiyan. The essay has drawn roughly 140,000 views since yesterday.

There is an important distinction behind the title, "Dragon Ball had CGI in 1993": these early examples are digital effects applied to drawings, not the fully 3D character models that viewers might associate with CGI. Some commenters question that broad use of the term. Mark's subject is the longer, messier transition between those techniques.

He follows it through Fusion Reborn's layered imagery and Goku's Super Saiyan 3 transformation, then into the conspicuous 3D models and moving cameras of Battle of Gods and Resurrection 'F'. Weekly television schedules, he explains, offered different opportunities from theatrical production.

The most revealing later example is Super Hero. Mark describes 2D artists correcting the 3D animation on iPads to preserve a hand-drawn appearance: computers supply the models, but artists still shape how the finished characters read on screen. He also examines director Tatsuya Nagamine's blend of techniques in Dragon Ball Super: Broly.

After his recent scrutiny of the Beerus remaster, this is a wider question than whether a particular scene looks better. Shenron's computer-rendered appearance prompts the investigation, and the dragon remains his practical example of where the technique can help. As Mark puts it: "CG isn't really a bad thing, it just needs to be integrated well."

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