Exciting news out of Japan this morning. The next Dragon Ball anime will be an adaptation of the popular Dragon Ball Heroes video game... And get this! It will debut this July!
Toei Animation and the cast of Dragon Ball Super definitely pulled one over on the fandom as they had to have known about the project while the Dragon Ball community was feeling a bit lost and melancholy following
the end of Super back in March.
As the announcement was made early this AM in Japan, details are still being verified as translations are made. Stay tuned for additional reporting when the scans from V-Jump make their way online.
UPDATE #1: It seems the news stems from an early leak of the latest issue of V-Jump magazine, which hit Japanese newsstands this Friday morning (it's already Friday in Japan).
UPDATE #2: The new anime will be a promotional anime series. Meaning its sole purpose is to promote the new Dragon Ball Heroes trading card video game (think Gwent from The Witcher 3) and there will be a finite number of episodes, i.e. this will not be an ongoing series (likely 1-cour).
ABOUT DRAGON BALL HEROES
Dragon Ball Heroes is a 2010 trading card video game from Bandai Namco that was first released in arcades before being ported over to the Nintendo 3DS in 2013. It is exclusive to Japan. Like Dragon Ball Super, the events of the video game series pick up from the end of Dragon Ball Z but has very little in common with Super. The latest version is titled Super Dragon Ball Heroes and was released in 2016.
There have also been various manga adaptations of the story that unfolds in Dragon Ball Heroes that were serialized in V-Jump (2012) and Saikyō Jump manga (2013) magazines.