In advance of the Dragon Ball Super TV series’ debut of the “Universe Survival Arc”, set to premiere tonight (05 February 2017) with episode 77, Japanese animation news outlet animate Times has revealed that the new story arc will also mark the debut of Tatsuya Nagamine (長峯達也) and Ryōta Nakamura (中村亮太) as the series’ new directors.

For the series this will mark the 5th director to assume the role of series director since the series’ debut in July 2015. Morio Hatano previously took over as the lead series director in episode thirty-three, replacing the series’ original director Kimitoshi Chioka, who assisted him in the role up through episode forty-six before leaving the series. Kōhei Hatano then most recently took over the role in episode sixty-eight with Morio Hatano remaining on to assist him.

While Ryōta Nakamura has been involved with Dragon Ball Super, having directed seven episodes (4, 31, 39, 48, 57, 65, and 75) of the series, Tatsuya Nagamine had thus far not been involved due to his heavy workload on other series, such as Pretty Cure, Digimon, and most recently, directing One Piece Film Z. Nagamine’s previous involvement with the franchise included opening and ending direction/animation for Dragon Ball Kai and prior to that being an assistant director for a single episode of Dragon Ball GT.