As the namesake of the entire franchise, the Dragon Balls have loomed large in all the various iterations of Akira Toriyama's massively popular shonen franchise. Gathering all seven of the mystical artifacts together will summon the Eternal Dragon to grant the summoner a number of wishes. And while the Dragon Balls have been omnipresent throughout the franchise, there has been some noticeable inconsistency around the limitations on the wishes an Eternal Dragon can grant. The Dragon Ball Super manga goes one step further, as the villainous Moro's attack on New Namek opens up what appears to be a massive plot hole about the nature of the Dragon Balls themselves.
After escaping imprisonment under the Galactic Patrol for millions of years, Moro begins restoring his strength by consuming the raw energy of entire planets through his dark magic. One of the first targets of Moro's renewed rampage is New Namek, a planet created after the original Namekian homeworld was destroyed by Frieza during Dragon Ball Z. Killing many of the Namekians, including the Namekian Elder Mori, Moro uses the Dragon Balls to wish for his full magical power back before turning his attention Goku and Vegeta, who arrive on New Namek to finally end the carnage.
The original Dragon Ball established that the existence of the Dragon Balls are linked to the Namekian who created them. With Piccolo and Kami's lives linked, when Piccolo was killed by Nappa at the start of DBZ, Kami died with him and the Dragon Balls immediately turned to stone, unable to summon the Eternal Dragon. During Frieza's rampage on Namek during DBZ, Guru died from the horror of seeing his people slaughtered by the invading army, resulting in the Namekian Dragon Balls becoming inert. After Guru was resurrected by Earth's Dragon Balls following Piccolo and Kami's own resurrections, Guru passed over the power of the Namekian Dragon Balls to Mori before he succumbed to natural causes.
The reason for the Namekian Dragon Balls not becoming inert after Mori's death during Dragon Ball Super is subtly revealed over the course of the manga series. Sometime before being murdered by Moro, Mori had quietly transferred the power over the Dragon Balls to a young Namekian named Esca. Esca survived Moro's onslaught, allowing the Dragon Balls to endure beyond Mori's death as his life force was no longer linked to them. However, this meant that Moro and his henchman Cranberry could summon the Namekian Eternal Dragon Porunga and wish to restore Moro's full magical power just in time for the Z Fighters' arrival.
From inconsistencies over the Dragon Balls only being able to resurrect a person a single time to limitations on the number of people that can be resurrected, the rules governing the Dragon Balls and their resulting wishes have never been particularly concrete. However, the incident during Dragon Ball Super on New Namek is one such plot hole that is offhandedly explained away rather than being another continuity error of convenience. And with New Namek getting the chance to rebuild after Moro's devastating attack, Esca will give the extraterrestrial race a new direction as they cheat total annihilation a second time.
