Dragon Ball Super: Broly is a 2018 Japanese anime martial arts film directed by
Tatsuya Nagamine and written by
Dragon Ball series creator
Akira Toriyama. It is the twentieth
Dragon Ball feature film overall, the third produced with Toriyama's direct involvement, and the first to carry the
Dragon Ball Super branding.
Set after the events of the
Universe Survival Saga depicted in Dragon Ball Super, the film follows series protagonists
Goku and
Vegeta as they encounter a powerful
Saiyan named
Broly. In the beginning, it tells the history of the Saiyans and the background story of these three Saiyans with different destinies connected to the turbulent period of their race, and later resulting in a massive fight between them. The film represents the first canonical appearance of Broly, following the character's appearances in the non-canon films
Broly – The Legendary Super Saiyan (1993),
Broly – Second Coming (1994), and
Bio-Broly (1994).
Cast:
-- Credit: Wikipedia
Plot:
41 years ago, the Saiyan homeworld Planet Vegeta is ruled by King Cold, who delegates command of the planet to his son
Frieza.
King Vegeta, leader of the Saiyans, believes his son Prince Vegeta is a prodigy destined to liberate their people. He learns of Broly, a Saiyan baby born with an abnormal power level that exceeds that of his son, and exiles Broly to the distant planet Vampa. Broly's father Paragus goes after his son, but they are stranded on Vampa after their ships are damaged. Paragus vows to raise Broly as a mighty warrior to exact revenge on King Vegeta. Five years later, a low-class Saiyan warrior named
Bardock becomes suspicious of Frieza, and sends his son Kakarot (later named Goku) to Earth. His suspicions are confirmed when Frieza, upon learning of a legend that states a Super Saiyan will one day defeat him, destroys Planet Vegeta. The Saiyan race is eradicated, save Broly and Paragus, Goku and his brother
Raditz, Vegeta and his comrade
Nappa, and Vegeta's brother Tarble.
In the present day, Goku and Vegeta train on an island with
Bulma, Bulla,
Beerus, and Whis. Bulma is contacted by
Trunks, who informs her that six of the Dragon Balls have been stolen by Frieza's soldiers. Goku, Vegeta, Bulma and Whis travel to the Arctic to find the seventh Dragon Ball before Frieza can retrieve it. Meanwhile, Broly and Paragus are rescued from Vampa by Cheelai and Lemo, two low-class soldiers in Frieza's army searching for recruits. They are brought to Frieza, who recruits them to help him defeat Goku and Vegeta. The two groups come face-to-face in the Arctic, where Paragus orders Broly to attack Vegeta. Broly fights Vegeta and then Goku, growing stronger as the fight goes on and catching up to their Super Saiyan God forms, but is outmatched when Goku powers up to Super Saiyan Blue. Frieza murders Paragus, and Broly's rage over his father's death causes him to transform into a Super Saiyan. He overwhelms Goku and Vegeta with his new power, so they trick him into attacking Frieza instead and then teleport to
Piccolo's location. Goku and Piccolo teach Vegeta how to use the Fusion Dance technique; after two failed attempts, Goku and Vegeta successfully fuse together into Gogeta and teleport back to the battlefield. Gogeta defeats Broly and is about to obliterate him with a powerful Kamehameha, but Cheelai and Lemo, who had formed a friendship with Broly, summon
Shenron with the Dragon Balls and use their wish to transport Broly back to Vampa. Frieza retreats, promising to return another time. Goku later meets with Broly, Cheelai and Lemo on Vampa, wishing to be friends and providing them with various survival supplies from Capsule Corp. Before teleporting back to Earth, Goku states his desire to spar with Broly again someday and seemingly accepts his Saiyan heritage and name.
The Verdict:
Animation
Without a shadow of a doubt, Toriyama and his team have cranked up the quality of their animation to new heights here. I remember when
Dragon Ball Super first dropped, tons of people (me included at times) commented on how sub-par the animation was in comparison to the Battle of Gods film that preceded it.
Dragon Ball Super is a regular serialized animated series and not a one-off film, so they have to scale back the quality a bit to get their episodes done within their desired deadlines. That being said, I understand why they cut corners - something they've done as far back as
Dragon Ball Z between it's "big" fights and normal, filler based episodes so that their top-notch artwork can shine when it counts for these memorable moments.
Naruto does it religiously.
One Piece does it too but not as much.
Bleach did it too, with the Grimmjow and Ulquiorra fights immediately coming to mind. A lot of these ongoing Shonen Jump anime do it just to make a statement for these milestones that their fans will remember for years to come.
My biggest knock against
Battle of Gods and
Resurrection F' visually was that they both sported computer generated effects that looked great but stuck out like a sore thumb next to the hand-drawn character models. Here, it seems like Toriyama and his team heard that critique loud and clear as the hand-drawn two-dimensional characters and computer-generated character models blend seamlessly during the chaotic battle scenes during the film's climax. I watched the film on my laptop like I did with the first two
Dragon Ball Super films and I honestly regret not being able to see how well those visuals would have looked on the silver screen.
Story
 |
| After the Tournament of Power, I think everyone wanted to drag Goku's ass through the mud and I don't blame them... |
For me personally, almost everything post-
Dragon Ball Z is a muddled mess from Toriyama in terms of retconning and revising stuff from the timeline in order to sort out what is canon and what's not. In case that you haven't kept up, then it goes as follows (to my personal understanding): Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z, are all canon. Anything after the Buu Saga, meaning
Dragon Ball GT and the Z era films, are
NOT canon. The
Dragon Ball Super movies,
Battle of Gods and
Resurrection F', are canon and serve as both the foundation to the start of the events of
Dragon Ball Super and the events leading up to this film.
Battle of Gods sets the stage for the beginning of Dragon Ball Super's first story arc while
Resurrection F' details the revival of Frieza into that series which led to his role during the Universal Survival arc.
That being said, there's some inconsistencies here with the narrative and makes the timeline a little more convoluted in my honest opinion. We've come to the know that Goku was sent to Earth as an INFANT (a la Superman/Kal-El's origins) before Planet Vegeta was wiped out by Frieza. That's been the narrative since the start of
Dragon Ball and even repeated time and time again throughout flashbacks. Here, it's shown that Goku's parents, Bardock and Gine (Goku's mother is shown for the first time in the franchise's history), saw Goku off as toddler before sending him off to Earth. That really screws with the timeline in terms of ages. If Goku was old enough to recognize and cry at the sight of leaving his parents then exactly how old were him, Radditz, Vegeta, Nappa, and Vegeta's undisclosed brother at the time of the destruction of their planet? I was throwing my hands up in the air at that reveal, but I shouldn't be too surprised when Toriyama has proven time and time again that he tends to forget the intricate details of his own franchise at times.
Another weird time jump happens when Paragus and Broly find themselves stranded on Vampa not too much later in the film. Paragus and his co-pilot leave their damaged ship to investigate the crash site of Broly's ship, only to find a preschool-aged Broly had decimated the savage alien creatures that came for him. Much like Goku before him, he was shown as an infant in his birthing pod earlier in the film. Do Saiyan children have some freaky ability to age up past their infancy or something? If so, that's a detail that seems odd for them to skip after all of these years.
That being said, there's a lot of fan-service here in terms of details and breadcrumbs that are scattered throughout the first portion of the film that I'm sure a lot of long-time fans will pick up on.
My biggest complaint about the film is that it continues to paint a negative picture about Goku in this
Dragon Ball Super environment. Goku is depicted currently as selfish as he merely keeps Freeza - i.e. Universe 7's most notorious villain and powerful one to boot with enough power to rival the other Destroyer gods of the other universes - and now Broly alive, just because he wants to spar with them, especially knowing how dangerous these people are. It's strange to see Vegeta of all people as the calm and collected one of the two, pointing out how absurd it is to allow Frieza to do what he pleases. Just because Frieza came around at the end of the Tournament of Power, doesn't mean that he's always going to align himself with the forces of good. Hell, Frieza didn't have a second thought about killing Paragus during Broly's fight with Goku and Vegeta to push him over the edge to go Super Saiyan against them. Frieza is still the same villainous tyrant as ever and it's just coming off extremely stupid that Goku and Vegeta are allowing him to do what he pleases in the meantime. Frieza's already scheming to manipulate Broly to do his dirty work for him in some fashion the near future. You would think by now that someone would talk some sense into Goku about attracting all of this trouble to himself and more specifically to the planet Earth when he just wants to fight someone stronger than him. You would think the Tournament of Power would have been his wake-up call over all else, especially when he dragged all of the other universes into that ordeal all for the hope of satisfying his own selfish behavior.
I know I couldn't have been the only one who got a good laugh at Frieza getting his ass kicked by Broly for that hour or so while Goku and Vegeta practiced Fusion. I just can't imagine myself being the only one who gets sick of this pattern of almost every "big" Dragon Ball battle at this stage of the ridiculous state that the tiers of power that are currently presence in the series. Tell me to stop if you don't recognize the pattern here: Goku and Vegeta team up to fight a new baddie/alleged strong foe. Vegeta sizes him up first and gets outclassed, slowly over the course of their battle. Goku steps in and picks up the scraps until he either wins or figures that it's better for him and Vegeta to team up. That doesn't work so they resort to Fusion. If Fusion doesn't work, then the Spirit Bomb or someone on the sidelines gets a power boost to even the odds for everyone can go home happy. The second Vegeta went to fight Broly first I knew this wasn't going to end well with him coming out on top over the featured antagonist here, especially when Vegeta was robbed of the glory of beating Frieza by Goku during
Resurrection 'F'.
Seeing that Broly got to "escape" and his fight with Gogeta didn't have a decisive finale just felt like a cop out, leaving the film feeling like it's the prequel to something that would be ten times better if it had more time to build onto. And boy, did this film have a long runtime. It felt like nothing happened in the first hour to ninety minutes up until the fighting started during the last thirty plus minutes. I feel like this is going to boil down to the next major story arc in the anime, leading up to a potential Broly and Frieza tag team match where Frieza somehow gains the ability to do Fusion with Broly and controls his massive wealth of power. I'm not saying that's for certain, just giving my two cents in terms of speculation here.
Comparisons to the original Dragon Ball Z Movie: Broly - The Legendary Super Saiyan
Right off the bat, let's clarify that the original Broly movie is non-canon by current Dragon Ball Z mythos, but it's still fun to make some comparisons here. Broly's origin in that film is that his power level was so high as an infant that he was regarded as a threat not only to himself but to their race as a whole. King Vegeta cast him out in the same manner as this film, but Broly went Super Saiyan to protect himself and his father after being stabbed in the chest. They were stranded on a desolate planet for years after Freeza destroyed Planet Vegeta where Paragas kept his son under his control with an inhibitor collar since when he was a berserk beast when his powers unleashed. King Kai didn't detect this planet until Vegeta was invited to survey what they were calling "New Planet Vegeta" but were enslaving the residents there instead. The Z Fighters go along with him to investigate, only for Paragus' son, Broly to lose control and lash out at the sight of Goku. Apparently, Goku was a rowdy infant in the room with Broly when they were infants and served as a constant source of angst from that period. Broly's murderous instincts take over as all of the Z Fighters (Piccolo, Kid Gohan, Future Trunks, Goku, and Vegeta) all try their hand at trying to best this foe. What transpires afterwards is best described as the Z Fighters getting their asses handed to them royally. Broly was literally beating the Super Saiyan out of the Saiyans here while Piccolo wasn't doing much better either. Vegeta embarrassingly got beaten to the point of tears during this ordeal and I'm glad we didn't see a recreation of that scene in the canonical film. Since none of the Z Fighters can beat Broly individually, they decide to pool their resources and channel their power levels into one fighter - namely Goku, of course - to best Broly. Vegeta isn't having any of it and refuses to give any of his power to assist Goku in this task. Goku finds himself on the losing end of this fight regardless being backed by the power of majority of the Z Fighters until Vegeta gave up the ghost at the last moment to give Goku the burst of power that he needed to defeat Broly with a punch through the stomach, seemingly killing him in the process.
Major differences between this film and canonical release:
- Broly had subconscious hatred of Goku since they were infants. Him and Goku didn't have any idea who each other were after escaping Planet Vegeta
- Broly kills his own father after freeing himself from the control collar instead of Freeza killing Paragus to trigger Broly's own Super Saiyan transformation.
- In this film, Broly allows his power to warp him to the point of insanity, creating an unredeemable antagonist here for the Z Fighters, especially after killing his own father. Dragon Ball Super paints the picture of Broly being a neutral player. He's manipulated by Freeza into facing Goku and Vegeta, but doesn't pan out how he envisioned after Goku (along with Broly's newfound friends) senses that he's not really a bad person.
- In this film which is set during time frame roughly between the Androids Saga and Cell Games of Dragon Ball Z, Goku, Vegeta, Gohan, Piccolo, and Future Trunks all fight Broly to mostly a losing effort. In Dragon Ball Super, the roles are reversed since the power level scaling is so vastly different. Broly is challenging only Goku and Vegeta (with Freeza getting his ass kicked too briefly) while slowly rising and challenging their power levels and various transformations.
- At the end of this film, Broly is "killed" by Goku and the Z Fighters here, but it's not revealed until Broly - Second Coming that he somehow survived Goku's killing blow here and the destruction of the planet afterwards. In Dragon Ball Super, Broly is wished away back to Planet Vampa by his newfound allies before his battle with Gogeta came to proper conclusion.
- Last but not least, this film had a genuine sense of awe that the Z Fighters have finally met their match. There wasn't a single instance where I doubted that Goku and Vegeta were going to lose against Broly. C'mon, for Christ's sake the dude was still on the first tier of Super Saiyan transformations and they were trying to convince me that he was holding his own against Goku and Vegeta at their current tiers of the power scaling. I thought that aspect of this film was completely bullshit.
Watch It or Don't Bother?
If you're a fan of the series and kept up with everything to this point, then you don't need me to tell you to watch this. If you're new to the Dragon Ball franchise, then I have to recommend that you stay far, far away from this, despite the amazing visuals and fight scenes as you're going to be lost on the lackluster build up to the much anticipated fight in the film's climax. This is a film devoted to the long-time fans of the franchise, not someone just deciding to get their feet wet with what this series is about. You can't even treat this as a standalone film either as there's too much exposition to set the stage for it from the previous series prior to it and what it sets up for the future of Dragon Ball Super.
