Anime: Dragon Ball Super: Broly

A must-see movie at the movie-theater (cinema).

The reason is that movie will blow you up. Then seeing it again in Blu-Ray will undoubtedly allow you to detect the many dynamic and exquisite scenes offered by the animation studio and Akira Toriyama.

The film begins with a fairly long sequence of about thirty minutes putting us in context to understand the universe and potentially the stakes of the film.

Issues that will also disappear quickly enough to leave room for 1 hour of non-stop fighting between the various protagonists. Broly and his father returning to Freezer, who took them to Earth to see them face His Goku and his friends.

Then follows a deluge of special effects and animation, which will take off the retina of pleasure for the duration of the fight. Challenging the devastating attacks then the usual transformations, the different combatants will face each other in a panting fight (certainly at the known end) pushing the limits of the Japanese animation as we know it.

There are a negative point about this film, a soundtrack really out of step with the Dragon Ball universe, which spoils a little visual orgy that presents the studio. The film is nevertheless very good if you are a neophyte to the Dragon Ball universe or that you are a follower of the saga since your earliest childhood.

I am not going to bother with plot holes, since the movie retcons the backdrop of the Saiyans as well as a character who was not canon up until this point. No matter what I say about the changes, it won’t matter in terms of continuity and it’s not the first time Toriyama changed the origin of the Dragonballs or the cause behind the destruction of planet Vegeta.

I’m going to limit my impressions to plot aesthetics and say the way Saiyans are portrayed now makes them look like pansies. The 90s Saiyans were badasses and only cared about fighting and killing. There was no love and compassion or any of that nonsense. These here are soyboys, written that way to appeal to the new generation, pretty much the same thing that happened to superheroes in comics.

A weird thing about it, is how it doesn’t feel like a movie. Unlike a series, it doesn’t have the same main character in every scene and as such it feels like an anthology. It’s a pretty obvious indication for whenever they decide to continue the tv series, the first arc will obviously be the adaptation of this movie, since it was written like a series.

The plot stops jumping around in the second third of the movie, and it begins with the laziest way imaginable. Frieza’s men steal the Dragonballs from Bulma, exactly as they did in Resurrection of F. Why bother with new ideas when you can keep reusing the exact same ones in every movie? And speaking of lazy, they didn’t do a thing with any of the secondary cast. 90% of the characters don’t even appear, and Beerus turned from a terrifying god of destruction into a babysitter who does nothing to stop a monster capable of destroying the whole universe. Also, remember when he was bulling King Vegeta in the first movie? What happened to that plot point? He wasn’t shown in the past, and they didn’t elaborate on why he didn’t destroy the Saiyans himself. How lazy can you get?

And then it’s the comedy that tries so hard to be juvenile like it used to be in the original series, but it falls flat. Bulma wants to wish from the dragon to become a bit younger. Frieza wants to be a bit taller. Isn’t that funny? Maybe it would be, if they weren’t the exact same jokes and the quality of the writing didn’t turn to shit.

Anyways, Frieza randomly finds a Saiyan which just happens to be more powerful than any other villain so far, and Frieza feels like he can kill Vegeta without proving his worth. The non-canon Broly had destroyed a galaxy in the first seconds of the movie, so he had proven to be a major threat. This Broly was just fighting crabs all his life, thus he had nothing to show his threat level. Frieza’s reasoning is bullshit, but so is Dragonball Super as a whole, thus who gives a shit? Just sit back and watch Broly fighting Goku and Vegeta while constantly getting stronger, because power levels are bullshit and everyone only cares about the light show.

Toriyama tried to make it seem like Broly snapped after seeing the death of his father as some sort of an excuse to get super powerful in an instant, but since the emotions between father and son were convoluted, it wasn’t much of an excuse. On one hand Paragus loved his son and sacrificed a lot to find him, on the other hand he was using him as a tool for his revenge. And Broly on one hand hated his father for using him as a tool, but on the other he got really pissed when he died. You can’t even tell what the hell is going on.

Everybody loves the new Broly for having a personality and shit, and yet the older Broly made sense as a character because he was just a one-dimensional battle crazy maniac. Laugh all you want with his motivation for hating Goku being him crying a lot, but it still made more sense than the shit we see in the new Broly. I mean, he’s not someone who became the legendary super Saiyan by getting stronger as he was gradually destroying a whole freaking galaxy. He’s a mortal with zero battle experience who can kick the crap out of warriors with god ki which were constantly fighting and improving all their lives. Jumping from Average Joe to rivaling a god of destruction in a few minutes is what destroys all the gravity behind the concept of getting stronger.

And then comes the fan service moment of the movie by rehashing yet another transformation that wasn’t canon up until this point. Fusion dance is back, and so is Gogeta after a quick training session by Picolo. Because they didn’t think about getting potara earrings from the Kaio’s planet, or telling Beerus to stop being a babysitter and do something for a change. By the way, just like any power up in Super, it was meaningless since it never defeats the big bad. The battle ended with a plot device for yet another time, so basically the entire fight was meaningless. They could wish from the dragon to teleport Broly away since the very beginning.

So the fight is over and nothing makes any sense even then. Broly magically loses his anger when he returns to his planet. Frieza is allowed to leave and continue his galactic extermination. And nobody on Earth felt there was a fight going on, even after an entire ice continent vaporized and caused who knows how much climatic change. Oh, and the best part is how Broly is now a good guy and will fight along with Goku in a following arc. Because this is the modern Dragonball where we have to become good friends with everyone we fight. Isn’t that wonderful, children?

… What a load of crock.