'Dragon Ball Super: Broly' is Peak Dragon Ball

When I first started writing reviews ten years ago, Dragon Ball was a has-been. It had a place in history, but it had been long since superseded by younger, hotter shonen anime like Bleach. In 2019, however, Bleach is the has-been, and the Goku Renaissance is in full force. There are new episodes of Dragon Ball Super airing on a reborn Toonami, there's Dragon Ball FighterZ, there's Dragon Ball Z Abridged, and there's the All Systems Goku podcast. If you want fan or official releases, you are drowning in Dragon Ball #content. And the latest film, Dragon Ball Super: Broly has had what amounts to a major motion picture release and made millions at the box office. This is the greatest come-back tour in anime history.

I have been happy to see Goku and Vegeta put on new shows for the fans. But like an old band reuniting, they can play the songs but can they still rock when they were in their twenties? At some point you're just a cover artist of yourself. The previous movies, Battle of Gods and Resurrection F were fun little reunion shows. However, it never felt like the characters or the franchise were pushing themselves in any way. It isn't that I dislike the new Dragon Ball Super series, it just never felt relevant or important. Super is their retirement. I don't want to age-shame here, I'm glad the Saiyans are still in shape and can still work this late into their careers. But when you take away nostalgia, how much is left?

Dragon Ball Super: Broly is the first new Dragon Ball story that feels ambitious to me. I haven't been as excited about Goku since grade school. Broly doesn't push our favorite characters to new places.  Goku and Vegeta have done this a thousand times before and act like it. Luckily it isn't really their movie. And story isn't the draw here in Broly: The Movie. This is instead a grand showcase of modern anime techniques. Dragon Ball has never looked this good or been this experimental with its art design. The film's plot is just an excuse to watch nearly an hour of shonen brawling. This time, Toei Animation wanted to make the greatest Dragon Ball fights ever. They succeeded.

I don't want to hate on Dragon Ball Super for too long, but I need to further explain where I'm coming from when I say Dragon Ball is stale to me. If you love Super, feel free to tell me how I'm wrong. But bear with my old man bitching for two more paragraphs then we can talk about the movie.

Once the Buu Saga ended, all the major character arcs were over in Dragon Ball. Vegeta was fully a good guy, Gohan was fully an adult, and Goku had nothing more to learn about himself. Series creator Akira Toriyama quit at the right time. After you've literally blown up the Earth the stakes cannot really go any bigger. Dragon Ball GT tried to just be more Z, and failed.

Dragon Ball Super instead is like Goku's happy Golden Years. Instead of golfing in Florida, he gets to find new aliens to punch. Boring villains like Hit aren't pushing Goku to learn new things about himself or test his morals as a father or friend. They're just obstacles. The fights have no emotion behind them, it's like watching the Patriots win the Super Bowl for the eighth time in a row. Even Vegeta is like Goku's tsundere wife now. Without true character stakes, Super will always be boring to me. I'm glad it is pleasant, I'm glad that it lets us see Goku and Piccolo be grandpas occasionally. But like old WWE stars who have been in the spotlight way too long, Goku and Vegeta need to move on to make room for new talent. Or else Vegeta might see his sex tape get leaked by Gawker.

Dragon Ball Super: Broly is at least partially Goku and Vegeta giving up the top billing. Most of the movie is about its marquee villain instead of our usual heroes or even a resurrected Frieza. If you forget your Dragon Ball history, Broly originally was a DBZ film villain who was popular enough to get two sequels. That old Broly now is best-remembered as a mindless edgelord who yelled "KAKAROT" a lot. (Abridged mocked him as "literally a giant baby".) This new Broly has the same story arc as the original: he is a ridiculously strong Saiyan with an anger problem and probably a steroid one too. Vegeta's Dad tried to have him killed but his father Paragus saved him, and now they both plot for revenge.

The difference this time is that Broly is actually even more of a child than he was before. Not child-like in terms of three movies of an extended temper tantrum, but child-like in terms of innocence. He spends his entire life growing up on an ugly planet, a bug planet. Upon reaching space civilization, Broly has no idea how to react to people, especially the advances of his new short green alien waifu. He was basically raised by wolves or more precisely, giant alien bear-worms, and his awful father. Instead of being truly evil, Broly simply doesn't know how to control himself.

The movie keeps a positive Dragon Ball Super tone. Only one character dies and is not missed, Frieza's evil plan is just to make himself taller, and while the entire Antarctic gets melted, the Earth is never in any real danger. I think Gohan sleeps through the whole movie. We have a subplot where it turns out Bulma has been using the Dragon Balls to keep herself young. The most dramatic moment is in the intro when Broly: The Movie adds some scenes to Goku's backstory to make him even more like Superman than he was already.

Now the real draw to Broly: The Movie is the action scenes. With a doomed Kryton opening and a preposterously-long action climax, this is effectively the better version of Zach Snyder's Man of Steel. But unlike Man of Steel, Dragon Ball Super: Broly manages to keep the action inventive and fun for most of that endless climax rather than miserable and depressing. I'd still argue there's probably ten minutes too much action, but that just shows you how much of a visual delight you are getting out of this movie. It is too much of a good thing.

Broly throws everything it can at the audience. There's jagged Gurren Laggen faces, Kill la Kill cross-shapes, and a feast of colors, styles, and effects. Every minute the movie feels like it cuts toa  different studio making a different kind of Dragon Ball fight scene. Scene to scene the fights bounch radically into new and crazier color pallets and temperatures. Later when Goku and Broly reach max power, they literally blast into an alternate reality of weirdness and hues. Broly: The Movie is a good rival for Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse in terms of animated brilliance.

Typically the cinematography in Dragon Ball is very flat and static, just there to capture the action. In Broly instead the camera is moving along with the characters, giving us an extra dimension to the combat. Toei must be employing 3D animation to get this kind of fluidity, but it flows perfectly with the traditional cel work.

There's a particularly inventive scene where the camera goes first-person while Broly beats the shit out of Vegeta (see above). Dragon Ball has never looked anything like this, there's never been that kind of filmmaking creativity.

I'm even impressed by how the fights are choreographed. Dragon Ball has never been about the martial arts. Nobody has a style of their own or any sort of technique, everybody basically fights the same way. But in Broly, Goku's movements remind me of Jackie Chan's drunken boxing. His sloppy stance and rapid attacks make our star less the Man of Steel and more a trickster monkey god. (Living up to his Son Wukong inspiration, I suppose.) Broly is the Hulk, whipping his opponents around like Loki at the end of The Avengers. If we must have an hour of nearly non-stop action, it is great that the action itself helps draw the characters.

If you're wondering why this post exists at all, it's because the fights and animation really are that good and I left the theater knowing I had to write home about it. I didn't want to complain about Super and sound like an unpleasable asshole. I want to gush about a true achievement in shonen action. Dragon Ball Super: Broly takes the gloves off and beats you with everything the studio has.

That said, the animation isn't consistently great. Toei definitely cut corners in the scenes without Super Saiyans. It's especially jarring when right between two tightly-composed fight scenes the film cuts to a plot moment and every character is now severely off-model. But at least Broly is using its budget well.

Dragon Ball Super: Broly is not a revolution that has rebirthed Dragon Ball for the better. Dragon Ball doesn't need a revolution. It is instead a grand celebration of a series at the peak of its popularity. This isn't just banking on nostalgia, it is has its own ideas of how Dragon Ball can look and how Dragon Ball can feel. Toei set out to put on the biggest Dragon Ball show with the most hair colors and the best action, and with Broly, they succeeded. All Dragon Ball needed was ambition to be greater than its past. In Broly: The Movie, that ambition was achieved.