Dragon Ball Super: Broly is the Franchise's Best Film, Period

WARNING: This article contains minor spoilers for Dragon Ball Super: Broly and various other Dragon Ball Z films.

Dragon Ball fans have had quite an exciting few years. There were the franchise's first new movies in almost two decades in 2013's Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods and 2015's sequel Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection 'F', which were great and, for the first time, involved franchise creator and manga icon Akira Toriyama. Then came Dragon Ball Super, a brand new anime set in the 10-year time gap between the end of Dragon Ball Z's Majin Buu Saga and its final episode.

The series retold the stories of those new movies and added more epic adventures for the Z Warriors (and, despite ending in March of 2018, is still airing on Adult Swim in the United States with new episodes on Saturday nights). In video games, there was the best-selling Xenoverse series and the instantly beloved fighting game Dragon Ball FighterZ.

And now comes Dragon Ball Super: Broly, which takes a beloved fan-favorite villain from three earlier movies -- that'd be Broly (Vic Mignogna in the English cut), the unstoppable, feral Saiyan warrior -- and fleshes him out into a sympathetic, tortured monster, all while setting new standards for CGI in anime, offering some of the most thrilling fights in franchise history and, without question, being the best Dragon Ball film that's ever been made.

Surpassing Its Own Limits

Since Japanese readers first met him in 1984, Son Goku (Sean Schemmel) has always striven to protect his friends and family, battling fierce opponents for the fate of the Earth, universe and more, and surpassing his own limits along the way. Accordingly, Broly reaches for the stars, surpassing every other film in the series.

In 1993's Broly -- The Legendary Super Saiyan (which Funimation re-released to select theaters last fall), Broly was a silent co-conspirator of his father, Paragus (Daemon Clarke), who swore revenge on Vegeta (Christopher Sabat) after his father and namesake exiled them due to Broly's astronomical power (a situation repeated in Broly).

While he was creepy, Broly had no real personality. That only got worse in his next two appearances, 1994's Broly -- Second Coming and Bio-Broly, where he didn't even speak at all. In the latter, his striking design was even replaced by a weird cross between Hulk Hogan and a slime monster.

So for its first trick, Toriyama's screenplay for Broly recasts the titular character as a victim of child abuse. Cruelly sent away by King Vegeta so as to not upstage his own son's power, the then-infant Broly is sent to the inhospitable, monster-infested world of Vampa. Paragus steals a ship, catches up to him and then spends the ensuing decades training Broly (who now has a spiffier design) to be the perfect warrior above all else.

NEXT PAGE: Dragon Ball Super: Broly's Fight Scenes Are Jaw-Droppingly Good

Eventually rescued by Frieza Force members Cheelai (Erika Lindbeck) and Lemo (Bruce Carey) while they're out looking for recruits (Frieza himself having been resurrected as part of Super's final arc), Broly seemingly has no social skills and is scolded by Paragus for even daring to talk. To control him when he flies into uncontrollable rages, Paragus has outfitted Broly with an irremovable shock collar.

Frieza (Chris Ayres), intrigued by the power Broly can offer him, takes the duo with him and his forces to Earth, where some of his minions have gathered the Dragon Balls for his use (we're not going to reveal what he wants to wish for, but it's funny and very in keeping with his character). Naturally, Goku and Vegeta are there to stop him, but the film never forgets that Broly isn't a mindless brute, but rather an emotionally stunted man with nigh-incomprehensible power that's being twisted all for someone else's gain.

A Whole New Kind of Fight Scene

That doesn't mean this new Broly isn't a formidable opponent for Goku and Vegeta. Far from it. Even though the events of Super enabled them to achieve the inconceivably powerful forms of Super Saiyan God and Super Saiyan Blue with relative ease, Broly still puts up a tremendous fight.

And what a fight! Taking place over the majority of the film, the massive showdown between Goku, Vegeta and Broly in the Arctic is the best kind of spectacle. Combining stellar fight choreography, next level CGI effects, a score by Norihito Sumitomo that brings just the right kind of cheesy bombast and swooping camera shots (this is the first Dragon Ball film screened in IMAX, after all), director Tatsuya Nagamine, animation director Naohiro Shintani, art director Kazuo Ogura and their team at Toei Animation produce minute after minute of jaw-dropping sights.

Now, for whatever reason, most of the last two decades of anime has seen CGI effects struggle to blend in seamlessly alongside traditional 2D art. Broly skirts these issues with an innovative trick. During the huge three-sided fight scene, when the film really needs to get crazy, it swaps out 2D Goku, Vegeta and Broly for 3D models. But then it layers 2D animation over them, which helps hide the transition and keeps the visuals consistent. It's a really smart trick and a stunning move in a movie just plain full of them.

What The Future Holds

Dragon Ball Super's weird status as an interquel between the final episodes of Dragon Ball Z means there's always an innate time limit for how much new material can be added. That said, the fact that Broly ends on such a hopeful, open-ended note is heartening and exciting.

Broly's survival at the film's end and his newfound peace of mind -- with Cheelai and Lemo quitting the Frieza Force to take care of him -- is heartwarming, and Goku wants to help him survive so they can fight again one day. Will he get his wish? The film certainly suggests so and, if the sequel is as astonishing, well-crafted and fun as this one, we certainly hope we get it.

Whatever happens, the future for Dragon Ball looks brighter than ever.