#point is. nappas cool. dragon ball legends said so

[mamepwrites]

A (kind of) review on Dragon Ball Super, and DBS: Broly

Let me start this by stating that, like many people, I've been a fan of Dragon Ball since childhood. So when the Battle of Gods movie and Dragon Ball Super were announced, I was ecstatic in getting to enjoy more Dragon Ball.

Long story short, while I enjoyed Super during its run, I started to realize its flaws more and more in hindsight. Inevitably it must be compared to its predecessor Dragon Ball Z, as Z is arguably the defining work of the franchise. After all, if Z wasn't so popular, reshaping the series from its adventure roots in the original Dragon Ball into being much more focused on fights constantly increasing in scale, then we wouldn't have had the continuations that were GT and Super. Nearly all of the franchise's derivative works in film, video games, merchandise, et cetera come from Z more than anything else.

Anyway, I came off of Super disappointed that the show felt so underwhelming. I felt like so much of it lacked the drama that Z had. Super succeeded Z on a surface level with its exciting battles and new transformations. They're what you immediately think of when you think of the Dragon Ball franchise, after all. But I can say with complete confidence that Super, for the most part, lacked the character drama that made these fights and transformations constantly increasing in scale so engaging. My one exception to this is the Future Trunks and Zamasu arc. With the overt introduction to the world of higher gods in the Dragon Ball universe(s), Zamasu was the optimal response to the changing scale of setting as a villain and antagonist, showing how these gods and supposed overseers of their places in the multiverse could go wrong and how the lines between good and evil, right and wrong, and justice and oppression can be so thin that you might not even notice when you've crossed them.

The Universe Survival arc forming the latter chunk of the show takes a much greater presence, having been alluded to since the show's early Tournament of Destroyers arc, and the idea of it reminded to the viewers in the Future Trunks and Zamasu arc. With eighty contenders representing eight universes, grandiose battles are a given, with the fights featuring big name contenders being the most anticipated. All of this would lead to an impressive final fight between our protagonist Goku and his greatest enemy thus far, Jiren, who is rumored to be even stronger than a God of Destruction. It's natural that the show would reach this point, seeing as its first new primary character to the franchise Beerus be the new standard for the heights of strength, and then have the show culminate in his power levels being surpassed in some way. Dragon Ball Super carried that theme fairly well, if nothing else. However, the focus on this theme of ever-growing power and having fights take center stage really took away from some important things, and that's character and soul. It's what I felt Dragon Ball Z had that Super lacked. Behind characters like Frieza and Cell were legitimate malicious threats to peace and life. Frieza was a galactic emperor whose freely showed off his talents as an oppressor and genocider. Dragon Ball Z's introduction of the Saiyan race immediately led to the revelation that their people were destroyed, and following the introduction of the Saiyans came Frieza, who directly caused the end of their race. So while we have character goals and motivations in the Namek saga that have nothing to do with dealing with Frieza (Krillin, Bulma, and Gohan travel to Namek to revive their friends killed by Nappa and Vegeta, while Frieza wants the Dragon Balls for immortality), it's the clash of motivations involving the Dragon Balls themselves that ultimately lead to the fight between Goku and Frieza. And to have Goku, a lower-class Saiyan runt sent away from the destruction of his planet, become the strongest Saiyan of legend and be the one to defeat Frieza... you have to admit, there's some poetic quality in that. Goku doesn't defeat Frieza to avenge his species, he only becomes a Super Saiyan through pure rage after Frieza kills his best friend. The Namek saga of Dragon Ball Z features some of the best fights in the series -- not solely because of how cool and powerful everyone looks and is chalked up to be, but because of the drama behind each fight. The Android/Cell saga continues to carry this torch, with the Z Fighters trying to prevent their world from ending up like Future Trunks's timeline, and eventually a worse threat in the shape of Cell, whose threat constantly takes humanity and Earth mere inches from extinction and destruction.

And it's this drama that Super sorely lacks, and part of it can be blamed on Super taking place in the time of peace between the end of the Buu saga and the finale World Tournament. By then, Vegeta has already completed his redemption arc, a slow-bake that occurs through the passage of time and his marriage with Bulma and rearing of Trunks (both the ones from the future and the present). Goku returns to Earth as its first line of defense out of necessity after having willfully remained dead after the Cell saga, in his third lease on life. Beerus wanting to destroy Earth out of either lack of pudding or a Super Saiyan God is an incident that carries no weight or genuine malicious intent behind it. Frieza's revival is put to an end just as quickly as he came back. The Tournament of Power's erasure of most of the universes is quickly reversed -- and depending on whether you keep up with the television serial or the comic, this was expected by the tournament's holders. To summarize, Super has lacked a true major villain (aside from Zamasu), and in its stead keeps gods who hold the threat of destruction and erasure over the heads of universal populations, solely because it's easily expected of those in the positions of gods.

Now, onto Dragon Ball Super's first official film: Broly. I have to admit, they did wonders for Broly's character in giving him a backstory that's more than just him getting angry at another baby crying. Broly and Paragus have motivation in revenging upon Vegeta, for his king father's exiling of them. Frieza, this time around, is reduced to standing on the sidelines, serving as the catalyst for bringing Broly, Paragus, and Vegeta together, and only wanting the Dragon Balls for a frivolous wish. The first half of the movie was great for showcasing the new Broly and quickly garnering the viewer's affection for him as the story's (sort of) main character. However, after Broly and company land on Earth, the movie quickly defuses into a series of fights for the sake of fights. (Kinda like Goku, I guess.)

Vegeta responds to Broly and Paragus's hate for him with his fists in kind, as is natural. However, none of this issue is resolved in any way. No one ever brings up King Vegeta's exiling of Broly again, and Paragus never gets the chance because he's promptly killed by Frieza to push Broly into becoming a Super Saiyan. The blind rage of the Legendary Super Saiyan form is a weakness for his character, and not just in the way of Super detailing it to eventually destroy the user the more they fight and well up with power. This blind rage prevents Broly from being a character with motivation behind his punches, and makes him more of a walking power level like Jiren and his flimsy backstory. I should say that Jiren's motivation in getting a wish through Dragon Balls (however ambiguous said wish was kept in the television serial) is at least something of a motivator, however irrelevant it was to the conflict of the Tournament of Power itself. Broly on the other hand loses any rational thought and only wants to destroy anyone he sees.

Next up comes the issue of Gogeta's introduction to the canon of the main Dragon Ball timeline. I was looking forward to this as any Gogeta fan was, and was excited for a fight between Gogeta and Broly ever since the opening animation to Dragon Ball Z: Budokai 3. However, while the fight itself felt great, I thought there was little in the way of justification for Goku and Vegeta to fuse aside from Broly's overwhelming strength. For characters like Goku and Vegeta who dislike fusing because they want to rely on their own strength, the amount of time given between their transformations into Super Saiyan Blue and when they flee and later become Gogeta was very short. Seeing as Super Saiyan Blue became the relative standard for fights in Dragon Ball Super, not seeing Goku and Vegeta being pushed to use the Kaioken technique and Blue Evolution form respectively to attempt to contend with Broly was a letdown. It could have really cemented just how strong Broly was, likely even stronger than Jiren, who bested both Goku and Vegeta together in said forms. Still, in a film you have to abridge some things. Maybe I'm overreacting for this one bit. After all, it did take a while for Goku and Vegeta to agree on and successfully perform the fusion. Still, it felt like glorified fanservice. Gogeta didn't get much in the way of defining personality traits to distinguish him from his Potara counterpart Vegito. Previous iterations of the character did better. Gogeta in Z's 12th movie, Fusion Reborn, was shown to be about business, immediately becoming a Super Saiyan before the viewers could even see his base form and taking down the film's antagonist Janemba in well under a minute of onscreen action, only cracking a smirk at the demon kid who causes the incident in the first place. The brevity of the fight is dissatisfying, but was enough to showcase his differences from Vegito, who joked and played around during his fight with Super Buu, and purposefully acting the fool. Super Saiyan 4 Gogeta in Dragon Ball GT had much more screen time, and played around more (to his detriment), showing off the hubris of an ultra-powerful character. This time around in Super: Broly, all we saw in regards to personality for Gogeta was him wanting to seem cooler with a name, and is arguably similar to his Fusion Reborn incarnation, only spread out over several minutes.

In the end, I feel like Dragon Ball Super: Broly was did a fair job at introducing new things, but failed in filling up those things with proper narrative substance. I don't think this movie stands up on its own as a film I'd go out of my way to see if I wasn't a Dragon Ball fan. But in regards to Dragon Ball films in general, Dragon Ball Super: Broly likely stands as the best among them.

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