A couple of qualifying notes here: We don’t usually review anime films at LCB, but as a general fan of DB I had to make the plunge. As for my own fandom, I’ve watched the series up through GT, and seen probably half the movies including the first two non-canon Broly movies. To prep for the movie, I read and watched some recaps of Dragon ball Super (which I’m definitely going to go through and fully watch cause GT stunkkkkkkk and everyone says Super is great). Now to the good stuff.

I loved this movie for a few reasons. The first and foremost is that it doesn’t take itself too seriously. It’s a straight up mano-a-mano(s) fight between continuously leveling up heroes/villians with no particularly dire stakes. The second is that have some pretty good humor throughout, including Bulma and Frieza’s motivations for getting the dragonballs which was both funny and perfectly memeable. Lastly, what a visual treat this was. Some of the most outstanding fight sequences I’ve ever seen an Anime film put together.

The mele fights were sick on their own, and the energy attacks animation made it even more insane. Another thing that stood out to me was how they fleshed out some more of planet Vegeta, and the Saiyans relationship with the Frieza Force. They establish King Vegeta, Bardok, Gine, and Paragus and their respective struggles to protect their children (Vegeta, Goku and Broly) which was awesome to see in a consolidated film instead of it being scattered across the series and movies.

I also loved the conclusion of this because it was both satisfying and ambiguous as to the possibility for a sequel. I think if you’re a new or OG DB fan, you will love this action packed brawl. I would make a point to catch in in theaters if possible, although it didn’t release in a lot of locations.

Spoiler Section:

I feel sort of bad for Paragus because he gets painted as a bad dad when he literally abandon his entire life to chase down his son on a barren planet. Especially when you consider how Bardock/Gine establish how Saiyans usually don’t give a shit about their offspring. He trained Bardok really hard for the purpose of destroying what he thought would be a formidable opponent in King Vegeta and his lackeys which is actually kind of funny in retrospect (Broly could probably destroy the whole planet with a fart). He also had sort of an unceremonious death getting killed by Frieza’s death beam just like Vegeta did on Namek. Speaking of Frieza, knowing he got the everloving shit beat out of him by Broly for a full-ass hour while Goku and Vegeta struggled with the fusion dance was laugh-out-loud funny. I loved the Gogeta fight with Broly, and when he powered up his final Kamehameha I was ready to run through a god damn wall. The last thing I want to note is that I thought I was going to hate Cheelai and Lemo based off their first few scenes, but they grew on me as the movie went on. I’m excited to see how their dynamic works with Broly in future movies.