Writer: Akira Toriyama
Director: Tatsuya Nagamine
Studio: Toei Animation, 20th Century Studios
Director: Tatsuya Nagamine
Studio: Toei Animation, 20th Century Studios
Watched on: 23/12/2020
Review contains ***SPOILERS*** for Dragon Ball Super: Broly
Ratings:
Wow wow WOW! That was a fucking amazing experience. Without any of the added value of nostalgia, this film straight up had some of the sickest fight scenes I've ever seen. With the nostalia though, I feel like this was some long overdue closure and a lovely way to wrap up a 30-year journey through the DBZ series, the Budokai Games and a bunch of (apparently non-canon) movies. It wasn't quite so perfect as Endgame was for MCU fans but the film paid its respects to all of that stuff and nicely put a ribbon on it. And it looked amazing doing it.
Nowehere else to start than the animation. Legitimately unreal how good it is. So much of it is hand-drawn, which always looks amazing to me. But it's done so well, with all the little angles and turns and small touches that the rest of Super really didn't have. It's just high quality traditional animation. They also made the decision for the cleaned up animations to keep a sort of unkempt 'grease pencil' look on all the outlines - that worked perfectly! It never looked messy but always felt hand-made, as if someone genuinely put their heart and passion into it. Speech isn't quite that fluid, fully-acted, perfectly-synced style I like but the characters are at least expressive with their bodies when they speak. As mentioned, the fights are what really make this film such an experience. Even the early sparring match between Goku and Vegeta just looks sick. Genuinely interesting hand-to-hand combat that's clearly articulated, well choreographed and super active. Never stands still. I'll come onto the 'final' fight in a bit but the art design is all unmistakably Toriyama as well. He's got a very distinct style that so many people are familiar with and enjoy, so it was nice to see that really shining in every character, outfit and animal. The style can also fit both serious and playful moods so well and switched between both pretty seemlessly throughout. Leaning so heavily into that style really let this film be a bit of a swansong for Toriyama, which was pretty sweet.
Now onto that final fight. First of all, I'll say I'm impressed with just how long it lasted. They actually genuinely spoiled us viewers with how long it was, whilst keeping it visually interesting, constantly evolving, and even story-related in bits. It goes way past the usual allotment of high-quality action (fucking 'sakuga') you'd normally expect. The fight also has maybe a dozen passages of distinctly different animation styles, likely by multiple key animators and studios. The amazing thing is that they're each stylised enough to distinguish themselves but they're never dissonent with the main style. They all fit together perfectly. That even goes for the parts where they clearly rigged up 3D models for a few seconds of action, with the characters and the environment moving around mad quick. They even sometimes smoothed this out by hand drawing the last few frames to bring it back home, which worked very nicely and just speaks again to the quality of the whole thing. The 3D models even had those hard outlines that give them that faux-2D look and I read that as almost a direct tribute to the Budokai games (although will concede that might be a bit of a reach). The same harmony was clearly shown with the effects animation, which was definitely a mixture of hand-drawn and computer-generated. All the powering up, auras and energy blasts looked amazing. There were sadly 1 or 2 parts where the CGI environment (icy mountains and water) looked a little soft (I may learn a better word for what I mean here one day), as did the Frieza Force's CGI ships in the rest of the film. But yeah, what a whole load of fun that fight was.
Also a clear reason why this film was so much better than most of Super was the environments. A ridiculous amount of Super takes place in a bland, flat arena in the middle of space. There's nothing to interact with and a plain back background all around is really boring. The vibrant, varied, dimensional arenas in this film make for far more interesting fights. Also, setting the big fight in a glacial tundra just gave it a nice feeling, kinda like the library planet in Rogue One.
A lot of the above of course comes from great directing and storyboarding and I gotta give major props in that department. The decision was clearly made to really make the film as much about wicked fights as possible, as Dragon Ball always should be and that alone deserves praise. It was really nice actually to see the things we liked about DBZ brought back and honoured, without the things we disliked, like excessive dialogue and hours of powering up. That said, it wasn't perfect. There was a bit of trying too hard with the fusion - although it was funny-ish to see them do the 2 staple fuck-ups of the fusion dance, it seemed very weird to suggest that all 3 of Goku, Vegeta and Piccolo spent a full hour sitting around doing nothing while Bulma and a few others were definitely in danger. That could have just been a funny thought or flashback. It was also really nice though to see 2 fan favourites finally given their place in the canon, in Broly and Gogeta. My main experiences with Broly are through the games, so all I know him for is being the Legendary Super Saiyan and basically a mindless, raging brute. So it was interesting and refreshing to see this portrayal of him as a sensitive, kind-hearted young kid, although I haven't seen any of his older movies, so that may be who he always was. Either way, it made for a great character, who you will really feel for as a viewer. A lot of the Saiyans we saw were pretty good characters actually.
I do have to be critial of a few things in terms of the directing/story. Firstly, the pacing of the story was a bit off. I think the Planet Vegeta opening was a little too long and could have probably been improved by having bits of the second half of it drip fed throughout the rest of the movie. All the same, it was cool to see Bardock and quite a bit of Planet Vegeta. Young Vegeta and Raditz looked a little odd but oh well.The same timing criticism goes for the Broly fight. It was too long to be watched in one go. They should have split it up into an initial encounter that ends fairly quickly and a long final fight (maybe 3/4 of the original) after some other plot stuff and/or training. The film also put too little or too much focus on certain things, which felt a bit odd - like the fuzzy green ear wasn't necessary at all and they spent like 5 minutes talking about it but Broly breaking the shock collar is a pivotal moment in the story and isn't acknowledged at all. Also probably just an issue with the dub but there was a lot of unnecessary explaining, which was a bit annoying but that's not really a criticism; gotta remember this is aimed at kids/teens after all. I will also say on the big fight that it was the same old formula of the fighters randomly being better than each other, then switching with no real explanation. That will always be poor storytelling but you kinda allow it because 1. it's the last hoorah, 2. it's a movie, so has limited time to set stuff up and 3. the fight is so thoughtfully executed, that things like that becomes way less important. It's also fundamentally Dragon Ball, so you can't complain. The same goes for the stupidity of Beerus being more powerful than all of the Z-fighters at "15%" of his power, then Whis being far more powerful than him, then Zeno being incomprehensibly more powerful than him. You just gotta gloss over it.
The story itself was pretty simple and straighforward but ironing out a few points would have made it that much more fulfilling; like Frieza revealing an actual serious plan for the Dragon Balls. I did like the fact that it basically ended with "well Frieza still on his bullshit", that was fair. I found the last scene between Goku and Broly really lovely too.
Nothing else to say, really. I can now happily put the main story of Dragon Ball to bed and move on peacefully. Also makes for a nice change that I'm finally happy with a closing chapter.
