"Dragon Ball Super: Broly" Review - (Non-Spoiler)
Insanely good. The definitive Dragon Ball movie if there ever was one.
I've been a Broly hater all my life, the character in the non-canon movies was just awful and dumb despite a very appealing design (which was the only part of him that was actually penned by Akira Toriyama), but what was done with him in here is terrific. Akira saw the wasted potential in this godforsaken character and made great use of it, giving him a complete rework from the ground up. This Broly is nothing like the old one, as his motivations are totally new and his personality much more complex - the very thing that defines the character, his power-induced loss of sanity, is driven by something a lot more layered and well developed throughout the film than what was originally done with him back in the '90s. The same goes for his relationship with Goku, which is built on the foundation of the film's themes, and how Akira subverts a few notions about this world - the one that Saiyans are evil savages by nature, for example. Here we see it's not exactly like that, and there's a lot more depth to what composes a Saiyan, to what and why they are.
The animation is absolutely from out of this world. If you think that the last arc in Dragon Ball Super set a bar too high in terms of animation, believe me, this film obliterates that bar. I've never seen any anime movie more insanely-frenetically animated than this one. The fights are jaw-dropping from the beginning, but they only get crazier and the animation recurs to a number of bold techniques to portray certain aspects of them. The transformations, for instance. Look, I wasn't impressed with the Super Saiyan God form back when Battle of the Gods came out - didn't hate it, just wasn't impressed. Came out of this film completely in love with it. The way they use the animation to portray the transformations is very inventive; they go for different art styles for each form, and you just feel immediately that there's a lot more that has changed besides the hair color. It's just fascinating to see how they glow different, how they move different, how they look and feel completely different - and also, the techniques, the "special powers" if you will, are all executed in very different styles, and the more powerful, the more psychedelic they get.
I watched this in a completely packed theater; the fact that this is a brand with enough audience in its fans not to need anything else to sustain itself upon says a lot about the power of Dragon Ball and how it is still as relevant now as it was over 20 years ago.
"Dragon Ball Super: Broly" is an excellent addition to the franchise's canon, proving that Akira Toriyama has found true inspiration to do genuinely great things with his creation. This film has an insane level of action that will leave you drooling as it's carried out in some of the most mind-boggling visuals I've ever seen in animation, but it's also filled with soul and character in its story. As a long-term DB fanatic, I was very intensely satisfied. I can't wait for whatever comes next. I'm going to give "Dragon Ball Super: Broly" an 8 out of 10.