Unpopular DB opinions

[WittyUsername]

I'll take Super Hero any day of the week over Broly. Broly is a boring movie and the animation while good can't make up for the really week story. The action isn't good enough, either. It's just so lame that Broly gets so insanely strong because he has a temper tantrum.

Is that really any different from Gohan? Hell, Gohan gets a new transformation that has zero explanation behind it in Super Hero just because he gets mad.

[Scsigs]

I'll take Super Hero any day of the week over Broly. Broly is a boring movie and the animation while good can't make up for the really week story. The action isn't good enough, either. It's just so lame that Broly gets so insanely strong because he has a temper tantrum.

Bruh. Super: Broly's an actually good movie. I think it leaves something to be desired from the extra backstory stuff & whatnot that they had Toriyama cut from the script, but they took Broly, a character that was very divisive in his original incarnation. The main crux of the story is that you're supposed to find Broly a tragic character because he & his father were castaways exiled from Planet Vegeta & spent the last ~40 years on a planet they couldn't escape. Broly by his very nature is a gentle giant, but has a very volcanic temper where if you piss him off enough, he accesses a well of hidden power inside of him. He got used as a weapon by Freeza when that's not his choice because of that to fight Goku & Vegeta while his father also wants to get revenge on Vegeta for his father, so he teams up with Freeza to get it. The story is a tragedy that also ends on a happy note because they find a way to solve the problem. The only reason I can see someone not liking it is if you don't feel anything for Broly because he's the main character of the movie.
Comparing to the original Broly movie, he didn't have much of a character to him because he's nothing but a plot device & not shown as anything more than a sociopath that Paragus had to make a headband to control his power as Broly goes on tantrums because Goku's crying made HIM cry as a baby & he somehow not only remembers THAT, but also the grown up Saiyans making fun of him for it outside the nursery, which is just fucking stupid. His father Paragus also just wanted to kill Vegeta with a comet that's gonna hit a planet. The story is nothing but an action movie that tries to sew (bad) pathos to motivate its main antagonist that's extremely laughable & the other antagonist is just on a revenge plot that's, honestly, kind of dumb with how they executed it.

As for it being lame that Broly gets so strong because he gets mad, is it, though? That's kind of the entire point of a Saiyan's power. With Goku going Super Saiyan, Gohan's entire well of power (which, btw, was a plot point in his fight with Cell if you don't remember), Trunks in the History of Trunks special, & Cabba in the Universe 6 Tournament going Super Saiyan, enough examples of Saiyans getting a tremendous amount of power from their anger in the original manga, Z, & Super. I think either you're forgetting these things, or you just don't like that. Either way, this has been established in the older materials.

[90sDBZ]

I like both DBS Broly and Super Hero, though I like Broly more.

One big detriment to Super Hero is how it disregards Gohan's excellent ToP development, and has him carelessly slack off yet again. His training with Piccolo prior to the ToP really felt like it was hammering home he'd learned his lesson.

Beast would've been so much better if Gohan had been training the entire time. It was an asspull when it never needed to be. Gohan even alluded to wanting to achieve a new form prior to the ToP. They'd set it up perfectly, but needlessly had him slack off only to get handed a new form anyway.

Also it has the controversial meditation scene.

I enjoy DBS Broly largely because of the action, the animation, and Gogeta vs Broly being awesome. It's just a fun movie from start to finish.

[kiarasuraru]

Super Hero will forever have Gohan as an asterisk on it since he was never supposed to be there in the first place.

[The Dark Knight]

Super Hero will forever have Gohan as an asterisk on it since he was never supposed to be there in the first place.

Gohan's inclusion was suggested to Toriyama by Iyoko, just as Broly was before him.

[kiarasuraru]

Super Hero will forever have Gohan as an asterisk on it since he was never supposed to be there in the first place.

Gohan's inclusion was suggested to Toriyama by Iyoko, just as Broly was before him.

Yes? That's what we all know, which is problem. Gohan was not supposed to be there at all.
And no. There's a difference between "Hey, Broly's popular overseas. How about we make a movie about him, Toriyama-san?" and "Hey, I know your original idea is for just Piccolo but you should totally add Gohan there too".

[The Dark Knight]

There's a difference between "Hey, Broly's popular overseas. How about we make a movie about him, Toriyama-san?" and "Hey, I know your original idea is for just Piccolo but you should totally add Gohan there too".

They're exactly the same, as for all we know Toriyama's original pitch for Broly included a completely new Saiyan character that was replaced by Broly. Both movies pretty much followed the same pattern of Toriyama being suggested a popular character to spotlight. This was also how things were handled once Toriyama's was fully on board following the release of Battle of Gods, as popular fan demand became front and center.

[kprison]

Edit: I didn't read any of the above posts before writing this, funny that everyone was already talking about it, but just wanted to clarify that this isn't a response to anyone else.

I don't like DBS Broly or Super Hero. Once you've exhausted the great visuals there's not much else to them.

DBS Broly is just a retelling of Z Broly + Fusion Reborn + Bardock. I don't need to explain why it's a worse take on Bardock, that would be beating a dead horse. Fusion Reborn was more visually interesting with better characterization and humor than DBS Broly. Z Broly isn't the most interesting narratively but its visual direction is better at setting the intended atmosphere even though most of the animation isn't very impressive. The concept of Broly as a shy reactive character clashes with the actual design philosophy behind him, and not in the clever Toriyama way, it clashes in a way that makes you expect more from him than you ever actually get. Most people seem to like Super Broly because his motives are more sympathetic but a proactive character with silly motives is more interesting to me than a boring character with a sympathetic backstory.

Kale was a much more interesting Toriyama take on the Broly character, and the contrast in her personality and design actually work, especially paired with Caulifla.

(Z Broly's motivations also have nothing to do with Goku crying, at no point in any of the actual movies is that communicated either visually or through dialogue, it's just a weird misinterpretation of the flashback scene that somehow became universal in the fandom. That scene is actually communicating that Goku and Broly's fates were antagonistic from birth, they're fated enemies, which is not very believable but it's not outright stupid like people think.)

Super Hero is even closer in spirit to one of the original 13 Koyama DBZ movies. It doesn't have particularly good continuity with the original anime, it's just kind of... taking old ideas, vaguely rearranging them into something still familiar, but slightly different, and retelling mostly the exact same story that has already been told several times. The character moments with Pan are fun but they don't save it.

[kprison]

Double posting bc the two unpopular takes are so unrelated.

GT is better dubbed with the Menza score, and I say this as someone who prefers the Japanese version for everything else.

The corny dated approach actually improves GT and sometimes the dub makes legitimate corrections to the plot that didn't make sense in the original. Tokunaga score also had placement issues. The Menza score is a little dry but you never have things like Goku and Trunks raiding the villains' hideout in a moment that's supposed to be tense, while the most lighthearted rearrangement of the ed plays in the background, undercutting the intended atmosphere of the whole scene.

GT's awful music placement is not something that gets spoken about often. It's almost as bad as early Super.

[ABED]

I'll take Super Hero any day of the week over Broly. Broly is a boring movie and the animation while good can't make up for the really week story. The action isn't good enough, either. It's just so lame that Broly gets so insanely strong because he has a temper tantrum.

Bruh. Super: Broly's an actually good movie. I think it leaves something to be desired from the extra backstory stuff & whatnot that they had Toriyama cut from the script, but they took Broly, a character that was very divisive in his original incarnation. The main crux of the story is that you're supposed to find Broly a tragic character because he & his father were castaways exiled from Planet Vegeta & spent the last ~40 years on a planet they couldn't escape. Broly by his very nature is a gentle giant, but has a very volcanic temper where if you piss him off enough, he accesses a well of hidden power inside of him. He got used as a weapon by Freeza when that's not his choice because of that to fight Goku & Vegeta while his father also wants to get revenge on Vegeta for his father, so he teams up with Freeza to get it. The story is a tragedy that also ends on a happy note because they find a way to solve the problem. The only reason I can see someone not liking it is if you don't feel anything for Broly because he's the main character of the movie.
Comparing to the original Broly movie, he didn't have much of a character to him because he's nothing but a plot device & not shown as anything more than a sociopath that Paragus had to make a headband to control his power as Broly goes on tantrums because Goku's crying made HIM cry as a baby & he somehow not only remembers THAT, but also the grown up Saiyans making fun of him for it outside the nursery, which is just fucking stupid. His father Paragus also just wanted to kill Vegeta with a comet that's gonna hit a planet. The story is nothing but an action movie that tries to sew (bad) pathos to motivate its main antagonist that's extremely laughable & the other antagonist is just on a revenge plot that's, honestly, kind of dumb with how they executed it.

As for it being lame that Broly gets so strong because he gets mad, is it, though? That's kind of the entire point of a Saiyan's power. With Goku going Super Saiyan, Gohan's entire well of power (which, btw, was a plot point in his fight with Cell if you don't remember), Trunks in the History of Trunks special, & Cabba in the Universe 6 Tournament going Super Saiyan, enough examples of Saiyans getting a tremendous amount of power from their anger in the original manga, Z, & Super. I think either you're forgetting these things, or you just don't like that. Either way, this has been established in the older materials.

It's not a good movie. It's boring, the fight is lame. Broly as a character is barely one. There's a Sea of Tranquility between Goku turning Super Saiyan because he lost his best friend and his son is being threatened vs. Broly bridging the insane gap with God ki because someone took his rubber ducky. Add on top of this that it's the 4th time we've had Broly in a movie as the antagonist. Making giving him a sob story doesn't make him more interesting. Why are you explaining the movie to me? I've seen it. Do you think I don't like it because I didn't understand it?

I like Super Hero because there's a quirkiness and a charm to it. Pan and Piccolo's relationship is so much fun.

[VegettoEX]

I tend to get no support on this myself, but I also think Broly just isn't a good movie.

It's a confused, overly-long mess of at least three disparate, largely unrelated stories; I can't stand its musical score (my soundtrack is still in its shrinkwrap); there's so much animation that the actual impact is lost at countless points...

I just didn't have a good time watching it. I understand what people see in it, but that didn't land with me.

And that's fine. It's just unpopular!

[The Dark Knight]

The problem with Broly is that all it had going for it was its art and animation; the writing was a complete dud. I watched it once and never attempted to do so again, as my time would be better spent watching the three stories (Fusion Reborn, the first Broly movie, and the Bardock special) that inspired it.

[JulieYBM]

To make a weird comparison, Dragon Ball Super: Broly is taken out of the oven ten minutes too early while Res F just never goes into the oven. The fights are cool as hell, but they need to be structured with more character development. I kind of doubt that develoment exists in that 70 minutes of unanimated storyboards, too, which is a shame because there's a cool underlying story there, but Toriyama is allergic to using his authority as the original creator to push for more story and there's clearly not much authority from Nagamine beyond begging for ten more minutes than the 90 that he was going to be given in the first place, either, which sucks because he was a good director and should have been given more authority over the project.

Broly should have gotten more time to be developed and Gokuu and Vegeta should have actually gotten to face their pasts established in the prologue. That big dimensional rift-thingy scene where Gogeta transforms into Gogeta Blue would have been a perfect excuse to take a break and have those three have a Newtype-esque moment where they realize their confrontation is basically just playing an extension of a system that existed forty-plus years ago before then proceeding to the final clash. The fact that these stories are intentionally undercooked either because of Toriyama not wanting to make something that requires thinking or nobody else being allowed to really flesh them out without jumping through executive hoops is what's so frustrating to me.

Is Broly a good movie? Probably not, no, because it's hard not to see how much better it could have been if it followed through on pretty basic parts of storytelling. Am I entertained by seeing Nagamine and the animation team go all out? Yeah, definitely.

Super Hero annoys the hell out of me because it just drops it's fun first act for repeating the same Gohan shit again, only Toriyama isn't skilled enough as a writer to make it work. Tomioka et al took the Gohan business as far as it could be taken during the Tournament of Power, and the fact that it's then just ignored because Toriyama probably didn't watch that arc of the anime sucks for anyone coming in right off of the 2015 animated series.

Hashtag As a Woman, my view on the Pan stuff is that I honestly don't find it very impressive. I legitimately think this would have been funnier if Pan's relationship with Piccolo was with the Cell that Gohan killed instead. Piccolo's role in relationship to Gohan and his family feels too "appease generic online sentiment" and not enough making Pan a fully realized character instead of a mascot for Piccolo to interact with for, like, two scenes. There's also more room for dramatic tension if Gohan thinks of Pan being in danger because of Cell, but that winds up getting into a whole different film at that point lol

[The Dark Knight]

Is Broly a good movie? Probably not, no, because it's hard not to see how much better it could have been if it followed through on pretty basic parts of storytelling.

This is a problem I have with the majority of stories we've gotten since the Buu arc: I feel like I could have done a better job writing them. If you've spent months (or however long it takes) writing one of these stories as a professional writer, only for the viewers at home to be able to think of better alternatives on the fly, then you've failed as a writer. I'll use GT as an example, as Super needs a break from being crapped on; the shadow dragons arc. That arc by far had the most potential to be great out of everything we've gotten since Buu, yet they did the absolute bare minimum with it; any fan could have done more with that concept in 10 minutes.

[BernardoCairo]

I think both Broly and Super Hero are enjoyable films.

I see Broly's story as very cohesive. I like how there's an interpolation of the stories of the three Saiyajins and how meeting Broly, someone Goku admires and hopes will continue to live, leads him to better accept his origins as a Saiyajin (which culminates in the "Kakarotto" scene at the end of the story) . The elements that it borrowed from other projects were also well connected, so I don't see any problem with them. It's way better than any of those 90s movies anyway.
As for Super Hero, I think it's a really fun movie. Piccolo is intelligent and works very well as the main character, the new characters are fun, and I love how they framed the return of the Red Ribbon Army. It also has fun slice of life moments, much like Battle of Gods, which was a breath of fresh air at that point. My only problem with it is that I don't like seeing Gohan as the main character. It wasn't the original idea, and that's clear. Although it works in the final version of the movie (it's funny to see Piccolo dragging Gohan onto the battlefield), I wish Piccolo had been the sole protagonist.

[JulieYBM]

Is Broly a good movie? Probably not, no, because it's hard not to see how much better it could have been if it followed through on pretty basic parts of storytelling.

This is a problem I have with the majority of stories we've gotten since the Buu arc: I feel like I could have done a better job writing them. If you've spent months (or however long it takes) writing one of these stories as a professional writer, only for the viewers at home to be able to think of better alternatives on the fly, then you've failed as a writer. I'll use GT as an example, as Super needs a break from being crapped on; the shadow dragons arc. That arc by far had the most potential to be great out of everything we've gotten since Buu, yet they did the absolute bare minimum with it; any fan could have done more with that concept in 10 minutes.

I mean, I think I could do a better job about a lot of things, it's hardly a unique experience—especially when dealing with an author whose skillset it limited to making a few shounen comics. He's not a professionally trained writer—not that being so is necessarily a requirement, but it gives you skills that are useful to have—and his range of experience is really limited. It also doesn't help that Toriyama was not particularly a fan of studying and understanding the craft of writing and filmmaking in general, near as I could tell.

At least with actual anime writers we know that they're mostly just freelancers that ultimately just answer to the series director and others above them. It's only with directors like Tomino and Anno, who are also writers, that that dynamic is different. Dragon Ball Super (2015) not having a properly credited series kousei is probably reflective of the producer's desire to frame all of Dragon Ball animation as only coming from the mind of Toriyama, hence why the films keep being written by him directly and why Daima had him being extra attentive to the scripts.

[DanielSSJ]

My take on Broli is that it doesn't do enough to follow through on anything it tries to set up in the first half: Broli doesn't grow or change from the start of the movie, Paragus's abuse of Broli has no satisfying conclusion: he just unceremoniously killed off by Freeza to make Broli transform in time for the big action climax, Goku and Vegeta don't form any kind of relationship with Broli (no I[m not counting Goku popping in at the very end having already decided he and Broli are friends), Gogeta basically ends up at the film's antagonist, having to be stopped from killing Broli by Cheelai and Lemo, the stuff with Bardock and Gine ends up being completely irrelevant to anything and might as well have been cut entirely. To me it embodies being less than the sum of it's parts.

I'm a bit more forgiving of Super Hero, since I feel it at least succeeds in being a movie with a coherent story with characters that grow and learn something by the end? It's not a remarkable story, and there's a lot to criticize, not the least being it's the third or fourth time Gohan penchant for not training in times of peace is mined for drama or that it's a blatant attempt to cash in on Cell arc-era nostalgia, but I feel it's at least structurally a more competent story than Broli, at least in isolation.

[ABED]

Is Broly a good movie? Probably not, no, because it's hard not to see how much better it could have been if it followed through on pretty basic parts of storytelling.

This is a problem I have with the majority of stories we've gotten since the Buu arc: I feel like I could have done a better job writing them. If you've spent months (or however long it takes) writing one of these stories as a professional writer, only for the viewers at home to be able to think of better alternatives on the fly, then you've failed as a writer. I'll use GT as an example, as Super needs a break from being crapped on; the shadow dragons arc. That arc by far had the most potential to be great out of everything we've gotten since Buu, yet they did the absolute bare minimum with it; any fan could have done more with that concept in 10 minutes.

But fans aren't thinking up better alternatives. It's easy to throw out ideas you find appealing but that's thinking on paper. That's not writing. Writing is actual execution. Also, being professional writer means deadlines, bosses, other artists, etc. chiming in. I would hope fans who have zero of those concerns could come up with something better. But even then I don't agree. All those fans would have is an idea. You're comparing an idea to execution.

I didn't think this would create such discussion. Interesting. The idea of DBS: Broly being about 3 Saiyans and their fathers is both interesting and not interesting. This would've been an interesting idea decades ago. As of right now, I want to get past the Freeza arc. Toriyama's writing ended arcs and moved forward. now that fans who grew up with it have taken over, they want to take it back to their childhood. Or at least that's what it feels like.

[DanielSSJ]

But fans aren't thinking up better alternatives. It's easy to throw out ideas you find appealing but that's thinking on paper. That's not writing. Writing is actual execution. Also, being professional writer means deadlines, bosses, other artists, etc. chiming in. I would hope fans who have zero of those concerns could come up with something better. But even then I don't agree. All those fans would have is an idea. You're comparing an idea to execution.

It's also a lot easier to look at a story that already exists and think of how it could've been more effective than it is to come up with something from scratch. Like, I personally think Vegeta could've had an even stronger character arc in the Cell arc if he didn't acquire Super Saiyan until END of the arc when Cell kills Trunks, but I'm coming from a position with decades worth of hindsight. There's no was Toriyama ever could've planned for anything like that at the time of writing it.

[JulieYBM]

But fans aren't thinking up better alternatives. It's easy to throw out ideas you find appealing but that's thinking on paper. That's not writing. Writing is actual execution. Also, being professional writer means deadlines, bosses, other artists, etc. chiming in. I would hope fans who have zero of those concerns could come up with something better. But even then I don't agree. All those fans would have is an idea. You're comparing an idea to execution.

Fans aren't being paid to think up better alternatives. Pay me money to pay my bills with and I'll create a detailed outline to make this shit better. Okay, that's a joke: I'd rather jump out of the Enterprise's airlock than make commercial art [within the systems that exist]. I know how the sausage is made and it all sounds terrible lol

The idea of DBS: Broly being about 3 Saiyans and their fathers is both interesting and not interesting. This would've been an interesting idea decades ago. As of right now, I want to get past the Freeza arc. Toriyama's writing ended arcs and moved forward. now that fans who grew up with it have taken over, they want to take it back to their childhood. Or at least that's what it feels like.

The thing is, this is really just two different discussions: 1) Dragon Ball Super: Broly as a movie about the three Saiyans of Gokuu, Vegeta, Broly and their fathers is a good idea for a film. The prologue should have 100% been intercut with the big battle:

♥Just as Broly fires that big blast at Broly that eventually leads to his first transformation, the film should have cut to a King Vegeta flashback that tied things together to better frame how Vegeta was unintentionally fulfilling his father's vengence as part of a cycle of generational trauma.
♥After witnessing his father's death, we should have seen the Paragus and Broly scenes from the flashback to establish that Broly is not only emotionally and developmentally attached to his father in an unhealthy way, but also that his death represents a sort of shattering of Broly's innocent belief that he could have a better relationship with his old man. Sorry, son, you're fucked! At least you get a cute, cheeky shortstack gee-eff to console you now!
♥When Gogeta and Broly's clash shatters reality, Gokuu should have had a chance to interact with the Bardock portion of the flashback itself and seen a Saiyan perspective different from not only his own, but from Vegeta's, in how decades of endless war had left Bardock hollowed out and seeking something more and that he is himself the result of that.
♥Freeza's role in the film is that of a nexus point, right? He's the thing tying all these threads together...and the film also goes out of the way to have that rich twink's Papa right there, serving as a fourth father—a father passing down his own generational bullshit down to a child. There's rich stuff to fuck around there with and it doesn't even necessarily have to entirely Piccolo-fy Freeza, just add more to him as a character.

The second discussion is: why the hell would anyone want to keep making more of any pre-established IP when they could just go and make their own shit and not have to worry about all that garbage? Other than the fact that capitalism forces creative people to sell their souls to pay the bills. This isn't even a new problem, either. This problem has always existed and it's not even about fans now being adults and able to join the industry to work on continuations of said projects.

Capitalism has propagandized a generation of people who will sooner discuss wanting to feed into the system by making new additions to IP nonsense, rather than being inspired to make their own shit that is independent of corporate control. That's a terrible sign of an unhealthy artistic climate and one that needs to be addressed.

Fans are also at an inherent advantage in being able to look at the whole story after it's already completed when thinking about revising it. Like, I personally think Vegeta could've had an even stronger character arc in the Cell arc if he didn't acquire Super Saiyan until END of the arc when Cell kills Trunks, but there's no was Toriyama ever could've planned for that at the time of writing it.

I mean, he could have planned for it: It just would have meant actually having ideas. He wasn't married to anything and while that's certainly good to have—goodness knows not being married to an idea has saved my ass before—it also doesn't really lend itself to telling a satisfying story. Making shit up and seeing what sticks to the wall every week on no sleep and a probably really shitty diet is going to make for some awful storytelling—especially if your only other colleague sources for ideas aren't exactly great sources.