So, about the Broly hate...

[rereboy]

You know, had I really wanted to be condescend I should go on with rereboy advice and start bragging how shameful is it that nobody here reads Four Chinese Classical Novels and doesn't make obvious connections. I was a bit surprised, because that was the only place in Internet I come across people who actually read enough to discuss more subtle plot parallels.

Er... You stated "Srsly? Am I the only person who actually read Journey to the West?", and I suggested that you said, instead of that, "it's a shame that not more people read those classics... maybe that way the connection would be clearer to more people".

I don't know about you, but to me the only sentence where bragging and condescension appears to happen in on what you actually said. In fact, the whole point of my suggestion was to show you that you could tone down that tone while still stating what you wanted to say... It wouldn't make much sense for me to suggest a phrase that increased it. If I failed in doing that, that wasn't my purpose.

Anyway, I guess enough has already been talked about this. Let's not derail the topic further.

[Saiga]

Broli's similarities to Wukong are pretty cool, I'd never really noticed that before and it certainly adds more depth to his design.

It also makes him more appropriate as an opponent for Goku, one problem I had was that the whole movie felt more like Vegeta should be more important to Broli's story. But Broli taking inspiration from the same source as Goku makes it perfectly logical to face the two off against each other.

[Cold Skin]

Broly was a good concept different from previous villains for the initial movie he appeared in.
A brutal psychopath, a killing machine that can't be talked to or reasoned with, that goes full strength to kill everyone in just three minutes (and almost does so twice), and that can't take damages as he doesn't even feel the hits. The almighty Kame Hame Ha did nothing to him even at close range.
Just a giant, invincible ball of rage who enjoys destroying at every second and doesn't care for fair fights, something the heroes are not used to.
The incarnation of the Saiyan warrior taken to the extreme (even with the regular power increase, except he doesn't even need to be close to death to trigger those increases).
There's also something symbolic about seeing our Saiyan heroes somehow fighting the very nature of what their race was supposed to be and was still like a few decades ago.

But then the character was turned into a parody of himself in the subsequent movies, acting dumb and retarded instead of giving the sense of just being a psychopath, and losing the "strikes at full power to kill right now" aspect that made him unique as he takes time to play with the kids. Then he became just a big pile of mud. And finally, his return was just unnecessary, especially since he seemed really, visually torn apart / blown up by Goku's attack in movie 8.

But I think the most irritating thing is that he is often unrealistically overrated by a certain number of fans and sometimes games, to the point of what seems to be pure delusion.
Games will sometimes have in their description - or in the way they position him in the story/missions/chapters/dialogues - that he is the ultimate enemy, implying he is even stronger than any form of Majin Boo, any level of Super Saiyan, etc...
As for fans, some will easily argue that had he stayed alive, he would be undoubtedly a match - or even more than that - for Vegetto and even Beerus and Whis.

So there's a point where the "cult-like" aspect of "I'm completely in love with that psychopath God, he's undoubtedly stronger than even the strongest of the strongest" beyond any logic becomes annoying (even from Broly's creator himself who basically said Beerus didn't feel impressive compared to Broly and was kind of a disappointment). Not counting the fact that saying a big pile of mindless muscles that wants to kill everything and everyone is infinately better than all other, more thought-through characters can also make you seem a little... young or shallow, I guess.
Battle powers should not be debated too seriously in Dragon Ball, there are lots of personal opinions that can be valid and understandable even when you don't agree with those in your own opinion, but there's still some sort of limit in that you can't seriously say that Ginyu is obviously stronger than even Vegetto for example.

[rereboy]

As for fans, some will easily argue that had he stayed alive, he would be undoubtedly a match - or even more than that - for Vegetto and even Beerus and Whis.

Since Toriyama himself made Freeza become as strong as SSJGSSJ Goku with 4 months of training (which isn't that far off of Beerus) just because he is a prodigy, I don't see how anyone could criticize someone for saying that Broly has the potential to, with more than a decade of time to train and improve, match Beerus or Whis.

[Cold Skin]

^ But the thing is that Broly has no personnality to train. He's just a destroying machine who can't remain calm.
All of his power is due to his automatic power increase: and his whole life of automatic increases has only led him to be defeated in an era equivalent to the Cell saga, then the beginning of the Majin Boo arc.
These increases are not so impressive if you ask me and take a lot of time to make any significant difference.

It would be hard to believe that he would suddenly reach a power to rival characters from the end of the story, and it would be hard to believe that he could train unlike Freezer's perfectly valid revelation that he never trained and that he's willing to.

Freezer and Cell have refined personnalities that would train if needed.
Boo (pure form) and Broly are uncontrolable destroying machines that never trained and never would be able to in any circumstances. Hence Oob's incredible potential.

[Doctor.]

I don't know, maybe because in that time Beerus and Whis would improve as well and maybe because Broly doesn't have the same depth in his personality Freeza has to make him want to train rather than just meaninglessly destroy.

[rereboy]

^ But the thing is that Broly has no personnality to train. He's just a destroying machine who can't remain calm.
All of his power is due to his automatic power increase: and his whole life has only led him to be defeated in an era equivalent to the Cell saga, then the beginning of the Majin Boo arc.

It would be hard to believe that he would suddenly reach a power to rival characters from the end of the story, and it would be hard to believe that he could train unlike Freezer's perfectly valid revelation that he never trained and that he's willing to.

That's true. I was suggesting with training and regarding his potential. Without training there's no reason to assume that his abilities would skyrocket.

As for Freeza... Well... If he's willing to, he really should have been willing to before... Like when he got recked in Namek and before going to Earth... But that's my problem with the movie and another discussion.

[Tohru Adachi]

Maybe if they did something different with him and not shohorn him into everything like he's still relevant. In almost any new media he's in the guy is either a complete jobber and taken out in one shot by one of the Z (S) fighters, or completely overpowered enough to take on SSJ4 Gogeta. Still part of me hopes he makes it into canon in future installments with the new DBZ series and movies coming out.

[Captain Sauza]

Plus statements from Broly fans like these can easily make one tired of the guy:

"Brolly is literally the most powerful figure in the DBU next to the Gods of Destruction. Brolly destroyed a galaxy. Neither Cell nor Buu nor Gohan nor any of the others ever came anything close to that level of destructive force... the fact that King Kai's reaction immediately followed the South Galaxy's destruction means it happened just that moment and was not gradual."

"LSSJ Brolly >>> SS2 Goku, SS2 Gohan and SSJ Goten.

That's the fact of the matter. Vegeta never displayed anything that would even remotely place him on Brolly's level. Even by Power Scaling, Majin Vegeta would only be slightly above a System-Buster like Cell. Brolly is still a Galaxy Buster, placing him leagues beyond any of them."

[Vaughngief]

He's what everyone wrongfully makes fun of Dragon Ball for supposedly being. A big dumb buff guy who just screams...he's also a really boring character.

[BlackCatScott]

I like 'Broly: The Legendary Super Saiyan' a lot, and Broly was good as sort of a completely uncontrollable physcopath madman that could just snap in an instant... but he shouldn't have been brought back again, and then again. I think people would look back more fondly on his character if he was just featured in that one film, who knows?

I understand he's not a very interesting villain though with little to no personality.

[Cursed Lemon]

I really, really hate that Movie #8 is so much better than #10 or #11, and yet both of those movies are drawn/animated so much more beautifully...

[moochfloatjr]

Movie 8 is decent and Broly is a neat idea, but it's everything after that which starts going downhill.

Movie 10 was iffy and Movie 11 was even worse, then after Budokai 3 they started putting him in literally every game, including Attack of the Saiyans, and all the while so many fans praise him as way stronger than he is - even his creator, to some degree.

Plus, as Vaughngief said, he's a very stereotypical DBZ character who doesn't help the case of fans trying to inform people who claim it's just yelling and punching for 20 episodes in a row.

[Lord Beerus]

He's what everyone wrongfully makes fun of Dragon Ball for supposedly being. A big dumb buff guy who just screams...he's also a really boring character.

Vaughngief, you hit the nail on the head. Broly is every false, shallow trope about Dragon Ball rolled into one.

[DemonRin]

Ok, my reasons overall for hating Broli are as follows:

1: His motivation was absolutely stupid. Goku made him cry while they were babies, whaaaa, Gonna kill Kakarott now. That's literally it. The movie doesn't really do anything to show you "Hey, there's a deeper meaning here", it's just "You made me cry when we were 1 day old, I'mma kill you". They didn't even try to say it had something to do with the mind control or anything. I mean, a very plausible theory would be that Paragas had Broli enslaved from infancy, so Broli still has the mind of an infant now that he's free which is why he attacks Goku or something, but no, that's not explored or even hinted at. He remembered that Goku made him cry, so Goku gotsta die.

2: This might be caused by the first thing, but he has absolutely no personality as a result. He's a mindless beast whose job in the story is to punch people as hard as he can. I mean, that might have worked if you considered Paragas the villain of movie 8 and Broly was basically muscle, but that only works for Movie 8. Then you have Movie 10 where Broli is the ONLY threat, and the film comes off extremely weak for it. You have this peronality-less tank with a whiny motivation.... it just rubbed me the wrong way.

3: Add to this, a large contingent of the Fanbase, at least in the US, inexplicably loving him and acting like he's the best villain DBZ has ever had, and it's just really annoying. I don't think "It's popular" is a valid reason alone for why something is bad, but when something is THIS popular, it's kindof weird. Broli is easily the most popular and famous of the movie Villains, and honestly, I think he outshines some of the canon ones too. I've never seen a T-Shirt of Lord Slug, or Coola, or Janenba for example, but I've seen a bunch of Broli.

It just feels like a character that got popular, not because he's a well written nuanced character, or a very menacing yet charismatic villain, no, he got this status because he's big and buff and looks cool.

[rereboy]

1: His motivation was absolutely stupid. Goku made him cry while they were babies, whaaaa, Gonna kill Kakarott now. That's literally it. The movie doesn't really do anything to show you "Hey, there's a deeper meaning here", it's just "You made me cry when we were 1 day old, I'mma kill you".

No, clearly that's not it, as it's been already explained in this topic.

[One_Instance]

I think there were two paths that fans of movie 8 went down, a lot of people who loved the first movie, started hating Broly after seeing 10 and 11, and the others kind of went into denial about how bad the latter two were. Although, as a side note, my favorite of the the three is movie 11, I didn't really like movie 8 all that much.

[DemonRin]

1: His motivation was absolutely stupid. Goku made him cry while they were babies, whaaaa, Gonna kill Kakarott now. That's literally it. The movie doesn't really do anything to show you "Hey, there's a deeper meaning here", it's just "You made me cry when we were 1 day old, I'mma kill you".

No, clearly that's not it, as it's been already explained in this topic.

Yeah, I read earlier in the topic and I don't buy it.

There is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING in the film to show any deeper meaning to specifically why he wanted to kill Goku. True, Goku's crying in and of itself didn't drive him crazy, and anyone claiming that it did is kinda way off base. His craziness comes from his uncontrollable power, that's obvious.

But the supposed "Symbolism" of the crying scene makes no sense when you realize a few things:

1: The mere SIGHT of Goku was enough to make Broli start to lose control, and Paragas had to reign him in. It took no demonstration of power or anything. In fact, Goku ultimately wasn't able to beat Broli on his own. He needed power from everyone else to do it. By this logic, Goku without that power share wasn't really much more powerful than Gohan or Vegeta at this point in the series.

2: Vegeta is also able to go Super Saiyan at this point, and not only is the son of, but is the splitting image of the person who tried to kill Broly as a baby, yet Broly has NO reaction to Vegeta at all? If recognizing a strong rival is the thing that sets him off, why wouldn't THE GUY WHO TRIED TO KILL YOU AS A BABY elicit some kind of a reaction?!

3: He's fixated on "Kakarott" by look alone as I said in number 1, and this is underscored by Movie 10 in which he attacks Goten and Gohan SOLELY because they have a resemblance to Goku.


This reeks of interpretation. The baby crying upsetting Broli and making him hold a grudge against Goku is ridiculously stupid, so some people try to come up with an "excuse" for why it's not stupid, when in reality, yes it is.

[rereboy]

If you want to believe that the carefully placed scenes of their interaction together as children (especially when Goku defeats him) and all the coincidences and parallels between the two of them are completely random, including the elements in his design that eco parts of the Sun Wukong mythology that Goku is also based on, and that Broly is mad because he simply heard crying as a baby, you are free to do so. To me, that's completely ridiculous and shows a lack of ability to grasp subtle parallels in storytelling, which aren't even that subtle, they are just subtle for DB's standards.

As for the problems you mentioned:

1. That's the whole point. Broly IS more powerful than Goku, just like he was when they were babies. However, despite that, Goku STILL finds a way to make that not matter. As a kid, he still managed to make Broly cry with his own crying despite being massively weaker, and, as an adult, with the help of his allies (something that Broly doesn't have and something that only Goku could achieve, since most of the gang are former enemies), he once again finds a way to overcome the difference between them despite being clearly weaker.

2. Broly never met Vegeta before or King Vegeta. And Broly instinctively recognizes Goku as his rival, as his counterpart. This goes beyond being powerful or being a SSJ or what they did to him in the past. He realizes that Goku has the ability to overcome the difference in their powers and ultimately overcome him. He feels it on instinct, so he recognizes him as his personal rival. And he is proven correct since, what do you know, Goku manages to do just that, overcome the difference between them and defeat him. Vegeta might be powerful and a SSJ but he was never meant to be Broly's rival and he doesn't posses Goku's ability to overcome the difference between them. The story goes out of its way to show us that the relationship, the rivalry and confrontation between Goku and Broly is meant to be and fated to happen.

3. I've already explained to you why he reacts to Goku that way. As for Goten, that's played for laughs, but in-universe its either because Goten is so similar to Goku that he confuses him or because he realizes that he is obviously related to Goku.

[Eire]

If recognizing a strong rival is the thing that sets him off, why wouldn't THE GUY WHO TRIED TO KILL YOU AS A BABY elicit some kind of a reaction?!

Ordered to kill. Actual executioner was never seen aside of purple glove. And I doubt that Paragas had an old-fashioned medallion with King's portrait inside.