(So, this is me taking a shot at one of the better received anime films to come out in a while, as well as a series I do keep close to my heart, this is a review of DragonBall Super: Broly)

Summary: So, a long time ago on planet Vegeta there was this Saiyan named Broly, and he was so powerful, even as an infant, that it gave the king of this planet an inferiority complex and he had the little runt shipped off to a desolate planet to die. It didn’t work and he’s been living on said desolate world all these years being trained by his father to be a killing machine. As you can probably imagine, when the Freiza Force finally comes across and liberates him, all Hell breaks loose.

The Good: This is Broly’s story, through and through and, frankly, it works. For all that I did come here for a DragonBall movie and that does itself, generally entail, Goku, Vegeta and the rest, taking our time to actually develop a villain for once, rather than just having somebody show up with a few flunkies and essentially scream ‘hey, look at my cool new transformation’, is a very welcome change of pace. It also takes a few minutes to do some ‘revisionist history’ for the series and, I think that does help to smooth things out a bit. Admittedly this might be a tipping point for fans, but, what’s more believable, that Bardock suddenly gained psychic powers from one of his victims, or that he just had a bad feeling about a proven evil monster and chucked his son to Earth for safe keeping?

The Bad: They hit the ‘Goku is a moron’ button hard in just the first few minutes of screen time, and I mean HARD. There are no words just… He released Frieza, one of the worst villains in DB History, and didn’t give it a second thought, it… I mean… is it possible to slap a cartoon? Also, while I understand that Saiyans do essentially have dick measuring built into their DNA, after seeing Vegeta get pummeled by this guy in God Mode, why would Goku ever try to attack Broly in his base form?

Final Thoughts: While I do have a few nitpicks (like what the Hell was Bulma still doing in that lava field, why not take Broly to the planet to the Kais, why didn’t Goku go Ultra Instinct, and  why the Fuck do you keep saving Frieza), once the fighting starts, I really got no complaints. It’s a fun movie and I enjoyed it. You know, over the years it’s been kinda strange seeing the hills and valleys of this series, because, for as legendary as DragonBall has become, it aint perfect, and there’s a big heaping bowl of salt you gotta take with some of its flaws. That said, if this movie is an illustration of what this series can accomplish going forward, then I’m in, and I can’t wait to see what happens next.