Well that's it. After a longer wait, the new Dragon Ball movie has finally been released, and more or less all expectations have been met. And the best of all is that it is breaking box office records both in the US and in Spain and South America, already being the highest grossing film in the entire history of the franchise. Was anyone else expecting it? It seems that in Japan, which has always experienced a bit of everything that happened outside its borders in this regard, they are beginning to open their eyes, and more than one must be pulling their hair out.
In any case, and focusing on the movie itself, Dragon Ball Super Broly is a breath of fresh air in the best sense of the word. Not so much at the plot level - deep down they are retelling us the history of some existing characters, who were outside the official canon - but at the visual and artistic level. The Broly movie is the farewell door for all those stiff and plastic designs that we have been suffering from for the last 20 years, being renewed by the new animation supervisor Naohiro Shintani.
Less stiff designs and much more dynamic combat from the hand of the great Naohiro Shintani
The character designs are much more curved, with fewer layers of shading and much more scope for expressiveness. This makes the quiet scenes have a more comical touch, and the fights are much more emotional with expressions of pain, anger or joy pushed to the limit in many moments. Light years away from the last thing we saw in the Tournament of Power saga in the anime.
And it is that the architects of this invention called DBS: Broly give us some fighting with camera movements and a dynamism that far exceeds what was seen in Battle of gods and Resurrection F. In that sense we can finally say that Dragon Ball is close to what is expected of a 21st century anime, with scenes at the height of the great fighting shonen of the moment, such as One Punch Man or My Hero Academia.
Although many of the animators involved in this film are perfectly suited to the new Shintani designs, there are some "rebellious" animators like Yuya Takahashi who continue to maintain that 90s stamp of the Dragon Ball Z era. scenes don't mesh well with those of the rest of the team. Luckily, Takahasi's sequences are focused on very specific moments in the film, where his animation fits like a glove and serves to deliver one of the best Vegeta fights seen to date.
Rewriting the history of Broly and the death of the planet Vegeta
At the story level, we also appreciate a significant improvement over previous films, dedicating a good part of the footage to "telling us things" instead of putting up fights and waiting for the plot to advance on its own. Akira Toriyama has managed to give three-dimensionality to Broly, who is the character that has the most development throughout the entire film, thus making him the true protagonist of the feature film. All this with a delicious surprise in the last third of the footage.
Of course, in the end they have left the legendary warrior Yamoshi out of the film, something Toriyama was talking about in his last interviews. We are going to think that he is saving it for future sagas of the series ...
In short, Dragon Ball Super: Broly is one of those movies that you have to see several times to get all the details. You can tell there is a lot of love behind it, although they still continue to screw up those computer generated effects that do not stick or glue at certain key moments. In general, the film is very enjoyable, and a gift for the viewer. If we also take into account that they focus on a crucial moment in the history of Dragon Ball, such as the destruction of the planet Vegeta, and that the animation is practically from another galaxy, it is a mandatory viewing for any fan of the work that is considered as such.
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