Orange Piccolo is basically Super Saiyan Piccolo. I say that tongue in cheek, but it’s said in the movie, so you can’t tell me anything about it.
I saw Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero in IMAX with my good buddy Brandon, and that’s Dragon Ball floor to ceiling. Brandon grew up on the very first season of Dragon Ball, had a few good laughs, and stuck with it all the way to GT, which at its finest is probably his favorite, because that’s where you get Gogeta and the giant Super Saiyan monkey. I used to have that toy. It was huge. I gave it to my cousins because they were super Dragon Ball fans too, and at the time I figured I’d grown up. Little did I know I’d end up with a set that’s bare and has only Bardock holding it down. So, cousins, you know who you are. I’ll happily take my Dragon Ball toys back. I’ll buy them. For real.
Spoilers from here on. If you haven’t seen the movie, go see the movie, because we’re going to spoil all of it. And we loved this movie.
Just a Smidge Over Broly
We just had the Broly movie, which by the way was amazing, so I asked Brandon where this one ranks. He’s seen the Broly movie twice. He’ll tell you there’s another version of Broly that’s canon and he didn’t like that one. And he surprised himself: this movie topped the Broly movie, by just a smidge. What did it for him was the transformations.
I’m totally with him on that, so we’re diving right in.
The Red Ribbon Army Is Back, and So Are the Flashbacks
Goku, Vegeta and Broly are off training on Beerus’s little planet, far, far away. Apparently Beerus has a type, and it’s Broly’s little girlfriend who came with him in that movie. When Beerus was checking her out, the whole theater went, what is this, what’s happening? So Beerus is trying to impress her, everybody’s eating leftover ice cream, and Bulma can’t get anybody on the communicator. Piccolo is trying to get hold of her because he’s seen that the Red Ribbon Army is back.
It turns out the Red Ribbon people had a guy funding everything they did. He’s trying to recruit Dr. Hedo, the grandson of Dr. Gero, who only wants to do superheroes and sentai-type stuff, the heroes in colors. That’s Gamma 1 and Gamma 2, the blue and the red. So to sell him, the guy shows him footage of the old encounters.
It’s all stuff we’ve seen, but they didn’t just run old footage. They redid it in the style of this movie, and it looked amazing. Brandon’s favorite was Future Trunks showing up and doing the wackadoo on Mecha Frieza. Seeing what that looks like in this version, I was like, that’s awesome. They’re doing such good work.
Bulma, the Dragon Balls, and Two Leftover Wishes
Bulma has a team whose only job is to go find the Dragon Balls and bring them to her. She says she’s collecting them for emergencies. If you remember what she wanted in the Broly movie, you know why she’s really collecting them. She’s still in the mood for some cosmetic work, and this time there’s a little extra.
So they summon the dragon, and Piccolo says, I want you to open my powers up the way the Grand Elder did on Planet Namek a long time ago. But the dragon under Dende gives you three wishes, so there are two left. Sure enough, she wants a butt lift, basically, and some wrinkles taken away. Not too much. Not enough to make you notice. And the scene cuts straight to her behind, and I’m pretty sure every guy in that theater went, good lord.
Brandon says that’s even worse than what Frieza wanted. Frieza just wanted to grow a little taller, not enough to be noticed. This stuff is brilliant.
A Whole Theater Full of Us
Watching this movie was like watching it with a whole room full of us. Everybody had that person next to them, and at certain moments you’d lean over and go, this is what’s going on over here. Brandon did the same thing to me. The whole theater was talking to their friends, and it felt like watching it with a bunch of friends in our own house, because we were all so familiar with it and everybody reacted the same way.
A lot of cosplayers were there too. One was a Black dude with Super Saiyan hair, and I loved it, a very cool contrast. And there was a young lady dressed as an anime character I knew and can’t remember for the life of me. Everybody who cosplayed at that theater looked awesome. Good job, you guys.
Fat Gotenks and the Pompadour
I asked Brandon for his favorite part before we got to any criticism. It’s Goten and Trunks. They’re older now, and Goten telegraphs it, because he’s asking, how do we do that thing again? They do the dance just a little wrong, one move off with the fingers, and they come out as fat Gotenks. Everybody remembers that from the old series. Every time they showed up on screen it was pure laughter. And then of course the pants rip, the whole back of the pants, so his head is stuck in the ground and his butt cheeks are just out there.
This gave me such Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z feels. We’ve been leaning on Goku and Vegeta a lot in Dragon Ball Super, and this movie hands it to Piccolo. He knows Gamma 1 and Gamma 2 are super powerful, he hears about a new Cell being built, Cell Max, and he goes to get everybody. And it’s Krillin with his worthless butt. Okay, I lied, Krillin gets a point. He’s the strongest pure human being on the planet.
Pan is awesome in this movie. It’s about three years since the end of Dragon Ball Z, I guess, so she’s a little older and she’s training with Piccolo, and the chemistry between those two is dope. She’s adorable. Piccolo ends up part of a scheme to kidnap her, because he wants Gohan back in fighting shape, and he basically tells her, just go along with it. So she does. “Oh, I’m so helpless, help me, please.” And they’re eating it up.
Then when she’s ready to help, she goes and does her thing. Brandon wants it on the record: the guy pulls a gun and starts shooting at her toes, and she’s doing a little shimmy. Then she walks up, punches him in the gut and kicks him right in the chest. This guy has a pompadour and a car with a dome for his hair, and I don’t have any more Dragon Ball thing than that. The second he’s knocked out, the hair goes from straight up to flat.
Where the 3D Works and Where It Doesn’t
This is the first time they’re using this 3D animation style. Some places held up really well, and in others it felt like I was watching a cutscene from one of the Dragon Ball games.
I think they fully modeled the characters, and the problem is that when you draw them, not every angle is drawn right. In 3D, certain angles look perfect and others just look weird. When they talked too long, their hands and arms felt stiff, like nobody knew what to do with them.
Where it excelled was the fighting. Everything looks so visceral. Because they’re all 3D now, the camera can follow everybody’s moves, and when they fly it spins you around and you really feel like you’re flying with them. Brandon compared it to the Broly movie, where Gogeta got that first-person mode for a little bit, and Broly got it too. If you get motion sick, do not watch this movie. It’s gonna be rough.
And from a practical standpoint, I wish they’d put more anime in theaters. I saw Princess Mononoke at the movies, I saw the Broly movie, I saw this, and these are amazing movies. When is everybody going to get the hint that anime puts butts in seats? I think this opened at something like 17 million dollars, and I can double check that number, but it was a decent opening. Give us more. What’s wrong with you people?
The Titan Match, and the Red Line Past Gohan’s Head
Gamma 1 and Gamma 2 were raised to be heroes, and in the middle of the fight they finally realize they were fooled. They do a whole 180. So the dude they were working for, the head of the Red Ribbon Army with the pharmaceutical company, wakes up Cell Max.
Cell Max is Dragon Ball’s version of the Hulk. He’s just shouting and screaming, and he is so OP. Everybody else has to work up to that level. He’s just there. Man, is he brutal.
Then you get the titan match. Brandon said it felt like another season of Attack on Titan. If you remember early Dragon Ball, when Goku was still small, King Piccolo went big. And when somebody from Planet Namek goes big, there’s no extra power in it. It’s just size, and it’s there to make you think, oh crap, I’m gonna die. Piccolo even says so in the movie. So he and Cell Max go at it fisticuffs style, just swinging on each other. Cell Max is totally wiping the floor with him, but Piccolo is doing his best, because he wants Gohan mad.
The biggest pop in the theater came when it looks like Piccolo’s about to die, or maybe already has, and you see the red line go past Gohan’s head. Just like Android 16. Everybody was like, he pulled an Android 16.
And Gohan transformed into something brand new. I’m sure someone else can define it better than me. Gray or silver hair, red eyes, and the hair was like Super Saiyan 2 but a lot longer. Brandon thought it looked very much like Vegito, with the little spike coming down in front. The silver fits him, too. It was unreal. And he still needs his glasses when he’s not in Super Saiyan form.
The Verdict
Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero is a 9 out of 10 on the Know-It-All Index.
Brandon’s rating, since I told him he could go over ten if he wanted: it’s over 9000. That’s a great one.
Aside from the animation style, I was down. The storytelling was great and I liked what they did. I’m at nine only because the animation could have been a little better. Some of it was perfect, some of it was hit or miss, and they need to work a little more on getting that 3D style right for Dragon Ball. But they go so deep and so hard on the member berries. This really got all the other players involved, and it set some stuff up for the future. We got a brand new version of Piccolo. Even the Destructo Disc made a cameo, arguably the most powerful move in Dragon Ball. If it was only faster, it’d be dope.
Let me know what you thought of the movie, and whether you want more anime on the channel. I know for a fact Brandon would be down to come back and talk some. The conversation lives in the comments on the video above.
