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smokeybrandreviews · 2 years ago

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Marshawn Lynch

Gohan Beast is nowhere near as powerful as everyone wants it to be. I’ve seen cats rejoicing as if this was Gohan’s grand return to the top of the power scales and i just don’t understand how that’s possible. Look, Dragon Ball Super: Superhero was a fun watch. I loved the Piccolo content. I love seeing the former Demon King becoming relevant again, gaining a new form or two in the process. I loved seeing him go from best dad, to best granddad in the series. Even Cell MAX has grown on me somewhat. Hell, I'm having a hard time not giving well deserved due to my least favorite character of the entire franchise, Gohan, because this motherf*cker straight up bodied his fights. I can’t lie, Beast LOOKS incredible but it’s not the “strongest” transformation in Super. It might have one helluva multiplier but Gohan is FOURTH best in Beast, at best.

Not even gonna touch on the mild racism of Black Freezer, but the three full-blooded Saiyans were conveniently removed from this entire scenario with that ol’ go-to; Training. That’s right, the Red Ribbon return was missed by Goku, Vegeta, AND the new addition, Broly. This is wildly interesting because any one of those cats would have ended this “threat” before it even started. Straight up base form, the strongest motherf*cker in the galaxy right now is probably Broly. This man, just in Ikari mode, bodied a God Ki Imbued Vegeta and Goku, forcing them to go SSG, then SSB, only to lose individually. That's just a pissed off Broly, not a transformed Broly. When he does transform, it's into the Legendary Super Saiyan form and that's a problem. In this form, he embarrassed both Blue Saiyans at the same f*cking time, Golden Freezer, and it took Whis toying with him for an hour so that Gogeta could show up to save the day. God Ki Gogeta was more than enough to wax this cat but the Fusions are dicks so OP Blue it is. Broly was able to do all of this, WITH NO TRAINING. This was Broly’s first real fight and he did ALL of that damage with no experience outside of whatever he could glean from his pitiable scraps with Paragus. Fast forward to Superhero and he has been training with Goku for years. Literal years. How much stronger is he now?

Now for the main course; Goku and Vegeta. Assuming that the events in the manga aren’t canon just yet and Vegeta hasn’t unlocked Ego, Goku is still WELL on his way to cracking Instinct. It wasn’t demonstrated in Superhero, but you can see little hints that the two of them have those forms in their back pockets but i'm just going to act like that’s not the case. At the end of Super, the ToP demonstrated that Vegeta has effectively unlocked SSB Full-Grade with Super Saiyan Blue Evolved. This was his answer to UI Sign and it was strong enough to defeat a God of Destruction mode Toppo. That means Vegeta is as strong, or stronger, than a good amount of the GoDs on hand to see this tournament. Nowhere near Beerus (pretty sure he’s the strongest of that lot) but probably stronger than a great many of those f*ckers. Then there’s Goku who cracked Ultra Instinct during that tournament. He was able to outright embarrass Jiren, the literal pinnacle of strength throughout the multiverse, rivaling even Beerus in power (again, Cat-daddy is probably the strongest of the GoDs), until the backlash ruined his body. Let’s not forget the Zenakai these cats would get after the ToP. Bro, are you kidding me? That, alone, should put both Son Wukong and Getes up there in strength. AND THEY BOTH FOUGHT BROLY AFTER THAT!

By the time Gohan achieves Beast, it’s been YEARS since this tourney and these assholes have been training ever since. With Broly. Are you really going to tell me, with a straight face, that Goku and Vegeta haven’t, at the very least, figured out how to achieve a perfected Ego and Instinct by this point? Never mind those two techniques, (they are techniques and not forms, similar to Gohan’s Potential Unleashed technique) just cannon SSB Evolved and UI Sign would be, head-and-shoulders, more powerful than their introductions at this point. Specifically Vegeta’s SSBE. Vegeta is a whole ass genius when it comes to training and developing techniques. He’s the one that unlocked becoming Super Saiyan God all on his own and then went a step further to be the first to achieved Super Saiyan Blue. Gete’s did that. You expect me to believe he’s rested on his laurels this entire time? Especially after Goku achieved UI that one time? Especially since Broly exists? Especially since he KNOWS Freezer is still out there? Get the f*ck outta here. Then there’s Goku who would die first before letting Vegeta leapfrog him in power for too long. If you actually think that Goku hasn’t kept pace with Getes, you aren’t a fan of Dragon Ball.

Based just on the fact that Vegeta has the power to be a mid tier God of Destruction and Goku has mastered Ultra Instinct Sign, Cell Max would be nothing to them. Not a f*cking thing. Factoring in that Broly waxed these cats in their Blue forms, with just an Ikari state, not counting the Legendary Super Saiyan form, Beast can’t possibly be that strong. Just from the eye test of these three cats being absolutely removed from the battle by the safest deus ex machina imaginable, that the big threat was a human created Android based on Cell, Gohan Beast can’t possibly be in the same power tier as the full-blood Saiyans. The math just doesn’t add up. That’s not to say that Beast doesn’t have potential. I imagine through training this thing can become a problem but that’s just going to fuel Vegeta and Goku to break even more ceilings. Ultimately, Gohan Beast is probably the most powerful MORTAL transformation. I imagine Beast would body base form Vegeta and Goku with God ki and absolutely embarrass Broly. However, beyond that? That one step beyond, be it just a regular SSJ form of SSG? I dunno.

Beast feels comparable to, like, a SSG 1.5 or 1.75 to me. Like, Cell Max can’t be as strong as Jiren, GoD Toppo, or LSSJ Broly; All of which were handled by Vegeta and Goku in lesser forms. I mean, LSSJ Broly needed a Fusion but that’s neither here not there. Years after that fight, Goku was handling bro pretty well in a spar, even after he started going Ikari, during the Superhero movie! That’s who they were training! That’s why they weren’t around! They have literally been fighting this dude, for years, at this point! Considering how much Broly learned during the one fight he had with Goku and Vegeta, WHILE HE WAS FIGHTING THEM, dude must be on an entirely different level after properly being trained by someone who can actually keep up with him. Then there’s the question of how strong MAX could possibly be considering he’s created from Gero’s original Cell plans. Just how far could Hedo have pushed his granddad's research? He wasn’t able to create a Perfect Cell MAX so how strong was this thing really, limited to the second, still imperfect form as a base? Now, i know authors and guidebooks have hyped up that a “complete” Cell Max would be a problem for even Broly but really? Using what is objectively hyperbole to get butts in theater seats as evidence by claims that Gohan is the “strongest”, comes across as a little desperate to me. There’s no way Cell MAX is stronger than the weakest of GoDs and all three full-blooded Saiyans are at least mid GoD level at this point, realistically high to top tier. That means, at the end of the day, Gohan Beast is still just the FOURTH most powerful cat in DBS. Fifth, if we’re counting Congelador Negro. Or I could be wrong and Super is just, like, “F*ck it” in terms of power scaling because Toei is greedy for merchandising loot. Gohan Beast would make a pretty dope looking toy, for sure.

#Dragon Ball Super: Superhero #Dragon Ball Super #Gohan Beast #Son Gohan #Orange Piccolo #Piccolo Jr.

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splittingxpaths · 5 years ago

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{ @timelessxwinter }

❝And what do YOU want with me..?❞

This particular Frost Demon was no fan of Frieza, and apparently same was said for most Saiyans he encountered. Word must have spread that 'Paragus' was acting most peculiar among the Time Patrollers- more so than he should.

#{.event.}_April.Fools #//in Xenoverse verse #if it isn't clear lol

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duhragonball · 5 years ago

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Dragon Ball Super Movie 1: Broly (1/2)

This ended up taking longer than I expected, so I decided to break it up into sections. The first Dragon Ball Super movie premiered in Japan on December 14, 2018, and then in the U.S. and Canada on January 16, 2019.

After Resurrection F, just about every episode of Dragon Ball Super aired, and this movie takes place after all of that. So just to get everyone up to speed: Beerus had a friendly tournament with his counterpart in Universe 6, and the King of Everything liked the idea so much that he threw his own event called the Tournament of Power, which saw eight universes square off in teams of ten. But our universe was short-handed, so Goku arranged for Frieza to be brought back to life for one day so he could participate, and then Whis revived Frieza for keeps after Beerus was pleased with Frieza’s performance.

This movie is important for a few reasons. First, it features Aya Hisakawa as Bulma, the first time the role has been recast following Hiromi Tsuru’s tragic death in 2017.

Second, this movie reintroduces the Broly character. In the DBZ films, he was a side-story, non-canon villain, but this movie works him into the main canon. Well... as canonical as Dragon Ball Super gets, I suppose. Similarly, this movie also does the same thing with Gogeta.

Third, this one currently stands as the highest-grossing Dragon Ball movie ever, and one of the top-grossing anime films of all time. I looked at the Wikipedia list, and it’s at #12. But Resurrection F is at #19, so I think it’s safe to assume that any future Dragon Ball movies might break the record. Even so, I knew this one was a bigger deal when I went to see it. Res F only played in my town for three days, I think. Broly ran for maybe three weeks and I couldn’t see it on the first try because it was sold out that night. If it’s true that Akira Toriyama came out of retirement because of how bad Dragon Ball: Evolution was, then I think it’s safe to say that he’s exorcised that demon.

Fourth, this movie’s box office success and popularity led to the downfall of American voice actor and sex pest Vic Mignogna. Vic has played Broly in all of his past movies, as well as the video games and any other localized Broly media. But he’s also garnered a reputation over the decades for creeping on women and girls at fan conventions. DBS: Broly put him in the limelight again, and I’m pretty sure this caused a lot of people to ask why we’re still putting up with this perv in the year 2019. A few weeks after the movie premiered in the U.S., RoosterTeeth cut ties with him and re-cast all the parts he played for their shows. A week later, Funimation did the same thing. Quite stupidly, Vic tried to sue his way out of this mess, taking Funimation and two of its voice actresses to court for defamation and conspiracy, and the case was dismissed with prejudice on October 4. The last I heard, he was doing public appearances in the basements of creepy malls. Maybe there’s still venues willing to do business with him, but as I understand it, most anime conventions have recognized that he just isn’t worth the bad publicity.

Anyway, it’s kind of weird to be doing this with a movie that just came out eleven months ago. This will probably be more text-heavy than usual, since I have a lot of things to say about this movie that I never got around to earlier in the year.

For example, what the hell is this thing?

All right, so the first... I dunno, fifteen minutes?... of this movie is a flashback of what Planet Vegeta was like before Frieza destroyed it. For clarity: the main story of this movie is set in Age 780, the same year as the Tournament of Power in the DBS TV series, while this flashback takes place in Age 739.... I guess? The Dragon Ball Wiki contends that Goku and Broly were born in Age 737, and they look about two years old in this part, but I dunno.

Anyway, King Cold has come to Planet Vegeta to inform King Vegeta that he’s retiring from the space-villain business and putting his son Frieza in charge. This was always very satisfying to me, because I never quite understood King Cold’s role in the Frieza organization. Turns out he used to run the whole thing, and then he handed it over to Frieza, which allows him to retain a lot of power without actually having to run things directly.

It also explains why the Saiyans lasted as long as they did under Frieza’s rule. Conquering the Saiyans happened under King Cold’s regime. Once Frieza took over, he spent some time reconsidering that decision. Anyway, Frieza hands out scouters to King Vegeta, explaining that they’re the new latest and greatest technology for detecting and quantifying powerful fighters. He even shoots down some Saiyan snipers just to demonstrate how well they work.

King Vegeta doesn’t like this turn of events, maybe because he had hoped King Cold would grant the Saiyans independence when he retired. But there’s no much he can do about it, so he consoles himself in his son, Prince Vegeta. The tests show that Vegeta has enormous potential, and the King is certain that his son will one day grow powerful enough to overthrow Frieza and rule the universe himself.

Then he sees another life support tank with another Saiyan baby in it, and he throws a hissy fit about it. See, Saiyans in this era raise their newborns in these tanks, and this particular tank farm is for babies singled out for having elite fighting potential. The guys who run the place explain to him that Colonel Paragus’s son had exceptional test results, which may even exceed Prince Vegeta’s. The King tries to see for himself, but the measuring device overloads and explodes.

Then this lady walks up and tells him Broly might possibly become the next Legendary Super Saiyan, which doesn’t exactly put the king at ease.

So King Vegeta orders Broly to be shipped off to the planetoid of Vampa. When Paragus learns of this, he demands an explanation, since you only do that sort of thing for weaker, low-class Saiyan babies. That’s what Raditz said way back in DBZ episode 2, you know, but Broly’s already been shown to be far stronger than this. Also, Vampa’s a dump and everyone knows it, so even if Broly subjugates the planet, no one would want to buy it, so what’s the point. King Vegeta explains that Broly is probably some kind of mutant, and no matter how strong he may be, he’ll eventually lose control of that power and become dangerous. At least this way he’ll be on Vampa instead of being dead. But Paragus thinks the king is only doing this out of jealousy. He can’t handle that a mere colonel’s son tested better than the prince, so he’s sweeping Broly under the rug.

So Paragus hijacks a spaceship and flies to Vampa himself to rescue Broly. His plan is to desert King Vegeta and the Frieza Force and raise Broly on some other planet until he can make Broly into a great warrior. Another Saiyan named Beets tries to talk him out of it, but ends up getting roped into the hijacking. Paragus foolishly crash lands the ship on Vampa, and when Beets says he can’t repair the ship, Paragus shoots him so the rations will last longer. I like this scene, because when they first arrived on Vampa, Paragus made Beets come with him, fearing that he’d take off and leave them if he stayed behind. Beets swore he’d never do that, but Paragus doesn’t believe in trustworthy Saiyans. So his shooting Beets is just proof of his cynicism towards his own people.

Then we flash forward another five years. That seems kind of fishy to me, but okay.

Bardock and his comrade are on their way back to Planet Vegeta, because Frieza ordered them all to come home. Bardock is suspicious, because if Frieza had orders for them, he could have just relayed them by radio, and if he has weapons to distribute, then there’d still be no need to have every Saiyan on the planet at the same time to hand them all out.

I know people don’t care much for the Dragon Ball Minus version of Bardock, but it does make a lot more sense than the “Father of Goku” version. This movie expands on the Dragon Ball Minus comic by explaining Bardock’s reasoning in greater detail. The other Saiyans simply can’t believe that Frieza would do anything drastic to them, mainly because they work for Frieza and do what he wants. But Bardock knows that the Saiyans dislike Frieza, and that the feeling is probably mutual, and he might just be planning to do something about it.

Then one of his pals mentions that Frieza’s administrators have been asking around about the Super Saiyan legend, and that’s the final piece of the puzzle. Bardock realizes that Frieza’s worried about a Saiyan uprising, which normally wouldn’t be a threat, unless a Super Saiyan emerges.

The point I’m driving at here is that he doesn’t really need psychic powers to see all this coming. He just happens to be smart enough and paranoid enough to figure out how Frieza thinks. It’s not as dramatic as “Father of Goku”, but it’s still effective.

The thing I tried to do last year was to write a fanfic that combined this version of Bardock with the “FoG” version. Basically, to have Gine in the story and have her cope with her husband having doomsday visions. I really ought to get back to that sometime.

As for Frieza, his people report that the Super Saiyan and Super Saiyan God are nothing more than old stories, but Frieza insists that he had to be certain. Even so, he plans to blow up all the Saiyans anyway, since he’s got them all together in one place. I don’t know, maybe he only asked about Super Saiyans because he was afraid this upcoming attack might provoke a Super Saiyan survivor.

Moving on, if you know the story of Dragon Ball Minus, you know what’s coming next. Bardock meets up with his wife Gine, and I dig this chubby Saiyan working at the meat-packing place. I think that’s my favorite part of this movie, really, just seeing all the diverse kinds of Saiyans running around on this planet. Fat ones, thin ones, weak ones. That one lady looked like some kind of scientist, and the guy in King Vegeta’s court looked like a butler or something. It’s a nice change from DBZ, where every Saiyan extra ended up looking like Raditz, more or less. And every Saiyan from Universe 6 looked like they were made of noodles.

Bardock asks about their kids, and Gine explains that Raditz has been assigned to off-world duty with Prince Vegeta. As for Kakarot, he’s still in his tank, which just sort of sits in the middle of their home. Bardock plans to steal a space pod and send Kakarot to another planet, since he thinks Frieza’s going to blow up Planet Vegeta soon, because he believes the Legendary Super Saiyan might appear.

Gine is upset with this, obviously. What really threw me when I first watched the movie was how all these characters speak of the Legendary Super Saiyan. No one seems to quite believe in the idea, or maybe it’s more accurate to say that they don’t particularly care if it’s true or not, since it would have happened so long ago. But there’s a forboding sense that it could happen again. King Vegeta are looking forward to it, because they think their sons could fill that role. But Bardock and Gine dread it, because that dumb story convinced Frieza to kill them all, and it’s going to get their son shot into space. Anyway, anytime someone mentions the Super Saiyan in this movie, someone else always goes “You mean the Legendary Super Saiyan?” No, mate, I was referring to the ordinary kind you see on every street corner.

Anyway, this was why I started writing my fic, because this legend was such a big deal in early DBZ. No one in-universe seems to know anything about the previous Super Saiyan. Even if the guy never existed, you’d expect there to be some details. My assumption is that this was all lost over the past thousand years, to the point where all anyone remembers is that some Saiyan got tired of being nice and decided to go ape shitt. And that run of destruction was so memorable that people still talk about it a thousand years later, even after everything else got forgotten. For me, that’s a writing prompt, and I’ve spent the last four years trying to write a story and build an OC who could make Frieza nervous enough to blow up an entire planet of his own henchmen.

So when I watched this movie, I sort of worried that one of the characters might drop some new, unwanted lore about the Legendary Super Saiyan. Up to this point, all we knew about the legend was what Vegeta recalled, but for all I knew Gine studied up on the subject when she took that mythology course at Saiyan University. “Super Saiyan? You mean like Topotay, the seven-foot-tall heteronormative man who hated cooking and never left his home planet?”

So Bardock prepares the pod, and when Gine asks him why he’s bothering, especially when they can’t save themselves, he explains that it’s because he spends all his time fighting that he wants to try to save something for a change. I like that a lot, because so much of the Saiyan culture in DBZ is extrapolated from Raditz and Vegeta’s perception of it, which is slanted towards ultra-violence and ruthlessness-as-virtue. And sure, there’s plenty of that. We get a lot of it in this very movie. But there’s two sides to the coin. Paragus was genuinely worried about his son, and Beets seemed to be sympathetic to him as well. Bardock embraced his wife in front of someone, and now this. Character traits aren’t hard rules. It isn’t out-of-character for a violent man to crave peace once in a while, or for a brutal warrior to finally appreciate compassion, especially when he thinks he’s about to die.

The big twist here is that Bardock sent Goku to Earth to save his life. He was not, as Raditz assumed, deployed to Earth by the Saiyan government to conquer it. In fact, Bardock chose the Earth specifically because it was far enough out of the way that he didn’t think Frieza would bother with it. Gine would later contact Raditz to inform him of all of this, but she left out the details of why they did this, probably for fear of being overheard on the communicators.

In orbit, Frieza’s aides point out that the Saiyans make up half of their fighting force, but Frieza doesn’t care. He knows the Saiyans aren’t going to quietly tolerate his rule forever, so it’s better to deal with them now. That’s how afraid of the Super Saiyan he is. He’d rather blow up half his military than worry about it. Presumably, King Cold never cared in the first place. He could barely rememer what a Super Saiyan was, even while he was watching Trunks turn into one.

Anyway, Frieza does the fingerbang thing, Bardock tries to stop it, but he fails and gets zapped back in time to the Episode of Bardock special, and the planet explodes. We’ve seen this moment maybe a dozen times by now, but I do like the part where Frieza monitors the destruction on his scouter, and the number of power signals coming from the planet count down to zero.

Elsewhere, Prince Vegeta’s group hears about this, and they find the whole thing suspicious, because the official story is that the planet got hit by a meteor. Vegeta and Raditz don’t particularly care. They both have brothers off-world, but they dismiss them as unimportant weaklings.

Then we finally flash forward to the main story of the movie. Baby Kakarot has grown up into Son Goku, the hero of Earth, and Vegeta lives here too, and he’s married the richest lady on the planet. They both turned into the next Legendary Super Saiyan, and recently they just got done teaming up with Frieza to win the Tournament of Power, proving that their universe deserves to exist. But Goku and Vegeta still want to get stronger. Goku, because he wants to fight all those strong guys he met from the other universes, and Vegeta because he’s convinced that Frieza will attack the Earth again now that he’s returned to life. Also, Beerus and Whis are here, for no particularly good reason. That seems to be the Dragon Ball Super brand in a nutshell. What made Movie 14 so good was how they introduced them as new characters, made them the focus of the story, and had them shake things up. Since then, they just hang out on the sidelines and eat snacks.

This works out, though, because Bulma gets a call from Trunks about someone breaking into her lab and stealing the six Dragon Balls she had collected, as well as the Dragon Radar. They quickly realize it was Frieza’s henchmen who did it, and so they head off to find the 7th Dragon Ball before they do. Whis wants to tag along, but Beerus doesn’t, so she leaves her baby behind and asks him to keep an eye on her. D’awwwwwwwwww.

On the way to the ice continent where the last ball is located, Goku asks why Bulma was collecting the Dragon Balls in the first place. She admits that she wanted to ask Shenron to de-age her by about five years. Just five? Bulma figures that if she makes herself too young all at once, people will think she had plastic surgery. Why not just get plastic surgery? Wait, I’m asking the wrong question here. Don’t people already think Bulma already had work done? She hasn’t aged since the Cell Games.

So what does Frieza plan to wish for? When he first appeared back in early DBZ, he wanted to become immortal. His aide, whose name I have forgotten, asks if he’s going to try that again, but Frieza says no.

I’m confused by his reasoning, but Frieza explains that while he was dead and in hell, he realized that it was torture being unable to die or move, so immortality holds no meaning for him. Okay, but that only happened to you because you died. Does Frieza think that becoming immortal would leave him unable to move? Or is he just afraid of getting trapped in some situation where death would be the only release, like when Garlic Junior got trapped in the Dead Zone?

At the very least, I’ll give credit where it’s due: it looks like Toriyama finally gave Frieza a bit of character development to play into his resurrection. My big complaint about Resurrection F was that Frieza came back to life and immediately went right back to doing all the stupid shit that got him killed in the first place, and it seemed like the 15 years he spent in hell had no effect on him whatsoever. He wasn’t afraid of dying again, nor was he dismayed by the knowledge of what awaits him on the others side. Now, in this movie, he at least has some perspective. Shenron could make Frieza immortal, but he can’t make him stronger than Goku, so maybe he’s worried that Goku might throw him into a black hole or something.

Even so, it was weird to watch this movie and see a Frieza who utterly does not care about becoming immortal, because he seemed so obsessed with it back on Namek. But now that I’ve watched DBZ in Japanese, I’ve noticed that Frieza never seemed all that concerned about it. He’s not Voldemort, who was terrified of death and sought to conquer it, or Kars, who wanted to eliminate his few remaining weaknesses. Frieza only seemed to want immortality back then because it was the only thing he could think of that he didn’t already have, and maybe to screw with Vegeta, who saw the Dragon Balls as the only way to beat Frieza. Still, I find it odd that Frieza isn’t even a little worried about what’ll happen to him when he finally kicks the bucket. His aide suggests that he might wish for an invincible-but-still-mortal body, and Frieza says that would take all the fun out of “the game”. So I guess he’s adopted an Android 17 outlook on life? Well, so be it, but he knows he’s going to get hung up on the happy fun tree again whenever he dies of old age, so why doesn’t that weigh on him? In Movie 15, he seemed to think he only ended up there because he died on Earth. Does he think if he dies someplace else, that he’ll go to a better hell with free wifi and room service? If I were Frieza, I’d be doing some serious churchin’ up.

Anyway, his other, cooler aide, Berryblue, already has this figured out: Frieza wants to wish to be taller. Specifically, five centimeters taller, so that it won’t be too conspicuous. I really like Berryblue, even though this is about the only thing she does in this movie. Both of these aides appeared in the flashback, implying that they’ve been with Frieza for decades and somehow survived his fifteen-year death. There would have been no need for someone like her on his Namek campaign, but the absence of characters like her was exactly why I never cared much for Frieza’s classic henchmen. They were all jacked up thugs constantly licking Frieza’s boots and not much else. Berryblue’s not afraid of this guy at all, probably because she changed his space-diapers when he was little, and if he kills her, he won’t have anyone to bring him space-wine from the ship’s space-cellar.

So why doesn’t Frieza just use his second form, the one he used to fight Piccolo on Namek? That form was like eight feet tall, but also fuck Frieza’s second form. He only had those forms to regulate his power, and these days he doesn’t even use them. He wants to be taller in his default state. But he doesn’t want to be too tall all at once, or it wouldn’t look natural. This from the guy who went out of his way to turn mustard yellow at full power.

Personally, I’m torn on this whole gag. It is kind of funny that Frieza is after the same dumb kind of wish that Bulma was, but it’s also kind of stupid that Frieza is after the exact same thing that Commander Red wanted way back in the original Dragon Ball. The problem with bringing Frieza back is that no one knows what to do with him. They already had him attack Earth again, die again, and come back again. We’ve even seen him team up with the good guys. But DBS ended with him going off on his merry way, and it looks like he’s rebuilding the Frieza Force, but that feels kind of hollow while he has Goku and Vegeta on his mind. Having him make another go at the Dragon Balls is a solid move, except the Dragon Balls alone aren’t a motivation because you still need to have something to wish for. This whole “5cm taller” thing just feels like a gag to cover the lack of an actual answer to the problem.

Meanwhile, let’s check in on these two. The green lady is Cheelai, and the orange guy is Leemo. They’re in the Frieza Force, but not as warriors. Leemo��s just a transport pilot, and I don’t really know what Cheelai’s official job is, but their current assignment is to search the galaxy for strong warriors to recruit for Frieza’s army. When you think about it, Frieza’s pretty bad at this whole “private army” business. King Cold left him the entire Saiyan race, the Ginyu Force, Zarbon, Dodoria, and whoever else. First, Frieza wiped out the Saiyans, which made up half of his soldiers. Then he deployed his finest troops to Namek, where they al got taken out by Goku and Vegeta, two of the Saiyans he neglected to kill. Then Frieza gets himself and King Cold killed on a pointless revenge mission, leaving Sorbet to try to keep the whole thing going. Across a fifteen year period, Sorbet probably loses a lot of good soldiers to insurrections and desertion. Then Frieza comes back and assembles an army of 1000 warriors, and he kills all of them on another pointless revenge mission.

So yeah, in this scene, Cheelai laments that there just aren’t many warriors out there with a power level greater than 1000. Well there used to be, until Frieza got them all killed. Now he’s down to scrubs like Leemo, who’s worked for Frieza for decades, but can’t fight worth a damn. According to Cheelai, she only joined up because she stole a spaceship or something, and knew the authorities wouldn’t chase after her if she was in the Frieza Force. Really? I don’t think Frieza would go out of his way to personally avenge or rescue her if the Galactic Patrol caught her.

There’s a cute gag here where Cheelai mentions how Frieza turned out to be shorter than she expected, and Leemo warns her never to say that again if she values her life, recalling how Berryblue mentioned that Frieza used to execute some of his men for mocking his height behind his back. Gee, why could Frieza have a staffing problem? This is why Cell is the best villain. He’s plenty tall, and he’s not so friggin’ insecure, and he can handle his own shit.

Anyway, the pair pick up a distress signal and it turns out it’s coming from Vampa, where they find Paragus striking... a pose. Yes. It’s like he knew he’d be wearing a shower curtain over his legs for the rest of the movie so he wanted to flaunt his goodies now while he still had the chance.

Paragus is now old and grey-headed, but he still has a power level of 4200, which is weaker than Nappa, but still good enough that Leemo and Cheelai are thrilled to take him back on their ship. But then they get attacked by the giant head lice on Vampa, and Paragus calls for Broly to save them...

...And Cheelai is astounded by his power, which is too high to measure on the scouter. That... doesn’t mean a whole lot these days, unless they increased the scouters’ range since the Freiza Saga. Hers doesn’t explode, at least, so they managed to improve that much in the past twenty years.

So on the ride back, Cheelai spends some time with Broly and gives him ration bars, or maybe it’s just candy, I dunno. Paragus tells Broly to thank her, but she finds it too formal, and teaches the “Okay” sign as she tells Broly to just say “thank you” and leave it at that.

Aboard Frieza’s ship, Paragus explains that he had to cut off Broly’s tail because he was getting too powerful, and that Broly would have these surges in power where he would lose all control of himself. To deal with these, he put a shock collar on Broly’s neck, and he keeps the remote in his fanny pack. He demonstrates how it works, and Leemo and Cheelai are horrified.

But they’re not so horrified that they balk at their reward for finding these two. Apparently everyone in DBZ outer space gets paid in ball-point pens.

After Leemo and Cheelai leave, Frieza explains to Paragus that Planet Vegeta was destroyed a long time ago, though he neglects to mention that he did the destroying. Not that Paragus cares, since he gave up on ever going back there because of King Vegeta. Frieza mentions that Prince Vegeta is still alive on Earth, and offers to help him get revenge.

Notably in this scene, Frieza refers to Prince Vegeta as “Vegeta IV,” which makes his dad King Vegeta III. It’s nice to finally have that settled after all these years.

I hadn’t noticed this until now, but there’s another lady on the ship besides Cheelai and Berryblue. Probably not that remarkable, since Cheelai already explained that Frieza was hiring more women now that he couldn’t afford to be picky. There are sources that say Frieza’s organization just didn’t allow women, period, but I always find those sort of absolutes hard to believe. There’s also been talk that Frieza’s species has no gender, which is entirely plausible, but then why should Frieza bother with making sexist hiring policies?

Wait, maybe Frieza got frustrated with it. Like, he kept misgengering his staff, and he didn’t like looking foolish, so he just went, you know what, no women. That actually makes some sense, especially in light of this movie, where he’s on a hiring spree for his ultra-important campaign to grow two whole inches.

Oh, wait, I just remembered that tough-looking lady they introduced for Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot. I guess she was working for Frieza the whole time, but maybe he made special exceptions for quality talent. Or he separated his crews by gender, so whenever he boards a different ship someone has to tell him which pronouns to use. This is why Cell’s the best villain, because if you tell him your pronouns, he’ll just fucking remember instead of being a jackass about it. All thanks to Piccolo’s cells. Also Nappa’s.

When Broly and Paragus come down for some food, Cheelai invites them to their table, but Paragus isn’t interested in chatting, and Broly doesn’t seem to know how. Cheelai asks him why he’s still wearing the green fur around his waist, but when she tries to touch it he flips out, and she backs off. Mostly, I just like this shot of Cheelai here.

Also this one, where she gets upset with Paragus for not allowing Broly to tell his tragic backstory. But we’ll have to save that for the second half of this review.

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mamepwrites · 6 years ago

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A (kind of) review on Dragon Ball Super, and DBS: Broly

Let me start this by stating that, like many people, I've been a fan of Dragon Ball since childhood. So when the Battle of Gods movie and Dragon Ball Super were announced, I was ecstatic in getting to enjoy more Dragon Ball.

Long story short, while I enjoyed Super during its run, I started to realize its flaws more and more in hindsight. Inevitably it must be compared to its predecessor Dragon Ball Z, as Z is arguably the defining work of the franchise. After all, if Z wasn't so popular, reshaping the series from its adventure roots in the original Dragon Ball into being much more focused on fights constantly increasing in scale, then we wouldn't have had the continuations that were GT and Super. Nearly all of the franchise's derivative works in film, video games, merchandise, et cetera come from Z more than anything else.

Anyway, I came off of Super disappointed that the show felt so underwhelming. I felt like so much of it lacked the drama that Z had. Super succeeded Z on a surface level with its exciting battles and new transformations. They're what you immediately think of when you think of the Dragon Ball franchise, after all. But I can say with complete confidence that Super, for the most part, lacked the character drama that made these fights and transformations constantly increasing in scale so engaging. My one exception to this is the Future Trunks and Zamasu arc. With the overt introduction to the world of higher gods in the Dragon Ball universe(s), Zamasu was the optimal response to the changing scale of setting as a villain and antagonist, showing how these gods and supposed overseers of their places in the multiverse could go wrong and how the lines between good and evil, right and wrong, and justice and oppression can be so thin that you might not even notice when you've crossed them.

The Universe Survival arc forming the latter chunk of the show takes a much greater presence, having been alluded to since the show's early Tournament of Destroyers arc, and the idea of it reminded to the viewers in the Future Trunks and Zamasu arc. With eighty contenders representing eight universes, grandiose battles are a given, with the fights featuring big name contenders being the most anticipated. All of this would lead to an impressive final fight between our protagonist Goku and his greatest enemy thus far, Jiren, who is rumored to be even stronger than a God of Destruction. It's natural that the show would reach this point, seeing as its first new primary character to the franchise Beerus be the new standard for the heights of strength, and then have the show culminate in his power levels being surpassed in some way. Dragon Ball Super carried that theme fairly well, if nothing else. However, the focus on this theme of ever-growing power and having fights take center stage really took away from some important things, and that's character and soul. It's what I felt Dragon Ball Z had that Super lacked. Behind characters like Frieza and Cell were legitimate malicious threats to peace and life. Frieza was a galactic emperor whose freely showed off his talents as an oppressor and genocider. Dragon Ball Z's introduction of the Saiyan race immediately led to the revelation that their people were destroyed, and following the introduction of the Saiyans came Frieza, who directly caused the end of their race. So while we have character goals and motivations in the Namek saga that have nothing to do with dealing with Frieza (Krillin, Bulma, and Gohan travel to Namek to revive their friends killed by Nappa and Vegeta, while Frieza wants the Dragon Balls for immortality), it's the clash of motivations involving the Dragon Balls themselves that ultimately lead to the fight between Goku and Frieza. And to have Goku, a lower-class Saiyan runt sent away from the destruction of his planet, become the strongest Saiyan of legend and be the one to defeat Frieza... you have to admit, there's some poetic quality in that. Goku doesn't defeat Frieza to avenge his species, he only becomes a Super Saiyan through pure rage after Frieza kills his best friend. The Namek saga of Dragon Ball Z features some of the best fights in the series -- not solely because of how cool and powerful everyone looks and is chalked up to be, but because of the drama behind each fight. The Android/Cell saga continues to carry this torch, with the Z Fighters trying to prevent their world from ending up like Future Trunks's timeline, and eventually a worse threat in the shape of Cell, whose threat constantly takes humanity and Earth mere inches from extinction and destruction.

And it's this drama that Super sorely lacks, and part of it can be blamed on Super taking place in the time of peace between the end of the Buu saga and the finale World Tournament. By then, Vegeta has already completed his redemption arc, a slow-bake that occurs through the passage of time and his marriage with Bulma and rearing of Trunks (both the ones from the future and the present). Goku returns to Earth as its first line of defense out of necessity after having willfully remained dead after the Cell saga, in his third lease on life. Beerus wanting to destroy Earth out of either lack of pudding or a Super Saiyan God is an incident that carries no weight or genuine malicious intent behind it. Frieza's revival is put to an end just as quickly as he came back. The Tournament of Power's erasure of most of the universes is quickly reversed -- and depending on whether you keep up with the television serial or the comic, this was expected by the tournament's holders. To summarize, Super has lacked a true major villain (aside from Zamasu), and in its stead keeps gods who hold the threat of destruction and erasure over the heads of universal populations, solely because it's easily expected of those in the positions of gods.

Now, onto Dragon Ball Super's first official film: Broly. I have to admit, they did wonders for Broly's character in giving him a backstory that's more than just him getting angry at another baby crying. Broly and Paragus have motivation in revenging upon Vegeta, for his king father's exiling of them. Frieza, this time around, is reduced to standing on the sidelines, serving as the catalyst for bringing Broly, Paragus, and Vegeta together, and only wanting the Dragon Balls for a frivolous wish. The first half of the movie was great for showcasing the new Broly and quickly garnering the viewer's affection for him as the story's (sort of) main character. However, after Broly and company land on Earth, the movie quickly defuses into a series of fights for the sake of fights. (Kinda like Goku, I guess.)

Vegeta responds to Broly and Paragus's hate for him with his fists in kind, as is natural. However, none of this issue is resolved in any way. No one ever brings up King Vegeta's exiling of Broly again, and Paragus never gets the chance because he's promptly killed by Frieza to push Broly into becoming a Super Saiyan. The blind rage of the Legendary Super Saiyan form is a weakness for his character, and not just in the way of Super detailing it to eventually destroy the user the more they fight and well up with power. This blind rage prevents Broly from being a character with motivation behind his punches, and makes him more of a walking power level like Jiren and his flimsy backstory. I should say that Jiren's motivation in getting a wish through Dragon Balls (however ambiguous said wish was kept in the television serial) is at least something of a motivator, however irrelevant it was to the conflict of the Tournament of Power itself. Broly on the other hand loses any rational thought and only wants to destroy anyone he sees.

Next up comes the issue of Gogeta's introduction to the canon of the main Dragon Ball timeline. I was looking forward to this as any Gogeta fan was, and was excited for a fight between Gogeta and Broly ever since the opening animation to Dragon Ball Z: Budokai 3. However, while the fight itself felt great, I thought there was little in the way of justification for Goku and Vegeta to fuse aside from Broly's overwhelming strength. For characters like Goku and Vegeta who dislike fusing because they want to rely on their own strength, the amount of time given between their transformations into Super Saiyan Blue and when they flee and later become Gogeta was very short. Seeing as Super Saiyan Blue became the relative standard for fights in Dragon Ball Super, not seeing Goku and Vegeta being pushed to use the Kaioken technique and Blue Evolution form respectively to attempt to contend with Broly was a letdown. It could have really cemented just how strong Broly was, likely even stronger than Jiren, who bested both Goku and Vegeta together in said forms. Still, in a film you have to abridge some things. Maybe I'm overreacting for this one bit. After all, it did take a while for Goku and Vegeta to agree on and successfully perform the fusion. Still, it felt like glorified fanservice. Gogeta didn't get much in the way of defining personality traits to distinguish him from his Potara counterpart Vegito. Previous iterations of the character did better. Gogeta in Z's 12th movie, Fusion Reborn, was shown to be about business, immediately becoming a Super Saiyan before the viewers could even see his base form and taking down the film's antagonist Janemba in well under a minute of onscreen action, only cracking a smirk at the demon kid who causes the incident in the first place. The brevity of the fight is dissatisfying, but was enough to showcase his differences from Vegito, who joked and played around during his fight with Super Buu, and purposefully acting the fool. Super Saiyan 4 Gogeta in Dragon Ball GT had much more screen time, and played around more (to his detriment), showing off the hubris of an ultra-powerful character. This time around in Super: Broly, all we saw in regards to personality for Gogeta was him wanting to seem cooler with a name, and is arguably similar to his Fusion Reborn incarnation, only spread out over several minutes.

In the end, I feel like Dragon Ball Super: Broly was did a fair job at introducing new things, but failed in filling up those things with proper narrative substance. I don't think this movie stands up on its own as a film I'd go out of my way to see if I wasn't a Dragon Ball fan. But in regards to Dragon Ball films in general, Dragon Ball Super: Broly likely stands as the best among them.

#dbz #dragon ball super #dragon ball super: broly #dragon ball super broly #broly #gogeta

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smokeybrand · 2 years ago

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Marshawn Lynch

Not even gonna touch on the mild racism of Black Freezer, but the three full-blooded Saiyans were conveniently removed from this entire scenario with that ol’ go-to; Training. That’s right, the Red Ribbon return was missed by Goku, Vegeta, AND the new addition, Broly. This is wildly interesting because any one of those cats would have ended this “threat” before it even started. Straight up base form, the strongest motherf*cker in the galaxy right now is probably Broly. This man, just in Ikari mode, bodied a God Ki Imbued Vegeta and Goku, forcing them to go SSG, then SSB, only to lose individually. That's just a pissed off Broly, not a transformed Broly. When he does transform, it's into the Legendary Super Saiyan form and that's a problem. In this form, he embarrassed both Blue Saiyans at the same f*cking time, Golden Freezer, and it took Whis toying with him for an hour so that Gogeta could show up to save the day. God Ki Gogeta was more than enough to wax this cat but the Fusions are dicks so OP Blue it is. Broly was able to do all of this, WITH NO TRAINING. This was Broly’s first real fight and he did ALL of that damage with no experience outside of whatever he could glean from his scraps with Paragus. Fast forward to Superhero and he has been training with Goku for years. Literal years. How much stronger is he now?

Now for the main course; Goku and Vegeta. Assuming that the events in the manga aren’t canon just yet and Vegeta hasn’t unlocked Ego, Goku is still WELL on his way to cracking Instinct. It wasn’t demonstrated in Superhero, but you can see little hints that the two of them have those forms in their back pockets but i'm just going to act like that’s not the case. At the end of Super, the ToP demonstrated that Vegeta has effectively unlocked SSB Full-Grade with Super Saiyan Blue Evolved. This was his answer to UI Sign and it was strong enough to defeat a God of Destruction mode Toppo. That means Vegeta is as strong, or stronger, than a good amount of the GoDs on hand to see this tournament. Nowhere near Beerus (pretty sure he’s the strongest of that lot) but probably stronger than a great many of those f*ckers. Then there’s Goku who cracked Ultra Instinct during that tournament. He was able to outright embarrass Jiren, the literal pinnacle of strength throughout the multiverse, rivaling even Beerus in power (again, Cat-daddy is probably the strongest of the GoDs), until the backlash ruined his body. Then there's the Zenakai these cats would get after the ToP. Bro, are you kidding me? That, alone, should put both Son Wukong and Getes up there in strength. AND THEY BOTH FOUHT BROLY AFTER THAT!

Beast feels comparable to, like, a SSG 1.5 or 1.75 to me. Like, Cell Max can’t be as strong as Jiren, GoD Toppo, or LSSJ Broly; All of which were handled by Vegeta and Goku in lesser forms. I mean, LSSJ Broly needed a Fusion but that’s neither here not there. Years after that fight, Goku was handling bro pretty well in a spar, even after he started going Ikari, during the Superhero movie! That’s who they were training! That’s why they weren’t around! They have literally been fighting this dude, for years, at this point! Considering how much Broly learned during the one fight he had with Goku and Vegeta, WHILE HE WAS FIGHTING THEM, dude must be on an entirely different level after properly being trained by someone who can actually keep up with him. Then there’s the question of how strong Max could possibly be considering he’s created from a human. Just how far could Hedo have pushed his granddad's research? He wasn’t able to create a Perfect Cell Max so how strong was this thing really, limited to the second, still imperfect form as a base? Now, i know authors and guidebooks have hyped up that a “complete” Cell Max would be a problem for even Broly but really? Using what is objectively hyperbole to get butts in theater seats as evidence by claims that Gohan is the “strongest”, comes across as a little desperate to me. There’s no way Cell Max is stronger than the weakest of GoDs and all three full-blooded Saiyans are at least mid GoD level at this point, realistically high to top tier. That means, at the end of the day, Gohan Beast is still just the FOURTH most powerful cat in DBZ. Fifth, if we’re counting Congelador Negro. Or I could be wrong and Super is just, like, “F*ck it” in terms of power scaling because Toei is greedy for merchandising. Gohan Beast would make a pretty dope looking toy, for sure.

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