Broly Coming Back to the Dragon Ball Franchise is a Blessing For Longtime Fans

July 26, 2018

Broly Coming Back to the Dragon Ball Franchise is a Blessing For Longtime Fans

By: Caleb A

Last week during Comic-Con the internet was collectively blown away by an epic trailer for the new Dragon Ball Super movie (here's the trailer in case you missed it). Given how much we here at E to Interact enjoy the Dragon Ball franchise (check out MSJ’s article here), I decided to talk about how this is a great move for the series.

A Legendary Super Saiyan

For those of you who may be unfamiliar with who Broly is let me give you a little background information. To make a long story short, the Z-Fighters (the name for all the heroes of the Dragon Ball franchise) are summoned to stop a rampaging monster in a different part of the galaxy. Upon arrival the group meets Broly and his father Paragus who are both Saiyans like Goku and Vegeta. While the team tries to investigate this supposed rampaging monster, Vegeta is suspicious of Broly and Paragus. His suspicions are justified when it is revealed that Broly is the monster they were looking for and Paragus was controlling him. All control is lost when Broly sees Goku and goes into a violent rage. The ensuing fight is one of the most memorable ones of the franchise as everyone is using his or her full power at that point in the series and still struggles to stop Broly. The man takes on four other Super Saiyans (Goku, Gohan, Vegeta, and Future Trunks) and Piccolo but keeps on fighting strong. Even though the team somehow pulls through, this movie helped cement Broly’s status as a powerful and iconic villain in the Dragon Ball universe.

Broly’s triumphant return

Dragon Ball Super (DBS) has been a runaway success in the last couple of years. Earlier this year when they were showing their Tournament of Power season some of the streaming services crashed a few times due to the record number of people trying to watch the action unfold so needless to say, the franchise is going strong.

For those of you not caught up on the show, the Tournament of Power was a fighting championship between the twelve alternate universes of the show; which pits the ten strongest warriors of each universe against each other in an attempt to keep their universes from being destroyed. This final season culminated in many high points for not just DBS, but the franchise as a whole. After the tournament was over, however, many fans, myself included, asked where can they go from here? Thankfully series creator Akira Toriyama had an answer for us: bring Broly back.

How is this good for the franchise?

So if Broly was this incredible villain and powerful warrior why was he not fighting in the Tournament of Power and why has he not been mentioned in the show up until this point? Well similar to many other anime movies based on existing franchises, the Dragon Ball movies are not counted in the overall story of the show. The movies are just separate stories from what's going on in the main show. So if we're looking at this from a technical standpoint, no one in DBS should have any idea of who Broly is.

Having Broly be introduced into the canonical story is great for a few reasons. First, this shows that Toriyama hasn't forgotten about the character. Even though Broly has been a prominent figure in the Dragon Ball video games since his creation, he hasn't been in the movies since the 90s. This is an excellent bit of fan-service to longtime fans! Personally, I never thought we would ever see Broly become part of the main story so this was an incredible surprise.

Second, Broly's immense power could be a great test for certain characters. As we saw in the trailer Broly will fight Vegeta, Goku, and Frieza. Over the entirety of DBS so far these 3 characters have had significant boosts in power to the point where they can go toe-to-toe with literal gods. Remember in Broly's first appearance it took multiple people working together to take him down, so with that in mind, it should be interesting to see how he stacks up now. Granted, I'm sure Broly's power will be scaled up to match everyone else's just to keep things fun but I think we're still in for one hell of a match when these warriors meet up.

Lastly, this announcement could open the door for other characters to become part of the main story. Given that the Dragon Ball franchise has gone on for over thirty years they have a plethora of fan-favorite characters that haven't been seen in years. With Broly coming back we have a chance for favorites like Bardock (Goku's dad), Nappa, Alternate Future Gohan, Cell, and Cooler (Frieza’s brother) to come back into the series. We could see match-ups that were never dreamt of and interactions from characters who have never met before. Another possibility is seeing redemption for villains similar to what we saw with Frieza and Android 17 in the Tournament of Power season.

Broly coming back to the franchise is a nice love letter to longtime fans and quite frankly I think he's the right villain to keep the popularity of DBS on an upward trend. Broly's been around for years and has been a popular character in the video games for years it's high time he gets to show up in the main canon. Dragon Ball Super is one of the most popular animes around and if the hype for this upcoming movie is any indication of its success, we should expect to see Dragon Ball continue well into the future.