Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero

While Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero's focus on characters besides Goku and Vegeta as well as it's expansion of the lore is welcome, it lacks the oomf of the prior and more action focused Dragon Ball Super: Broly. Will many hardcore Dragon Ball fans love it anyways? Most likely...

Let's start with one of the biggest changes with this movie, and that's the new animation style. After it's new CG animation style was unveiled, I think a lot of people were tentatively waiting for this new instalment in the film series with baited breath. As trailers and more footage slowly rolled out, I think many peoples ... gripes with the new style softened, and after seeing and entire film in this new style, I think it definitely worked (though I don't know if I'd want this as some new standard moving forward). Generally speaking, the new art style really pops and allows for some fun character animation, especially more varied and interesting character animation while characters are idle. Yajirobi eating some food while Piccolo and Korin talk, Pan spinning and walking around with big exaggerated steps and Gamma 2 striking ridiculous poses are just some of the moments that stood out to me where this new style really allowed the characters to pop and showcase more personality than ever before. Other scenes like Piccolo and Pan speaking to each other underneath a tree felt very immersive with the way lighting and shadows were handled, with spots of light breaching through the trees branches onto Piccolo and tracking accurately. The action itself was a little more hit and miss on this front. Depending the the battle or how it was choreographed, this new style could definitely match the more epic battles like in Broly, but more often than not fell flat. One moment that really stood out as a highlight of this new styles potential was a battle between Goku and Vegeta, where the CG and cel shaded style was blended together in a way that seemed seamless. In other action scene however, I felt like there was an over reliance on effects as well as 3D camerwork. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't, but overall most of the fights felt like they had less impact as well as creativity in the way they were animated and presented.

Unfortunately, speaking of battles, while there were quite a few of them scattered throughout the film...they were generally over pretty quickly and didn't feel very high stakes. There are also new transformations, but with how they're worked into the battles, felt lacking, and as exciting as they were to see, weren't capitalized on. Obviously it's very exciting to see a fan favourite character achieve a new form after so many years, but then when they use a single attack and revert back to their previous form, it's definitely a bit deflating.

The film begins with a fairly long explanation and set up for the new Red Ribbon villains that, while long, I was actually pretty on board. It was an interesting expansion of the lore, and an aspect of the lore important all the way back to Dragon Ball, but one that we rarely see or hear about these days. Speaking of, we actually get a really cool 2D animated segment of Dragon Ball Goku attacking the Red Ribbon Army that looks really nice. On this front, whenever a flashback is shown in the film it's done in 2D art and I thought this was an interesting touch. It conveys a sort of contrast between the new and the old which worked well with the drastically different art styles. I also enjoyed the way that the Red Ribbon Army was portrayed using propaganda to trick people into seeing their views on Capsule Corp and the Z Warriors feats. I liked the set up fine, and the new villain characters worked well enough (while by no means being interesting enough to steal the show). Where I felt the film really dropped the ball was with it's main big baddy hinted at from the start of the film. When mentioned, I got excited at the possibilities, but the execution was pretty crap. Where it could have been done in a very exciting and thematic way given the characters that were involved, the villain is reduced to a giant rampaging monster with a weak design. On top of that, I felt the final big character moment/transformation was really forced and poorly handled. Sure it was cool, but a few different decisions directorially could have had a huge impact on how the scene played out. Overall, the action worked fine enough, but also really didn't blow me away like with Broly, and many scenes were over too quickly.

On a more positive note, I've always found the character work in these films to be fun and that continues here. While this film was advertised as a Gohan and Piccolo joint, it's really Piccolo who steals the show. He's upset at Gohan's lack of training and uses situations throughout the film to try and push him to unlock more power. He's also the main driving force of the film as far as uncovering the villains plans and also preparing their own counter attack. A fan favourite character who was definitely handled well. Gohan on the other hand is, alright...He's there and is given a big moment at the end but generally, he's just there.

All in all, while it might sound like I'm being very critical of the film, at the same time i enjoyed it well enough. The character bits and humour sprinkled throughout somewhat made up for a pretty weak final battle and the new characters and lore introduced were fun. I definitely don't see this film making waves like Broly did, but if you're a Dragon Ball fan you're probably going to be checking this out and enjoying it on some level regardless.

I'll start off by saying I felt like I was watching an over the top DBZ fan fiction. I love Dragon Ball Z and it's my favorite show of all time, I was even more hyped going to this movie despite the CGI animation due to my favorite character, Gohan, being the main protagonist.

Anyway, safe to say I was incredibly disappointed and felt like I was watching an over the top fan fiction, which will both end up being the theme of this review. From the get go the 3D art style sticks out like a sore thumb. For some reason, instead of being ... a true 3D animation, it's 3D imitating 2D and it ends up looking ugly and causes the animation of the non action scenes to look very janky, off and ended up resembling an upgraded PS3 cut scene.

While I don't expect a complex plot from Dragon Ball, the plot in this felt incredibly childish and cringe and the attempts at humor fell very flat for me which has never happened to me when watching Dragon Ball before. The point of it being very fan fiction esque and childish also goes for for the villains too, which were disappointing to say the least.

I watched the movie dubbed and while some of the voice acting preformnces were good such as Gohan's and Number One's most of them were sub-par, changed, and a far cry from the quality of the Dragon Ball Z dub. Part of the problem was the dialogue felt awkward and off. Maybe this was something to do with the translation and a lot of the dub voice actor performances and is perhaps better in the original japanese version.

There were some good moments in the film such as some of fight scenes but this was severely dragged down by all the negatives I mentioned as well as the very fan fiction esque moments (that I won't go into as they're spoilers) and ultimately ends up being wasted potential, potential being something this film had a lot of if it just went in a few different directions and, preferably, stuck to 2D animation but if they really wanted to experiment with 3D, they didn't try to imitate 2D.

Ultimately I am left incredibly disappointed and hoping for so much more.

My language is Spanish so excuse me if my English is bad. 😓

I loved watching the Dragon ball movie, it was entertaining and beautiful. If you are fans of Dragon ball I think you will be comfortable with the movie. As a person who is fond of the Dragon Ball franchise, I enjoyed it very well, keeping the humor and the action very stable. The characters, as always, continue to maintain the charisma of always clear with the development changes that occurred. Very nice everything hehe~ I also liked the memories of the first TV series of "Dragon ball" if you loved the first ... part of Dragon ball I'm sure will love that installment.
If you want to hang out in your day, watch the movie, it will entertain you. Don't expect the movie to be a "BOOM", just enjoy and relax hehe~

ESPAÑOL:
Me encanto ver la película de Dragon ball, fue entretenida y hermosa. Si eres fans de Dragon ball creo que te quedaras a gusto con la película. Yo como una persona que le tiene cariño a la franquicia de Dragon ball, lo disfrute muy bien, manteniendo el humor y la acción muy estable. Los personajes como siempre siguen manteniendo el carisma de siempre claro ya con los cambios de desarrollo que se dio dando. Muy bonito todo jaja!~ También me gusto que traigan los recuerdos de la primera serie TV de "Dragon ball" si te encanto la primera parte de Dragon ball estoy seguro que te encanta esa entrega.
Si quieres pasar el rato en tu día, ve la película, te va entretener. No esperes que la película va a ser un "BOOM", solo disfruta y relájate jeje~

Going to do this without spoiling.

First off, the cg animation. I absolutely hate it. Looks weird, would fit for a Xenoverse game, not for a bloody movie. There are so many things about this movie that could have been cool. I mean, this thing writes itself. There are some really cool moments, but in between it all this movie is an absolute mess.

They flat out re-use a key moment from dbz, and it just comes off stale af. It looked cool, but that's about it. Seriously, a monkey on a type writer could nail this script and get a 9/10. Even if the animation was ... on par with Brolly, I'd up my score to 6/10 instead of 5/10. What were they thinking? There are some fundamental flaws in the plot, I really love Piccolo in this but I can think of a ton of different ways to do the "spoilers" of his arc different.

I don't get how they botched this. We've wanted less focus on Goku and Vegeta for awhile, but I guess the reason Toriyama neglected his side characters for so long is he couldn't write any meaningful story? This is a huge disappointment. I say mixed feelings because I liked some things, but this movie is a great example of terrible execution, still watch it because if Toriyama's proctologist wrote this we'd still watch it, as that's what being a Dragon Ball fan means.

This film hangs its hat on only three things:

1. Beautiful 3D animation.
2. A pretty explosive, if overall, unimportant final battle.
3. Giving Gohan fans what they have wanted for years. Gohan's return to relevance on the battlefield.

Outside of that? There's nothing here but a really, really low-quality story leading to a big 30 minute brawl, that purposely keeps out Goku and Vegeta, to put emphasis on Gohan and Piccolo. Which is fine, because the lesser guys should be able to shine once and a while, too. But, if you really wanted them to shine, more thought definitely could have gone into the ... story of this film. (SPOILERS AHEAD)

The story is really bad. It's basically just the new Red Ribbon Army tricking the new Dr. Gero (But, it's a portly guy in love with superheroes named Dr. Hedo, instead) into making some powerful new androids by telling him the Capsule Corporation are filled with evil aliens who want to enslave and then destroy mankind. He chooses to believe it, so he can have access to their money and build new androids. After he does, then the army goes and kidnaps Pan so that Gohan can come and fight and they can kill him. It's an amazingly stupid premise.

But, however dumb the story is, it does lead to a good fight when Piccolo and Gohan confront the androids. And both of them achieve new (pretty sick) forms. The final fight almost takes your mind off of how dumb the story is. But, you can't fully forget, because when Cell returns, instead of the clever character you remember, this new Cell Max is just a mindless screaming giant based off of Hedo altering some of Gero's original work. Extremely disappointing, since the OG Cell is one of the most iconic villains in anime history. I expected to see him back and more powerful. But, it is what it is. It was still a hell of a fight, and it was nice to see all the gang (sans the big two) fighting again.

But, my suggestion to you is to not spend your money to go see this in theaters. Wait until it hits streaming services, if you haven't already watched the Cam version going around. It's really not worth it. You could just watch some fan-made DBZ stuff on YT if you're really just jonesing for it. I would recommend Legend: A Dragonball Tale and Goku vs. Saitama by Etol1c Animations on YT. Hell, even deathbattle has some good DBZ action if you haven't seen Vegeta vs. Thor, yet. Really, do that before you break into your pockets for this.

Story: 1
Art: 10
Sound: 7
Character: 8
Enjoyment: 6
Overall: 6

SUMMARY:You need to see it to form your own opinion.
I will be very hard with this movie, it really seemed very bad to me, bad rhythm, I did not take affection to any of the new characters, many nonsenses happen, everything is solved with power ups taken from the ass, the characters seem to have lost all their neurons , the only good thing that I can really highlight would be the animation, despite the fact that at times it doesn't look quite right, it becomes comparable to 2D animation and is very nice, and the final fight wasn't too bad.

RESUMEN:Tienes que verla para formar ... tu opinion.
Sere muy duro con esta película, realmente me pareció muy mala, mal ritmo, no le tome cariño a ninguno de los nuevos personajes, ocurren muchos sin sentidos, todo se resuelve con power ups sacados del culo, los personajes parecen haber perdido todas sus neuronas, lo unico bueno que realmente puedo destacar sería la animación, a pesar de que en algunos momentos no se ve del todo bien, llega a ser equiparable con la animación 2D y resulta muy agradable, además la pelea final no estuvo tan mal.

So I'm someone who is a fan of dragon ball , Z , GT and a bit of super . I enjoy battle of gods when at came out . like Resurrection 'F . Love Broly movie . but my god this was is pretty bad .

The good 1

So finally Goku is not the main hero who beats the main villain at the end . Piccolo and Pan moments was pretty cute . Goku and vegeta is not the main forced on the movie and giving to piccolo and Gohan . Okay i did somewhat like fat Gotenks


the bad 2 ...
The CGi is not bad atleast looks like dragon ball but than why added great 2D animated . So in Super anime we had a small arc with Gohan and Piccolo . Where Piccolo help Gohan to unlock his ultimate power for the tournament of power . But are we during this again in this movie . Even it what takes place two or three years after . So you where hoping to see some moment with Goten and trunks come on now . But why are nerf Gohan again . So the main villian is making a new version of cell called . Cell max and is really similar celling to Bio Broly and in a good way . So since in the new arc of super pretty much is what is the point of training if now you can make wish on the dragon ball . So if now using this logic . Than why didn't they use the dragon ball all against all the major threat .
Yeah it will make it overpower and break the rules . But dragon ball has been breaking power scale for the longest time .