So it turns out the leak around the time of Anime Expo wasn’t a hoax. Broly returns in the upcoming Dragon Ball Super anime film. Not long after the leak came a confirmation in the form of new character designs. Then SDCC happened and gave us a good look at Broly in the first trailer for the movie.
This comes after the teaser trailer, released some months ago. And it definitely delivers a lot more information. Broly is an interesting character. By that I mean that the general attitude toward him is interesting. The character, himself, is about as interesting a brick. Sure, it’s fun to throw the brick and see it smash something. But it’s not exactly high entertainment. That is Broly in a nutshell. And yet the general opinion of him is split straight down the middle. An overwhelming number of fans love him. He’s just so cool. But there’s a not-insignificant number of people who don’t like him. Because once the “cool factor” wears off, he’s really just a dumb brute and with a really weak motivation. Ironically, there’s all the set up in the world to have the motivation but much better. But then it wouldn’t involve Goku, so there’s that. Marketing at its finest.
Despite that, Broly’s popularity is unquestionable. He’s in several Dragon Ball video games, for one. And an obvious gender-inverted analog of the character – Kale – was heavily featured in the final arc of the Dragon Ball Super anime to great success. There are also several other major details regarding this movie’s direction. The Dragon Ball movies have always been in a weird limbo state between canon and non-canon. They definitely take the events of the canon series into consideration. But they aren’t canon and their events don’t have any impact on the series as a whole. Even Battle of Gods and Resurrection F weren’t canon. They were later adapted by the series proper to become canon. But they were non-canon, just as their predecessors. However, Dragon Ball Super: Broly will apparently be canon. And that means that Broly is now the first character to receive this treatment. This has a great deal of potential.
Akira Toriyama actually penned the story for this movie. This is effectively a reboot of the Broly character, meaning that his meme-status motivation may be drastically different. It already appears to be the case as far more than Broly’s design changed. There do appear to be some other wholesale changes on the way. Could Broly go from an admittedly cool meme to an actual compelling character? Maybe even a sympathetic one? Would that sacrifice his cool factor? Fans have to wait to find out. Dragon Ball Super: Broly releases in December.