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- Think of Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero as a breather film. It’s a respite from massive storylines with all of reality on the line, and a chance to sit back, relax, and enjoy some Dragon Ball nostalgia. The only interruption in that dynamic is Super Hero ’s use of 3D animation, a first for a Dragon Ball movie.
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Aug 19, 2022 · Read Critics Reviews. The new animation style takes some getting used to, but Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero has an easy-to-follow story, smart fan service, and tons of action. Read...
- (59)
- Tetsuro Kodama
- PG-13
- Toei Company
- The franchise’s first 3DCG-animated film is a fun, low-stakes adventure about Gohan getting his groove back.
- What We Said About Dragon Ball Super: Broly
- Who's Dragon Ball's best dad?
- Verdict
By Kambole Campbell
Posted: Aug 11, 2022 7:01 am
Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero hits North American theaters on Aug. 19, 2022.
A franchise as old as Dragon Ball - a series at this point (among others) synonymous with the proliferation of anime television in the West - comes with a lot of baggage, fan expectation, increasingly labyrinthine continuity, and perhaps diminishing returns on its best qualities. The recent Dragon Ball Super: Broly managed to answer all of this, delivering a new take on an old fan favorite character in a straightforward, white-knuckle brawler that at the same time took the series back to its paternalistic interests. Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero manages to succeed in a lot of the same ways, with a few differences and new tricks up its sleeve.
Directed by Tetsuro Kodama (who also worked on the first Dragon Ball Super movie, Broly) and with the close involvement of series creator Akira Toriyama, where Broly had the emotional hook in the introduction of Broly as a tragic victim of patriarchal abuse, Super Hero is a more sentimental reunion of the series’ most stable father-son relationship. It turns its action spectacle into a love letter to the bond between one-time villain Piccolo and his surrogate son Gohan – emphasizing that parental relationship to the point where Piccolo even forgets that when Gohan’s daughter Pan says “grandfather,” she means Goku and not him. But, it also must be noted that even as Piccolo is clearly a big old softie (despite his sternness) as well as the better father, this is also a movie that begins with him kicking a 3-year-old into a rock (she’s fine).
It’s a follow up to Broly as well as an older era of the series - more specifically, that of Dragon Ball’s Red Ribbon Army Saga and then Dragon Ball Z’s Android Saga ending with the Cell Games, which for a time felt like a genuine status quo shift to the series as a whole, putting Gohan in the center, before other plans got in the way. Part of Super Hero’s approach of following up on these old arcs is how it essentially picks up where Gohan’s brief time in the spotlight left off, originally meant to inherit his father’s mantle as a defender of Earth, something cemented by his defeat of Cell. The series eventually rolled things back to make Goku the protagonist again, and Gohan receded back to the show’s periphery, which in the long term feels like a shame, stalling a sense of forward momentum, and reducing conflicts to a matter of “when is Goku going to show up?” Gohan’s exit from the spotlight becomes part of the story, Piccolo’s words about how he’ll surpass Goku being thrown back in his face - the film comes off as something of an apology for leaving fan favorite characters in the dust, revisiting Piccolo and Gohan’s paternal relationship and the ways in which Gohan can be better than his father - as a parent and a partner, and as a fighter. In Super Hero’s revisitation of the character, it feels like the better kind of fan service, showing some thoughtfulness about the rich roster of personalities often left at the sidelines in latter-day Dragon Ball stories.
Fuminobu Hata gave Dragon Ball Super: Broly an 8.5/10 for IGN, writing that it "delivers in terms of awesome action, but more than that, it uses the fathers of Goku, Vegeta, and Broly to link back to the late-1980s and early-1990s heyday of the series to add a relatable and thoughtful subtext." Read the full review here.
After a somewhat labored setup recapping old grudges and establishing new threats, Super Hero surprises by how accessible it is to newcomers or viewers who haven’t checked in since Dragon Ball Z, especially as someone who has lost track of the new additions in Super Saiyan transformations. Better still, it eschews so much of what’s associated with Dragon Ball Super, decentring Goku and Vegeta Beerus, Whis, and Broly (who spend most of the film offscreen) and winding back the series’ power creep and long-time escalation of scale, going from battling literal cosmic gods to the Red Ribbon Army, an incredibly old name in Dragon Ball at this point. Even in a series where the same villains come around time and again (that is, if they don’t become allies), the film actually feels more fresh for their return.
There’s a sense of fun in how Super Hero turns the clock back, playing on familiar moments, costumes, and battles as well as how it tells its story. A tongue-in-cheek introduction summarizes villains of ages past, appropriately maintaining a 2D-animated recap, remaking iconic moments in a thrilling and sometimes sepia-toned montage, a narrator asking “Perhaps, dear viewers, some among you have lived long enough to recall the name ‘Red Ribbon Army,’” as it lampshades how back-to-basics the film is getting. It heavily emphasizes the passage of time - it’s been a long time, everyone has continued to move on with their lives somewhat and everyone is a bit rusty - bringing the series’ infamous power creep a little more down to earth, even if every character still gets stronger as soon as they feel like it.
Though it takes time to warm up, the occasional hiccups in pacing and any qualms with the new style melt away pretty quickly.
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As Super Hero brings together elements of the series’ past and its potential future, it does so also with its aesthetic ideas. Effectively a sequel to Broly as well as to events long past, it’s appropriate then that it mixes in a new medium for the series with a classical style, using 3D computer-generated animation with a bright, graphic style that feels like a renewal of the classic era of the show, the production team doing strong work translating the familiar look into a new medium of work. Despite there being an uncanny sheen to characters at points, and occasional stiffness during scenes of long conversations, this mode of animation really comes alive in the explosive action sequences, the animation team taking advantage of the ability to introduce a roaming camera in tandem with explosive effects work, swooping around and chasing characters through scenery, adding new dimensions of movement to Super Hero’s various skirmishes. Though it takes a time to warm up, the occasional hiccups in pacing and any qualms with the new style melt away pretty quickly, finding a happy medium between tradition and change.
Piccolo
Vegeta
Gohan
Goku
Other -- let us know in the comments.
Better still is when these bouts incorporate the visual language of comics with large, colorful written sound effects (which Piccolo can somehow see), following in the footsteps of Into the Spider-Verse with its various onscreen “KAPOW!”s. With its crossing of Journey to the West with the origin story of Superman, Dragon Ball has always had a bond with Western superhero comics and it’s exciting to see how Super Hero (the title should be a clue) pushes this to the forefront visually. The rest of the time, it’s the kind of action you’d expect from Dragon Ball - screaming and shouting punctuating moments between fast-paced, mid-air brawls, fights that quickly bounce between close-ups of quick attacks and wide angle destruction. Of course, this being the series that it is, there’s also plenty of room for sentiment between energy blasts, or even a heartwarming combination of the two in the case of Gohan, showing his love for his surrogate father through his choice of attack.
The more things change in this series, the more they stay the same, but Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero mostly manages to successfully thread the needle between past and present, both showing love for the now codified personalities of its characters and finding a new path for them. Better still, it does so with an exciting sense of style, pushing the...
- Kambole Campbell
Aug 19, 2022 · Top Critics. All Audience. Verified Audience. Manuel São Bento FirstShowing.net. Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero offers what most fans of the saga come looking for: energetic action, new...
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- Cezary Jan Strusiewicz
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Aug 11, 2022 · ‘Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero’ Review: It Isn’t Over 9,000, But It Is Solid Fan Service. First-timers may be lost, but longtime “Dragon Ball” devotees will feel right at home in this...
Aug 17, 2022 · Review. Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero review – eye-candy anime is gloriously mesmeric. The immensely popular franchise is back with a cast of brightly coloured characters in a world...
