Few franchises have become as new-viewer-unfriendly as the the 38-year-old Dragon Ball series. What started off as a sci-fi/kung fu riff on the Chinese epic Journey to the West has now become an unfathomably complex multiversal storyline so convoluted that there are noncanonical films released by Toei, the Japanese studio behind the anime juggernaut.
Like so many of the other 20 Dragon Ball films, Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero crams in meaningless cameos by dozens of fan-favorite characters. That includes a whole B-plot about why exactly Goku, Vegeta, and Broly (the three most powerful characters) aren’t in the final battle, a subplot that’s just set up to take them off the table – oh, and provide a funny post-credits stinger. It all just gets in the way of what could have been some of the most interesting plotting in the franchise in a long time. On one side, there’s Doctor Hedo (Irino in the original Japanese version, Zach Aguilar in the English language dub), the superscientist who fools himself into becoming an unwitting evil genius for the sinister Red Ribbon crime syndicate, who sells out his dream of creating superheroes for cash. On the other is the real driver of the story, the fact that mean green powerhouse Piccolo (Furukawa/Christopher Sabat) feels that heroic nerd Gohan (Nozawa/Kyle Hebert) is letting his training slide as he concentrates instead on his science research: Worse, that he’s letting his responsibilities as father to adorable tike Pan (Minaguchi/Jeannie Tirado) slide, and that the new menace is a way to get his focus back on what’s important.
Those elements are just strong enough to stop Super Hero feeling like it’s drowning in fan service and endless flashback exposition – although there’s still a lot of both. This is still Dragon Ball, with all its quirks so well established that they’re just part of the process now. There will be villains who end up as heroes, there will be some weirdly off-color jokes – in this case, some really misguided height gags about crime boss Magenta (Ota/Charles Martinet) – and there will be a lot of continuity crammed in there. At least series creator and scriptwriter Akira Toriyama realized this time that the setup needs explaining. After all, Red Ribbon was the antagonist in the original manga before Goku was even an alien (if you know, you know, and if you don’t then don’t worry), and the evil organization hasn’t been a factor in the multitudinous films and series since the mid-1990s. It’s arguably a little disappointing that Toriyama brings back one of his greatest threats to the heroes in a single film, rather than as a long-term irredeemable threat. After all, as the Saiyans, Namekians, androids, and all the associated heroes become more absurdly powerful with each storyline, it seems like a wasted opportunity to so quickly dispatch a deadly threat that comes from regular, cunning humans.
This article appears in Back to School 2022.