Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero - Movie Review

With great animation, excellent dubbing and a focus on Gohan and Piccolo, Super Hero is a movie worth your time!

Don't know about you, but among the anime I remember as a child and teenager, beyond the things that aired in school, you can find things like Pokémon, Yu Gi Oh, and InuYasha, but among my favorite anime is undoubtedly Dragon Ball Z. Every day after School, I would get home and sit down to watch another episode of the super long and tedious battles of this anime. But, it was the first Shonen anime I knew, and over the years I learned to look at the anime a little more critically. Even with my criticism of the show, it has a particularly warm place in my heart and to this day I manage to remember most of its plot.

The story of Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero  is a direct sequel to Dragon Ball Super: Broly, the last film released in 2018, but it doesn't connect to it in any way, so I wouldn't say it's absolutely necessary to watch Dragon Ball Super: Broly to enjoy the Super Hero plot. After the battle between Goku, Vegeta and Broly, Goku and Vegeta continue to train together with Broly in Beerus' planet. The plot of the movie, if you can't guess, doesn't focus on them at all. One of the things that really characterizes the Super anime compared to Z is the relatively low amount of screen time of Gohan, Goku's son, compared to other characters. Here, Gohan gets a lot of the spotlight, but more about that in a moment.

The plot of the film is particularly enjoyable, it is light and entertaining (along with fourth-wall breaks that would not embarrass Deadpool), it does not require a deep familiarity with the Dragon Ball universe in order to understand it, even if it is an old organization, and the story provides all the background needed on In order to really understand the plot in full.

The CGI animation has improved a lot in recent years, the quality is not bad at all, but it's hard not to notice the animation that is almost alien to the Dragon Ball medium at a level that felt like I was watching a transition scene from one of the games. The amount of frames is completely uneven and there is still a fair amount of cartoon animation used throughout the film at a level that makes me wonder why not go in one direction regularly, and be sure that the transitions between the two styles are far from smooth and imperceptible.

The Bottom Line

Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero is a great Dragon Ball movie, but not without its problems. While its plot is fun (without taking a major part in the overall plot of Super), it also gives quite a bit of love to Gohan and Piccolo, two characters that have been somewhat neglected over time, who are getting the spotlight for the first time in a while. The transition to CGI animation is noticeable, and as usual it's still far from perfect, but I'm slowly getting to like it and sits quite well in this movie. However, the transitions to the more classic animation take the concentration out of it and prevent continuous enjoyment of it. Is this a trend that will continue with the movies? Find out in the next episode of Dragon Ball Z. or Super.