Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero (2022)

Even though I was raised on Dragon Ball and I adore it up to this day, Super was a huge letdown. It played as a washed-out version of Z - there was no tension, the new characters were bland, and it was simply boring. The fact the only not-terrible part of the series was one huge tournament didn’t help. Just give me an adventure!

I also can not say I enjoyed Dragon Ball movies. There are a few enjoyable, but most of the time they are either bad or incredibly bad. They try to condense interesting story lines into a few dozen minutes, failing miserably. Say what you will about pacing, but Toriyama sure knew how to build tension over a hundred episode fight.

And therefore we are here, the Super Hero movie. It’s the last Toryiama’s Dragon Ball. I expected nothing and still left disappointed.

The story exists, which is nice. We’re after the last Broly movie. Red Ribbon army still exists, and they want to take over the world again. Goku and Vegeta are training, so they won’t help. It’s all up to Picollo, Androids and the young Sayians to save the day.

Who is the main enemy this time? A new Cell. Yes, Red Ribbon’s latest acquaintance happens to be a genius capable of creating a better Cell, Cell Max. And this is where the good things about this movie end.

Remember Cell’s saga? It was long, it was interesting. It gave us Android 18. It was full of development, horror and surprises. None of this is present here. The new Cell looks worse than the original, doesn’t have any forms nor any spoken lines.

Moreover, the animation is terrible. Yes, CGI looks great when still, but when we start to see any fight it becomes unwatchable. It’s the kind of CGI that is not bad per-se, but still obvious. It’s clear that what we’re seeing here is made by a soulless computer. They don’t even try to hide it with constant camera shifts. CGI can look great, but here it looks lazy.

So, wasted Cell and bad animation. Do we get anything instead? We do - a lot of fan service. We meet people from all other series and hear about even more. We see return of figting Gohan and a few thinks we’ve been waiting for since the 90s. It’s fitting, as we’re decades into Dragon Ball. The problem is that they are just there and if they weren’t, there would be difference. Those cute scenes try to mask absence of anything new and interesting.

Unfortunately, we also see Shenron. In the old series, every time he was summoned, it was a spectacle and a memorable moment. With each occurrence however the characters stop treating him as a force, but more of a goof ball. Yes, the first wish we see him fulfilling was creation of pantyhose, but it was part of the plot. Here? Here Bulma uses him for butt-lift and wrinkle removal, as he became useless.

And this sadly summarizes all modern Dragon Ball. It’s a low effort, forced return of an old legend. It should stay were it was. And this movie is one of the worst parts of Super. It’s not as bad as Gohan’s¹ whistle-dance, but the fact that it’s not the worst of DB doesn’t save it from being a insulting goodbye to the Dragon Ball world.