Many animators working at Toei were very positive about the Shintani-style redesign for the characters due to how animation-friendly they are.
Yuya Takahashi, freelance animator and possibly one of the most popular animators of Dragon Ball Super, has approved of the designs, calling them animation-friendly and closer to the Namek saga style.
Naotoshi Shida, an animator known for working on episodes 110 and 130 of the Tournament of Power saga, among others, has called the new designs "wonderful!"
Masaki Sato, the animator responsible for Goku's first transformation as a Super Saiyan complemented the third trailer, specifically, a really detailed shot of Broly with huge veins on his face drawn by popular newcomer Yuya Takahashi. He says that he had trouble animating the Super Saiyan transformation since adapting the visual sound effects from the manga wouldn't be realistic, so he interpreted it with veins coming out of Goku's face, and is happy to see it in the movie.
Ricardo Brust (Broly's voice actor in Latin America) approved of this fan edit of the dubbed first trailer that added an echo to Broly's screams since the trailer lacked them.
Bad Export for You: The North American Blu-ray releases have a green tint to the footage due to Funimation's footage being damaged. This isn't an issue with the English release in other regions, such as the Australian release handled by Madman, which do not have the green tint.
Content Leak: Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 was datamined after a patch. While Broly was obvious (and was indeed found in the datamine), placeholder data for Super Saiyan Blue Gogeta was found, long before a trailer even announced the character was appearing.
Creator's Favorite: Director Naohiro Shintani said that if he were to choose a favorite character in the movie, it would have been Paragus.
Dueling Dubs: There's two Latin American Spanish dubs of the film dubbed in different countries, which is is something unusual in that region for the Dragon Ball franchise, as all the animated works are dubbed in Mexico since day one. In this particular case, the theatrical version of the film was done in Mexico based on the Japanese version, while another dub was made in Argentina based on the Funimation dub. The Argentinian dub is used exclusively in the U.S. for the Starz network.note This isn't exactly unusual, as many Spanish dubs used in American releases are not always the same ones used in Latin America due to a mix of both copyrights and content reasons, since in this case, the Mexican dub used in the theatrical release is owned by both Toei and 20th Century Fox, while the Argentinian dub was done by Funimation's request. For example, Goku, voiced in the Mexican dub by Mario Castañeda, is voiced in the Argentinian dub by Santiago Florentín.
Executive Meddling: Reportedly, the original script clocked in at three hours long. That said, it was forced to be cut down to closer to two.
In regards of the English subtitles, starting with this movie, Toei has requested Steve Simmons, the translator of most of the Japanese Dragon Ball animated projects, to use character names from the English dub instead of the proper names.
Some fans state that the reason why Broly became a Canon Immigrant was because Kale from the Tournament of Power wasn't "well-received" and they decided to adapt the real deal. However, according to Norihiro Hayashida, they received the storyline in June 2017, with Kale barely transforming for the first time in episode 93 on July 4, and her reception alongside Caulifla was actually quite positive according an interview with Producer Satoru Takami and Series Director Ryōta Nakamura. It's been confirmed that the creation of Kale actually came about after the film was in the planning stages, according to an interview with Yoshihiko Umakoshi.
One of the animators working in the film is Takashi Hashimoto, known for his gorgeous special effects in the movie Your Name (the opening with the comets blazing through the clouds being one of his scenes), among other works.
On the English side of things, the English dub's release is in 2019, 20 years after Funimation's original English dub of Dragon Ball Z with their Texas-based cast first premiered.
Missing Episode: On the US Blu-Rays, the bonus feature advertised; "Vic Mignogna Answers Your Questions", was left off the final release. Vic is also absent from the other bonus features you'd expect him to pop up, despite being one of the stars of the movie, most likely due to the allegations against him that came out after the movie was dubbed.
Missing Trailer Scene: In the SDCC 2018 trailer, Goku had an Oh, Crap! reaction to Broly transforming, with Goku internally saying "He's...getting stronger!" as Broly rises up from the ground. In the movie proper, Goku just assumes a fighting stance again and remains calm under pressure when Broly transforms.
Never Trust a Trailer: The first trailer features a shot where Broly attacks Frieza while in his "Rage" form. Broly is actually a Super Saiyan by this point in the film itself; the trailer simply recolored his golden hair to black.
No Export for You: The movie won't be released in Venezuela since 20th Century Fox stopped releasing films in 2017 for reasons not officially clarified.note Other distributors continue to release films in Venezuela.
Paragus' original voice actor, Iemasa Kayumi, passed away in 2014, and was replaced by Katsuhisa Hoki, who voiced him in Dragon Ball Heroes.
With Hiromi Tsuru passing away on November 15, 2017 at the age of 57 of an aortic dissection, Aya Hisakawa takes her place beginning with this film.
Defied again speaking of Frieza, at least with the English dub trailer. Chris Ayres was unable to perform any kind of voice acting since March 2017 due to his combat with COPD. Daman Mills, his understudy, is now the official voice actor of said character. However, Funimation has allowed the former to record in his condition for the English dub trailer (which is rather puzzling). The official English poster revealed that Ayres will actually voice Frieza in the finished movie, rather than being The Other Marty to his understudy as was previously speculated.
The one voicing Broly in the English dub trailer is confirmed not to be Vic Mignogna, though this has been speculated as due to the limited time before the San Diego Comic-Con, and Vic himself has expressed wanting to reprise the role. Vic was eventually confirmed to be replaying him once the official English promo poster was revealed.
In the Italian dub, Stefano Mondini replaces both Diego Reggente and Vittorio Bestoso as Paragas's voice.
Refitted for Sequel: Akira Toriyama had planned for Gogeta to appear in the Buu Saga, but upon learning that Dragon Ball Z: Fusion Reborn was in the works, replaced him with Vegito, with this film becoming Gogeta's introduction to the main continuity.
Role-Ending Misdemeanor: This film's English dub was Vic Mignogna's last portrayal of Broly in the Dragon Ball franchise. Years of sexual harassment allegations against Mignogna came to prominence in 2019 as a result of the dubbed movie's release.
As usual, Bin Shimada reprises his role as the Japanese voice of Broly, as does Vic Mignogna for the English Dub.
Dameon Clarke returns as Paragus for the English Dub, the first time since the original movie.
Chris Ayres returns to his role as the English voice of Frieza, after medical issues forced him to take a hiatus from voice acting in 2017.
Ricardo Brust, the now-retired voice actor of Broly and many other characters in Dragon Ball plays the character again after Dragon Ball Z: Broly – Second Coming was released in 1999 in Latin America, twenty years later.
José Luis Castañeda, who voiced several characters in the franchise, came out of retirement to reprise his role as Nappa since he last appeared in Dragon Ball GT, which was in March 2000.
Lupita Leal returns to voice Baby Broly as she did 20 years before.
The Italian dub haves Mario Bombardieri reprising his role as Broly from the first dub of the original movies.Explanation The old Dragon Ball movies have two different Italian dubs: one more faithful to the original done with an entirely new cast - which later also dubbed Battle of Gods and Resurrection of F - and a second one with the same cast from the series and some alterations. Broly makes a mix - using the show's voice cast but with a faithful script
Sleeper Hit: At least as far as mainstream US box office is concerned. While Broly was anticipated to perform well for Funimation and Toei for a limited release, with the film receiving a rather sizable marketing push including a Macy's Parade balloon and a billboard in Times Square, nobody really expected the film to perform far beyond what the previous movie, Resurrection F, did. As stated below, this clearly was not the case, as the film grossed $7 million on its opening day, topped the box office for that and the following day, and it ended the weekend with a whopping $21 million haul, performing admirably against mainstream fare such as Glass (2019) and The Upside, as well as baffling many box office analysts in the process.
Broly would be the last time Chris Ayres voiced Frieza before his passing away in 2021, having come out of a medically-induced hiatus while prepared to stop recording in mid-session and leave for a lung transplant if need be. Chris would pass away after the movies release as well, making it the last time he would fully voice Frieza.
In the Latin American Spanish dub, Broly was the final film for Abel Rocha (Shenron), who died of natural causes in November 2021.
Urban Legend of Zelda: When the film was released in Japan, rumors spread quickly by viewers that Frieza mentioned having an older brother. This lead people to claim Cooler was canon and would be the focus of the next film. In reality this was untrue; Frieza never mentions having a brother (Vegeta does), and neither does King Cold in his brief appearance.
What Could Have Been: The movie had originally a three-hour script, but a lot of the content had to be cut for the final movie that has an hour and a half of content. Reportedly, the cut scenes are worth 70 minutes of content, with scenes of Raditz fighting Nappa and Vegeta, but since it was pointless to the story, it was cut.
Write What You Know: Nagamine, the film's director, used his vacation photos from his trip to the town of Amalfi in Italy as reference material for Bulma's vacation home.
Akira Toriyama was suggested by his editor that the film should include Broly since he has a fanbase in the west. This allowed Toriyama to flesh out Broly's character as he saw fit, meaning the original intentions for the character (i.e being an insanely powerful fighter) will be kept, but his original backstory and generic villainy will be intentionally Adapted Out.
The soundtrack includes two songs (Kakarot vs Broly, Broly vs Gogeta) that have an announcer hyping the fight between the characters. According to Nagamine, they were added because of how Goku vs Jiren was hyped and shown illegally in many parts of Latin America.
Series creator Akira Toriyama confirmed in an interview back in early 2018 that the movie is set "after the Tournament of Power that's currently airing on TV". Adding on to this, movie director Tatsuya Nagamine said that the reason for the absence of Ultra Instinct in the movie itself is due to him thinking that the TV series "broke its limits" and he didn't want limits being broken again so soon after the Tournament of Power while also wanting to showcase how much of a difference there is between Super Saiyan God and Super Saiyan Blue. The inability of Super Saiyan Blue Kaioken and Super Saiyan Blue Evolution to turn the tide in their favor seems to play into Goku and Vegeta's decision to use the Fusion Dance instead.
Despite this, both this film and its sequel "Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero" make use of material that suggest it may fall in line with the manga's continuity, making usage of Vegeta's Super Saiyan God form, stated by V Jump to be from the manga, as well as the sequel film "Super Hero" using Gohan's manga Piccolo outfit, instead of the Turtle Gi he had used in the anime's Tournament of Power.
Other trivia
The movie has sold 23,866 advance tickets in Japan during the first two days, a 207% increase from Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection 'F'.
While the movie was set to premiere on December 14, there was a limited premiere a month earlier with 2000 people being invited. There was a controversy regarding two hundred persons being left out of the theater, despite seats being available and as an apology, they got a free ticket for the official premiere. Despite this, many people posted their complaints online, which got the uninformed western fanbase (especially those affected by clickbait content from sites like Youtube) that the Japanese fanbase hated the movie, which is far from the truth, as the movie was a box office success, even dethroning Bohemian Rhapsody.
In the United States, the movie's opening day garnered $7 million, blowing away Resurrection F 's opening weekend and is the first anime film since Pokémon: The First Movie to reach #1 at the box office. It held the #1 position on its second day with over $3 million* ignoring the $3.7 million Thursday night previews for Glass (2019) and topped Resurrection F's final total in just two days.
Yuki Hayashi, an animator that used to work with Toei and is now working with Studio Bones (My Hero Academia), has called Shintani "so talented!"
Gen'ichirou Abe (an animator on the Monotogari series) has shown his support for the new style.
Arifumi Imai, a star animator in Attack on Titan, praised the movie visuals, saying it had great fluidity and character designs, alongside a nostalgic feeling to it.
of this fan edit