I'm honestly shocked Broly isn't a Western creation. He's a huge buff ultraman to contrast the leaner heroes of DBZ and the emphasis on training and acquiring skills. He can blow up anything, he's badass and invincible, and he's a real Super Saiyan.
My various fanfics."Real" being in huge sarcasm quotes, I hope.
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.
- "Is that smoke I smell?"
The first thing I thought of - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VoSpby3k-Y
........
Where's the Joking Mode and/or Sarcasm Mode pothole man?
You need that when you're messing around.
One Strip! One Strip!Goten and Trunks didn't really do much.
I remember loving Gotenks, but now I honestly wonder why he even existed. Gohan and Vegeta shared an understandable level of confusion/frustration when Goten and Trunks unlocked LEGENDARY SAIYAN POWERS before they were even old enough to drink legally.
And Goten is a goddamn brat in the second Broly film.
Had Goku not returned to save the day, I'd like them more.
Broli really isn't Toriyama's style, though. Of the examples you used, most of them aren't ridiculously buff (Raditz, Gohan-Boo) weaker than a small guy (Nappa, Buff Cell - who is also less useful than regular Cell) leaving really just Freeza. And even then he has stamina problems and gets tossed around by the leaner Goku.
Broli is way buffer than Toriyama's usual style and played completely straight, which is in huge contrast to Dragon Ball.
Gohan was only 2-3 years older than Goten/Trunks when he became a Super Saiyan, and Future Trunks also got it at a really young age. Goku didn't ruin the Kamehameha by learning it early, and that was a far more ridiculous example than Goten and Trunks' Super Saiyan.
Broli shat on Super Saiyan by making everyone else implied fakes, while only he the super special guy is the "Legendary" Super Saiyan.
Goten and Trunks also don't coast on being Super Saiyans. They had to master Fusion and unlock Super Saiyan 3 to even become relevant, and that combination of elements didn't leave them relevant for long because Super Saiyan 3 sucks dragon balls, and combining it with Fusion makes it even shittier. If anything, their role in the story was a warning against the cast's overreliance on transformations and other exploits for raising power level as the sole method for defeating the bad guy. "Congratulations! You get to be Super Saiyans! But that shit's not going to get you anywhere!"
Broli, by contrast, really only has the Super Saiyan thing going for him, but we're expected to buy that it's enough to make him unstoppable. He was born with the incredible power level of 10,000 and the ability to turn into a Super Saiyan, which means as a Super Saiyan, he would have been at 500,000, weaker than Frieza's base form. He gets around that by implicitly raising his power level an unknown amount since then and also by his transformation being an unknown but ostensibly stronger multiplier than the Super Saiyan one, but really, this winds up boiling down to, "Broli is the strongest because I said he is," and he's played hilariously straight.
edited 7th Oct '14 7:37:20 AM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Broly epitomizes everything wrong with Dragon Ball. His introduction franchise played a major role in warping the western audiences idea and general consensus of what Dragon Ball is. To qualify a strong or cool character in Dragon Ball you have to have insanely large muscles, be at least seven feat tall and barely talk. Not to mention that Broly is the flattest character in Dragon Ball history.
I'd take Goten and Trunks being Super Saiyans over Broly any day. Because at least they're likeable and work within the context of what Dragon Ball is and how the universe works. The strength of Goten and Trunks in opinion is a contrast of how strong Gohan could have been as a child if he had put his all into training from day 1.
edited 7th Oct '14 11:25:46 AM by FireShadow
Nope.
Once Piccolo fused with Nail, that was the true turning point in Dragon Ball as far as power inflation goes. Piccolo's power level skyrocketed when he fused with Nail; it went from no higher than 1500 to over 1,000,000 in just one month. That insane boost of strength was unheard of in Dragon Ball at that time.
Goten and Trunks are likable? In what universe?
They're obnoxious, they're annoying, they completely spat in Goku's legacy. "I have to leave it to a new generation to defend the Earth."
OOPS. You left it in the hands of two little dumb shits.
DBZ is not misconstrued because of Broly. That's just ridiculous. DBZ is a shallow series about grunting and energy beams with barely any character development or logic. Plus Death Is Cheap to such a degree that it's free.
Broly did not make all of those things happen. He is nothing more than a symptom.
edited 7th Oct '14 12:26:32 PM by Nikkolas

edited 6th Oct '14 3:26:53 AM by Saiga