Movie Review: Dragon Ball Z - Broly: Second Coming

Dragon Ball Z: Broly: Second Coming [1994]

Yeeeesh, what a bad movie. Ostensibly the sequel to the earlier Broly: The Legendary Super Saiyan, this tenth movie of DBZ is the first to take part in the Buu saga, featuring the cast of that era. And hoooooo boy. 

Broly's first cinematic outing wasn't the best movie out there, but it's good enough and Broly was menacing enough that I understand why he was so beloved by the fanbase. This one? Not so. And honestly, it's not just the titular legendary super saiyan himself that gets mis-handled in this movie, it's... it's honestly the entire movie, really. 

So the movie runs at around 50 minutes, but the first 20 minutes of this movie is wasted on an honestly pointless subplot of Videl, Goten and Trunks just dicking around, searching for dragon balls while helping a village that was menaced by a dinosaur and some hick tried to sacrifice virgin maidens to the dinosaur... or some shit? I dunno, I kind of zoned out on that part of the movie, and it ends up being completely irrelevant to the Broly plot -- what little it is, that is, beyond having Goten cry (because Videl doesn't want to give him an apple) and wake Broly up from his hibernation. And, well, remember how stupid Broly's motivations being disturbed by baby Goku's crying? Yeah, it's infinitely more stupid here.

Goten and Trunks' antics here are absolutely shit and annoying, and I'm not sure if it's the dub's fault because while I've never liked the kid versions of these two, my experiences with them in Fusion Reborn and Wrath of the Dragon was a lot more positive. Here, I'm rooting for Broly to squish their tiny, annoying, obnoxious heads in. Videl's not that well-written either, mind you, being pretty flat throughout the movie. I did say in my previous movies that I appreciate movies that focus on other characters, and I liked how Bojack Unbound focused on Gohan, while Wrath of the Dragon focused on Kid Trunks... but here it's just mindless, dumb antic that doesn't have any charm at all. 

And then Broly wakes up and the whole village subplot becomes entirely irrelevant, but where Broly is a slowly built-up threat in the first movie, here he... fails to hurt or damage non-Super-Saiyan Goten and Trunks (this was before they got super-powerful either). Hell, even Videl didn't come out of the battle with any more injuries than a bit of scratches. Throw in some silliness with Trunks pissing on Broly's head (no, really) and the fight with Broly ends up going from "most powerful and unstoppable demon of a Saiyan" to honestly being pretty unimpressive.

Broly himself still just grunts and shouts Kakarot a lot, which makes even less sense when it's established that Goku's dead in this time period. And how did he survive anyway? Or even get into a space pod? It makes even less sense than Cooler's brain traveling to the Big Gete Star. Having the 'lol find a missing dragon ball' bullshit subplot (which also involves Goten pissing on the ground) is also likewise unimpressively long and drearily annoying. SSJ2 Gohan then shows up and fights Broly, and... okay, that scene with the lava was at least somewhat cool. Gohan gets rescued from exhaustion and being consumed by lava by not-Piccolo-it's-actually-Krillin. Was... was there any real reason for Piccolo not to show up at this point in time? I don't really think so.

And then Broly pops back up, whacks Krillin aside, and shoots blasts that still fail to hurt anyone in a meaningful way, before getting beaten by Goten accidentally wishing Goku to be 'there' for a while (i.e. the duration of a Kamehameha) and... why didn't the balls work earlier in the fountains? And Broly gets shot straight into the sun and gets burned up. The imagery of the family Kamehameha is pretty neat, but it definitely does nothing to really fix any of the drivel that this movie delivers. It goes from a very irritating and pointless and joyless subplot with three of the franchise's more annoying characters at their worst, and Broly is reduced to an even more boring version of his already not-particularly-spectacular personality. I can easily say with utter conviction that this is my most hated DBZ movie, and by a long, long shot.