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New “Dragon Ball Super: Broly” movie gets two-thumbs-up, screening event gets a fail

Kay Nov 19, 2018
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We went to the Premier screening of Dragon Ball Super: Broly… and almost didn’t get to see the movie!

This past Wednesday, Toei Company hosted the world premier screening of Dragon Ball Super: Broly, which they had announced would be the only advance showing of the film until it opened at theaters next month on December 14.

We’d been excited about the new movie ever since the news was announced in March this year, so naturally we were thrilled to get a ticket to the screening event.

▼ The ticket looked awesome! Although we wouldn’t have expected any less.

Plus, the premier was going to be held at the Nippon Budokan, one of the largest and most prestigious concert/live event venues in Japan, with the main cast of voice actors making a live appearance! What more could a fan ask for?

▼ Here we were at the Nippon Budokan, all psyched to see the new film.

▼ Broly, Goku and Vegeta figures greeted the guests.

As it turns out, things didn’t go exactly as planned. When we arrived at the Budokan 15 minutes before the start of the event, there was a considerable line of people waiting to get in. But after a while, we noticed that the line wasn’t moving at all, which was the first sign that something was wrong.

Soon it was past the time the event was scheduled to begin, and there was still no sign of the line moving. Loud sounds came from the arena, seeming to indicate that the event had already started! But a lot of people were still waiting outside. What was going on?

Eventually, the staff announced that the seats prepared for the screening were already completely full and they couldn’t let any more guests in. Apparently, many more people came than expected, so the staff apologized and handed out pre-paid tickets to see the movie once it was released in theaters.

▼ “But we want Dragon Ball NOW!”

We, along with many of the others there, were quite disappointed, to say the least. We didn’t want to miss out on the special event, not to mention seeing all the voice actors!

Thankfully, about 40 minutes after the event started, the staff announced that they were opening up seats on the sides of the arena that had not been intended for use, and that we could enter and see the movie if we didn’t mind the position of the seats not being ideal.

So in the end, we did get to go inside, but not before hundreds of guests had already gone home. Fortunately, the view from the seats they opened up for us wasn’t too bad since the screen was huge, though we did end up missing the voice actors’ appearance.

▼ We tried not to show on our face how much our hearts were breaking.

But all that aside, how was the film? In short, it was awesome!

The story takes place after the Tournament of Power in the TV anime series, but it also takes us some 40 years back in time. As promised, quite a bit of previously-untold Saiyan history gets introduced in the movie, so the drama is quite satisfying. It even has some touching moments, as well as a good number of laughs.

The artwork in the film has a warm, “human handwork” look, a refreshing departure from the typical digitized and overwhelmingly precise visuals of today’s anime.

But more than anything, what makes this movie special is the battle scenes between Broly, the most legendary Saiyan, and Goku and Vegeta. And we truly mean it when we say the fighting is epic! It’s good old-fashioned battle action in the extreme, and there’s plenty of it too. We don’t think fans will be disappointed.

▼ Broly, the legendary Saiyan.
It was well worth bringing back his character from nearly 15 years ago

With plenty of emotion, drama, laughs, awesome music, and tons of amazing battle scenes, we were more than satisfied with the movie. The only thing we felt was missing was some participation of other classic characters besides Goku and Vegeta, but even that was a minor point, as there was enough action to make up for the absence of the other “Z warriors”.

Overall we thought there was a nice “back to the basics” feel to the movie. With the more traditional-looking artwork and a straight-forward clash of immense powers, fans shouldn’t miss out on seeing the movie on the large screen.

▼ They also gave out this limited edition towel at the Premier event.

It was also a nice touch that Masako Nozawa, who plays the voice of Goku, and Bin Shimada, who plays the part of Broly, came out on stage after the movie was shown and repeatedly expressed their huge thanks for so many people attending the event that day.

This was probably done in consideration of the guests who were admitted only after the additional seats were made available and as a result had missed the voice actors’ greeting held before the movie screening. It was touching that the two voice actors had stayed until the end of the showing to say a few closing words to everyone.

▼ The movie was a two-thumbs up in our opinion.

Although there was no denying that it was a royal mess up on the part of the event organizers that so many people who turned up at the event missed out on the experience by being sent home, we were quite happy with the film itself.

If you’re a Dragon Ball fan, we think it would well be worth catching the new film when it comes out. Dragon Ball Super: Broly releases on December 14 in theaters across Japan, and on January 16, 2019 in the U.S and Canada, so don’t miss out on the Saiyan action!