Japanimation Station #07 – Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero Movie Review

Aug 23, 2022

Welcome to Japanimation Station, an anime podcast brought to you by the folks at The Weekly Stuff Podcast. We are here to dive into the wide and wacky world of anime, and you can subscribe on all platforms at JapanimationStation.Com.

Nearly 4 years after Broly, Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero – the 21^st Dragon Ball film overall, and 4^th of the modern era – opened this weekend in North American theaters, playing in both English and Japanese for the first time in franchise history, and with the widest opening for an anime film ever in the United States, playing on nearly 4,000 screens! It’s also the first Dragon Ball film to be produced completely in 3D CGI, with a new team led by director Tetsuro Kodama bringing Akira Toriyama’s script to life in a very different style than we’ve seen before. And the movie turned out to be well worth the wait and the hype, telling a compelling character-driven story centered on Piccolo, Gohan, and Pan, with several wonderful new characters, a lot of incredible action, plenty of big laughs, and even a few surprisingly touching pay-offs at the end! It’s a great Dragon Ball movie, and a big step forward for CGI anime, and it makes for an incredible fun discussion between Sean and Jonathan.

Enjoy, and come back next time for Part 1 of our Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood review, where we’ll be covering Episodes 1-32 of the 2009 anime!