Dragon Ball Super: Broly is now out in theaters in Japan, an as such the official tie-in merchandise for the film has also been released. As such, the official Dragon Ball Super: Broly novel is now on shelves, and that longer, more detailed form of the story introduces some important new details into franchise mythos.
One of the bigger new revelations we get in the novel is a more specified lineage to the Saiyan royal line – specifically how Vegeta fits into it!
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It’s been mentioned before that in the movie Freeza describes Vegeta as “Vegeta IV”/”Vegeta the Fourth” (ใใธใผใฟๅไธ). The novelization follows up on this by describing his father King Vegeta as “Vegeta III”/”Vegeta the Third” (ใใธใผใฟไธไธ). As one would expect. pic.twitter.com/3yzbtDl8Dd
โ Todd Blankenship (@Herms98) December 14, 2018
As you can read above, Vegeta is actually Vegeta IV, in the royal line of his family. His father, King Vegeta, is therefore King Vegeta III, solidifying something that has, admittedly been a little confusing for fans from Dragon Ball Z – Dragon Ball Super. Vegeta being the son of Vegeta, who was king of the planet Vegeta, was always a crazy jumble of trying to keep the same name straight, based solely on context. Now, a few added numbers will make things crystal clear – and if there’s anything that Dragon Ball excels at, it’s adding arbitrary numbers to create minor character variations.
In a larger sense, this is the kind of things that Dragon Ball Super: Broly is all about. In addition to delivering the best and most action-packed Dragon Ball movie yet, Broly is also doing a major bit of franchise clean-up. The film’s storyline is effectively collecting loose strands of the franchise mythos that’s been hanging in the limbo of non-canon, and tying it together into a more solid chain of shared origin and thematic for Goku, Vegeta, Freeza, the Saiyan race, and iconic characters like Broly. What’s truly impressive is how deeply Akira Toriyama and the DBS:B creative team have delved into the deepest details of the franchise (or lack thereof) and polished the character arcs to such a bright shine. Fans who have seen Dragon Ball Super: Broly are already describing the deeper emotional connections to the principal characters the film establishes, so it’s sounding like the mission was accomplished!
Dragon Ball Super: Broly officially releases in Japan this December, so fans will get to see more of Super Saiyan Blue Goku in action soon enough. Funimation will be bringing the film to theaters in the United States on January 16. Dragon Ball Super currently airs its English dub on Adult Swim during the Toonami programming block Saturday evenings at 9:30 p.m. It is also available to stream on Funimation and Amazon Video. The Japanese language release of the series is complete, and available to stream on FunimationNOW, VRV, and Crunchyroll.
