‘Dragon Ball Super: Broly’ Gives Goku’s Origin a Superman Nod

Dragon Ball Super: Broly is, at its core, a major revision of the franchise's core mythos regarding the Saiyan Race and their history. One of the biggest changes the film is no doubt the origin story of Goku, which gets the biggest retcon of all!

Basically, Dragon Ball Super: Broly takes the oft-debated Dragon Ball Minus bonus story from the manga and makes it official canon. If you know anything about Goku's origin story via Dragon Ball Minus, then you know that it is, essentially, a Superman origin tale!

In Broly's opening act we meet Goku's father Bardock, a warrior of Planet Vegeta when it falls under Freeza's rule. Years later, Bardock and his fellow Saiyan warriors are out conquering worlds when they get an order from Freeza to return to Planet Vegeta. Bardock is suspicious of the decree, and starts to question and investigate. What he discovers is that Freeza is afraid of the Super Saiyan God legend, and Bardock deduces that Freeza would probably eradicated the entire Saiyan race, rather than risk the legend one day coming true.

Realizing their end is coming, Bardock confides in his wife Gine that he will be stealing a space pod to secretly send their son Kakarot off to another world. Despite Gine's initial reservations, they enact their plan, packing Kakarot into the pod and bidding him farewell, before blasting him off into space, headed for Earth. Bardock picks Earth for the fact that its inhabitants have low power levels and primitive tech, which would allow Kakarot to flourish as a Saiayan conqueror. Soon after, Bardock is seen leading an attack on Freeza's mothership in space, and trying to block the evil emperor's Supernova blast - only to be disintegrated along with all of Planet Vegeta. If you know anything about DC Comics lore, that's pretty much Superman's origin in a nutshell.

The merits of Dragon Ball Minus' Goku origin retcon or often debated, but clearly Akira Toriyama felt as though Goku has grown into enough of a heroic figure and icon to stand along the greats. How Dragon Ball fans will react is a whole different story...

Dragon Ball Super: Broly is out now. Dragon Ball Super currently airs its English dub on Adult Swim during the Toonami block Saturday evenings at 9:30 p.m. It is also available to stream on Funimation and Amazon Video. The Japanese language release is available to stream on FunimationNOW, VRV, and Crunchyroll.

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