33 Years Later, Dragon Ball Z’s Legendary Super Saiyan Still Hits Hard After Major Reboot

Dragon Ball Z introduced fans to Broly the legendary Super Saiyan 33 years ago, but does it still holds up as well after the character got a major reboot in Dragon Ball Super. The Dragon Ball franchise has introduced fans to many iconic villains over the many decades of its run so far, but there are just as many villains who aren’t a part of the official timeline. There were quite a few villains that fans loved to see in action in each of the movies, but they were never acknowledged in any of the other anime or manga arcs.

That was until Dragon Ball Super: Broly. This film took Broly from the original Broly film trilogy, and gave the iconic villain a massive makeover. Original series creator Akira Toriyama gave Broly a brand new origin story, design, and brought him into the official timeline to fight a much stronger version of Goku and Vegeta than fans could ever dream of. Now 33 years later, it’s clear that Dragon Ball Z: Broly – The Legendary Super Saiyan still holds up even with the reboot.

Broly Made His Dragon Ball Z Debut 33 Years Ago

Dragon Ball Z: Broly – The Legendary Super Saiyan first made its debut across theaters in Japan 33 years ago, this week, on March 6th, 1993. The film would then get an official release in the United States on DVD and VHS a decade later, and Broly would become an icon within the Dragon Ball franchise. Although he was not part of Akira Toriyama’s official story at first, it really did seem to slot perfectly into everything that had happened to Goku and Vegeta up to that point as he was the first major Saiyan villain in quite a while.

Offering a much stronger version of the Super Saiyan transformation, Goku and Vegeta quickly realized that their version of the transformation was not going to compare. Broly was quite literally on another level as his blind, berserk rage made him much stronger than any opponent they had faced. Even taking him on all together didn’t bridge the gap in their power. The only way to take him down was to unite all of their power into Goku (a concept we’d see used many times since), and it gave him the strength to deal a final fatal blow.

Broly was such a massively successful villain that he even returned in two other feature film projects later, Dragon Ball Z: Broly – Second Coming and Dragon Ball Z: Bio-Broly. These aren’t held in as high regard as the first film, however, as they not only bring back the villain in a much inferior way, the final appearance of the villain wasn’t even fully him. By that point, Goku and Vegeta weren’t even needed to take down the Super Saiyan. The events of the Dragon Ball world had long passed him by. That was until he made his reboot debut decades later.

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Dragon Ball Rebooted Broly for a Reason

Broly would then return in 2018 as the leading star in Dragon Ball Super: Broly. This new film offered a brand new version of Broly as designed and crafted by Akira Toriyama himself. This new version of the character maintained the rage based Super Saiyan power, and was a massively strong opponent for Goku and Vegeta, but had been scaled up to make the new levels that the Saiyans had gotten to by the end of the Tournament of Power.

He also has a much different origin story that paints him as a lonely kid who was forced to give into his rage, and now he’s just a sparring partner for Goku and Vegeta on Beerus’ planet. This is a much different fate that he had originally, and yet the original version of the character still holds up well today. It might be stuck in the early 1990s when Broly was designed thanks to just how cool and edgy of a Saiyan he is, but that’s also what’s helped it age so well when compared to the other movies.

It’s just such a perfect encapsulation of that era. The English dub takes it further with its soundtrack (though Broly’s voice actor has not aged as well), and it just throws you right back into that radical energy that helped Dragon Ball Z standout so much in the United States in the first place. There’s just something about this original version of Broly that remains unmatched, and it’s why we still see him together with the rebooted version of the character we got later. It really does make fans wonder which of the two Brolys is stronger at the end of the day though.

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