YMMV / Dragon Ball Z: Bio-Broly

• Ass Pull:
  • Krillin attempts to decapitate Bio-Broly with his Destructo Disk, and it actually seems to work; only for a completely unexplained Healing Factor of Bio-Broly’s to kick in (even though his body is supposed to be falling apart) and heal him solely to prolong the movie.
  • Everything about the culture fluid, from its unexplained lethality to organic organisms to Bio-Broly’s ability to fuse with it and become a giant and even its Weaksauce Weakness. All of it either goes unexplained or is given the flimsiest of explanations.
• Awesome Music: Despite the movie's flaws, the movie's ending track "Dragon Power Mugendai" is one of the catchiest songs by Hironobu Kageyama.
• Badass Decay: Broly is nowhere near as intimidating as he was previously. Given this is his third film and that Toei literally had no idea what to do with the character after the first film, it's understandable. That and the fact that Bio-Broly is not Broly (his soul was in Hell the whole time). Still, even the original Broly is treated like a non-threat, with Goku casually noting that he can easily take care of Broly when he starts rampaging in Hell at the end of the film (note that this was months before Goku revealed Super Saiyan 3, so he would only need to use Super Saiyan 2 to put down Broly).
• Contested Sequel: The question isn't whether or not this movie is bad, but whether it or the second Broly film is worse. On the one hand, when Bio-Broly isn't being stupid and childish, it actually has a plot, lets popular but screentime-light characters like Android 18 and Mr. Satan get focus instead of just cramming in more Goku and Vegeta, and is much better-paced than its predecessor. But, stupid and childish it often is regardless, and Broly's fans are extremely unhappy with his treatment in this film.
• Funny Moments:
  • When Android 18 basically shows who's the dominant figure in the household.
    18: Now do as I say and wait at Roshi's house.
    Krillin: No, I'm coming with you.
    18: You look after the baby.
    Krillin Aww, but 18!
    18: Why won't you simply obey me?!
  • Krillin, naturally, follows this up by dropping the baby off somewhere safe and ignoring her orders completely. Because he was worried. Which is fairly funny as well, if the nature of the relationship was that she gives orders and he just decides to follow them or not based solely on being a Nice Guy. It's like a twisted, almost heartwarming fusion of Goku and Vegeta's relationships with their wives. No wonder she always seems content yet annoyed with him.
  • Yet another is when Krillin is rescuing a scientist and asks her to hold on tight because she will fall to her death otherwise. Frightened, she hugs him tightly. Krillin is clearly enjoying this, while 18 is right behing him. She is not amused.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The film ends with Goku having to go to hell to fight Broly with Pikkon, since he was informed that Broly was causing trouble in hell. Take a wild guess which DBZ movie villain does not appear at all in the next movie, despite said movie's premise involving all the villains escaping from hell^note although it's worth noting that Broly's voice actor did portray someone who's easily worse than Broly.
  • In addition, the Japanese version’s title and Jaguar himself call Broly a “super warrior”, years before the infamous “Big Green” dub used it as one of the replacements for the term “Saiyans”. Not only that, one of the movies said dub covered was Broly’s first movie.
  • When Bio-Broly has Goten on the ropes at one point in the film, Krillin uses his Destructo Disk to go for the head.
  • A few years after Bio-Broly was released, one of the studios that helped work on the project (Nakamura Productions, who handled most of the in-betweening for the DBZ films between Bojack and this one) would go on to be involved in the making of another movie featuring clones that actually follows a good portion of the plot beats of Bio-Broly (though it got a much better reception than Bio-Broly).
• It Was His Sled: Even though it was intended to be kept a mystery as to who exactly they were cloning other than the fact that it was a Saiyan, the English title Bio-Broly spoils the twist.
• Inferred Holocaust: Besides the numerous scientists that got dissolved by the culture fluid in the castle, the fluid eventually completely covered the whole island, and at one point can be seen getting ready to cover several boats people are attempting to use to flee. It’s not focused upon, but there must have been countless casualties besides the ones we see onscreen.
• Just Here for Godzilla: One of the few liked aspects of this film is that it serves as a Lower-Deck Episode for characters like Android 18 and Krillin who otherwise don't get much focus. Fans who wished to see Goten and Trunks save the day also appreciate this movie.
• Nightmare Fuel: There's a lot of creepy imagery in this movie despite its childishness, most notably the Biowarriors and Bio-Broly himself.
  • The acidic culture fluid is almost as dangerous as the titular villain, racking up a much higher kill count, including Bio-Broly himself. The scientists predict that it would eventually consume all life on Earth if not for its Weaksauce Weakness.
    • The death of Hei, Jaguar’s dog thing, especially counts, as it looks like the fluid ate it and the poor animal whimpers in pain throughout. It also doesn’t help that the film plays this sequence twice.
• The Scrappy: A big part of the reason for the film's oft-maligned status is Bio-Broly. Fans who love Broly hate it for turning the Legendary Super Saiyan into a Blob Monster with underwhelming performance and an ugly design. Fans who don't like Broly still don't like it, because it leaves nearly all the common complaints about him intact and his appearance is entirely gratuitous and hijacks the initial story. Even fans who defend the film tend to consider the part after Bio-Broly is introduced to be where its quality takes a dive. To put it in perspective just how unpopular of a villain he is, he only appears in two Dragon Ball video games, Heroes and Dokkan Battle^note Bio-Broly only has one UR unit dropped from his Story Event released in 2017 in contrast to the regular Broly who has multiple Dokkan Festival counterparts and 2 Summonable LRs. In fact, when they made a campaign for the Bio-Broly movie, it is Goten & Trunks that were the Dokkan Fest units along with Krillin as the side unit with zero mentions of the titular villain, both of which incorporate large casts and aren't as big of games as the likes of Budokai Tenkaichi^note Bio-Broly was the only Z movie made at the time not adapted in Tenkaichi 3 or Xenoverse.
• Sequelitis: While some people find the second movie worse than the third, most people agree that the Broly movies became worse with each sequel. Bio-Broly is considered as one of the worst, if not the worst, DBZ movie in history^note with its main competition being Lord Slug and the second Cooler movie.
• Take That, Scrappy!: While Broly himself is a Base-Breaking Character within the broader fandom, his many haters at least got the satisfaction of watching his clone get killed off or horribly-mutated in a variety of entertainingly-disgusting ways over the course of the film.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Lord Jaguar is an old rival of Mr. Satan's who has a personal grudge against him and enough money to build Bio-Warriors stronger than Frieza and clone Broly. He could have been an interesting Foil to Mr. Satan, but instead ultimately is ignored in the grand scheme of things.
  • Maloja comes back from the second Broly movie for the sole purpose of starting the plot and giving exposition, and then is immediately killed off in his next scene.
  • The other Bio-Warriors besides Bio-Broly could have served as a Quirky Miniboss Squad, but are relegated to Cannon Fodder and get killed off by the culture fluid.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: Regarded as one of this film's few saving graces. It's very well-animated.