YMMV / Dragon Ball Z: Broly – The Legendary Super Saiyan

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • At least one fan has theorized that Broly isn't really motivated by Kakarot's crying while they were infants, but by his Saiyan instincts. Notably, Broly never outright states he wants to kill Goku due to him crying, instead wanting to have a good brawl as the sadistic Blood Knight he is. At the same time, the direction of the movie, and the fact there is a flashback of them crying as babies before he dies, makes the viewer think Broly is remembering his past (and indeed placing significance on this single event), which adds to the confusion. As stated below, the movie is sort of ambiguous in this regard. This ambiguity, however, disappears in the following movie due to Broly losing his personality, being awakened by Goten crying, promptly mistaking Goten for Goku, and then going on another rampage.
  • Before destroying the Shamoshians' planet as his Moral Event Horizon, Broly gives a small speech about how they always looked at space, hoping to return to their own planet one day. Is this just sadism, or a twisted sense of empathy?
• Ass Pull: The "Miracle Punch" used by Goku to "kill" Broly. After Broly easily establishes himself as being stronger than all of the Z Fighters combined, Goku absorbs the energy of an already battered Gohan, Piccolo, Trunks, and Vegeta and manages defeat Broly with what many fans call the "Miracle Punch" (or more cynically, the "Toei Punch"), essentially a retread of how Goku destroys Super Android 13 in the previous movie but without the (presumably) greater power boost of the Spirit Bomb backing him up. Even the film staff appears to agree with the sentiment, naming Goku's last-ditch effort the "Miracle Blow" in the sixth volume of the Daizenshuu guidebooks. A common attempt by fans to make sense of this scene posits that Goku hit Broly in the same place he was stabbed as a baby, but this is speculative and widely debated due to the assassination attempt on Broly being framed in shadow, making it unclear how well this idea matches up to where Goku fatally wounds Broly. Then along came the next film, where Broly is revealed to be alive after all, having crash-landed on Earth and fallen into a coma for seven years to recuperate from the injuries he sustained.
• Awesome Music:
  • This is one of two reasons why "10's" by Pantera is considered Broly's theme song. (The other being the mere fact it play during his iconic transformation.) It's become so synonymous with the character that some fans even requested it appear in Dragon Ball Super: Broly, which it ultimately didn't (though that didn't stop some fans making edits).
  • The soundtrack also has some other notable tracks, including "Day After Day" by Haji's Kitchen and "The Invisibles" by Tendril.
• Base-Breaking Character: Broly. The divide is mainly visible between the Asian audiences and the western ones. People either love him for being a crazy badass or see him as everything wrong with Dragon Ball Z. Those who aren't in Broly's corner will point to how he has little to no personality and how writers and fans (usually the latter) sometimes push him too hard and try to make him look like the most powerful character in all of Dragon Ball. The fact that various spin-offs introduced additional transformations for Broly to seemingly validate this claim (ex. Super Saiyan 3 in Dragon Battlers and Raging Blast, Golden Great Ape and Super Saiyan 4 in Heroes), culminating with 2017's The Real 4-D at Super Tenkaichi Budokai giving Broly his own god form (simply dubbed "Broly God"), only furthered the schism. Fortunately for Broly, Akira Toriyama's reworking of his character and backstory for Dragon Ball Super: Broly won over many of his detractors.
• Common Knowledge: The perception that Broly hates Goku because Goku's crying bothered him as a child has slid into this over the years, with it becoming one of the most well-known things about the character. In truth, while remembering this could be part of why Broly breaks out of Paragus' brainwashing, after transforming and going back to his real personality he shows no particular enmity for Goku (since he's attacking all the heroes at once), and it's certainly not a part of his motivation — at least in this film. One fan theory is that Goku's presence is a Trauma Button for everything that collectively happened to Broly as an infant (thanks in part to Shin Budokai establishing Broly remembers the destruction of Planet Vegeta), but there's very little in the film itself that definitively supports this.
• Complete Monster (Funimation dub only): Paragus is the cruel Saiyan father of Broly, the Legendary Super Saiyan. A long time after being banished from Planet Vegeta and being saved from the planet's destruction thanks to his son, Paragus creates a Mind-Control Device in order to control Broly and his violent psychotic behavior until he realized that he can use Broly to conquer the universe. Much later, Paragus uses Broly to destroy the entirety of the South Galaxy, killing billions. After forming an army of his own, Paragus enslaved the Shamoian race and forced them to do slave labor. While manipulating Vegeta into joining him in making a new Saiyan empire and tricking Goku and his allies into believing that he's a friendly guy, Paragus secretly plans to leave them, his army, and the Shamoian race to die on the new planet, "New Vegeta", from the cataclysmic Comet Camori. After one of his soldiers finds out about the comet, Paragus swiftly kills him. Once the comet is nearly close to crashing into New Vegeta, Paragus decides to leave his son, Broly, to die along with the planet, declaring his son to be "nothing" to him.
• Crazy Is Cool: Broly. A massive Breakout Villain, he's a veritably insane Super Saiyan Blood Knight cranked up who uses sheer Super-Strength rather than fancy moves to make the Z Fighters look like amateurs for most of the fight.
• Draco in Leather Pants: Broly, due to his popularity status, but also because, unlike all the Non-Serial Movie villains in the franchise, Broly has a shown backstory. Many fans and even the creators themselves have argued that Broly has something sad about him, particularly the fact he was stabbed as a baby by King Vegeta who left him and his father to die; the fact he appeared incapable of controlling his power (with his Legendary Super Saiyan form looking like a Superpowered Evil Side and being depicted as an incredibly painful transformation); and his sad and/or pained look for a sizable portion of the film, never mind Broly appearing to be a decent, unassuming fellow until he crosses paths with Goku. Due to this, fanfics sometimes treat him more like a tragic victim of his own power or try to give him aspects that make Broly come across as somewhat pitiable. Some video games like Shin Budokai and the Raging Blast series similarly treat his treatment at the hands of Paragus as a Freudian Excuse, and Supersonic Warriors 2 even redeemed him, having Mister Satan treat him nicely while Broly was recovering from amnesia. It's possibly no surprise that Kale, the Super anime's answer to Broly, is presented as a pitiable girl who can't control her own power and has some Character Development which involves controlling said power and gaining the confidence to fight, and that later the new incarnation of the actual Broly was also depicted more way sympathetically.
• Ending Fatigue: Once Broly turns into his Legendary Super Saiyan form, the entire film is just him beating the protagonists, and it takes up half the film because he's the only villain for them to fight. The cast have fought plenty of one-sided battles throughout the series, but they always got some good hits in (Vegeta vs. Perfect Cell) or eventually turned the tide (Goku vs. Cooler). Here, the heroes don't deal any damage on Broly til' the final blow.
• Evil Is Cool: Broly, to his fans.
• First Installment Wins: This movie is the only one of the three Broly films most fans regard as actually being good, with the sequels being considered among the worst of the Dragon Ball animated movies. The sequel was also responsible for Broly losing almost any interesting trait to his character.
• Fountain of Memes: In Japan, the movie is something of a beloved icon for the internet, similar to Doctor Robotnik with the YouTube Poop fandom. Broly and Paragus are considered meme icons, because of the fact that they individually manage to say every syllabe in the Japanese alphabet on this movie alone, allowing for some good ol' sentence-mixing to let them say anything you want them to.
• Fridge Brilliance: Paragus is one of the few notable Saiyans not to be able to go Super Saiyan in any medium^note in the animated canon, Goku, Vegeta, their children, and the Universe 6 Saiyans could go Super Saiyan; Bardock could go Super Saiyan in the Episode of Bardock special; and while neither Nappa or Raditz have gone Super Saiyan in any animated adaptation, there are video games that gave both Super Saiyan forms. Why? Unlike Turles (who's too cold-hearted), King Vegeta (who isn't as bad as Turles, but is pretty close), or Tarble (who is pure-hearted enough to unlock the form, but doesn't get into situations that would let him do so), Paragus most likely relied on Broly to handle any conflicts he got into — after all, we never learned the exact context of Paragus saying Goku's Saiyan name, which caused Broly to go berserk and destroy the South Galaxy, and as we see in the film, he is a Dirty Coward.
• Fridge Logic: Two minor complaints that can be forgiven due to being a Non-Serial Movie.
  • How did Paragus know about Vegeta's whereabouts and the Earthling name of Goku? Paragus was not associated with Frieza's Empire, so him knowing about these details doesn't hold weight.
  • How did Broly's constant rampages in the past go unnoticed by either King Kai or the Frieza Empire?
• Funny Moments: "Broccoli! Just give it up; it's all over!" "Very tough, but his name's Broly."
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The use of "10's" by Pantera in the Funimation dub is quite funny in hindsight since the following film takes place in an arctic environment, with Broly frozen in ice. My skin is cold, indeed.
  • Broly's Super Saiyan form is blue, as a side effect of his Power Limiter slave crown. Two decades later, Super Saiyan Blue is a canon transformation for the Super Saiyan God.
  • Some shots make Broly look like he has pink hair. Come Dragon Ball Super, Super Saiyan Rosé also becomes a canon transformation. Double hilarious since Broly and Goku Black can fuse in Dragon Ball: Fusions, making Broly gain that form.
  • It turns out that there is a canon Legendary Super Saiyan. And it's a woman named Kale. On top of that, the film following the end of the arc in which Kale was introduced establishes Broly himself as part of the Dragon Ball canon.
• It Was His Sled: Broly is the Legendary Super Saiyan — the being that destroyed the Southern Galaxy. This was supposed to be a mystery in the plot, but promotion and advertsing very quickly undermined it. The Funimation version dispenses with a pretence of a secret altogether, titling the film: "Broly:The Legendary Super Saiyan".
• Memetic Mutation: My skin is cold! ^ExplanationThe lyrics to Pantera's "10's", used during Broly's transformation, have become an In-Joke in the English-speaking community, and are always associated with the character.
• Moral Event Horizon: If Broly didn't cross it when he wiped out an entire galaxy, he definitely did when he destroyed an entire planet just to see its inhabitants' reaction.
• Never Live It Down: Broly's motivation of despising Goku for crying a lot as a baby is something his detractors will never forget about him. Expect this fact to always be used as a criticism for his lack of motivation. It doesn't help that the film implies there are many other factors responsible for Broly's warped personality yet never definitively shows this to be case while putting focus on the encounter between Goku and Broly in their infancy. And if that wasn't enough, Second Coming uses the similarity between Baby!Goku and Goten's cries as the catalyst that awakens Broly from his slumber, as if to prove that Broly's "childhood trauma" is indeed the driving force behind his madness.
• Newer Than They Think: Broly is not a brute who only screams "Kakarot!!!" in this movie. He actually has plenty of lines in this film - most prominently "You, Kakarot, I choose you to be the first of my victims!". In fact, the time he does yell "Kakarot!" is when under the influence of his slave crown and meant as a sign that it's beginning to short-circuit, not in his normal state of mind where he is perfectly well-spoken. That is a result of the Flanderization in the sequel, Dragon Ball Z: Broly – Second Coming, and his many video game appearances thereafter (many of which were likely influenced by Second Coming).
• Signature Scene:
  • Broly's transformation into the Legendary Super Saiyan is one of the most well-remembered parts of the movie, and would eventually be recreated upon Broly becoming part of the series' canon in Dragon Ball Super: Broly.
  • Goku going through space by using Instant Transmission is a pretty well liked scene because of the awesome image and colors. This scene would be reused before the credits in Broly: Second Coming and Fusion Reborn.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Broly did have potential for being a more fleshed out character, if only through exploring how his trauma from nearly being killed as a child twisted him like it did and how being raised as a classical, brutal Saiyan didn't do him any favors at all, and then getting the slave crown put on him by his father, effectively turning him into a personal kill toy for his father. With most of it being implied rather than stated, however, his characterization suffers to the point he's less a person and more a force of nature, a hurricane of fists, feet, and pain. That isn't really a bad thing for an antagonist sometimes, but it's a disappointment for people wanting more than just that, especially if you take in considering Broly is the most fleshed out movie villain, as in, we explore his backstory instead of only being told about it.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: There are a lot of detractors who think that the movie would have been better if Broly had been given a more compelling Freudian Excuse than "Goku's crying bothered him." (The fact that King Vegeta tried to assassinate an infant Broly out of dread and paranoia, failed, and left him for dead along with his father, only for Broly to live through the destruction of Planet Vegeta seems to have had no bearing on his mental state, Shin Budokai aside).
• Visual Effects of Awesome: In one scene where Broly goes Legendary Super Saiyan, some cyan computer-animated trails appear flying away, which were decent by 90's standards.

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