(different anon) is there something wrong with the super broly movie and broly himself ? Aside from things like freeza and the opening being almost like db minus?

Well most of the movie is the fighting and all of that is really good. Absolutely phenomenal animation.

The story is really fucking bad though. You could literally remove Freeza from the movie wholesale and it would ACTIVELY IMPROVE the film. Seriously why the fuck doesn't Gogeta just kill Freeza at the end? They just fucking let him go? After he came to Earth with Broly specifically to unleash him upon them and have them killed? He's just this team rocket ass saturday morning cartoon villain now and they LET HIM GO so that he can spend his ending monologue of the movie CONQUERING A PLANET AND KILLING THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE? "Oh we gotta find a good place for Broly to live where he can hide from Freeza to keep him safe" YOU KNOW you wouldn't NEED to hide him if you just FUCKING KILLED FREEZA. You dumb fucks.Fucking ass, I fucking hate Dragon Ball Super.

I really just prefer Broly as a villain. The Super movie turning him into this uwu softboi tarzan who becomes fwiends with Goku by the end is just really asinine and makes him so much less interesting. Like, what even is his motivation? Can you answer that question? What, literally, what is Super Broly's motivation as a character? What does he WANT? He's literally just a prop for other characters, he's a passive nothing of a Tarzan archetype who exists to make you go "oh no the poor little buddy =ccc ". And his power and transformation makes, like, no sense? He just is a berserker? I don't understand WHY he's so powerful or what the reference for how powerful he is. Literally HOW can he POSSIBLY be stronger than Super Saiyan God Super Saiyan? Just BECAUSE the movie needs him to be for the sake of the fight? Nothing about his character makes any fucking sense.

Freeza killing Paragas was, like, funny from the way he pretended to be distraught about it and I do kinda like how he remembered that killing Krillin is what triggered the Super Saiyan transformation in the first place. But it would have been way more emotionally impactful is Broly DID genuinely accidentally kill his own dad. Again, removing Freeza from the movie actively improves it.

Say what you want about OG Broly but at least I understand his motivation. I know exactly what he wants. He's a psychopath who just wants to kill everything and hates Kakarot in particular. He also retains full cognitive awareness even when he's Transformed, hell arguably he's at his most Himself when he's transformed and freed from the restraints his father put him under, so everything he does is his own deliberate choice wherein he retains full agency over his decisions. As opposed to Super Broly, who is just a mindless weapon. Broly is THE Legendary Super Saiyan that Vegeta spoke about, as opposed to the dye job power boost that the transformation becomes for everyone else; a legendary warrior that loves battle and bloodshed over anything else. A monster who destroyed an entire galaxy single handedly and loved every single moment of it. A sadist who blew up a planet and taunted its inhabitants as he did so.

He's just so much more interesting. And there's better emotional payoff to him killing his father himself. His transformation is defined, makes sense, and I understand completely why he's so much more powerful than every other character. Even the visuals of his transformation are so gnarly, his fucking skin gets torn off and it looks metal as hell.

Also sure you could say him not liking Goku because baby Kakarot's crying upset him was stupid, but at least it's A connection. He has a REASON to want to kill Goku, even if you think it's a stupid one. What's his reason in Super? He has none. He's just a fucking pawn, a weapon pointed in Vegeta and Goku's direction, with no agency or motivation of his own. That isn't interesting. He's just an empty hollow pointless punch monkey. I find the original Broly to be vastly superior in literally every single aspect.

It's insane to me that they took a character as overhyped Broly, and turned him into a hot plate of fucking nothing. Super is so unmitigatingly awful.

Last Encore was............ a weird experience? And I don’t mean that in a “lololol sooooooo weird I have obviously never had a shaft experience in my entire life” kind of weird. SHAFT is my fucking brand, man. Spring quarter I binge-watched all of monogatari because of how on-brand it was for me. I love their weird conceptual symbolic bullshit and their playing with framing and style even when they aren’t switching up the actual artstyle, but i digress.

Opinions for like the first......... 5ish? (Shinji’s Floor and Dan’s Floor) episodes under the cut. I actually wanted to just do everything but those two arcs get me so heated I needed to rant about what was wrong with them.

Basically, for me:

1st episode - cool. loving purgatory.

2 - 5 episodes....... just felt like a gigantic waste of time tbh. Namely because at that point in the series it feels like there isn’t a clear vision for what needs to be told; SHAFT is weird, yeah, and “hard to get” or whatever, but for their own IPs, at least, it’s clear that they DO have a vision, even if they have a roundabout way of getting there. Shinji and Dan’s episodes feel...... floundering. There isn’t enough substance for them to anchor themselves other than “ooooooooh what could be gOiNg ONNNNN?!?!” and to the viewer, it’s annoying. Even on a rewatch, where it technically makes sense now, there’s not enough emotional depth to any of it to warrant...... anything, really.

At that point in the series it’s clear that the target audience isn’t “new viewers” or else literally nothing makes sense, but it’s also EXTREMELY alienating to anyone who played the OG EXTRA because, at least in that point in time, it feels like almost a..... slap to the face? One of the most striking parts of EXTRA is that very first week; we see Shinji, known Mother Fucker with a face and personality so punchable it really doesn’t matter if you played FSN or not who........ turns out to be 6 years old. And, unlike in other Fate installments, Masters do not have the liberty of saving other Masters. Part of the tragedy of EXTRA is that no one (save for clown and pre-CCC Gatou - but even then he’s just like an idiot, and like....... Julius, until you learn how fucked his life is) actually deserves to die. Many of them (including Shinji) don’t even realize that it’s really fucking real that you’re going to die if you lose. Talking to NPCs and seeing them have to take lives and how they react to all of that is a fundamental part of the story...... as is seeing the school slowly grow more and more empty, one by one.

And looking back on that, on the original, emotional impact, Shinji’s days especially just feel like a complete waste. They spent two episodes on him to do what amounts to absolutely nothing. At least Dan, while his storyline here kind of feels like a huge slap in the face, still had some emotional depth by bringing up his wife and the verrrryyyyy last second and like. that one line with robin.

And in both of their cases I feel like too much is wasted keeping everything a mystery from the viewer. Alice’s arc works and works AMAZINGLY because you’re seeing it from her perspective. I honestly, honestly think that Shinji and Dan’s arcs would have benefited from and least partially being from the PoV of Drake/Robin respectfully. We still wouldn’t need to know everything that’s going on, but seeing how the way things “should be” in their eyes vs. Kishinami’s reality would have provided emotional depth while also hinting at the nature of this story pre-Alice arc. Or, even if they wanted to keep the mystery, having shots of Shinji thinking about Rider - because we KNOW Rider actually Kind of means a Ton to Shinji ala CCC - and how maybe not being worthy of her help in favor of half-baked data he got from other Masters actually does kind of hurt. Maybe hurts in a very Shinji tch-ing about how worthless the “shadow” servants are, but still thinking of her wistfully nonetheless. Same with Rider maybe looking on and some reference to him being a “stupid kid who never learns”. Even that, with just like two extra scenes showing them thinking of each other with all the baggage that comes along with that, could’ve given more depth to the eventual team up and conclusion of their arc. As it stands it was just....... nothing.

Dan...... Dan was done dirty tbh. They spent a lot of time with PUNISHED DAN without any, like...... explanation or redemption??? Dan is a good man and he deserved better. Like, even if you want to make him PUNISHED EDGELORD you gotta balance it all out with flashbacks of who he should’ve been and/or Robin purposefully sabotaging himself and DRAWING ATTENTION to the fact he could’ve won “like this” - aka shady dirty way he’s known for - rather than trying to fight head on (they sorta did this in his last fight with Saber, and it’s reaffirmed when he goes to Dan’s grave and says something along the lines of “Looks like I’m really not cut out for a fair fight) but there’s no attention brought to it in scene and................. tbh Shaft ain’t really known for action scenes so while I noticed it, it was still kinda like “oh, did they mean to do this or.....” and then at the end of the episode like “oh i guess it was intentional” but at that point the emotional impact it could’ve served ESPECIALLY if Robin had purposefully “thrown” the battle by fighting fair and openly because he wanted to honor the man he once served, even if he could’ve totally bested Saber - that would’ve been MUCH more impactful than what actually happened.

and, in the end, I guess my grievances with those two arcs are summed up by - EXTRA was never the journey of just one person. In OG extra, Hakuno is forged in the flames of the trials they must go through. No Master’s story is ever shafted because by shafting them and the emotional impact they bring to the table, you also shaft Hakuno’s emotional development; by writing strong antagonizing Masters, by making them complex and emotional journeys, Hakuno also benefits as the protagonist. Their choices, their pain, what they choose to do or not do is weighted by the experiences they have over the course of the game with these other Masters. So when whoever did the script for the first two Last Encore character arcs - because that’s really what each floor is, a character arc - says “making this soooooo mysterious is worth more than making a complicated narrative” it does Hakuno an injustice in that his story isn’t furthered as far as “deaD FaCE?!?!?!” “so...... much........ hate...... why.......................” goes