Few villains in Dragon Ball have had a career like Broly’s. He began as the star of a non-canon 1993 movie, returned for two more films within a year, became a fixture of the video games, and then, a quarter of a century later, was rebuilt from scratch by Akira Toriyama himself for Dragon Ball Super: Broly. The two versions share a name and a terrifying power curve, but little else. So why does the Legendary Super Saiyan keep coming back? Let’s compare the original and the Super version side by side.
The Original Broly – A Monster Built for the Big Screen
The first Broly appears in Broly – The Legendary Super Saiyan, a film made by the anime staff rather than drawn from the manga. He is born on the same day as Kakarot, the baby who will become Goku, in a neighbouring crib. His power level is already enormous at birth, so King Vegeta, fearing for his throne, orders him and his father Paragus executed. Broly survives anyway, shielding his father with his own energy as Planet Vegeta is destroyed.
His hatred of Goku comes from the detail fans still joke about: the infant Kakarot’s crying kept him awake. As Broly grows, his violence spirals out of control until Paragus has a scientist build a crown-shaped device to restrain him, then lures Vegeta to a fake New Planet Vegeta to use his son as a weapon of revenge.
Why the Original Worked Anyway
- Raw spectacle: Broly’s Legendary Super Saiyan form, huge muscles, pale green-gold hair and blank eyes, made even Super Saiyan Goku look small.
- A power that grows mid-fight: Instead of tiring, Broly gets stronger the longer he fights. Goku, Vegeta, Gohan, Trunks and Piccolo together cannot stop him, and Goku only wins by gathering energy from his friends, with even a reluctant Vegeta finally giving his share.
- The myth: He is presented as the warrior who appears once every thousand years, which made him feel bigger than an ordinary movie villain.
- The two faces: Quiet and almost melancholic at rest, sadistic and laughing once unleashed. He openly calls himself a devil.
Three Films, Endless Games
Broly was so popular that Toei brought him back twice in 1994. In Broly – Second Coming, he crash-lands on Earth, sleeps frozen in the ice for seven years, and is woken by a crying Goten, who reminds him of baby Kakarot. Gohan, Goten and Trunks have to stop him, and the film ends with a father-and-sons Kamehameha as Goku appears to help Gohan and Goten. In Bio-Broly, a clone grown from his blood turns into a sludge-covered monster. No other Dragon Ball film villain has headlined as many movies; Cooler, the runner-up, managed two.
Video games then kept him alive for decades. Whenever a fighting game needed a boss with absurd damage and a famous roar, Broly was the obvious pick.
The Problem Nobody Could Ignore
Still, the old Broly had clear weaknesses. A lifelong hatred caused by a crying newborn never quite made sense, he was pure evil with no inner life, and he could never join the real story, because the films sat outside Toriyama’s manga timeline.
The 2018 Reboot – Toriyama’s Broly
For Dragon Ball Super: Broly, Toriyama wrote the story himself and kept only the core idea: a Saiyan child whose potential scared a king. This time Broly is born around the same time as Prince Vegeta, not Goku, and King Vegeta exiles him to the harsh planet Vampa out of jealousy that the boy’s potential outranks his own son’s. Paragus follows to rescue him, but their ship is wrecked, and father and son are stranded there for decades.
The result is a very different man:
- Gentle at heart: Raised with no one but his father and a giant creature he befriended, Broly is shy, honest and barely knows how to talk to people. He wears a piece of that creature’s ear as a keepsake.
- Controlled by force: Paragus keeps him obedient with a shock collar, treating him less like a son and more like a weapon for his revenge on the royal family.
- Inexperienced: His battle with Vegeta on the ice is essentially the first real fight of his life, and he learns at a frightening pace while it happens.
- A different power source: On Vampa he learned to draw on the strength of the Great Ape without transforming. That is why he can overpower Super Saiyan God Vegeta and trade blows with Super Saiyan Blue Goku, but it also costs him his self-control.
The film’s key twist is that Broly only becomes a Super Saiyan when Frieza kills Paragus and blames Goku. It takes Gogeta in Super Saiyan Blue to stop him, and even then he is not killed: his new friends Cheelai and Lemo wish him back to Vampa with the Dragon Balls.
Same Name, Opposite Hearts
- Rival: The original obsesses over Goku; the new Broly has no personal link to Goku at all and is aimed at Vegeta by his father.
- Nature: The original is cruel by nature; the new one is kind and fights only because he is ordered to or because someone he cares about is hurt.
- The legend: The original is the Legendary Super Saiyan; the new version strongly resembles that legend, but his strength is explained through the Great Ape rather than destiny.
- His father: The original kills Paragus without hesitation; the new Broly transforms out of grief for his.
A popular reading goes further and sees the new Broly as a Goku who landed on the wrong planet. Both were sent away as babies, both grew up isolated and innocent, and Cheelai’s early friendship with him echoes Bulma’s first meeting with young Goku. The original, with his controlling crown, was closer to the Monkey King of Journey to the West; the new one is a mirror of Dragon Ball‘s own hero.
Why He Keeps Coming Back
He Is Unfinished
Because the canon Broly survives, his story is still open. Goku moves him, Cheelai and Lemo to Beerus’s planet to protect them from Frieza, and he trains there in Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero. The manga takes this further: he spars with Goku in Chapter 92, holds his own against Vegeta in Chapter 101, and in Chapter 103, facing Gohan’s Beast form, he finally keeps control of himself as a Super Saiyan. A Broly who masters his rage could easily return as an ally.
He Is the Fantasy of Limitless Power
Both versions embody the idea that a Saiyan’s strength might have no ceiling, which is why fans keep asking where he stands against every new god or form. And the reboot did not erase the 1993 villain: he lives on in games and spin-offs as the absolute evil the main story would never allow. Fans get both, a tragic hero in canon and a pure monster on the side.
Conclusion
The original Broly was an unforgettable force of destruction with a paper-thin story; the Super version keeps the overwhelming power but adds a heart, a family tragedy and a future. That combination is exactly why Toriyama’s Broly feels like the definitive one, and why the character keeps returning instead of fading away.
Which Broly do you prefer – the screaming devil of the 1990s films, or the gentle giant still learning to control himself on Beerus’s planet?
