Warning! Spoilers ahead for Dragon Ball Super chapter 82!
In what is clearly one of Dragon Ball Super‘s most pivotal moments, Goku just recalled a memory of his father Bardock for the first time in his life, and it turns out to be one of the most controversial scenes from the revamped Broly film. Mangaka Akira Toriyama, it seems, is trolling his critics.
In chapter 82 of the manga, an audio file of Bardock’s voice in the deceased Saiyan’s scouter triggers Goku into remembering the pivotal scene from Dragon Ball Super‘s Broly movie when Bardock and his wife Gine peer into the space pod they put their infant son Goku in (then known as Kakarot) just moments before it was set to blast off Planet Vegeta towards Earth. Bardock had been under the impression that Frieza might be planning to do something terrible to the Saiyans and convinced Gine to send Kakarot off planet to protect him in case his fears were justified.
For some diehard fans of the Saiyan’s first origin story in the Bardock: The Father of Goku movie, this retcon in particular is especially slanderous. Bardock was originally quite indifferent to his son throughout the majority of the first one-shot. In fact, when Bardock returns to Planet Vegeta, spurred on by his violent run-in with Frieza’s henchman Dodoria and by foreboding visions of his world’s destruction, the Saiyan attempts to convince his comrades to go off-planet but to no avail. When he later stumbles across his son, Bardock not only articulates disgust at Kakarot’s low power level, but he leaves the boy there rather than attempting to save him like he did just moments earlier with his fellow warriors.
It isn’t until, quite literally, the very end of his life that Bardock hopes that Kakarot will survive and grow up to defeat Frieza. And when Bardock later “returns” as some invisible spirit to his sleeping son, the deceased Saiyan expresses regret for not having taken advantage of the short time he had with him. But this new rendition of Bardock comes to this more acceptable and fatherly opinion of his son while he’s still breathing (and isn’t dying). After a scene from the manga that hints that Super‘s version of Bardock changed the moment he first laid eyes on his son, Bardock loves his son so much that he jeopardizes his life to ensure that Kakarot will escape from Frieza’s grasp.
Diehard fans of the first Bardock: The Father of Goku undoubtedly view Dragon Ball Super‘s choice of making this Goku’s first memory of his dad as a slap in the face, for that moment in the retconned Broly film is the very embodiment of all they think is wrong with Bardock’s latest rendition. The “true” Bardock was so invested in gaining Frieza’s recognition that his son was secondary, if even that. It wasn’t until he literally had nothing left to lose that Bardock finally realizes his faults and regrets not bonding with his son when he still had the chance. But this revamped Bardock’s love for his family is so great that it literally chips away at his hard exterior and affects him as a warrior, making him into a more loving and caring father. Goku not only remembering that, but it being his first memory of his dad, only makes that version of Bardock even more set in stone and not just some random isolated incident from an ostensible one-off story.
