When Stephen Hillenburg premiered SpongeBob SquarePants in 1999, there’s no way he could’ve known what would become of his animated creation. Sure, he may have foreseen success: the cartoon's years on Nickelodeon, multiple feature films, even an eventual Broadway musical. What was less imaginable then, though, was the fact that Hillenburg's titular tetrahedral goofball and the rest of the gang from Bikini Bottom would cast such a sway over the meme-loving corners of the internet.

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The double helix of SpongeBob and the internet is so prevalent you don't even register it. Imagining the web without Hillenburg’s creation is like imagining it without Google or Facebook (where at least one post in your feed on any given day would feature SpongeBob, Patrick, Squidward or another undersea character.) The show is simply part of online culture's fabric—a part that Hillenburg, who died today at age 57 after a battle with ALS, built whether he knew he was doing it or not.

“SpongeBob is one of the most significant television series in meme history,” says Know Your Meme managing editor Don Caldwell, noting that the show currently has 90 sub-entries and some 290 entry search results related to the show—that's more documented memes than either The Simpsons or My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. "SpongeBob clearly resonates with a large part of internet culture like no other, and I don't think this is simply driven by nostalgia.”

Figuring out why the internet grew attached to SpongeBob is like trying to figure out why the internet likes (or dislikes) anything. It just happens. But something about Hillenburg's show proved irresistible to memery. The show’s characters—and its titular hero specifically—are expressive enough to communicate a mood in a single frame. The show's wholesome, if slyly subversive, tone makes recontextualizing those faces all the funnier. (My personal fave: An image of SpongeBob making a rainbow with his hands juxtaposed with the words “Nobody Cares” in bold Impact font.)

The result is memes like Evil Patrick (aka Savage Patrick or Angry Patrick), which uses an image of the pink starfish making a slightly sinister face to convey anything remotely devilish, Tired SpongeBob, which can basically relay any kind of exhaustion, and Krusty Krab vs. Chum Bucket, which illustrates any kind of rivalry where one thing is superior to the other (Marvel vs. DC, etc.). There are many, many more—far too many to count—and each one is as familiar to internet users as the last.

There’s a reason for that familiarity. Although Hillenburg originally came up with the idea for SpongeBob (then SpongeBoy) a few years before his debut, his cartoon hit just as internet access began to get faster and easier. As the web grew, so did the show's popularity; its fans are some of the first digital natives. Add to that the show's cross-generational appeal and international reach—at one point, it aired in 170 countries—and you've got a majority of the internet covered. Put an image of any of the SpongeBob characters online, and more will get the reference than won't. Scenes from Bikini Bottom are the lingua franca of the meme world.

And while the bulk of the show’s popularity amongst meme-makers is due to the creators themselves, a lot of credit also goes directly to Hillenberg. He stepped away from the show’s day-to-day operations in 2004 after the first animated feature and, as Caldwell points out, SpongeBob’s early seasons provided a lot of the insightful commentary that the internet glommed onto. “The show's first three seasons, prior to Hillenburg's departure,” he says, “dealt with real issues in an authentic and clever way, which I suspect has a lot to do with its enduring cultural relevance online.”

Today, that is obvious. As news of Hillenberg’s passing hit the internet, social media, and the show’s subreddit filled with tributes, more than a few of which thanked the creator not just for his show but for the memes that came out of it. His character lived in a pineapple under the sea, but his legacy survives in a much bigger world.

Let's begin with family. With fathers and sons. Love and defeat. Forgiveness and redemption. The heart of Creed II, the sequel to Ryan Coogler's mostly perfect 2015 boxing flick, pumps with all the typicality of the sports movie canon, though director Steven Caple Jr. works tirelessly to mainline such themes with contemporary resonance. The result lands somewhere in the middle: a boxing epic trapped by the legacy of all that came before it—the generation-defining intensity of the Rocky saga; the visual poetry of Coogler's predecessor—even as it fights to ascend to their elevated planes.

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To hear Buddy Marcelle tell it, "Rumble in the Jungle didn't just manifest itself … You need a narrative. Something that sticks to the ribs." Marcelle (Russell Hornsby) is a boxing promoter, a sort of low-carb Don King, and every bit the shark. Still, his words are not without truth, and newly minted light-heavyweight champion Adonis Johnson (Michael B. Jordan) knows this. It's why he accepts the challenge from Viktor Drago (an imposing Florian Munteanu). The match isn't for fame, money, or adoration—all of which Adonis has in excess these days—but for family, his father, the reclamation of his birthright. The kind of narrative that sticks to the ribs.

If the name Drago sounds familiar, it should. In 1985's Rocky IV, the feared Russian boxer Ivan Drago (Dolph Lundgren) beat Apollo Creed, Adonis' father, breathless in the ring, killing him. Sylvester Stallone's Rocky Balboa later avenges Apollo's death, but the consequence of triumph comes at a cost. Those long-simmering furies is where Creed II commences.

Left to a working-class existence in the bleak tundra of Kiev, the elder Drago was ripped of everything in his loss to Rocky: "Country, love, respect." And so the son must exact retribution in his father's name. Ivan will do anything to return honor back to the former Soviet Empire, and thus himself, even as Viktor remains conflicted by his father's motivations. Ivan hungers for acceptance among the Russian elite, the very same people who disowned him after his headlining loss. This is where the lifesource of the film shows itself. More than anything else, Creed II is a film about fatherhood, its necessary failures and its hard-won victories.

Rocky and Adonis' relationship is also tested, the former seeing Apollo for what he was, the latter seeing him for what he wasn't. This, expectedly, causes a rift in their bond, and fuels the film's final acts. Fearful of the past, Rocky decides to forego training Adonis for the title match, which sends the young fighter down a path in which he must confront all that haunts him: death, defeat, and what he's ultimately fighting for.

For all its flash and emotional vibrancy, Creed II is largely an uneven experiment in boxing cinema, laced with the sweet footwork and lyrical bloodthirst of any great sparring match but predictable in all the ways sports flicks have become. Caple Jr.'s landscape is best understood through its onscreen relationships; they can hum with life, as is the case with Adonis and girlfriend Bianca (a magnetic Tessa Thompson), or they can flat-line completely. Stallone's Rocky feels less essential this time around; even as he tries to rebuild a connection with his biological son, his mentorship often presents itself through a series of simple, childlike maxims. "Sometimes when you want to make a change, you have to change things" might have worked on the page, but tautology can't cover triteness.

The genius of the original film was Coogler's ear for reinvention: He upended the Rocky franchise while still lending it an air of relevance. And Caple Jr. delivers a more than satisfying film (his 2016 feature, The Land, about four Cleveland teens trying to arise from their circumstances was utterly fantastic). It's not that Creed II wants for such reinvention, it's that moments of transcendence rarely arrive—either for the characters or for the film itself.

I think that's the most vital lesson I left with: that with precious few exceptions—among them, A League of Their Own, The Wrestler, and Oliver Stone's Shakespearean opus Any Given Sunday—a sports movie can only be, or do, so much. And this one is simply a product of history's parameters: impassioned and glazed with drama in all the right spots, but rarely venturing to higher planes. Creed II is a safe bet—not because it lacks heart, but because it does exactly what you expect it to.

Cry it out from the rooftops: we survived 2018. (At least as of press time, so, y'know, probably.) And in this long, complicated year, a few games stuck out as the best, the most interesting, the most surprising, of the year. Whether you're catching up over the holidays or just looking for fuel to argue with your friends, here are our picks for the best videogames released in 2018. And yes, they're ranked. And no, your eyes aren't deceiving you: a certain Western-themed open-world game isn't in here. (Nor is Celeste, which honestly should have warranted making this a Top 11 list.) Games are a vast and varied field, friends; so are opinions. Argue away!

10. Monster Hunter World (Capcom, PC/PS4/Xbox One)

Monster Hunter has, for a certain variety of player, been a big deal for years. The once-obscure franchise has garnered a cult following addicted to its obtuse but idiomatically playable rhythms of hunting monsters, crafting gear, and hunting tougher monsters. World takes those rhythms of play and expertly makes them accessible to a broader audience, one that might have an interest in Monster Hunter but never had the time and will to learn how to play it. Using all the power of the modern gen, Monster Hunter World strikes a perfect balance between being welcoming to new players while still being challenging and strange. Explore a vast island full of prehistoric wonders, learn them, and then fight them to the honorable death.
[Original review; buy now]

9. Into the Breach (Subset, PC/Switch)

Giant robots! Time travel! Horrible aliens! If Pacific Rim went into a VitaMix with that one time-travel arc of Heroes when that show was good, this would be the videogame smoothie that resulted. Travel back in time repeatedly to try to save humanity from a horde of alien bugs—building, and losing, dozens of small squads of mech pilots while you do so. This is the rare strategy game that sings because of just the right amount of story, a veneer of melancholy and grief over the repetition. You've let a lot of people die to get to this point. But this run? It's going to be different. It has to be different.
[Original review; buy now]

8. Minit (Vlambeer, PC/PS4/Switch/Xbox One)

What can a game accomplish in 60 seconds? Traditionally, not much—but Minit presents a strong argument to the contrary. Think a 2D Legend of Zelda game, only you die every minute. What this means is that everything in the game worth doing has been compressed into 60-second increments, a design conceit that grows beyond a gimmick and into something brilliant. Riffing on the original Legend of Zelda is a favorite hobby of gaming's commercial indie scene, and I usually have absolutely zero interest in it as a trend. But Minit brings something concise, and witty, and absolutely jovial to its deconstruction of the game that became a genre. Minit only asks for one minute of engagement at a time. But you're going to want to give it a lot more.
[Original review; buy now]

7. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (Nintendo/Bandai Namco, Switch)

This was something of an off year for the Nintendo Switch. Quality titles abounded, but first-party flagships were few and far between; the new Pokemon games this year didn't scratch that specific itch that Nintendo regularly crafts their games to scratch. That place of semi-nostalgic, simple wholesomeness. For that, the only game in town is really the multiplayer epic Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. Far from a perfect entry in the series, it's still more playable than almost any other game released this year. Nintendo excels at building games that are just good, clean fun, and this is the best the company they put out this year.
[Original review; buy now]

6. God of War (Santa Monica, PS4)

The grimmer by far of the two PlayStation 4 exclusives on this list, God of War is a difficult game to anoint with cheerful superlatives—not because it doesn't deserve them, but because they don't really fit the mood. It is, after all, a game about a bad, violent man trying to raise a son only moderately less broken than he is. It's a game about butchering droves of monsters and supernatural warriors, for no other good reason than because they're standing in your way. It's a game about going too far and trying to dial it back, maybe just a little, maybe just until you can almost see something approaching decency. It's a great game. Just not exactly the sort you want to praise with a smile on your face.
[Original review; buy now]

5. Hitman 2 (Io Interactive, PC/PS4/Xbox One)

If I could take any game with me to a desert island, provided that island also had electricity and a compatible game console, it would probably be Hitman 2. Agent 47, the series star, is a murderous cipher in an infinite cycle of assassination and disguise, and this is his perfect outing. Io's latest refines the nontraditional stealth sandbox of earlier titles into a tightly wound, impossibly complex series of puzzle box levels that burst open with an explosive giggle. Sure, you can just run up and shoot your target before fleeing, but even if you survive, what fun is that? How about throwing them off a roof while dressed as a corporate mascot. Or pretending to be a tattoo artist and then taking them out when you're all alone. Hitman 2 rewards creativity and black humor, and it can be played pretty much forever. What a game.
[Original review; buy now]

4. Donut County (Ben Esposito, PC/PS4/Switch/Xbox One)

Donut County is not a long game, nor is it particularly complex. The puzzle premise, of sucking objects into a hole in the ground, never really gets more challenging than that, and the rhythms here are more those of a scenery showcase than a traditional puzzle game. But it's still a delight, bright and goofy, written with a shining wit and an effervescent joy. This is a comedy critique of capitalism disguised as a game about mischievous citygoing raccoons, and, like, honestly, I'm not sure what more you really want from your videogames. It ticks all of my boxes. I waited for this one for years, and it did not disappoint.
[Original review; buy now]

3. Dead Cells (Motion Twin, PC/PS4/Switch/Xbox One)

Dead Cells is an almost peerless action game. There, I said it. Within the framework of a simple roguelike structure—die, progress, die again, slowly eking your way toward an ultimate goal—Motion Twin has built one of the most satisfying 2D combat systems I've ever had the joy of getting my hands on. Every sword slash, bomb throw, and slammed door bristles with energy. The visual and auditory feedback, the speed, everything in this game's design is built to make the action absolutely soar. Dead Cells is a morbid, challenging game, which in 2018 isn't exactly a strong differentiating factor. But I've rarely, if ever, played a game that just feels so good.
[Original review; buy now]

2. Dragon Ball FighterZ (Arc System Works, PC/PS4/Switch/Xbox One)

Honestly, the only reason this didn't get my top spot is because fighting games are about as niche as they come. Still, this game is stunning. A distillation of everything that makes Dragon Ball one of the most influential and enjoyable pieces of Japanese comic media of all time, Dragon Ball FighterZ is also just one of the best fighting games ever. Responsive, surprisingly easy to learn, and predictably difficult to master, it turns the clear visual language of the anime it's based on into brilliant play. FighterZ (pronounced "fighters," to settle that bet) is also home to some of my favorite videogame moments of the year as a spectator. No other competitive game has such a fascinating sense of visual energy, or such clear mechanical drama. It absolutely slaps, is what I'm saying. Play it, watch it, pretend to be 13 again.
[Buy now]

1. Spider-Man (Insomniac Games, PS4)

2018 was a conservative year in videogames. There were some gems, and a few exceptionally innovative titles in the indie scene, but nothing earth-shattering happened. No paradigms shifted this year. Expectations were rarely, if ever, subverted. Spider-Man likely wouldn't have made the top of a list like this in a bigger, stranger year. It's a conservative title, a triple-A open-world game in a world full of them. But don't let that fool you: even if Spider-Man is a game well suited to a quiet year, it's still an excellent game. It's pure comfort food in a year where even the best stuff rarely provoked that warm, happy feeling. Insomniac Games has crafted a title that adores its source material, that shapes its entire form around celebrating it. Spider-Man loves Spider-Man, and Spider-Man is a welcome, fun, bright presence in 2018. This is a quintessential Peter Parker adventure, perfectly translated into game form, and my impression of it has only grown more fond with time. One of my big litmus tests for games is if I find myself going back to it after I'm done covering it for work, and this was one of the few this year to pass. If you have a PlayStation 4, you owe it to yourself to check this one out.
[Original review; buy now]

Last summer, the actor Jay Duplass found himself in the middle of a lush forest in Washington state, his body struggling under the weight of a giant space-helmet. The actor was filming scenes for the sci-fi drama Prospect, in which he plays a planet-scavenger hoping to get rich. Duplass' otherworldly get-up—like nearly all of the film's costume and props—had been designed and hand-made by a team of earthbound artists. But while his beat-up headgear looked cool, wearing it was "a goddamn nightmare," the actor says. "It was heavy. Those helmets are not designed to be worn all day, or walked around in. It messed my neck up for a good six months."

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Such sacrifices were a near-daily requirement on Prospect, which opens this Friday in select cities, and expands next week. It's a defiantly DIY indie, one that takes place in a richly designed sci-fi world, full of gonzo weapons, clunky spaceships, and lived-in locales—yet focuses largely on three primary characters. "The insane ambition was to try to capture the essence of huge movies like Dune, Star Wars, and Blade Runner," says co-writer and co-director Zeek Earl. "We tried to capture a slice of a world, but with a very low budget."

That task required Earl and his partner, Chris Caldwell—both making their feature-film debut—to spend much of last year in a Seattle workshop, where they constructed their own on-screen galaxy. The 31-year-old filmmakers had first produced Prospect as a short film, which drew attention after premiering at the 2014 SXSW Film Festival, ultimately becoming a hit on Vimeo. Afterward, the two former Seattle Pacific University students toured Hollywood, trying to sell producers on a full-length Prospect. "It was a startlingly long process," says Caldwell. "But we were pitching a very unique production plan." The duo wanted seven months to make the film's ships, costumes, and weapons—an almost unheard-of amount of prep time for an indie. "Most people were like, 'Oh. Cool,'" remembers Earl. "They were clearly thinking, 'This doesn't fit in to how things work.'"

Earl and Caldwell finally secured financing from Canadian company BRON Studios (the film's budget, Earl says, came in under $4 million). In late 2016, they got to work, moving into a former ship-building warehouse in Seattle's Fremont neighborhood, where they were sandwiched between an Episcopal bookstore and a marijuana dispensary. "We hired a lot of people who'd never worked on a movie before: industrial designers, carpenters, mechanics, cosplayers," says Caldwell. "They were working with us as the script was being written, and by the time we got the green light, we had this kind of art collective under one roof."

Working-Class Grunts of the Future

It was a fittingly hands-on environment for a sci-fi tale that focuses not on aerial battles or inter-world politics, but on the day-to-day life of the working-class grunts of the future. Prospect casts Duplass as Damon, a small-time explorer who lands his dinged-up spaceship on a gorgeous but toxic moon, accompanied by his young daughter, Cee (played by Chicago Med’s Sophie Thatcher). They've landed a contract to collect elusive, oyster-like gems, with a potential payday big enough to get their lives back on track. But the family's search is interrupted by a mysterious traveler (Game of Thrones and Narcos alum Pedro Pascal) who's just as desperate as they are. What follows is a slow-boiling showdown with hints of noir-westerns like Deadwood and The Treasure of Sierra Madre, albeit with bulky air-filtration devices and gnarly spear-guns instead of whiskey and pistols.

All of Prospect's exterior shots were filmed on a private land trust adjacent to Washington's Olympic National Park, where Earl and Caldwell had backpacked during college. "A few times," says Earl, "Fish and Wildlife officials would wander in and see a bunch of people in space helmets, and get really confused." They probably overheard some mild gasps from the actors, as well, as they were spending hours in the meticulously designed gear. "Their airflow was restricted, and we were making them hike all over the forest," says Earl. "It was pretty arduous."

CGI would have made everyone's lives easier, of course: In mega-budgeted sci-fi films like The Martian, the performers’ costumes—including helmet visors—are often created with digital assistance. But everything in Prospect had to at least appear fully functional, in order to amplify the film's realism. Back in the filmmakers' warehouse, which also served as a film studio and editing bay, the production team used a CNC (Computer Numeric Control) kit to create much of the ship's interiors. "We spent a week figuring out how to put it together," says Caldwell, "so that we could design all these sets digitally, and just cut them out." Even the particles of poisonous dust that flutter across the moon-forest were the result of practical effects: Earl threw dust around the basement of his home, filmed it, and overlaid the results into the finished movie.

That analog approach makes Prospect its own sort of satellite in the world of recent science-fiction films. It's a big-screen genre dominated by well-known properties and steroidal budgets: Solo: A Star Wars Story, Ready Player One, The Predator. But there's always been a place for cerebral, less showy tales of futures yet to come, from George Lucas’ dystopic THX-1138 to Shane Carruth’s time-traveling Primer to Duncan Jones’ far-flung Moon. After its premiere at SXSW this year, Prospect was picked up for distribution by DUST, a sci-fi-focused division of the indie company Gunpowder & Sky. The imagination found within next-wave sci-fi stories like Prospect—and the determination of studios willing to back them—hints at not only an alternative world, but also an alternative Hollywood, one where big ideas are just as important as big budgets. "I've never been a fan of large spectacle sci-fi, or large spectacle movies in general, because I feel like they almost always drop the ball on character and emotion," says Duplass. Growing up, the actor's sci-fi tastes gravitated toward movies like the scaled-back 1985 drama Enemy Mine. "It's a weird little chamber piece about two enemies who are stranded, and rely on each other to survive," he says.

Prospect has some of that same weird-little-movie vibe, though it hints at much larger stories just beyond the moon planet's horizon. After the movie's debut, Amazon approached Earl and Caldwell about developing a TV sci-fi series, one that would employ "the same apparatus" the duo used for Prospect, Earl says. They said yes, and a pilot is currently in the works. A piece of advice for prospective actors: Bring your own headgear.

Is there a screen trope simultaneously more loved and reviled than real-time hacking? Not a chance. From the early 1980s, movies and TV shows have developed a seemingly endless appetite for scrolling gibberish, 3D interfaces, pop-up windows, and other kinds of eye candy that scream L33T H4X0R ATTEMPT UNDERWAY. But now, on the latest episode of Technique Critique, security researcher Samy Kamkar blazes a trail of destruction through the chicanery, diagnosing what each famous sequence gets right—or, as is much more likely, wrong.

All the classics are here: Swordfish. The Net. Hackers. Skyfall. Tron: Legacy. They range from utter crap (Swordfish and its reliance on fancy visual interfaces) to maybe not as utterly crap as we assumed (Hackers may feature a gratuitous flame war between Crash Override and Acid Burn, but as Kamkar points out, patching a target to foil other hackers while leaving a back door for yourself is actually a valid technique) to being decent enough for a participation trophy (Skyfall gets credit for including the idea of polymorphic code, but demerits for including invalid hexadecimal code.) But for each one of those, there's a surprising example of truth and accuracy—like Wargames ’80s-faithful move of dialing directly into a school's admin systems like a BBS, or Mr. Robot's portrayal of a hospital that runs its security on a hopelessly outmatched Windows 95 machine.

Of course, those aren't even half of the shows and movies that Kamkar dissects and explains. And none of those are the clunker that makes him laugh, look hopelessly offscreen, and say "I don't know what we want to say about this. No more pop-up windows!" Enjoy his bemused befuddlement—and relive some of hilarious hacking sequences ever—in the video above.

Talk about Dragon Ball long enough, and you're bound to hear a joke about shirtless men screaming at each other while their hair gets inexplicably sharper. In much of the popular imagination, the franchise evokes thoughts of a kids' anime show in which animated characters yell and power up and flex for several episodes in a row, an endless prelude to actual fighting. Nevertheless, in 2019—35 years after the original manga, written and drawn by Akira Toriyama, premiered in Japan—Dragon Ball is a sensation.

The story of Goku, a boy with a tail looking to grow stronger, and Bulma, a genius girl seeking wish-granting orbs, has long grown into an international pop cultural juggernaut, but almost two decades after its original animated run came to its completion in the United States and Japan, Dragon Ball is having a moment. Last year, the finale of the newest Dragon Ball anime, Dragon Ball Super, drew record audiences, filling stadiums in Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America drawing tens of thousands of people. Dragon Ball FighterZ, one of the best games of last year, became the hottest new title on the competitive fighting-game circuit. And this week a new feature film, Dragon Ball Super: Broly, earned over $7 million dollars on its first day in theaters—an astronomical number for a limited-run anime film.

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"It is very surprising to me," says Chris Sabat, a Texas-based voice actor and producer who has voiced Vegeta, Goku's rival, in just about every piece of Dragon Ball media created since the mid-’90s. "I honestly thought this was going to be a job that lasted me a year or something like that. I had no clue." Instead, it's lasted him about 20, with no signs of slowing down now. But while Sabat's work for a long period was either redubbing remastered versions of the anime or rehashing the same old stories in a dozen or so mid-budget videogames, now he's working on entirely new material, with a higher budget and more attention than ever before.

Why now? How did a niche childhood sensation—Sabat says he used to describe it to confused parents as "Pokemon but with fighting"—become a resurgent cultural juggernaut?

Partially, it's just the right demographic at the right time. "Dragon Ball was first sold as a kid's show, because back in 1998 the networks still believed that cartoons were for children," Sabat says. But, he continues, those kids are now the same age as the franchise's very first fans: "The people who loved Dragon Ball in Japan in 1998 and 2000 were people of all ages, particularly people in their twenties who were reading these manga on the subway on their way to work."

In other words, Dragon Ball has managed to keep pace with its audience. Quickly after Akira Toriyama began the manga, which was at first a madcap adaptation of Journey to the West, the narrative started to shift, emphasizing fighting and superhuman strength over hijinks. After a significant time jump near the middle of the manga's run, hero Son Goku was revealed to be not a monkey boy but in fact a member of a race of superpowered alien warriors—because sure, why not?

From there, the series leaned heavily into melodrama and impossible action, a direction that it's only doubled down on during its current revival, a renaissance that began with the 2013 movie Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods. From a specific, goofy adventure story, Dragon Ball has grown into something more totemic and straightforward, something almost like professional wrestling: A collection of stories about larger-than-life heroes and villains brawling, with stakes that are both impossibly high and completely absent. The good guys will win and the bad guys will bleed; justice meted by cartoon fists and psychic energy beams.

But there's another reason for the Dragon Ball resurgence, too, and that's just that it's been so damn good lately. When the original Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z anime series were created, they were modest operations, with limited budgets, questionable dubbing, and no direct involvement from Akira Toriyama himself, who was busy writing the manga. Now, the new movies and the Dragon Ball Super anime (which, while discontinued, is rumored to return) are all being created with Toriyama's direct involvement and an increased focus on the value of good animation. While Super, as any fan will tell you, has its rough moments in terms of visual quality, moments late in the series are incredibly visually compelling, and Dragon Ball Super: Broly is the best the franchise has ever looked.

The truth is, the detractors joking about men screaming and flexing weren't necessarily wrong. The original anime is packed full of filler and repeated animations to save money and buy time for Toriyama to write more of the manga, leading to fight scenes that are questionably paced and not nearly as visually compelling as they should be. Recent Dragon Ball media, particularly the Broly movie, works hard to correct this, and in the process captures the power that fans' imaginations have always imbued Dragon Ball with. This is vibrant, fast, world-destroying heroic conflict, with each moment rendered in vivid color and with striking visual flair. Dragon Ball as it's always deserved to be.

Dragon Ball Super: Broly, then, is a culmination of years of slow building and at least a year of popular resurgence. And it might be, pound for pound, the best piece of Dragon Ball animation ever produced. The plot could be stronger, and the series has more iconic moments in its history, but it's never looked or sounded so good. It's never had the style it has here, with a new type of animation helmed by animator Naohiro Shintani, designed to give the series a more hand-drawn look drawn directly from the manga. Every frame is graceful and striking. It's one of the most lushly animated films I've ever seen.

If this resurgence continues, maybe the cliché conversations about Dragon Ball will change. Instead of evoking what the series used to be at its worst, maybe they'll more quickly reference the best. Something big and goofy and violent, and also kind of beautiful. Just the way some of us have always wanted it to be.