#colonel violet

Super Hero opens with a flashback/recap focusing on the Red Ribbon Army. Real quick: the Red Ribbon Army was a mercenary group that dominated much of the world, until their hunt for the Dragon Balls put them into conflict with Son Goku, who destroyed their headquarters in Age 750. Seventeen years later, the Red Ribbon scientist Dr. Gero launched a campaign of revenge, using several cyborgs and androids of his own design. Gero failed, but his final experiment, Cell, managed to travel back in time from the future, where he nearly destroyed the whole world before Goku's son Gohan defeated him.

If you're a Dragon Ball fan, you probably already knew all of that, but what this movie reveals is that the Red Ribbon Army still lives on through its parent organization, the Red Pharmaceutical Company. When Commander Red died, his son Magenta inherited control over RPC, and he's been building up funds ever since, hoping to restore the Red Ribbon Army to its former glory. From behind the scenes, it was RPC that financed Dr. Gero's cybernetics research, but with Gero's death, there was really nothing more Magenta could do.

And that's what I really love about this shot of Magenta looking at a scale model of the old RR HQ. His father ran the Army from the real thing, but Magenta can't build a new one because Goku would just wreck it like he did before, and he can't beat Goku because Dr. Gero was the only one smart enough to build android warriors to kill that guy, and Gero's dead now. Magenta ought to be satisfied running the RPC, but what he really wants to do is rule the world, and he can't. Without Gero, the closest he can come to that dream is hanging around in this private little war museum he seems to have, and he probably can't even show it to anyone since it would expose the RPC's secret.

But then Magenta learned of Dr. Gero's grandson, Hedo. The movie opens with Magenta's right-hand-man, Carmine, giving a briefing on Hedo, so I assume Carmine was the one who discovered him. Better throw up the Carmine screenshot...

Man, these look great. Unfortunately only the bad guys seem to get them. Would have been neat if they made one for Goku or whatever. Yeah, everyone knows who Goku is, but who cares? I want to see an obnoxious still with his name in big letters.

This movie is chocked full with little gags and Easter eggs and such, so there's a lot to cover. Part of the reason for this is that the first twenty minutes of the movie is really heavy on exposition. The plot isn't all that complicated. The bad guys want to make some evil robots to kill the good guys, but to get there we have to explain who the bad guys are and how they joined forces, which takes a while. So there's a lot of visual things happening while they talk. For example, in this scene where Carmine has an overproduced powerpoint presentation playing while he explains who Dr. Hedo is. While he talks, Magenta has some sort of difficulty with hot beverages.

And while Carmine's video plays, we see Dr. Gero's family tree, including his wife, Vomi, and his son, Gevo. This is the first direct appearance of either character, although we've known about Gevo for some time. Several years ago, Akira Toriyama did an interview where he explained that Dr. Gero had a son in the Red Ribbon Army, and that son was killed during the battle with Goku, and so Gero modeled Android 16 after him. In the video game Dragon Ball Fighterz, we meet Android 21, who looks a lot like the image of Vomi in Carmine's video. I forget how and when these details were established, but the idea seems to be that Gero modeled #21 after his wife.

So does this mean Hedo is the son of Gevo? No, Gero had a second son, and that was Hedo's father. Hedo's parents died during his childhood, and he then went on to become a great scholar, earning his doctorate by age 14.

Today, Dr. Hedo is 24, and he's in prison, because he's a little too smart for his own good. Recently, he dug up some corpses and turned them into primitive androids, then he got them jobs at a convenience store to earn money for Hedo's research. I'm not exactly sure which laws were broken here, but it was enough to put him in jail. In the dub, Magenta observes that Hedo would have made more money with less fuss if he had simply robbed the store.

But Magenta doesn't care if Hedo is a little goofy. His talent for cybernetics is even greater than Dr. Gero's, which is pretty scary considering how close Gero came to destroying the Earth. Magenta needs those talents if he's ever going to bring back the Red Ribbon Army, so he waits three months for Hedo to get released from prison, then swings by to offer him a lift. To Magent's surprise, Hedo already knows who he is and has a pretty good guess as to what he wants.

This is because Hedo's been tracking Carmine with a surveillance device. It looks similar to the ones Dr. Gero used to study the Z-Fighters and collect genetic samples for Cell's creation. The difference is that Hedo claims it's a cyborg he built from a live bee. Maybe I shouldn't take this too literally, but it sure sounds like Hedo vivisected a bee in his prison cell and installed cameras and robot parts into its body. And for all I know, Gero did the same thing to make all of his spy robots, but I always assumed they were purely mechanical. Anyway, Carmine's been monitoring Hedo for a while now, driving by the prison yard whenever Hedo's out there, and Carmine's limo has a dome in the roof for his pompadour, so it was conspicuous enough for Hedo to notice. He built the bee, then had it trail Carmine until he found out who he was working for.

And the bee also gives us a great shot from behind Magenta's desk, where he has two framed photos. One is his dad, Commander Red, while the other is Colonel Violet. So we pretty much have to assume Violet is his mom, right? Kind of wild that Red and Violet were a thing, considering that one of the last times we saw Violet was when she looted the Red Ribbon vault during Goku's attack on their HQ. And she even did it in full view of the security cameras, probably knowing that Red would be watching.

So I wonder what Magenta and Violet's relationship must have been like? Is she still alive? Does Magenta know about her betrayal? How could he not? And considering how devoted he is to his father's dreams, how could he let her treason slide? Or maybe he recognizes that Red was a bad leader, and he means to succeed where Red failed. It's interesting stuff, that's all I'm trying to say.

Anyway, Hedo isn't too impressed with Magenta, but he has snacks, so Hedo gets in the car. Magenta asks if he got picked on during his prison sentence, and Hedo says everyone who gave him a trouble would always meet with "mysterious deaths". That column of black smoke behind them is the prison, by the way. The other inmates (and probably some guards) were chewing out Hedo as he left, so Hedo tossed a bomb inside as a final parting shot.

Magenta tries to sweet-talk Hedo by explaining their family connections. Gero once worked for Red, then Magenta inherited the RPC and continued to fund Gero's research. But Hedo isn't moved, since he never met his grandfather, and Hedo's parents hated Gero for his association with the Red Ribbon.

More importantly (to Hedo), he finds the Red Ribbon Army unappealing, because they resemble villains, while Hedo is a connoisseur of superheroes. That's why he's wearing the purple bodysuit, by the way. From what I can tell, Hedo's a fan of a TV show or something that features a character in a similar outfit.

So if Hedo's all into heroes, why did he... you know... desecrate those graves? I'm pretty sure that contradiction is the point of the character. He likes certain genres of entertainment, and he likes and identifies with heroic characters and their exploits, but he seems pretty much devoid of morals himself. He's like a Star Wars fan who loves the Jedi but has no qualms about harassing people who liked Episode VIII. He's one of those... oh, what's the word?

Asshole. Yeah, Hedo's an asshole.

So now Magenta has to convince Hedo that he's not an asshole, which is pretty stupid since they're clearly both assholes. Hedo just wants Magenta to pretend his asshole-ery is the same flavor as his own. So Magneta weaves this whole tale of how he wants to use his power and wealth to improve the world and stamp out evil. While he says all of this, Carmine cuts off the car ahead of him for driving too slow. But it's not just any civilian he did this to...

It's Janet! We'll meet Janet later on, but she gets a cameo here at the start of the movie, which is awesome to spot when you rewatch it. Fuck you, Carmine, for passing on the right and scaring Janet. Carmine doesn't had a big impact on the movie's plot, but he does generate nuclear heel heat simply because the things he does are very obnoxious. One thing I have to respect is that he's the one bad guy who doesn't try to rationalize or disguise his villainy. Carmine's a prick and he doesn't care who knows it.

For example, even after Magenta explains how he's a "champion of justice", and raises his offer to one billion zeni per android, Hedo still isn't convinced, so Carmine brandishes a gun just to make it clear that they won't take 'no' for an answer. Magenta may haggle, but Carmine is too direct for that.

So Hedo accepts Magenta's offer, but not because of the gun, since he enhanced his body to make it bulletproof some time ago. Also, his cyber-bee is armed with a toxic venom so deadly that it can kill any biological life with a single sting. So Carmine's threats are useless. Hedo is only taking the job because he's fascinated by the challenge of creating the ultimate android with an unlimited budget.

So he asks for background on Magneta's enemy, and Magenta explains that it wasn't Mr. Satan who defeated Cell at the Cell Games. He's part of the "organization", but the real ringleader is Bulma of the Capsule Corporation. Magenta says that her confederates appear to be aliens, which explains how Capsule Corp. got the technology for miniaturization and spaceflight. I'm not sure how much of this Magenta actually believes, and how much is a spin he's putting on things to make Dragon Team look like a gang of villains.

Magenta says that Capsule Corp is collaborating with aliens to pacify the Earth, then subjugate it for colonization. Hedo finds this hard to believe, until Magenta shows him footage of Future Trunks killing Mecha-Frieza. I'm not sure how he could have gotten that footage, unless it was recorded by Gero's spy robots.

In this twisted scenario, Gero created Cell to take the fight to Bulma's "organization", but he just couldn't get the job done. 17 and 18 turned against Gero, and Dragon Team was just too powerful that day. Hedo asks if Bulma is an alien, and Magenta's like "sure, why not?"

Then Hedo eats his Oreo all weird. Like, who does this? He takes apart the cookie, which is pretty standard, then he uses the one side to scrape the cream off the other, and he eats this part. Why? You already had a cookie with cream filling on it! This is just a duplication of effort!

The absolute best way to eat an Oreo is to dunk it in milk until it gets so soggy that it almost falls apart. When I was a kid I designed a device that would allow you to immerse the entire cookie in milk for maximum sogification without having to get your fingers wet. In hindsight, this was a stupid idea, because you can just do that with a spoon.

All this talk of alien conspiracies and Cell's heroic last stand get Hedo fired up, and he pulls up the hood of his costume and declares that the world needs a hero to design the ultimate android. I mean, he just got done saying he didn't buy into Magenta's good guy bit, but he does buy into his own good guy bit, and Magenta's story seems to suit this. For Hedo, it's less about being a hero and more about playing a hero. Magenta has created the role, and Hedo is eager to fill it.