I've already covered the Dragon Ball movies - and been surprised by how much I liked them on the whole - but that was just dipping a toe into this leviathan of a series. Even ignoring TV specials, follow-up Dragon Ball Z would go on to produce over fifteen feature films of its own, and wouldn't you know it but the vast majority of those came out in the nineties. Which means I still have me plenty of Dragon Ball reviewing to do, despite my strong suspicion that the best is already behind me.
Anyway, here's where we begin to find out, by way of Dragon Ball Z: Dead Zone, Dragon Ball Z: The World's Strongest, Dragon Ball Z: Tree of Might, and Dragon Ball Z: Lord Slug...
I went into this first Dragon Ball Z movie with certain negative preconceptions, and I'd say it bore them out to the tune of about eighty percent: I was expecting some of the clunkiest character designs in anime and lots of mindless fighting, and that was largely what I got. Thank goodness, then, for that other twenty percent, which was appealing enough to keep the experience on the right side of horrible.
Dragon Ball Z: Dead Zone feels made for fans of the series in a way none of the four Dragon Ball movies did. There's enough information given that you can basically follow everything that happens and appreciate broadly who everyone is without a recourse to Wikipedia, but you sure do need to be paying attention, which seems against the spirit of what's evidently supposed to be a brief burst of mindless entertainment. But then, that brevity is half the problem: Dead Zone doesn't even quite make it to forty-five minutes, and though there's hardly a lot of plot, what there is gets flung at the viewer so rapidly that it routinely loses all impact. There are ingredients here that certainly ought to have a bit of weight - a major villain uniting the dragon balls and using them for nefarious ends, what appears to be a battle for literal godhood, and a climax featuring the titular dead zone, which must be important for the film to be named after it - and yet most of them flit by in a couple of minutes, as the movie hurtles onto the next thing.
I'd recount the story in more detail, but it hardly seems worth the effort. There's that big bad, who's undermined from the off by having the preposterous name of Garlic Jr, and as part of his fiendish plan, he sort of accidentally kidnaps Goku's annoying son Gohan, and rather than do the sensible thing and chalk it up to bad luck, Goku feels the need to intercede, with the eventual aid of various other characters who just sort of blunder into the film. There's much fighting against Garlic Jr's three hench-monsters, all of whom look so crap that I can't bring myself to think about them, before a final showdown against Garlic Jr himself, who also looks quite crap. Seriously, am I the only person who hates how these characters look? They're like fan art of Lord of the Rings orcs drawn by a teenager who grew up reading nothing except Rob Liefeld comics.
But I said there was a twenty percent I had more time for, and I guess, in the interests of unbiased reviewing, I ought to finish with that. The designs may be trashy and the colours garish, but the backgrounds are mostly lovely, and I like Nishio enough as a director to concede that, outside of the rather listless fights, there are two or three really terrific sequences here, where he's evidently amusing himself by pushing things in directions that are outrageously trippy and / or apocalyptic. For example, Gohan redeems himself slightly by stopping the proceedings dead for a couple of minutes to deliver a drunken musical number that's the high point of the film, and later there's some hellish imagery that's legitimately interesting. And, again perhaps due to Nishio, who presumably knew how to get Dragon Ball right better than anyone, there's a breezy energy that keeps the whole business on the right side of watchable. That's faint praise, I know, but it's all I can stretch to; there's not a lot here for the first movie in such a mammoth series, and what there is could do with a more engaging style and a good fifteen minutes more of running time.
If, as I fear, these Dragon Ball Z movies are merely going to be a series of ever-escalating fight sequences, then The World's Strongest is how I'd like to see them go about it: this second film is a leap above Dead Zone in every way I can think of. It helps significantly that the running time has been stretched to just shy of an hour, allowing for some breathing room and what plot there is to develop at a reasonable pace. Watching it only emphasised the extent to which Dead Zone muted its impact by barrelling through what should have been major moments. Here, similar scenes unfold at a reasonable speed and so feel as though they actually have meaning. It's not like The World's Strongest hangs around or anything, but it has the space it needs to do the material justice.
Probably an even bigger deal, though, is that the villains are interesting, and not burdened with names that ought to be restricted to culinary ingredients. Here again, every aspect, from the voice acting to the designs to the manner in which they're introduced, is that bit more successful. And even their disposable underlings are much better, bringing quirks to the table that turn the fights from slapping matches into strategic puzzles. It's a little thing on the face of it, but it immediately gives the action - of which there's still an inordinate amount - a degree of tension and intrigue that was sorely lacking in Dead Zone, not to mention lending each confrontation a distinctive flavour.
And I realise I'm once again onto the third paragraph and haven't mentioned the story, but in honesty, it's the one element that's barely improved. There are villains, one of them's the still-living brain of a genius scientist who wants the body of the world's strongest fighter to really round out his CV, and after a mix-up in which they mistakenly abduct Master Roshi, they settle on Goku, who's more than up for a scrap. The only reason I'm trotting this out at all is so that you can hopefully see how a mad scientist brain in a jar and his only slightly less deranged assistant would make for fun antagonists. And that's perhaps the crucial point: The World's Strongest is fun. Even when it's dealing with events that theoretically should be quite serious, it keeps its tongue close to its cheek, and while I'm missing the out-and-out wackiness of the Dragon Ball films, this makes for an acceptable substitute, especially once it gets into its final third and the battle stretches to the sort of preposterously epic proportions only anime can deliver.
Oh, and the visuals are another major leap. The World's Strongest looks rather fine, all told, with routinely gorgeous backdrops, smooth animation, and, if I'm not mistaken, some tweaks to the design aesthetic that push it back fractionally in the softer, rounder direction of Dragon Ball. Or maybe I'm simply getting used to them? At any rate, there's nothing to complain about on the technical side. All in all, the sole significant problem - and problem, in this context, is an especially relative term, since I get that lots of people adore this series - is that the narrative is no more than an engine to keep the action flowing. Since that's what it apparently means to be a Dragon Ball Z movie, I guess we're back with what I said at the start: if this is the basic shape of what these things are going to be, The World's Strongest is close to the best version of that template I can imagine.
It's surely not possible that these movies are just going to keep improving, yet here we are on number three and it's possibly the best so far, not a small feat when The World's Strongest was already a standout. And okay, maybe Tree of Might doesn't precisely better it, though that argument could certainly be made, but it's every bit as good. What makes the difference, I think, is that it's the first Dragon Ball Z entry to crack an hour (and indeed, the first Dragon Ball film to full stop) and that extra running time, though it only amounts to a handful of minutes in the case of The World's Strongest, makes all the difference. It allows for a pacing that's almost leisurely in places, and thus builds up the conflict in a weighty, meaningful fashion, so that when the inevitable fighting comes, we're well aware of both the stakes and the rationale behind it. Moreover, that conflict is, in itself, a big leap up from what we've seen thus far, with a villain whose links to Goku and Goku's mysterious past make him feel that bit more significant, and a world-ending catastrophe that's unusual and interesting and genuinely dreadful enough that it seems to matter.
I won't spoil any of that - except to say that apocalypse by tree isn't something I've personally come across before - because it's probably best arrived at without much foreknowledge. And also because, truth be told, there's yet again not a great deal of plot here, and it still ultimately amounts to the usual "there's a super-strong baddie with a bunch of hench-folks and Goku and his friends have to fight them" template that I struggle to imagine a Dragon Ball Z movie breaking away from. Tree of Might is just built on better foundations than something like Dead Zone, and also a whole lot better made. These things have never looked shoddy, but this is still a leap forward; it's often spectacular, and in ways I wouldn't have anticipated Dragon Ball Z bothering with. In particular, the broad palette of intensely vibrant colours and the way certain scenes restrict that palette for effect is more sophisticated than anything we've encountered so far. And the animation isn't far behind. There are some stunning sequences, many of them involving the titular tree, and roots growing and twisting and thrashing in a destructive fashion that would make Akira proud. It really is a treat for the eyeballs, and cinema-worthy in a fashion that the franchise has only flirted with before.
Of course, great animation is mere eye candy without great direction, and while I've never had cause to fault Daisuke Nishio, this is a definite high point. The breathing room of the extra running time and the evidently lavish budget allow for a level of artistry beyond the deft, slick film-making he's previously exhibited, and there's room for things like actual themes that don't revolve around people punching each other: maybe there's nothing inherently profound about how he explores different aspects of nature throughout the film or keeps cutting back to locations and motifs to convey the wider impact of events, but it's fine storytelling all the same. Indeed, the biggest surprise here is that we have a Dragon Ball film that almost totally eschews the light-hearted adventure and comedy that were the bulk of what I'd been enjoying up to this point, and still kept me entranced for the space of an hour. Between this and The World's Strongest, I struggle to conceive of how the franchise can better itself going forward, or even keep up such a level of quality, but I'm beginning to dare hope I might be wrong.
For the first twenty minutes or so of Lord Slug, I continued to toy with the unlikely conviction that these things really might keep getting better. The opening is good enough to warrant such mad optimism, for numerous reasons. One is that, for the first time in a while, we get a scene that returns us to the goofiness which made the original Dragon Ball films so appealing, with a song and dance routine (of all things!) that's a hilariously joyful note to get things moving on. (That it later turns out to be in there for legitimate plot reasons spoils it only slightly.) Then the actual conflict kicks off, and its a belter, with some outstandingly economic storytelling hurling us into another crisis that feels suitably major and presenting an antagonist who's appropriately powerful and dangerous. Moreover, all this is wrapped up in some sterling animation: the aesthetic seems to have drifted back into a more traditional Dragon Ball mode, with everything becoming very soft and round and simple, and that scaling down not only makes Lord Slug easy on the eyes, it allows for some striking sequences. In particular, the inevitable destruction really looks the part, and helps to sell the notion that we're witnessing truly world-threatening events.
The threat this time comes from the titular Lord Slug, another alien invader, but one who wastes all of about three minutes in subjugating the Earth, and manages to kill a couple of his own underlings in the process, not to mention gathering the dragon balls and restoring his youth, so there's not much doubt he means business. Nevertheless, it's a disappointment when the setup has to give way to the traditional Dragon Ball Z third act, if we can call something that takes up fifty percent of the film a third act. There's lots and lots of fighting, and it's pretty good fighting, with enough wrinkles to avoid the feeling that super-powerful people are taking it in turns to shoot super-powers at each other, and the ultimate battle - spoiler warning for people who can't predict a Dragon Ball Z plot! - between Goku and Lord Slug is suitably epic, so there's no arguing the movie doesn't do a perfectly acceptable job of what it sets out to accomplish. It's only that what its aiming for has been done three times already in three preceding films, and we're at the point where I for one am ready for something even slightly different.
Moreover, at around fifty minutes, Lord Slug bucks the steady trend by which these films were getting longer with each entry, and that doesn't do it any favours either; when epicness is such a crucial component of their makeup, that extra few minutes can make all the difference, as Tree of Might amply proved. This seems like a step back in the Dead Zone direction, even if in every other meaningful way it's an improvement on that wonky beginning. And here it's worth a nod to director Mitsuo Hashimoto, who picks up the reins so smoothly from Daisuke Nishio that I honestly wouldn't have noticed the change had I not known in advance. There's no question that he delivers a thoroughly solid Dragon Ball Z movie; it's just a shame its beginning offers more than it can deliver, and that the two previous entries showed that the franchise is capable of more than solidness.
-oOo-
So that went better than I expected - which is weird, in a way, because it also went more or less exactly the way I expected. Probably it helps to go at these things with your eyes open, and for me, I'm sure it helps too that I'm enough of an animation nerd to enjoy well-made films even when they're very much not to my personal tastes. I mean, I do sort of get the appeal here - except for those character designs, which I'm just about at the point of finding tolerable - but I also don't understand why the fandom and the creators couldn't get together and arrange for a bit of variety. Like, what if every fourth Dragon Ball Z film had an actual story? Would that be such a disaster?
So that went better than I expected - which is weird, in a way, because it also went more or less exactly the way I expected. Probably it helps to go at these things with your eyes open, and for me, I'm sure it helps too that I'm enough of an animation nerd to enjoy well-made films even when they're very much not to my personal tastes. I mean, I do sort of get the appeal here - except for those character designs, which I'm just about at the point of finding tolerable - but I also don't understand why the fandom and the creators couldn't get together and arrange for a bit of variety. Like, what if every fourth Dragon Ball Z film had an actual story? Would that be such a disaster?
Oh well. Given that I watched these four in a box set and two of the four movies were pretty great and only one was actively poor, I at least feel I got my money's worth. And the knowledge that there are another nine entries to go? I guess I'll manage somehow...
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