User blog:Crabwhale/A Skeletal Retrospective: Dragon Ball Z World's Strongest



Note: Even if this film is nearly 30 years old, if you do not want spoilers, I would suggest stopping here, as I will be very non-conservative when it comes to every single detail of it.

Other Note: Yes, I was too lazy to make a pic this time, gimme a break.

Right, so, time for a bit of context: the place where I live at has this thing going that they import like, everything television related. And among them was, of course, Dragon Ball Z. As you can imagine, I, like the majority of the fucking planet, adored DBZ as a kid. However, the program was inexplicably taken off syndication (or the equivalent of that in here) only to return many years later as a re-dubbed show. It was one of the earliest dubs I had ever seen, so I dunno, maybe they just wanted to clean it up I guess.

Anyway, eventually I started watching another channel that was only accessed through another company's cable, and is the source of many of my weird cartoon know-hows, such as Iron Kid, Cubix, and Prudence Petitpas, the later of whom has a character named Jojo in it. Just wanted to point that out.

Now, during this time, my only contact with DBZ were the two movies that were continuously aired on this other channel: Dead Zone, and, you guessed it, the subject of this here blog, World's Strongest. Judging by the purpose of this review, you can obviously tell which one I liked better, though I love both movies to death.

Now, with all that pesky backstory out of the way, you probably have one question actually going through your skulls: Is this movie still good? HELL FUCKING YEAH

As a Dragon Ball movie, and indeed an animated action movie in general, this thing has it all: fast-paced creative action, beautiful animation and a decent story (which let's be honest, is far more than we can say for a lot of Dragon Ball movies). Not only that, but is one of the few Dragon Ball movies to have completely original ideas, and may have even inspired the actual manga Toriyama was writing at the time (killer cyborgs anybody?).

Though, while the characters and the fights are enjoyable, the thing I find the most amazing are the beautiful environments that this movie takes us too: from the mesmerizing icy mountains where most of the film is set, to Dr. Wheelo's coldly bio-mechanical laboratory (even having some inspiration from the Alien films, if my eyes don't deceive me) and the various other vistas that are displayed during the Spirit Bomb scene.

Oh yeah, the Spirit Bomb scene. A.k.a. the best scene in the movie, from an artistic standpoint (I can't help it okay? This movie's gorgeous) and even a narrative standpoint. Basically, the entire planet begins to radiate with power that Goku needs, gathering and coming to him. The strangest thing is, it's one of the most quite moments in Dragon Ball, and I haven't really seen anything quite like it before. That, and the Spirit Bomb showing a vision of every human on Earth, as if the entire planet is willing to stand up and fight against Wheelo's mad goals is what I'd like to see every Spirit Bomb scene be.

That being said, the movie also does a lot of things other Dragon Ball movies never really have: Roshi having an actual important role in the plot, Piccolo's and Goku's rivalry being rekindled for a moment (even though Pickles is being controlled at the time) and AGAIN, the immense focus on the backgrounds.

The villains themselves are in off themselves fairly inspired when it comes to Dragon Ball bad guys. Kochin is a fairly hilarious but intimidating crazy old coot, the Bio Warriors...have no personality but their designs are insanely cool and Dr. Wheelo himself is a bit bland, granted, but still terrifying with his Xenomorph-esque aesthetic.

So, anyway, I suppose that is it for this review. A bit shorter than the other (quite a bit actually), but what do you expect, it's Dragon Ball. I don't even need to talk about the character and the setting, cause they're all so well known. It's fun, it's goofy, it's imaginative, it's beautiful and you should go watch it if you haven't already. Seriously.