As it has been raised many times over, the Dragon Ball Z franchise has largely been unorganized in it’s way of film release and the chronology of its stories. In order to make them actually fit within the episode seasons, there would have had to be some serious down time between stories. The only film that actually fit in was The Dead Zone (1989). Other than this, all other entries have some aspect about them that don’t allow them to fit into the shows chronology. Why were there these difference between the films and show? Hard to say if it was creative differences or just misalignment. Either way, the order films now have completely detached themselves at this point where maybe each film follows a different timeline. It’s a bit hard to determine.
This entry is about another Earth invasion, this time by the villain name of Lord Slug (Brice Armstrong). Slug carries a secret trait no one from the Z fighter’s side has ever heard about which is what makes him so strong. For whatever reason, Slug now finds planet Earth his choice for the taking and it’s up to Goku (Sean Schemmel) and friends to stop him. This entry was originally directed by Mitsuo Hashimoto, who had directed episodes of Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z, as well as Bardock – The Father of Goku (1990). The screenplay was penned by Takao Koyama who also worked on the same credits as well as the Dead Zone (1989), The World’s Strongest (1990) and The Tree of Might (1990). Perhaps Koyama is just making his own separate storyline.
Arguably, this particular entry is a little worse than the past few. One, despite Slug having the secret trait that gets revealed later on, he’s not that smart of a villain nor is he taken down with much effort either. It’s sad being that the only other villain similar to him was King Piccolo. Lord Slug’s appearance is literally for random reasons. And as discussed, timeline information doesn’t go together here with the show. The other characters like Piccolo (Chris Sabat), Gohan (Stephanie Nadolny), Krillin (Sonny Strait) and various smaller supporting characters show up too. Yet with Piccolo involved, means it would fall sometime before season one, if it were to be there. Either way, with certain characters around, it just throws off the whole fitting in part. The English dub writers Neil Bligh and John Burgmeier weren’t able to modify much of the story either.
And these were the guys who had dubbed plenty of the previous films too. The voice acting is one thing that can’t be denied. All the voice actors from the English dub who have partaken in the anime are on point with their delivery. And at minimum, this is definitely a trait that is needed for the feature to even be remotely watchable. Brice Armstrong as Lord Slug fits in pretty well too. Fans of the show could probably figure out that he was actually the narrator for all the original Dragon Ball anime before Kyle Herbert took over as the Dragon Ball Z narrator. The animation is solid as well for the feature as usual. The way every scene is colored and moved looks great and gives the nostalgic feel to it.
The same could be said for the action sequences that were animated. The fight scenes are well choreographed and are fun to watch playout. For whatever reason, this film also needed two cinematographers, Masaru Sakanishi and Motoi Takahashi respectively. For Sakanishi, this was their first Dragon Ball Z film, as was Takahashi. However, Takahashi had worked on all three original Sailor Moon features. Still it did not feel necessary, as the music too. The English dub to this feature is awful in its soundtrack selection. Instead of sticking with Shunsuke Kikuchi’s musical score, the team felt having thirteen heavy metal songs layered throughout by various groups like Dust for Life, Disturbed, Breaking Point and so on were better. Heavy metal is fine if used the right way, but this franchise never needed that. It just sounds like garbage.
Acting and animation are the features that thankfully remain unchanged, but the rest is hard to accept. The villain had potential but goes nowhere, the continuity is still all over the place and the music is terrible in terms of placement.
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