When it comes to the entirety of the Akira Toriyama’s Dragon Ball Z franchise and its set of subsequent films to come out, the array of features has been mostly uninspired with little to no connection to the anime. Only have there been a few times where a story served a different purpose by providing context or further layering of a character’s impact on other characters. Those were the times where things made sense and made the show even deeper than before. All other stories either didn’t line up in continuity or counter the previous storylines with missing or different aspects. As the final Dragon Ball Z film to come out, this one fits more naturally into the shows timeline as there’s nothing that can counter it.
The story to this feature about the main dragon ball z characters running into an old goblin character named Hoy (Troy Baker) who says he has come to Earth to protect it from an oncoming evil and the only way to do this is by opening up a sealed music box. Once open a warrior by the name of Tapion (Jason Liebrecht) is released. Little do the main characters know that Tapion has more to him than meets the eye. The story was written by Takao Koyama who again basically wrote all the other features to the list of films. The same goes for Mitsuo Hashimoto who directed a few of those films as well. For what it’s worth this story is interesting to watch mainly because it actually gives a challenge to almost all of the heroes.
The beast Hoy is referencing is massive and also quite quick which are too things normally not associated with each other. Neither Goku (Sean Schemmel), Vegeta (Chris Sabat), Gohan (Kyle Hebert), Krillin (Sonny Strait) or Videl (Kara Edwards) can keep up with this creature. More intriguing though is seeing the friendship that develops between Trunks (Laura Bailey) and Tapion. As explained, since Trunks is an only child and Goten has two brothers, Trunks essentially is looking for anyone he can call a sibling. The dialog and actions shared between the two is nice and wholesome. If anything it also explains some other key aspects about Trunks that would make sense as he got older. It’s these kinds of tidbit easter eggs that make the film fun to watch because it provides further explanation to why characters are the way they are.
One other thing that’s great to see is that although the creature is the powerful one, it’s not the main focus. If anything, the struggle that means the most is the conflict with Tapion and his problems. It’s much better than trying to define a one shot villain like Bojack who only appears once. The voice acting is on point for the movie shown. All the actors in their roles are who they are this point for their well-known characters. Troy Baker as Hoy is good in his role. This was actually his first role in the Dragon Ball Z franchise but would later have roles in Lupin III films, Bleach and Call of Duty. Jason Liebrecht as Tapion is good in character, sounding like and sort of resembling what Trunks would look like later on. This was also Liebrecht’s first Dragon Ball Z credit, but he would later voice characters in Full Metal Alchemist, One Piece and Monster Hunter.
The animation style is appreciated. Like usual, it was the mid 90s so the look is very much nostalgic here. There’s a credit as well to cinematographer Masao Shimizu, but that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Mainly because its animation, so how would a camera be involved with animation unless it was 3D layering, which has been done before. The music is also flawed because the production didn’t stick with Shunsuke Kikuchi musical score. Instead Nathan Johnson who is more or less a branch from Bruce Falconer scores the US release of this. And while it is miles better than using outdated rock music from a band, the fact that the music is rescored doesn’t allow the movie to fully shine through with the original crew behind it. There really is no need to swap Kikuchi’s music with anyone else’s.
Aside from the original musical score being replaced and having a cinematography credit, this final Dragon Ball Z entry fits in nicely with the show and expands a little bit on kid trunks with good voice acting and great animation.
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