Hello, ladies, gentlemen, and everyone between and beyond, and welcome to week 64 of the first Dragon Ball rewatch of the decade.
We're doing five episodes a week, and we'll be watching every single episode of Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z, and Dragon Ball GT. All 508 episodes. Plus the TV specials and the movies.
I encourage you all to watch in Japanese with subtitles, especially if you have never done so before, but watch along in whichever way brings you the most joy.
Z movie 6 actually came out a few weeks after these episodes aired, but this seemed like the best place to put it without disrupting the story too much. Ideally I would have put it between the driving episode and the gang going to fight the androids, but that episode ends with them going to fight the androids, so I just put it at the beginning of this week's viewing.
Personally, I think Z movie 6 is a fun, dumb movie of action and no plot. It knows this and embraces it for whatever value that has. So, I can't really criticise it. It's a fun time to just sit and turn your brain off. Far more enjoyable than the, in my opinion, painfully boring movies surrounding it.
Anyway, KBABZ only advised on trivia this week; he's been quite busy. I suspect he'll drop in with a mound of extra trivia later.
Previous thread: Week 63 (DBZ 118-122)
Next thread: Week 65 (DBZ 126-130)
Anyway, without further ado...
DBZ movie 6 - Clash!! 10,000,000,000 Powerful Warriors
Dub title: The Return of Cooler
Originally released 7th of March 1992
Written by: Takao Koyama
Director: Daisuke Nishio
Animation supervisor: Minoru Maeda
One peaceful day the New Planet Namek is engulfed by the Big Gete Star, which begins sucking the energy from the planet. Back on Earth, Dende sees what is happening and immediately sends Goku and the others off to save New Planet Namek from this danger. Meanwhile, on New Planet Namek, robot soldiers begin hunting down all the Namekians in order to gather their energy. Some of the Namekians put up a resistance, but it only proves to be a futile effort. Just as the robots are about to finish off some of resisting Namekians, Goku and the others appear...
Episode 276 - Goku’s New Finishing Technique?! Watch This, My Instant Movement (DBZ episode 123)
Dub title: Goku's Special Technique
Originally aired 15th of January 1992
Kai equivalent: Episode 58 - Goku’s New Technique, Instant Movement! Special Training Staked on 3 Years From Now (Most of the episode)
Written by: Hiroshi Toda
Episode director: Shigeyasu Yamauchi
Animation supervisor: Masayuki Uchiyama
It turns out that Goku escaped the moment Planet Namek exploded by riding in one of Ginyu and co.’s spaceships. He was saved by the people of Planet Yardrat, where he crash-landed. There he learned a technique to teleport to places by searching out ki. Everyone there then promises to meet again in three years. Bulma suggests that they defeat Doctor Gero now, but Goku and the others oppose this, since they’re burning to fight, and Bulma calls them all perverse. Everyone begins their respective training; Goku by inviting Piccolo over, and Vegeta in a gravity room.
Anime-only/filler content: Most of Goku's flashback; in the manga, he simply described what the anime shows us. Tenshinhan, Chaozu, Kuririn, Goku, Piccolo, Gohan, and Yamucha training is filler.
Episode 277 - I Will Overcome… Goku!! The King of the Fighting Saiyan Race (DBZ episode 124)
Dub title: Z Warriors Prepare
Originally aired 22nd of January 1992
Kai equivalent: Episode 58 - Goku’s New Technique, Instant Movement! Special Training Staked on 3 Years From Now (Some scenes)
Written by: Aya Matsui
Episode director: Kazuhito Kikuchi
Animation supervisor: Minoru Maeda
Vegeta undergoes special training in the gravity room that Dr. Brief built. After sneaking in, Yamcha tests out 300xG but can’t stand it, and is shocked at the harshness of Vegeta’s training. After Vegeta breaks the gravity room by training wildly, he is angry at Bulma when she tries to save him, telling her not to waste her time. Goku and the others’ training is going well, and Gohan shows signs of growth. As he sleeps while injured, Vegeta sees a dream from long ago, and gains a new understanding of his father’s words that he is the prince of the Saiyans. His hostility to Goku burns even more.
Anime-only/filler content: Entirely filler. (Many scenes from this episode were used in Kai, however)
Episode 278 - License Mastery? Goku’s Newest Trial (DBZ episode 125)
Dub title: Goku's Ordeal
Originally aired 29th of January 1992
Kai equivalent: Episode 58 - Goku’s New Technique, Instant Movement! Special Training Staked on 3 Years From Now (Ending)
Written by: Aya Matsui
Episode director: Yoshihiro Ueda
Animation supervisor: Kazuya Hisada
Chichi is chased by a boar while returning home from shopping. Seeing a married couple in an air car, her dissatisfaction with Goku explodes, and she orders him to get a license. Piccolo also gets mixed up in this. Goku’s instructor is the old man Yuzukar, and Piccolo’s instructor is the speed demon Cynthia. While out in the rain for their driving instruction, Goku and Piccolo fly through the air to save a school bus that was hit by a landslide. Yuzukar and Cynthia praise them, saying that with such power they don’t need a driver’s license. Hearing they didn’t get their licenses, Chichi falls over from shock.
Anime-only/filler content: Everything except the final scene.
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Interesting trivia:
- At this point in time in the manga, Trunks realised a lot more things are different in this time than he was expecting, Bulma faxes him the picture of the time machine Cell used, and God agrees to fuse with Piccolo after briefly alluding to a threat greater than the Androids...
- It was apparently standard practice for the Dragon Ball Z movies to come up with a cool-sounding name and then figure out the actual story based on that. Nowhere is this more obvious than with the second Coola movie: "Clash!! 10,000,000,000 Powerful Warriors" fails to mention Coola at all, despite the anime loving to spoil what happens in the episode titles. The movies are rife with generic titles like "A Super Decisive Battle for Earth", "The Incredible Strongest vs Strongest", "Burn Up!! A Red-Hot, Raging, Super-Fierce Fight" and "Super-Warrior Defeat!! I'm the One Who'll Win". This is why most fans tend to refer to the movies by their number or, arguably more helpfully, the much more descriptive Funimation titles. The first DBZ movie to have a subtitle that directly related to the plot was "Revival of F" in 2015 (although a case could be made for "The World's Strongest Guy"). Its predecessor comes close with "God and God", but KBABZ points out that Goku never becomes a god, he merely accesses "God ki", and both of us agree it's just too vague in general.
- Z movie 6 is Vegeta's film debut.
- This movie also marks the debut of the yellower gi Goku would continue to wear in the three movies following this (but never in the series), and Piccolo's red sash worn in the same movies. These designs are more faithful to the manga than the TV anime designs.
- The film also features Dende as God of earth well before the TV anime or even the manga showed this. Perhaps Toriyama planned a bit further ahead than many tend to assume.
- The Big Gete star takes its name from the Japanese term "getemono", meaning something is essentially "thrown-together" and is likely of poor quality.
- Funimation renamed Metal Coola to "Meta-Cooler". I don't see anything particularly meta about him.
- This movie was the second to receive a film animation comic (often referred to as animanga), which released only four months after the movie released (the first film to get one was Z movie 5, which released the same month as the Z movie 6 film itself released). Over the next three years, in addition to these animanga being released alongside each new film, the older films each had an animanga, with the run finally completed in March 1995 when DB movie 3's was released. A full nine years after the last film animanga (the 10th anniversary's one released in 1996), the idea would be revived with the Z anime released in this format beginning in 2005; this wouldn't finish until July 2010. Another nine years later, beginning in December 2019, animanga was revived again, this time covering GT. It's likely the 2005 revival of the animanga was spurred on by the Jump Remix re-releases of the movies' animanga in 2004-2005, which themselves were spurred on by the success of the Kanzenban release of the manga. The Jump Remix line also reprinted the early TV anime comics in 2009-2010.
- While the anime animanga was likely done as a way to have Dragon Ball in colour, this ultimately meant that it was a manga adaptation of an anime adapting a manga, which is of course redundantly redundant. The Full Colours would render them redundant in triplicate!
- The film apparently received a theatrical release in the USA. A cursory googling yielded no further details.
- The Funimation dub of the film originally had a robotic voice filter on Coola, which is not present on the "Remastered" dub.
- Z episode 123 (108 in edited numbering) marks the beginning of the Westwood Media dub.
- The most likely reason for this dub coming about is that AB Groupe didn't like dealing with Funimation for one reason or another, and Ocean swooped in and made them a better offer (probably a much cheaper offer, even though Funi's budget was lower). Ocean, through their production arm Westwood Media, acquired a license from Toei to dub Dragon Ball Z, and used the production materials they were receiving from Funimation to make their own dub (in fact, they actually used their edited masters of the Funi dub that they were producing for YTV as the basis for their dub, just with the score replaced).
- Ocean reused Funimation's scripts, but some slight tweaks were made; mostly just slight rewording.
- Rather than acquire the Japanese score (which almost certainly wasn't included with the Funi masters) or license the expensive Faulconer score, Ocean used music they'd had Anitunes produce for other shows in the past, which they could use for free. Later on, they would have Anitunes do an original score on a few episodes and use the themes composed there to score future episodes. And long before that (roughly around the time of Great Saiyaman or The Cell Games), they had an injection of new themes from Anitunes' work on Monster Rancher.
- Initially, the Westwood dub aired in the Netherlands and the UK. Something like a year later, YTV in Canada would switch to Ocean's dub, starting from episode 183 (168 in edited numbering).
- The vast majority of the cast from the Saban dub reprised their roles for the Westwood dub. The exceptions I'm aware of are:
- Alistair Abell took over Raditz from Jason Gray-Stanford.
- Brian Drummond took over Fortuneteller Baba from Ellen Kennedy.
- Dale Wilson returned to the role of God, replacing Ward Perry who originally took over from him in Z episode 18; he also replaced Ward Perry as King Enma.
- Lee Tockar took over Elder Moori from either Don Brown or Richard Newman (sources differ).
- Maggie Blue O'Hara returned to the role of Bulma, replacing Lalainia Lindbjerg who originally took over from her after the first DB movie.
- Richard Newman took over Oolong from Alec Willows.
- Scott McNeil took over Dr. Brief from Paul Dobson, and Mez from Doug Parker.
- Ted Cole took over Karin from Paul Dobson.
- Terry Klassen took over Roshi from Don Brown (Pioneer) and Peter Kelamis (Saban).
- Some other minor roles may have also changed over.
- Alistair Abell joined the Ocean cast to play Trunks starting from this first episode of the Westwood dub, however I've heard some accounts that he provided the grunt in the Rock The Dragon opening credits (later used in the Anitunes opening too) when Trunks is on screen. However, I've never seen confirmation of this, so take it with a pinch of salt.
- A couple more cast changes happened throughout the Westwood dub; I will note those as we reach them.
- When Goku is arguing with Chichi about training Gohan in Z episode 123, he wears the same outfit he wore when he trained with Roshi prior to the 21st Tenkaichi; most notably, he's wearing the white bow belt. This belt hasn't been seen since Goku donned the Turtle School gi before competing in the 21st Tournament.
- Z episode 125 was likely inspired by the title pages of Chapters 255 and 256.
- Sean Schemmel highlights Z episode 125 as something he missed in Kai, citing it as one of his favourite episodes of Z. I imagine he was quite happy to get to do it again when he recorded his dialogue for DBZ Kakarot.
- The Androids are only the second group of characters to have themed names NOT based on foodstuffs. Coincidentally, the very first were the generals of the Red Ribbon Army!
