Don't Believe the Hype

A Masterpiece!

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

This is the first Dragon Ball movie and it is probably also the shortest at only 41 minutes. The main antagonist in this film from over 25 years ago is Garlic Jr., the son of another antagonist that got killed by Goku before this film in the series I assume. I am not familiar with the series, so I cannot comment any further in detail about that reference, but I can say that I was fairly underwhelmed by this movie here. Then again I may be a bit biased because anime was never a preferred choice of mine and I actually prefer very old cartoons or animation Pixar style. So yeah, with that in mind "Dead Zone" didn't do too much for me really. It's still not an entirely bad film by any means, but I felt the story was just stretched for way too long given that they already fight the antagonist halfway into the movie and it's pretty generic too. As always, it looks like they have no chance and then in the end they manage to win anyway. Oh yeah, the mission here is to get Goku's son back who was abducted by the vengeful other son I mentioned earlier. To make this somewhat funny they included scenes of where Goku's son is a nuisance to his kidnapper. Still, it wasn't exactly comedy gold I have to say. All in all, I cannot recommend this.

Takes place before the Saiyans landed on Earth. Kami's nemesis's son: Garlic Jr. has made his first move in seeking revenge. Due to his father loosing the title of Earth's Guardian to Kami. Junior sends out his minions to collect the Dragon Balls so that way he can wish to be immortal. Gohan was kidnapped during the Dragon Ball hunt, because he was wearing one on his head. Gohan's dad, Goku must rescue his son as well as defeat the "Immortal hungry" Junior.For only being the first Dragon Ball Z movie. It lives up to being an enjoyable flick. Contains the same opening as the long running TV series. While the the whole thing felt like a two parter episode than a movie. Of course anything shorter than an hour always seems that way. It was the same with the first 3 Dragon Ball Movies. Ignoring that, this feature film is worth watching. I imagine the Kami/Piccolo fans to enjoy this because the play a part in it.Available to own on DVD as well as the other 12 full length features.

Some of the Dragon Ball Z movies were great but confusing. The movies are only mentioned once in the series, otherwise, they never happened in the show. This is one that happened. Garlic Jr. The second worse villain in DBZ history next to Android 17. The movie was pretty good but with a different villain and not this stupid Dead Zone thing, it might of been a pretty good retelling of Gohan's first burst of power. Honestly I'm not a big fan of the early films because I don't like the voices and the villains don't reflect with anything from the TV series. One, two, and three all have their own, new but sad villains. Meanwhile the rest have some villain that have something to do with the show like Frieza's brother Cooler.

Though not the first Dragonball movie despite what many people thing (there were movies based on the original TV series that tells of Goku's adventures with Bulma when he was still a child), this movie is a pretty neat romp for Goku and his friends, as long as you don't think TOO hard about it...because then you'd notice there's no way it could fit into the continuity of the TV series (since Goku has mastered obviously been to King Kai's already and mastered the techniques he taught him there, but is not yet a Super-Saiyan). But if you ignore this, it's a well-animated but badly dubbed fight. Any real fan of Dragonball Z should check this out as soon as possible.