Dragon Ball Z: Super Saiya-jin da Son Gokû

I enjoyed this Dragonball Z film, it did not have quite the story or length as the first film featuring Broly, but it makes up for this fact by being fast paced. It is especially fast paced when compared to "The World's Strongest" and "Tree of Might". The English version I got of this one also did a pretty good job of syncing a rather good rock soundtrack to this one. The film has a mysterious alien force has descended upon Earth. Its goal, to turn the Earth into a spaceship, the villain a being known as Lord Slug. Enough with the introductions let the fighting begin. There are your typical fights with characters such as Krillin and Gohan. Piccolo also shows up to lend a hand. Still, most of the others do not do so well and then Goku shows and proceeds to wipe the floor with all the baddies. That is until he faces Lord Slug who gives him one heck of a nice fight. I am guessing this took place right before Goku turned Super Saiyan for the first time in the series as they sort of have a brief transformation of Goku to a state that is not quite Super Saiyan. All in all it is a rather good movie, the action is fast and the rock music soundtrack in the English version is just so perfect for this one. They would try again to do that in the Cooler movie, but it doesn't quite work in that one.

As a huge "Dragonball Z" fan, I thought this wasn't that good. It was just typical of the movies. It did seem like just a long episode of the show, albeit not that long. I'll never understand how these movies got released in theaters with such short running times. Anyway, this movie features a villain named Lord Slug coming to Earth and...that's about it. It's not bad.

It's just that there's nothing unique about it. Villains like Cooler and Broly were much more interesting. Cooler was uh, cooler, hee hee. Still, there are some twists and storytelling and it's a completely harmless movie. If you want a better DBZ movie, you probably are better off watching the other films. Of course, it's no "Dragonball: Evolution"... **1/2

Well, this is the fourth of the DragonBall Z movies, and its a stinker. The fight scenes are great, and the new music used in the US release adds an edge, but overall, the plot is childish. I mean, look at it: The indestructible Namekian is brought down by one boys ability to whistle. What the heck?! I'd give it a 3 out of 10, at most. You want something good, go see Coolers Revenge.

I watched the dubbed version of this movie first, so I'll begin with it. First of all I would like to state that the music in the American version was simply atrocious and even a bit insulting for DBZ. The dub voices are slightly better than the ones from Ocean Group but still aren't very good. At least none of them are as annoying as most of the Ocean voices were.

The thing I most liked about the original version was the music. Superb, as always. The Japanese voices are really cool (also as always), although Goku's voice is quite annoying and too feminine. I think they should have replaced Masako Nozawa with a male actor for DBZ.

Anyway, on to the plot - certainly not as nice as the ones of the previous movies, but still better than the plots of most animes and since it's DBZ it's pretty good. But they used an almost totally different definition for the term "Super Namekian" than they did in the series.

I recommend the previous three movies more than this one - not only because they have better plots, also because the dubbed versions have the original music score in them, because of which I'm willing to put up with the annoying voices.

"Lord Slug" is a very middle of the road DBZ movie. This one doesn't hold the same nostalgia for me that the first three movies do. Those were all aired on Toonami and that is where I watched and recorded them. This one I didn't get around to watching until much later.

On the plus side, where most DBZ movies are just rehashes of DBZ storylines, this one is a rehash of an original DB storyline. Lord Slug makes the same wish as King Piccolo did back in the original Dragon Ball.

On the positive side, the villain is able to transform and give us a new varied fight set up. The villain has a unique weakness to be exploited.

Other than that, all the other positives are mainly just beats that happen in a lot of DBZ movies. Piccolo and Goku teaming up, a spirit bomb, Gohan and other Z fighters helping at first but then being useless towards the end. All stuff that we have seen in the other DBZ movies.

On its own, the movie is pretty good. But because it falls in the middle of a film/anime franchise that does so much of the same thing, this one comes across as just that, middling.