So, look, I'll be honest: I don't know a dang thing about 'Dragon Ball.' Nothing meaningful, anyway: sights unseen, I can name exactly two characters (I know Goku and Vegeta), I'm aware of two meme-ready tropes ("super-saiyan" and "power level yada yada"), and I think at some point years ago (nearly twenty of them) I might have seen one or two episodes. But I'll watch just about anything, and I think all this puts me in a prime position to watch this 1996 feature with fresh eyes and judge it on its own merits. The violence in the opening scene raises a skeptical eyebrow, and the astoundingly sexist lines to follow before four minutes elapsed make for an inauspicious start, but there was still room for this to grow. Incredibly, however, the sexism continues to be a very consistent strain, alongside strangely simplistic, childish writing, and some animation that fits neatly alongside that juvenility. We can make an allowance to some degree that this may have been made for a younger audience in the first place, but that only gets us so far at best, and at worst raises more questions since the most boorish and toxic facets are decidedly inappropriate for young viewers (and just exhausting and inappropriate generally). Speaking as someone who sat for 'The path to power' with no real background on the franchise, this does not make a good first impression.
Granted, this is nothing if not a saga of science fiction and fantasy, ready-made for action and adventure. It only wants to entertain. Not knowing anything else of substance about 'Dragon Ball,' neither the manga nor the subsequent anime, I still recognize great, flavorful ideas in the characters, scene writing, story, and general concepts for storytelling of this ilk. And, hey, there's a lot to like in this one picture. Tokunaga Akihito's music is sometimes a little gauche, whether in and of itself or in how it is used, but mostly it's a delightful complement. I can't fault the cast for their spirited voice acting. The action sequences tend to be really fun. And above all, the artists of Toei Animation turned in terrific work. The series tends toward the more cartoonish side of anime, yes, but even so we're treated to lovely backgrounds and environments of every stripe, and fetching, creative designs for characters, creatures, and other active elements. The visuals are bright and colorful, making this easy on the eyes, and there's some nice consideration at times for lighting and shading in addition to overall detail. On a side note, it's not lost on me that filmmaker Hosoda Mamoru got his start working for Toei as an animator, and in that capacity, this is a fine credit. The movie is quite well made, and the production values hold up.
So it's unfortunate that those good ideas in the writing, Matsui Aya's adaptation of Toriyama Akira's manga and accordingly reimagining a plot already seen in the anime, is treated so poorly. I, a newcomer, easily discern that the full scope of the narrative has been pointedly abridged to fit into a concise runtime, and that truncation chops it up into a form that is less than satisfying. That's on top of unsophisticated dialogue, scene writing, characterizations, and plot development that were clearly penned with the false, condescending notion that kids wouldn't be smart enough to grasp the material if it were fleshed out into something judicious and meaningful with nuance and depth. And for as dubious a first impression as this makes with regards to how Bulma is written, and how she's treated at large in the screenplay as the sole female character, it actually gets worse. The character Oolong is basically a half-step away from being a sexual predator as he gazes lasciviously at Bulma. Worse, wherever the responsibility lies between source material, adaptation, and direction, I lost track of how many times we catch a flash of Bulma's panties (I wish I were kidding). And still worse, about halfway through we're treated to a scene - played for laughs - that goes a step further. Also: that said scene comes at the halfway point rather accentuates the fact that for how questionably this is written and sequenced, it frankly feels longer than a mere 80 minutes.
Then there's the bad writing, storyboarding, and editing that poorly establishes various minutiae, and which moreover inserts extraordinary leaps in the plot development - as in, "wait, how did we get here?" And did I mention that the writing of the chief villain is kind of ableist? Or how one character spontaneously changes sides? To be blunt, all told the title loses its appeal rather quickly. I don't think this is altogether rotten, yet the value that it boasts can be had elsewhere without also suffering through the most objectionable qualities and those aspects most deserving of criticism. Some of the animation and action are downright brilliant, a real feast for the eyes, but it's not as if there aren't other example of Japanese animation in the world. 'The path to power' isn't abjectly terrible, but it some ways it rather tries to be, and elsewhere the necessary care was simply not applied to make this the quality film that it could have been. I suppose I'm glad for those who find it more enjoyable than I do, but for my part, with this effectively being my introduction to 'Dragon Ball,' I'm given pause about dipping my toes any further into the franchise. And maybe even that's being too kind.
