#Dragon Ball Z: Lord Slug

[drilanime]

[roseunspindle]

What I Watched February 2023

the animation was pretty and parts were good/fun but the overall message was...really, really bad. Sadly a disappointment overall.

a very fun movie, they really went for the “dreamlike” especially with transitions and Alice seems quite happy to go along with things. A few of the masks were a bit horrific but not as bad as I’d feared. 

fun re-watch

Episodes

mmm watched episodes 1-5 and the princes are so annoying, not sure if I’ll continue

watched episode 1 and it was hilarious

would have watched more than 5 episodes but the subs aren’t synched properly so it got to where I had to give up. Very sad. 

watched eps 1 & 2 and really enjoyed them. Hopefully will be able to watch the rest soon.

yes I’m re-watching this again, I’m at about episode 15 I think? Sooooo good!

Have also watched a bit of Dragon Ball Season 2

[bens-things]

Dragon Ball Z: Lord Slug (1991) dir. Mitsuo Hashimoto

[slutpoppers]

Dragon Ball Z 4th movie: Lord Slug.

cred to IG: @shirtless_anime_boys

[tyote]

[tobiasdrake]

Kaioken strikes me as something that was done quite differently in the anime versus the manga, with the former going for a risky flash of power, and the later going full blown transformation, as well as insisting on stacking it with Super Saiyan forms in ways that end up ammounting to nothing...

Funnily enough, Toei doesn't get as much opportunity to play around with Kaio-ken as they might have liked. Goku uses it pretty extensively in the fights he's in between Nappa and Frieza, so they don't get much chance to bring it back in for a Playing the Hits moment.

Within the anime itself, I think that one punch he threw with Super Kaio-ken against Paikuhan is the only time he ever does one outside of the manga's rails.

Though they do get to have fun with it in the movies. World's Strongest, Tree of Might, and Lord Slug all see Goku fire up the Kaio-ken, though rarely with the degree of skill he brought to its mastery in the technique's later life.

You can really see the difference between Toriyama and Toei's creative philosophies with the Kaio-ken there, between Namek and Slug.

In his training on the way to Namek, Goku focused on hardening his body to resist the Kaio-ken's effects and learning to fire it on a hair trigger.

The basic Kaio-ken is still the only form of the technique that can comfortably be sustained for a long stretch of fighting. However, that no longer matters, because he's cultivated a new way of using it that allows him to reach greater heights.

Goku already gave us a glimpse of what that looks like when he fought the Ginyus, using regular strength and ki suppression.

This is different from when a suppressed character would suddenly release their ki and then the Scouter goes "FUCK NO" right in the PTO member's face. Goku arrived with 5k BP. And then he defeated Recoome with 5k BP. At no point until Ginyu arrives does he ever stop having 5k BP, and then only at Ginyu's request to see his full strength.

Burter and Jeice assume this was a fluke accident because that's the sort of conclusion you draw when you're so reliant on Scouter readouts. They saw Goku take Recoome down with their own eyes BUT THE SCOUTER SAYS

But Vegeta catches onto exactly how Goku is doing this.

Goku's ki flares up in the moment he strikes and then drops back down to conserve energy. He's flickering his ki suppression so fast that the Scouter doesn't even have time to register the change.

This is not the Kaio-ken. Uh. Probably. We'll never know when he uses Kaio-ken again. But whether he was using the technique or not, he was showing us what "bursts" look like.

Every second spent in Kaio-ken when not needed is wasted stamina and durability. So he taught himself how not to waste it. Consequently, Goku can sustain a multiplier of x10 by flaring it just like this, which he does throughout the Frieza battle, without ever showing it.

It's a surprise reveal that Goku's already using KKx10 because his flickering of the technique has prevented it from being noticeable. Except to Kaio.

These guys aren't present for the fight and are just spitballing ideas. Yamcha grasped at the "What about Goku's weighted gear?" straw a moment ago.

But the omniscient perspective of the audience is present, and we've seen what Goku looks like fighting. There's been no big dramatic shout of "KAIO-KEN TIMES ABOOBUHBLOO!" He has a battle aura at times, but that by itself isn't enough to indicate Kaio-ken.

And yet this is probably Goku x10 getting kicked in the face.

This reveal took Toei by surprise as much as it did the audience. "Wait, was this Kaio-ken?" is a much easier thing to sell in the black and white color scheme of the manga. The one guy who said Goku hasn't been using Kaio-ken isn't present to watch the fight, so it's entirely possible that he's been visibly flaring red with every burst.

Piccolo, Gohan, and Krillin never get tripped up by this the way Ten does. And, y'know, they sense ki so they're probably feeling each flareup.

The halcyon days of Goku roaring with Kaio-ken and suddenly burning with its power are gone; He's beyond it. He's internalized KKx10 as a natural part of his motions, like moving his wrist in a certain way when throwing a punch.

Except when he panics and goes to x20 out of pure desperation.

A tragic and costly mistake that, much like with Vegeta, leaves Goku extremely vulnerable and unable to continue defending himself.

It's hard to say what Goku should or should not do, as Frieza truly is an incomprehensible menace. He's exactly what Kaio warned about when he freaked out on Goku about "ABSOLUTELY NOT! UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES! DO NOT FUCK WITH FRIEZA!"

But he probably shouldn't have done that. Goku actually managed to do some damage to Frieza with that, to be sure.

We see Frieza scuffed and bleeding. But he blew out his body doing it.

Much like with KKx4 against Vegeta, KKx20 hit Goku a lot harder than it did Frieza. He probably would have been better off keeping to the KKx10 bursts.

And then we have Lord Slug. The movie that tried to steal the thunder of Goku's Super Saiyan transformation by hitting theaters right before Goku's transformation in the manga and having him go Super Saiyan first. Or. Uh. Trying to, at least.

This is all very complicated and intricate, and conveys a technique that's simple in nature and yet complex to master. Goku has pushed the Kaio-ken far beyond what even its creator ever imagined, because that's what Goku does. He is a martial arts master.

This is the sort of stuff you think about when you're writing for Goku as a writer.

Toei or, more specifically, the people making the anime, don't think about the story like writers, however. They think about it like animators. Because they're animators. Their job is to animate. This is where a lot of the disconnection between manga and anime comes from, as Toei tends to pay more attention to what will be cool to animate over narrative consistency or storytelling.

The movie Lord Slug also pushes the Kaio-ken to new heights with. Um.

...

Whatever this is.

Piccolo gives Goku his ki, and Goku flares up into the Kaio-ken.

And then Goku's KK aura burns with the fiery visages of Goku and Piccolo himself working together as bros.

Which makes him vastly more powerful. Originally, this was intended to be Kaio-ken x100 and in fact you still see that number passed around in supplementals and shit. It's in the Japanese trailer for the film but they took it out of the official release.

And then Goku hits Slug really super hard with the power of the ultimate Kaio-ken for a Piccolo-Daimao Playing the Hits moment.

It looks super cool, was probably a ton of fun to animate, and works perfectly with no drawbacks of any kind.

But it's also. Y'know. Kinda dumb, with no explanation given for why Piccolo's ki suddenly allows Goku to hit KKx100.

Which may be why they took Goku shouting "x100!" out of the official release, but then we're left with the basic Kaio-ken one-shotting Slug, when before he got serious he was merely being pressured by the Super Saiyan Kinda. Goku needs the x100 multiplier for this moment to work. But also. That's ridiculous.

Looks fucking cool, though. Great animation, Toei.

[crossoverheaven]

[bluboiart]

DB DAIMA: LORD SLUG

A powerful Super Namekian who conquers planets. He is now back in his prime and battles the Z warriors for Earth.

I drew in procreate.

[sketchp00ch]

“Kitten, do that face Daddy loves so much~ 🥰”

[laurawoodriff]

Another Goku Illustration that I made a while back.

[punster-2319]

I combined the Cooler movies due to the 12 answer poll limitations.

[theshadychamp]

Goku Vs Lord Slug!

Day 21 of Dragon Ball Madness!

[dragon-ball-beyond]

Side content.

Firstly, a disclaimer: This story currently follows Goku at the END of his story within the AU, venturing after a being of immense power called Ecliptor that wishes to rewrite events to make a timeline where chaos reigns supreme. In order to stop history from changing and causing the inevitable collapse of his universe, Chronoa, Goku, and many others are trying to stop Ecliptor from achieving his goal. Whether or not they succeed in stopping him remains to be seen. Since Goku is at the end of his story, would you all want mini comics that detail what his AU was about in the past and what had transpired differently from canon? Note that these mini comics will be used in order to tell you what was supposed to happen originally without either future(not future timeline) Goku or ecliptor's interference. It'll be showing exactly how the AU changes from the original dragon ball canon. I'll also be throwing headcanons and fun facts around!

[roy-dcm2]

Make the DBZ Movies Canon

I've said it before - I love shonen movies because they're just MORE. More time with the characters we love with a bigger animation budget (most of the time).

Again, imagine being the kid that LOVES Goku in 1997, and you want to see him go all out. Goku only uses SSJ3 twice in the anime, but he uses it 2 more times in the movies. You get 100% more SSJ3 with the movies. (Gear 4th Luffy is in a similar situation)

Also, imagine if fighting was like sex for sayans. How many GOOD fights did Goku have in his adult life? Piccolo, Vegeta, Freezer... maybe Majin Buu? Then it's nothing until Broli, I think.

(What about Cell, or Ginyu or Raditz - If sex ended with you bleeding on the floor, you wouldn't call that a good experience. lol)

But add in the movies and you could count - Jenemba, Android 13, Cooler, Slug... maybe Turles. (Not to mention OG Broly) Plus, all the other ones that were victories for the other characters like Garlik Jr, Bojack, or... Broly. Come to think of it, they were mostly there to make Gohan (or Goten) look good.

(It's almost like they're subs for Goku, when Goku's not around.)

So, here's my ideas on what you could do with the movie villains to add them to the canon in some capacity. Some would be big changes, and other tiny changes.

One big change up would be starting with Dr. Wheelo. Make him the LAST Dragonball villain. The set up is that he wants to be the World's Strongest. He should try to clash with Goku and his friends like 1 year after Goku became tournament champion. Because he's completely out of his debts as a DBZ villain, but he's just tough enough to give Goku + Tien, Yamcha, & Krillin a challenge. And Toei could just RETCON him in say that it happened. (Maybe make a TV special to show it.)

Next guy you gotta keep is Obviously Garlic Junior. He would make a great re-occuring villain for Gohan. Obviously, Dead Zone slots in pretty much unchanged into the anime right now. It's just a matter of who-meets-who when with Gohan/ Krillin/ Kami. I'd LOVE to see GJ capture Videl, or Pan, and he embues them with evil Energy and Gohan has to fight them but also save them.

Turles would require a major overhaul. The concept of the Tree of Might is AWESOME, but the fact that he's a random doppelganger of Goku REALLY stands out. Maybe we could change him to look like Raditz, and what I would do with him is I would actually put him in Universe 7.

This would be a NEW movie where Turles is attacking planet Salad. He hates that the Sayans are good guys in Universe 7, and so he's gonna use the Tree of Might destroy the planet, kill the vast majority of Saiyans, and he's gonna eat the fruit of might to power up. And... what if since he's ESSENTIALLY absorbing a bunch of different Ki, he triggers the Super Sayan God transformation in himself. Of course, it means Kale, Califla, Cabba, and like Goten / Trunks have to save the day.

Here's another great one. Lord Slug. I think they need to give him the Broly treatment. He needs a canon movie in Super. And he's def gonna be an interesting threat because now he can also borrow the new "orange" transformation. And this time, Goku needs Ultra Instinct to take him down.

They could also make him like an Evil Wizard. He's not just terraforming the Earth, now he wants to open up Earth's demon realm to unleash chaos because he feeds off of demon energy. That would also be an excuse to sideline Vegeta.

Meanwhile, Cooler only needs to be reconned into those two years where they were training to fight the Androids.

And then Metal Cooler can return after Majin Buu. In this new version, both Goku and Vegeta can go SSJ2, and Goku can say SSJ3 just burns too much ki.

A weird one would be Super Android 13. I think he works as a Terminator homage. (Like 3 robots just show up at a mall wanting to kill Goku) But there's NO WAY to make him work. There's no space where we can keep Goku, Vegeta, Trunks around. So i'd place him somewhere else...

The only place where he would make sense is in "The Great Saiyaman" Saga. Ya know, after the timeskip, but before the Buu Saga starts. So, it would be Teen Gohan, Goten, and Trunks (and Vegeta / Piccolo) taking him on. With Gohan going SSJ2 for the win.

(That would be great since Broly 2 is definitely on a dead timeline.)

Obviously, Bojack slots in almost completely unchanged. This is after Cell is dead. There's nothing stopping Toriyama/ Toyotaro/ Toei from saying it happened. Another WIN for Gohan.

BTW, they could also redo "Bio-Broly" and instead of being a clone of Broly, it could be a clone of Bojack. (Bio-Bojack)

Jenemba is a weird one. A big draw of the movie is seeing Goku and Vegeta have to do the Fusion. That means we'd have to add him to what is now the end of the "timeline" after the canon Broly (/SH) movie. This does mean that neither Goku or Vegeta are dead, but that doesn't matter much.

They could start off by letting the dead warriors like Pikkon and Olibu fight. (Or maybe a team of villains taking on Jenemba for time off their sentence or reincarnation, like Cell or Bojack.)

Then Jenemba reaches his final form and the path to the living world opens up, and we get the chance for Gogeta to win the day.

Finally, there's Hirudegarn. Again, he slots in without a problem after Majin Buu.

But really finally, there's one more antagonist that needs to be added to the official Canon and that is "Baby." What makes him great is the body-snatcher/ body horror aspect. He's a synthetic alien parasite.

They could change him up a little bit. So that he's not made by the Truffles, and instead he's made by the Cerealians. He was a bioweapon they weren't able to implement before they were wiped out.

It's main plan is to destroy Freezer and his empire. So, Baby starts in space until someone like Jacco accidentally takes it to Earth. It be best to make it TWO movies. One where Baby takes over, and then a last desperate band that has to take on Baby Vegeta with Ultra Ego.

[animefastfood]

McDonald's? Sloppy? from Dragon Ball Z: Super Saiyan Son Goku (Lord Slug) (1991)

[tobiasdrake]

FUN FACT: Namekian Dracula wants to buy a car.

Also, the ending to Lord Slug is the deepest cut of a continuity reference Toei has ever made and I'm super suspicious about it.

(This is the best Z movie. I SAID WHAT I SAID.)

It's pretty well-known that the Z movies aped the hell out of the original story arcs.. Pretty much every Z movie is Playing The Hits, remixing story elements from existing Dragon Ball arcs into an "original" Frankenstein's Monster of derivative material.

Lord Slug is the most on-the-nose it ever gets, in the sense that this guy is Piccolo.

Like. It's so on-the-nose, Kaio even says multiple times "He's JUST LIKE PICCOLO!"

He's JUST LIKE PICCOLO.

JUST LIKE PICCOLO.

It's amazing how shameless this is. They aren't even pretending this is an Original Character Do Not Steal, the way they do with most of the other movie villains. He's just Piccolo Again. We made Piccolo Again. Do you want to see Goku fight Piccolo Again?

So. What's his deal, exactly?

Slug has a birth defect where he's evil.

He just. He was born evil. I don't know what to tell ya. On rare occasions, Namekians will be born pure evil. And not just any evil, but Mazoku evil.

There are a number of words in Japanese that mean demon, spirit, wicked thing, etc. Most of them are derived from the word 'ma', which can mean demon or evil or magic or just... general occult stuff. Piccolo is the Dai-ma-o or Great Demon King. His offspring are Ma-zoku, or the Demon Clan.

Slug's followers are also Mazoku. It's never clearly explained how, exactly, Slug creates his Mazoku. I guess being made pure evil as a birth defect means he's a demon. The movie is aggressively disinterested in explaining Slug. He just. Is.

But Slug's Mazoku aren't just any kind of demon. The movie gives them a peculiar trait that Piccolo's Mazoku never had.

They're vampires.

When Slug and his forces arrive on Earth, they're initially forced to wear all of this protective gear to shield them from the purifying light of the sun. Even Slug himself, despite being more resilient than the others, is forced to remain under this giant Dracula cloak to protect him from being destroyed by it.(T

(Thank you, Medamatcha, for spontaneously explaining vampire weaknesses to Vampire Zarbon and Vampire Dodoria.)

Fortunately for them, they're old-hat when it comes to terraforming. They didn't come to Earth to conquer. Though they do pay lip service to the idea that Slug is some sort of galactic monarch....

His intentions for Earth are a bit more... oddball. You see, Slug's in the market for a new car.

I think they came up with this idea as a way to distinguish him from Frieza. Because, in addition to being Piccolo, Slug is also Frieza. Frieza's a real estate mogul who kills planets to sell them at markup, so they came up with the idea that Slug's killing planets for automotive manufacturing.

Slug travels the universe in a vehicle called the Planet Cruiser, which is precisely what it sounds like: A rogue planet retrofitted into being a spaceship. The process of manufacturing a Planet Cruiser is, however, quite lethal to the inhabitants of the world.

But that's fine because hostile conditions for people are optimal for space vampires. Also they blot out the sun for obvious reasons.

And that's the plot of Lord Slug. Namekian Dracula wants to buy a car - and also happens to find Dragon Balls here to restore his youth by happenstance. His plans are thwarted when Goku and Piccolo wipe out his Mazoku forces, and when Goku remembers a cut of Dragon Ball lore so deep and obscure that I'm honestly startled by it.

During Goku's training under Kaio, he learns to form the Genki-Dama or Spirit Bomb. This is Goku's most iconic desperation move. In addition to its three canon appearances, it shows up in a lot of these movies and GT. But there's an... interesting quality to it that the manga just plum forgot about.

When Kaio teaches Goku the technique, he explains it like this:

The Genki-Dama can borrow energy from inanimate objects, the atmosphere, people, animals, trees... all kinds of things. And, with this technique, Goku could even learn to tap into the immeasurable power of the sun itself.

Toriyama seems to have forgotten he wrote that. It never comes up again. And that's weird because there is one particular situation where it should have come up again.

This was it. The time to take that gun down off the shelf and fire it was here. Toriyama's written Goku into a position where he needs to somehow form a Genki-Dama vastly more powerful than the one from Earth, on a dead planet with little to work with... orbiting three suns.

If there was ever a time for Goku to fulfill Kaio's foreshadowing and whip out a Solar Genki-Dama, it was here.

I honestly wonder if Toei swiped the idea of a Solar Genki-Dama from Toriyama. We know they tried to jump the gun on Goku becoming a Super Saiyan. That's what this is about.

This was supposed to be the Super Saiyan transformation in its entirety. Toei wanted Goku to become a Super Saiyan in the movie first, prior to it happening in the manga, but the design hadn't been finalized so the final product doesn't look quite right.

The movie's even called "Dragon Ball Z: Super Saiyan Son Goku". That's the title of the film, even though it's only in the movie for like two minutes and barely accomplishes anything before the fight moves on like this never happened.

If they'd succeeded in making this the debut appearance of the Super Saiyan it would be horribly disappointing.

Toei later did it again, when they scooped Goku and Vegeta performing the Fusion Dance out from under Toriyama, forcing him to come up with Potara to make his fusion in the manga distinctive.

So I genuinely wonder if they scooped the Solar Genki-Dama from him. Because Toei's nowhere near good enough at Dragon Ball continuity for a cut this deep. It is bafflingly original, creative, and consistent to established canon.

Nonetheless, here we are. Faced with the power of Namekian Dracula, Goku remembers this special characteristic of his technique and hits Slug with the raw vampire-destroying might of the sun.

Goku does a lot of Genki-Damas throughout these films and they tend to blur together.

But this? This is such a perfect way to kill Namekian Dracula. If this is the character you're going to make Goku face, I can think of no better way to end the fight than by punching him in the face with the goddamn sun.