#the gaijin live action trilogy

[duhragonball]

Dragon Ball: Fight, Son Goku! Win, Son Goku! (South Korea, 1990)

So the 2023 Dragon Ball Apocrypha Liveblog rolls on, and this is the part I’ve been looking forward to: The Gaijin Live-Action Trilogy.  We begin with the first live-action adaptation of Dragon Ball, produced in South Korea in 1990. 

Now, if you’re not familiar with this film, you might be wondering: Why would Toei and Shueisha license a Dragon Ball movie to a South Korean studio?  And the answer to that is: They didn’t.  This was an unofficial adaptation.

Beyond that, I really don’t know the backstory to this one.  Presumably, Dragon Ball had become popular enough in Korea that there was some interest in a movie, and I think it was easier to pull a stunt like this in the 90′s than it would be today.  This movie isn’t exactly a big-budget affair, and if Toei was aware of it at the time, they probably thought it wasn’t worth the hassle of pursuing legal action. 

You can find the movie on YouTube like I did, but I’m pretty sure there’s home video options out there.  But if you just want a quick rundown of the movie’s highlights, I’ve got you covered. 

For the most part, this movie is a straight adaptation of the first arc of the Dragon Ball manga. Bulma meets Goku, convinces him to join her on her search for the Dragon Balls, they meet Roshi, Oolong, Yamcha, Chi-Chi, and the Ox-King, and then eventually they have to deal with the villainous Emperor Pilaf.  Oolong stops him by wishing for panties, Bulma and Yamcha get together, and Goku goes off to explore the wider world. 

The main problem with this movie is that it’s a little too faithful to that plotline, adapting little moments that probably didn’t need to be in a feature film.   I could respect the attention to detail, except the movie also manages to go completely off the rails as well, which sort of defeats the purpose of doing a shot-for-shot retelling of the original comics.  On top of that, the movie also cuts a lot of corners. 

The best example of this is when Goku first meets Bulma.  In some versions of this scene, she hits him with her car, and in some she manages to stop in time, but here, Goku just happens along her parked car while she’s checking the engine. And I get it, they’ve got a pretty young kid playing Goku, and if I was the actor’s mom, I wouldn’t want him filming a scene where he almost gets hit with a car, but considering the other car-related nonsense later in the movie, it’s kind of weird that the opening scenes are so subdued.

Also, when Bulma tells Goku about the Dragon, they just use what looks like footage from the cartoon they’re shamelessly ripping off.  

And when they start off on their journey, and Bulma gets attacked by a pterodactyl, it’s just a guy in a costume.  It’s a pretty fancy costume, although I have no idea what this thing is supposed to be.  Like, if this were a stage musical, I could just accept that this guy represents a pterodactyl, but maybe he’s supposed to be a cyborg bandit, or some other enemy that was easier for the studio to create.  The thing is, he still swoops down and grabs Bulma in his talons like a pterodactyl.  But why didn’t they give him a mask?  Maybe the actor left it at home the day of the shoot.

Also, Goku fights this guy for a really long time.  I’m pretty sure he just hit him once in the comic, but this movie drags it out for a really long time, and it’s a very one-sided beating.  I don’t understand this.

One touch I really like is how Bulma uses Hoi Poi Capsules in the movie.  It’s a simple thing to skip, but when you think about it, it’s such an easy effect to pull off in a live-action movie.  Just have the actor toss a prop, show some smoke and fireworks, and then show the characters looking at the building or vehicle that “suddenly” appeared before them.  This movie features literal puppets, and it still managed to make Hoi Poi Capsules work, so later productions really have no excuse.

So Bulma sets up a house for them to spend the night, and inside Goku watches... Dragon Ball?  Wow, they really had no shame at all about this. 

They do the bit where Bulma gives Goku a bath, and there’s some sort of censor effect over Goku’s crotch, which.... yeah, this all gets really messed up when it’s a real live kid standing around in the buff.  Also, why are we doing this scene from the manga?  Of all the things you could cut, this should have been a no-brainer.

Then we get to the part with the Turtle, and he’s just a guy in a suit, but it’s a pretty damn good likeness of the character.  That’s one thing I respect about this production.  They wanted to do a live-action Dragon Ball, and they didn’t just shy away from logistical challenges like a talking turtle. 

On the other hand, while they wait for the Turtle to return from the sea, Bulma starts wishing she’d brought a swimsuit so she could enjoy the ocean.  Then the movie just shows her in a swimsuit, cavorting around the beach.  This doesn’t actually happen, they just decided to show this anyway, as if it had happened.

This movie just makes a lot of weird choices.  For instance, Master Roshi is dressed very authentically.  He’s got the clothes, the staff, the turtle shell, all of it.   And yet they gave him these braids for some reason.  He’s bald on top, but they stopped short of just shaving his whole head.   Also, he never has on sunglasses.  And yet, the character always has sunglasses with him at all times!  He keeps a pair hanging from a lanyard around his neck.  So why not just put them on and complete the look?

Anyway, things play out pretty much like they do in the comics.  Roshi gives Goku the Kinto’un cloud, and then Bulma notices Roshi’s Dragon Ball.  This would be the part where Roshi offers to trade it for a look at Bulma’s underwear, but that doesn’t happen.  Instead... I’m not really sure.  They get really close together as they look at Roshi’s Dragon Ball, and then she accidentally kisses him, more or less, and Roshi just gives the thing to her, as though he’s already satisfied. 

Then we just smash cut straight to this scene, where Goku and Bulma are in a whole other place.  There’s no transition or anything.  They’re just like “Oh, we’re at the house,” as if they turned around and found this place along the same beach they were just at.

This leads into the Oolong part of the story, and while I don’t understand this setting, I have to give them props for their pitch-perfect casting of Oolong’s disguise.  He looks almost exactly like he did in the original story. 

Also, his robot disguise kicks ass.  Goku fights him for a bit, and then...

Yeah, not so impressive.  I don’t know, I feel like Oolong was close enough to human that you could get away with prosthetic ears and a snout.  So Bulma takes him along on their quest, and they do the bit where Oolong tries to turn into a fish and escape, except....

Mai is spying on them.  So Mai looks pretty much like you’d expect her too, but here’s a weird twist.  She raises her arms...

...And turns into a centipede?  And then she goes in the water?  I didn’t think centipedes could swim.  Anyway, she attacks Oolong for no obvious reason, and Goku has to save him.

Then they do the bit where Bulma tricks Oolong into eating magic laxatives.  Fun fact: In Korean, they say “pee pee pee”, but it actually means “poop poop poop”.  At least, that was the impression I was given by this scene.  Anyway, this is all observed by Puar, who reports back to Yamcha’s lair.  Also, Puar enjoys a cigarette, because who knows?  This movie was made in Korea, but Puar is in Flavor Country.

Anyway, Yamcha looks fuckin’ awesome in this movie.  The fact that he’s constantly accompanied by this ridiculous Puar doll only heightens the immersion for me.

Hell yeah!

Cool pals 4-ever.

Very intimidating.

Yamcha tries to do a cool entrance with his car, but it doesn’t work and he nearly runs himself over, and then he has to struggle to get it to stop.  Then he and Goku fight until he sees Bulma and backs off.

The weird thing is that Yamcha isn’t afraid of girls like he normally is in this story.  They never even get into that.  Instead, it just seems like he’s really infatuated with Bulma, which distracts him.  Here, he sees Bulma for the first time and imagines frolicking on the beach with her in a wedding dress.  Then Goku hits him and knocks him out.

Then he spies on their house to learn what the Dragon Balls are, and he accidentally sees Bulma in the shower, but he just tells Puar he saw something great.  And he confidently says he’ll get his wish, but he never explains what that wish would be.

Then we get to the Frypan Mountain stuff.  They just show Chi-Chi running around killing some monster or bandit or whatever.  Meanwhile, Ox-King is just a regular-sized man with a really red costume. 

Chi-Chi’s costume looks kind of bad.   Like, the design had the right idea, but her helmet is way too big and the pink armor parts just look like fabric attacked to the white tights.  She looks like a little kid who just got done with ballet class and her dad let her put on his motorcycle helmet. 

In further-away shots like this one, it looks pretty good, though.  Like, I can tell what they were going for, and it could have been really cool, but they just didn’t pull it off. Speaking of pulling, Chi-Chi pulls on Goku’s tail, but it doesn’t mean anything, because Yamcha’s not around to see it, and Goku’s secret weakness never comes into play.  I’m a little surprised that he even has a tail in this movie, since it never figures into the plot.

So then we go back to Master Roshi, and when Goku and Chi-Chi ask him for the Bansho Fan, Turtle reminds him that he doesn’t have it.  Then Roshi just starts smacking him around for no reason, and Turtle bites Roshi’s balls.

Then Roshi continues to assault Turtle, even as he uses him to fly to Frypan Mountain.  I get using Turtle in place of Baby Gamera, but that’s about the only thing I get about any of this part of the movie. 

Then he arrives and sits on Ox-King like a chair, and makes Bulma sit down in front of him, like Ox-King is a motorcycle or something.  For several awkward minutes, Roshi kind of gestures at Bulma, but there’s no dialogue, so I have no idea what this is supposed to mean.  Well, obviously, this is meant to reflect the part where Roshi asks Bulma to let him fondle her in exchange for putting out the fire on Frypan Mountain, but this bears no resemblance to any of that. 

Also, I’m pretty sure the Dragon Ball isn’t even in Ox-King’s burning castle.  Chi-Chi has it in this movie, if I’m not mistaken.  So Bulma really doesn’t have anything at stake here.

So Roshi finally gets down to business and bulks up, which is a pretty simple effect they pull off.  Just get a jacked up dude to pose in the same costume and never show his face in the shot. 

And here’s the Kamehameha.  Dunno why it’s orange, but no big deal.   Goku does his own and blows up a rock, but it’s not as spectacular.

Chi-Chi is all impressed and Goku does this cute humblebrag pose.  “Yep, not too shabby for a first try.  Yeah, I’ve been working out a lot.  Chopping wood with my hands, crushing rocks.  Been thinking about trying some Spirit Bombs one of these days, but I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself.”

So let’s check in on the villains.  They’ve shown up a few times in pointless scenes, but I need to point out this scene because it’s the best picture I could get of this dude, named Murasaki.   I don’t know if he’s meant to have any connection to Murasaki, aka Sgt. Major Purple, but he looks like Nappa with hair.  Anyway, Emperor Pilaf sends him to go take out the good guys, who now have five Dragon Balls. 

So they run into each other in a cave, where they fight and have a fun chase in mine carts, and Murasaki has ninjas on his team so maybe he really is a reference to Sgt. Purple.  Anyway, Goku takes him out with a Kamehameha.  Then Yamcha shows up and lends his sword to the team.

Then this green robot attacks and they all take turns trying to beat him.  Oolong attacks him with nunchucks (!) but it doesn’t work.  Goku tries his best, but nothing.  Then Yamcha summons his car to the battle and flies(!!) the car into the robot, but that does nothing.

I still don’t understand how this fight ended.  Bulma starts powdering her face, and I think the robot saw its reflection in her compact mirror, and then it exploded?  I can’t explain why, I’m just reporting my observations.  The gang all congratulate her for winning, but I’m not even sure she was trying to do anything.

Then they go back in the cave?  I guess?  And Pilaf knocks them out with gas to steal their Dragon Balls.  That guy in red and black armor might be Shu, but they never specify it in the subtitles. 

Then we just immediately cut to this hole in the wall that Goku made with his Kamehameha.  They don’t even show the group being trapped in a place, or Goku shooting the blast to create the hole.  Bulma suggests that Oolong turn into a bat to pass through, and he does, but they don’t show it, which is pretty weak.  I mean, how hard would that effect have been?

Outside, Pilaf is at... EPCOT center?  What the fuck?

Pilaf has all seven Dragon Balls, so fair play to him, although we only ever saw six of them in this whole movie.  Bulma started with one, then found four more, and Pilaf had one. I think the last one might have been in the cave?  Or maybe Bulma had it from the start, since in the original story she had two Dragon Balls before she met Goku, even if the movie never showed that. 

Anyway, here’s cartoon Shenron again.

Pilaf verrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrryyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

slllloooooooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwlllllllyyyyyyyy makes his wish, giving Oolong time to figure out that he can just make some other wish first and stop him. 

See, it’s important to make live-action adaptations of cartoons, because that way you can depict moments like this with a more realistic style that pen and ink could never do justice.

So from here the plot just completely abandons the original story.  Instead of Goku turning into a giant ape, Pilaf starts using Force Lightning on Oolong, until Goku busts out to save him.

So it’s these three vs. the good guys.  Goku fights Mai for a bit, then hits her with a ki blast and she explodes.  Shu (?) beats the crap out of Oolong until Yamcha throws a flagpole at him like a javelin and that blows him up.

Pilaf just wrecks everyone’s shit, and even Goku can’t stop him.  Also, I should note that Pilaf has been making weird faces throughout the movie, and now Goku is making faces as well to mock him.

But nothing he does seems to work.  Even Goku’s mighty weapon, the Pool Noodle Nyoi’bo, seems to be useless.

Also, Pilaf can do the Kamehameha too?  The good guys are fucked... until!

Turtle suddenly shows up, offering to help?  Wait, really?  What the hell is he gonna do?  Is he going to beat up Pilaf like he took out those guys in that one filler episode?

Yes, that is exactly what happens.  He just goes right up to Pilaf and starts smacking the shit out of him with his flippers.

Get turtle’d.

Then they all gather together and shoot Kamehamehas at him together.  This is like the end of the second Broly movie, only instead of Goku and his sons, it’s Goku, Oolong, and the fucking turtle.

Finally, after taking a triple Kamehameha, Pilaf makes one last goofy face and explodes.  Huzzah.

Then the characters just sort of make small talk.  Oolong explains that he wished for panties because he stole Bulma’s panties the day before, and he wanted to give her a replacement pair.  Wait, why not just give her back the pair he stole?  Bulma says she wanted to wish for a boyfriend, but seems less than eager to find one in Yamcha?  I have no idea what they were going for with Yamcha and Bulma in this movie but they totally blew it.  Then Goku taps his foot on Turtle’s groin and declares that he has no boobs, so that makes him a boy. 

Then the cast and crew all stand around posing together, and an explosion goes off behind them and they run for it.  Yeah, okay.

Anyway, the moral of the story is: Don’t fuck with Turtle. 

So yeah, this movie is... well, awful.  I mean, it’s amusing in places and kind of fun to watch.  It’s bad in an entertaining way, which makes it the perfect antidote to a screening of Dragon Ball GT.  But it’s still a terrible, terrible piece of cinema.

I’m not sure what else to say here, so I’ll just close out with a gallery of Emperor Pilaf’s goofy expressions.

[chernobog13]

Daimajin strolling through town.

One of the scenes filmed utilizing a “life-sized” model of Daimajin, which is 15-18 feet tall.  It allowed for shots like this without having to utilize complicated and expensive optical processing.  Otherwise, the samurai actors in the foreground would have to be super-imposed on footage of actor Chikara (Rikki) Hashimoto in the Daimajin costume.  Shots like that always resulted in weird shadows and white outlines around all the foreground figures.

Here are two more snippets of the life-sized Daimajin in action:

In the second shot the glint of light in the eye sockets are the only giveaway that this is a model.  Otherwise, the scale, the detailing, and the naturalistic movement really sells the premise of a giant stone statue come to life.

I have next-to-no information on this life-sized model.  I’m willing to bet that, even if it wasn’t dismantled/destroyed after the Daimajin trilogy was filmed in 1966, it definitely did not survive when Daei Film went bankrupt in 1971 or its subsequent acquisition by Kadokawa.

It’d be nice if someone recreated the moving model.  He could live at the front gate of Kadokawa Daei Studio with these guys (the Daimajin statues, not the gaijin tourists):

[duhragonball]

Dragon Ball: The Magic Begins (Taiwan, 1991)

We continue our exploration of the Gaijin Live-Action Trilogy with the second live-action adaptation of Dragon Ball, a movie called “Dragon Ball: The Magic Begins.”

I’d like to think the Taiwan studio behind this movie saw South Korea’s “Fight, Son Goku!  Win, Son Goku!” in 1990, and was inspired to make their own unlicensed film a year later.  But despite a number of similarities, the two movies have different styles.  “Fight/Win” was a very juvenile kind of film, using puppets and theme-park-style costumes to capture the cartoony aesthetic of the franchise.  It adapted Akira Toriyama’s butt-fart-poop jokes and worried that the movie might be too highbrow for its audience, so they threw in a scene where Turtle bites Master Roshi’s scrotum, and several moments where characters grab each other by hooking their fingers in each other’s nostrils.

The Magic Begins is probably also aimed at children, but it has a little more dignity.  It’s basically a standard kung-fu movie with Dragon Ball characters and situations.  For the most part, it’s a direct remake of the first animated Dragon Ball movie from 1986, what we now call Curse of the Blood Rubies.  So let’s be clear about the lineage here. 

First there was the original story arc, covered in the first 23 chapters of the Dragon Ball manga from November 1984 to May 1985.  You know the tale: Goku meets Bulma, they go searching for Dragon Balls, and eventually meet Yamcha, Oolong, and Puar, then end up having to thwart the evil scheme of Emperor Pilaf. 

Then, there was the Dragon Ball anime, which retold that same story arc in the first thirteen episodes across the spring of 1986.

Then there was the December 1986 movie, originally just called Dragon Ball, then renamed “The Legend of Shenron”, and then “Curse of the Blood Rubies”.  This tweaked the plot by replacing Pilaf with a different villain, King Gurumes, who was planning to wish for a cure from the curse that had afflicted him. 

Then Korea adapts the anime into “Fight/Win” in 1990.

Finally you get “The Magic Begins” in 1991, which takes the plot of the ‘86 movie, swaps Pilaf back in, and makes a few other tweaks.

 So yeah, if you’re looking for something original out of this film, forget about it. 

I always have trouble telling this movie from the Korean one, so I’ve put up a helpful image at the top to remind me.  On the left is the flag of Taiwan, and on the right is a white parrot, who played the role of “Snow White”, this movie’s version of Puar.  You might be thinking of the Puar puppet that smoked a cigarette, but he’s in the Korean movie.  In Taiwan, it’s all about white parrots.  Or maybe that’s a parakeet.  Who knows?

Everyone got new names in this movie.  I don’t know if that was a feeble attempt to protect the studio from Toei’s legal team, or if someone genuinely thought this would make the characters wholly original.  I have a hard time keeping them all straight, so I’m probably going to just refer to them by their true identities.  But for the record, the aliases are as follows:

First up, we have the Pilaf Gang.  Pilaf (center) is known as “King Horn” in this movie.  On his left is Shu, aka “Zebrata”, and the blonde on the right is Mai, aka “Malilia.”   Shu and Mai act a lot more like Bongo and Pasta from Blood Rubies, but their visuals are completely unique, so I’ll give them some credit here.  As for “King Horn”, he looks like Pilaf if he were tall and competent.  He also has some super-powers, and he leads his troops into battle, so he really has no connection to King Gurumes at all, except for his role in the plot. 

Next we have Son Gohan (left), who is known as “Sparkle”.  On the right is his adopted grandson, Son Goku, known here as “Monkey Boy”.  During the movie, it’s said that “Monkey Boy” is the 91st Descendant of Sun Wukong, the Monkey King from the ancient story “Journey into the West”. 

Then we have Pansy on the left, who is known as “Jade” in this movie.  If you don’t remember Pansy, that’s okay, she was a movie-only character who appeared in Blood Rubies, most notable for her all-red costume.  As “Jade”, she doesn’t stand out much here.  On the far right is Bulma, aka “Seetou”, and standing between her and Goku is Oolong, who is known as “Piggy”. 

Finally, we have Yamcha on the left, who is renamed “Westwood”, and on the right is Master Roshi, now called “Turtle Man”.   So for the most part, everyone’s pretty recognizable.  Roshi has a turtleshell, Oolong looks mostly human but his schtick is unmistakable, and the bad guys may be different but there’s no mistaking them for villains.  I think the only point of confusion would be Bulma and Jade, but they’re the only girls in this thing, and Jade is smaller, so it’s not too hard to work out who’s who. 

All right, let’s get started.  So the movie opens in Jade’s village, where her father, the new chief, receives the village’s prize Dragon Pearl in a ceremony.  Then Pilaf’s army invades, and basically mows down the entire population.  The chief and the local monks all pray in the temple.  Pilaf barges in and takes the Dragon Pearl by force, and kills everyone.  Since Pilaf already had a Dragon Pearl, that brings his count up to two.  And he already knows where to find the third. 

Meanwhile, Gohan and Goku are meditating in their home, when Gohan has a Bad Feeling About This.  He reminds Goku of their duty to protect their Four-Star Dragon Pearl, but doesn’t explain why they protect it or what would happen if it fell into the wrong hands.  Goku is confident that he can defend the Pearl, as he is armed with his magic staff, which can extend in length when he twirls it around.  Also it comes to him when he calls, sort of like the Silver Surfer’s board.

Then Gohan gives Goku a test of his abilities, by which I mean a pretty kick ass fight scene out in their back yard.  This is easily the coolest part of the movie.  I’m not familiar with the kung-fu genre at all, so maybe this movie is trash by comparison, but I’m pretty impressed with the action.  It’s hardly a breakthrough in special effects, and it’s definitely hokey, but it’s still fun, which is something I’ve needed after slogging through all of Dragon Ball GT.

This also seems to be the film’s main contribution to the wider Dragon Ball mythos.  We’ve never really gotten to see what life was like for Goku back when Grandpa Gohan was still alive.  All we know is based on their reunion during the Fortuneteller Baba arc, and various throwaway lines of Goku’s when he would reminisce about living alone in the woods with his grandfather. 

This is the first time I know of where I’ve gotten to see the kind of nonsense they might get up to during the day.  We know Gohan trained Goku, and this feels like the sort of exercises they would have had.  Just two guys bouncing off trees, shooting fireballs and trying to hit each other in the balls with the Nyoi’bo. 

I’m not sure why Gohan looks like Robin Williams playing Harry Potter, but otherwise, it seems pretty authentic.

For instance, at one point, Gohan catches Goku’s staff and uses it to fling Goku into the well  by their house.  But he doesn’t come up right away, so when Gohan gets concerned and goes to check on the boy...

BAM, Goku suckers him into taking a punch to the face.  Cool!

So Goku wins the test of strength, but then he loses a Rock-Paper-Scissors game and has to cook dinner, so he goes fishing.  And by “fish”, he means “crocodile”, because Goku doesn’t have a tail in this movie, so instead of doing what he did in the manga, he just swims up to a crocodile and shoves his staff into its mouth to incapacitate it.

On the way back, Goku runs into Bulma, and I think we pretty much know how that goes.  She nearly runs him down, but he stops her car with his super-strength, so she starts shooting, but the bullets don’t kill him.  Goku thinks she’s a monster or a witch, until she explains that she’s a girl, and thankfully we don’t get into the part where she offers to let him touch her butt.  However, once Bulma learns that Goku and his grandfather have the next Dragon Ball she’s looking for, she realizes that Gohan is in danger.  A couple of tanks filled with Pilaf’s goons drove past her earlier, and she now realizes they were headed for Gohan’s place.

But by the time they get there, it’s already too late.  Mai and Shu have wrecked the whole house and there’s no sign of Gohan.  Goku and Bulma chase after the bad guys but Bulma’s jeep gets destroyed.   This is playing out pretty much like Curse of the Blood Rubies, except the chase was aerial.  Also, when Bulma’s vehicles got wrecked, she would just get out another one from her store of Hoi Poi Capsules.   But none of that seems to exist in this movie, so instead Goku recruits an elephant to take them where they need to go.

This leads to the part where Oolong is chasing after Pansy, except... well, Oolong looks very problematic to say the least.  In Blood Rubies, he looked like a giant red monster, but here, he’s normal-sized, and the actor is covered in black paint. I’m... pretty sure this is not as accidental as the studio would probably like you to believe.

Fortunately, his true form just looks like a regular dude with a dumb haircut, so we can move on. 

Then Yamcha and Puar show up.  At first, Yamcha looks like a gunslinger from a Western film, but when Goku deflects his machine gun fire, he removes his hat and poncho to reveal...

Revolutionary Girl Utena?  They went to a lot of trouble to recreate the scene from Blood Rubies where Yamcha draws his sword all cool-like. 

It’s a pretty cool fight, which ends with them grabbing each other by the nostrils, a la Polnareff and Hol Horse in Stardust Crusaders, but then Bulma shows up and Yamcha loses his nerve. 

It’s basically the same as Blood Rubies, although Parrot Puar kind of changes things up.  He’s not a shapeshifter like the real Puar, so he doesn’t have a backstory with Oolong, so instead they just argue over who will win the Goku/Yamcha fight.  Then, after Yamcha flees in terror from Bulma, Puar mimics Bulma’s voice to terrorize him some more.

Later, Bulma asks Pansy about her backstory, and she reveals that her father was the village chief from the start of the movie.  Her parents were killed during Pilaf’s invasion, and before she died, Pansy’s mother told her to flee and seek help from Master Roshi.  Oolong has heard of Roshi and knows where he lives.  Bulma quickly realizes that Pilaf must be the one behind the attack on Goku’s house, and he must be planning to gather all seven Dragon Pearls so he can summon the Dragon and have his wish granted.  Pilaf said as much at the start of the film, and Bulma knows the same legend.  What the gang doesn’t know is that both Yamcha and Mai are spying on them, and they each run off to act on what they’ve learned. 

As in Blood Rubies, Yamcha plans to get the Dragon Pearls for himself and wish for courage around women, so he can finally marry.  Unlike Blood Rubies, he already had a Dragon Pearl in his treasure horde.  This doesn’t affect the plot much at all, but it’s treated like it’s important later.

So while he rides a jet ski (!) to get to Roshi’s island first, Mai reports back to Pilaf, who plans his own attack on Roshi and the others to shut them down before they can interfere.

So now we enter into the Roshi part of the movie.  I don’t know why, but the people who made this movie really love Master Roshi.  I say this because the scene on his island starts at about 42 minutes in and continues until the 65 minute mark.  Plotwise, it’s virtually identical to the Roshi’s Island scene from Blood Rubies, but it gets heavily expanded.  Here, we actually see Yamcha contact Roshi and warn him about Goku. That’s pretty superfluous, but what’s worse is that they show Roshi even before Yamcha arrives.  He tries to use the Magic Cloud, but it won’t obey his instructions.  In this continuity, he can stand on the cloud, but he falls off as soon as he tells it to do anything. 

When Goku and the others arrive, Goku and Yamcha fight a little, then Roshi settles things with the cloud, and since Goku can ride it, that proves he’s telling the truth, so Roshi gives it to him for keeps.   As for Yamcha, Roshi tells him he can’t leave the island unless he surrenders his own Dragon Ball to Bulma. Yamcha agrees, and when Bulma kisses him in gratitude...

His eyes turn into slot machine rollers and they land on hearts.  He panics and flees on his jet ski. 

But we’re still not done, because Roshi has his own Dragon Ball, and he offers it to Bulma in exchange for nudity.  As in Blood Rubies, Bulma convinces Oolong to impersonate her.  Oolong agrees, but demands nudity for himself as payment.  Bulma’s like “Dude, you can look exactly like me whenever you want.  You can see me nude any time you feel like it.”   That doesn’t seem to bother her much at all.  Anyway, Oolong-as-Bulma meets Roshi on his front steps and they do some weird dance together before she takes off her top. 

But we’re still not done, because the gang decides to ask Roshi if he knows where the seventh Dragon Ball might be located, since they now have six accounted for.  Roshi is too horny to think straight, so he can’t answer.  It’s like they forgot that Bulma has a machine that detects Dragon Balls.  Wait, Dragon Pearls.  Sorry.  Maybe her Dragon Radar got lost when her Jeep was wrecked?  I don’t think so. 

Then the bad guys attack and blow up Roshi’s house, just like in Blood Rubies, but not quite.  This time, Roshi shoots some ki blasts at them, but he doesn’t blow them away like he did with his Kamehameha from that movie.  None of his attacks make any difference, as the bad guys can just teleport back into their aircraft once they have the Dragon Pearls.  Roshi tells the others to flee on the Magic Cloud while he holds them off, and it seems like he’s killed in the battle...

But no, we’re still not done with this guy, because he shows up to meet the heroes when they regroup on the mainland.  And this is where things start to deviate from the plot of Blood Rubies, because in that movie, Roshi refused to help Pansy save her people, because she had already gathered all the help she needed from Goku, Bulma, and the rest.  Here, Roshi’s pissed about his house, so he’s rarin’ to give the bad guys a whoopin’.  Then Yamcha shows up and asks to join their team because his Dragon Pearl got stolen too.

So now we have five characters--Goku, Bulma, Pansy, Roshi, and Yamcha-- each personally connected to a Dragon Pearl stolen by Pilaf.  So the whole team has a stake in this, except Oolong, who....

No, wait, it turns out Oolong had a Dragon Pearl this whole time.  He said it was given to him by the Pig Fairy, his distant ancestor who had some connection to the Monkey King.  Oolong says that he was told to keep it a secret, but somehow he knew these guys were part of his destiny, I guess?   Anyway, he says that this was why he chased Pansy in the first place, because he knew it would bring him into contact with the other five Pearl-Bearers.  I mean, I’m kind of paraphrasing it, but that’s the way I understood what he said.

So then the good guys just storm into Pansy’s village and start shooting everyone.  Oolong takes out a bunch of Pilaf’s soldiers and even kills Mai while she’s fighting Goku and Yamcha.  What the fuck?  Why is Oolong suddenly so important?  Anyway, Roshi fights with Shu, and then Bulma shoots Shu in the back while he’s distracted.  This seems a bit underhanded to me.  Mai and Shu are ridiculously OP in this movie, but still.

Then Pilaf comes out and reveals he has Gohan held captive, and threatens to kill him if Goku’s group doesn’t surrender the last Dragon Pearl.  Goku wants to give in, but Roshi reminds him that they’ll all be killed if Pilaf gets his way.  So Pilaf tosses aside his hostage and tries a different trick...

Zombies!  I think?  He uses some kind of power to put a blue filter over the camera, and then all of the townsfolk appear and start attacking the heroes.  Maybe they’re still alive and they’re just being mind-controlled, but Pansy’s parents are included in the group, and Pansy said they were dead.

Things look hopeless until Goku summons the Magic Cloud and rides it over the villagers’ heads, knocking down Pilaf and cancelling his spell.  Then all the villagers collapse, so I think they’re all dead.

Then Gohan and Roshi get together and Gohan tells him that the other six pearls must be in Pilaf’s stomach.  I’m not sure how he knows that, but he must have seen Pilaf swallow them, or he watched Curse of the Blood Rubies and remembered that this was where King Gurumes hid his Dragon Balls.  So Roshi decides that they’ll put the seventh Pearl in his mouth and that way Pilaf will explode when the Dragon emerges.   This all made a lot more sense when Bulma figured all this out with the Dragon Radar in the Blood Rubies film.

Anyway, it works, and Goku usess his staff to drive the last Pearl down Pilaf’s throat, so at least he helped kill the bad guy.  Then this yellow thing shows up and says it’s the Dragon.  I’ll just take his word for it.

Pansy wishes for her village and its people to be restored, and then her parents turn out to be okay, so maybe they were resurrected, but I’m not sure.  Anyway, the good guys win.

Then Yamcha turns to Goku and goes “I have one more wish.  I wish to fight with you!”  And Goku’s like “Well your wish is granted, buddy boy, let’s rock!” and the movie ends with them leaping at each other.   Weird how they went with this instead of Bulma and Yamcha getting together, but that plotline didn’t seem to get as much attention as it did in other versions.  Also, you’d think Goku would be more relieved to have his Grandfather back. 

And that’s the end.  Akira Toriyama is completely un-credited here, even though he created all the characters and like 70% of the plot.  Maybe more than that, depending on how much input he had on Blood Rubies. 

It’s a fun little movie to watch, but definitely not something I’d recommend to newer fans.  On the other hand, you can find the English dub of the movie on YouTube, so the price is right. 

For my part, I’ve heard about this thing for years, and I always wanted to check it out, and now I’m happy to say that I’ve scratched that itch.

[duhragonball]

Dragon Ball: Evolution (USA, 2009)

The Gaijin Live-Action Trilogy comes to a close with “Dragon Ball: Evolution”.  Regardless of which movie is your favorite, I think it’s fair to say that DBE was easily the most disappointing.  “Fight/Win” and “Magic Begins” were unofficial, low-budget movies from the early 1990′s, while “Evolution” was produced by 20th Century Fox.  They spent seven years and 30 million dollars on this turkey. And they had actually gone to the trouble to acquire the legal rights to make the movie.  And yet...

The movie ended up being a critical and commercial flop.  In the fandom, “Dragon Ball: Evolution” has become a byword for failure.  Even Akira Toriyama expressed disappointment with the film, which is pretty rare for him. 

For my part, I was kind of intrigued when the movie came out in 2009, and I had some hopes that it might lead to big things for the franchise.  And I remember it being okay when I saw it, but I was quick to notice that there weren’t many people in the theater that day. 

I didn’t really get mad about the movie until I saw the 2011 Thor movie, which proved that a big studio could have done a better job adapting a superhero fantasy world.  Believe it or not, there was a time when live-action adaptations of comic books were just expected to suck.   The studio would just change a bunch of shit for no good reason or to make the movie cheaper and easier to film, and if you didn’t like it then you just didn’t understand movies or something.  The idea that the movie people needed to understand the comic didn’t really gain traction until the first X-Men film came out in 2000, and even then, it was understood that the movies were under no obligation to get it right, or even try to get it right. 

So I graded DBE on a curve back then, and as the MCU Phase 1 movies started to premiere, I got more and more irritated at Fox for failing to recognize the moment.  And now, 14 years later, I’m watching DBE for the second time ever and wondering why I ever thought it was okay.  It’s a terrible movie, with only occasional flashes of appreciation for the source material.  In hindsight, I realize now that I only enjoyed DBE as much as I did because of wishful thinking.  I just really wanted to like it, and I so managed to convince myself that I didn’t hate it.

But now?   Yeah, I hate it.  This movie sucks ass.  Let’s dive in.

We open with exposition, which is generally a bad sign for movies like these.  For one thing, they go over this information several times throughout the movie, so there’s absolutely no reason to spell it out at the very beginning. 

So, like the Korean and Taiwanese live action films, this one also dares to retell the story of the first Dragon Ball hunt.  Goku meets Bulma and they search for the seven Dragon Balls, but this is 2009, and that trick has been done several times already.  A timeline...

1984-1985: Chapters 1-23 of the Dragon Ball manga.

1986: Episodes 1-13 of the Dragon Ball anime.

1986: Dragon Ball: Curse of the Blood Rubies

1990: Dragon Ball: Fight, Son Goku! Win, Son Goku!

1991: Dragon Ball: The Magic Begins

1996: Dragon Ball: The Path to Power

2009: Dragon Ball: Evolution

Even if the audience wanted to see this again, it still would have been a bad idea, simply because of how many times it had been done before.  More importantly, this was an American movie, made primarily to attract business from American fans, most of whom were introduced to the franchise through Dragon Ball Z, not the Pilaf Saga.  Fans didn’t want to see Master Roshi and Mai, they wanted Vegeta and Frieza and Super Saiyans.  This is probably why Fox put Piccolo in the role of the lead villain.   Let’s face it, it just makes sense.  Korea and Taiwan stuck to Emperor Pilaf, but they ended up turning Pilaf into some overpowered badass.  You might as well swap him out for Piccolo, a villain who actually fills that role. 

And also, DBE was meant to serve as the first installment of a trilogy.  This was all the rage back in the late 2000′s, as movie studios deluded themselves into thinking they could turn any movie into three movies just by wishing for it really hard.   Terminator 4, 5, and 6 were each supposed to reboot the Terminator franchise, but none of them made enough money to pull it off, so they ended up becoming a trilogy of failed trilogies. 

So rather than having Piccolo and Vegeta fighting Frieza, like everyone probably wanted, this movie tries to take it slow, introducing Piccolo first, in order to set up Vegeta in the next movie.  Only there would be no next movie, so in hindsight they really would have been better off putting their best foot forward instead of holding back. 

Anyway, let’s get on with this.  So in this movie, Piccolo is basically the same as King Piccolo from the manga, except he tried to conquer the Earth 2000 years ago, instead of a few centuries ago.  He was defeated and sealed away by a powerful technique called the Mafuba, and in the events of this movie, he escapes and plots his revenge.  But he wasn’t alone back in the olden days...

And this right here is where the movie fucked up.  Piccolo’s sidekick villain is simply an ape-like creature named “Oozaru”.  So any fans watching this thing will immediately see the twist coming.  I suppose general audiences might not pick up on this, but come on. Oozaru is presented as Piccolo’s “disciple”, but he wasn’t captured like Piccolo was.  Instead he simply... “disappeared”.  This is undoubtedly meant to set up the Saiyans in the sequel, but there would never be a sequel.

So we move on to the present day, where Gohan is teaching is adoptive grandson Goku.  Goku looks like Frodo Baggins accidentally wandered into the wrong movie.  DBE Goku resembles a lot of other movie characters from around this period.  Frodo, Edward Cullen, Tobey McGuire Spider-Man.  I could probably keep going, but the one guy he really doesn’t resemble is Goku. 

Gohan defeats him in a sparring contest, and Goku is too frustrated with his social life to learn anything.  The kids at school bully him, and he can’t fight back because Gohan made him promise not to use his power.  Goku seems to understand this, but he’s also frustrated that he doesn’t know how to do anything else.  This movie tries to force Goku to fit into some sort of classic secret identity trope, where he has great power but he mustn’t reveal it.  In ‘09, I accepted this as a new take on the character.  In 2023, I’ve pretty much abandoned DC and Marvel superhero comics altogether, and I can see now how stupid this was.  It’s like doing a Bugs Bunny movie and making him act like Mickey Mouse.  It’s not going to impress Mickey Mouse fans.  All it does is expose your inability to understand the classic character you have. 

They wanted Goku to be Spider-Man so badly, or maybe Harry Potter.  And I’m like, fuck Spider-Man and Harry Potter.  Give us Goku, you cretins!

Or... yeah, the Twilight connection is really starting to seem more apparent to me.  Everything in this movie is blue or orange and it pisses me off. 

So Goku’s in high school and the teacher is explaining what a solar eclipse is, which reminds me way too much of Roger Corman’s Fantastic Four movie, where a college professor literally explains the cosmic MacGuffin that gives the FF their powers.  And Goku’s too busy crushing on his classmate, Chi-Chi.  He hallucinates her in a field of flowers, eating strawberries, which is kind of like... not exactly horny, but hornier than Goku needs to be, if that makes any sense.  Chi-Chi really doesn’t serve any purpose in this movie, except to be a love interest for Goku, which he doesn’t really need because there’s enough going on here as it is.  So Chi-Chi just sort of exists in the film, liking Goku for no particular reason and being this hot chick.  It’s dumb.

Then the teacher calls on Goku and asks him what their ancestors would say about a solar eclipse, and Goku stammers some crap about how the Earth was nearly conquered by the Namekians during an eclipse thousands of years ago.  Everyone laughs at him, but I don’t understand what the hell this movie is trying to establish here.  On the one hand, there’s all this secret lore about Piccolo and Oozaru nearly conquering the world, but on the other hand wouldn’t everyone kind of know about that?  I mean, there would be historical accounts of this terrible battle, right?  It would have altered the course of history, but these high school scenes make it look like the world is basically the same as our world. 

Later, Goku sees Chi-Chi struggling with the lock on her locker, and her homework assignment is trapped inside.  So Goku uses The Force his ki to open all the lockers.  This impresses Chi-Chi, who already knows about ki.  Meanwhile, I’m confused.  At the beginning of the movie, Gohan told Goku to use his ki, and he couldn’t do anything with it.  So why did he even try it here?  Maybe his boner for Chi-Chi unleashed his hidden potential?

Chi-Chi invites him to a party at her house, and he ditches his grandfather’s humble birthday celebration to attend.  Oh, right, it’s Goku’s 18th birthday, by the way.  The bullies from school try to intimidate Goku, but he stands his ground and defeats them by dodging all their attacks and getting them to defeat themselves.  It’s actually pretty true to Goku’s style in mismatches like this, and I’d give it a little credit, except it’s too similar to gags used in the Spider-Man and Superman films.  One thing that bothers me here: the bullies are using like kicks and flips and shit.  They seem pretty skilled in martial arts themselves.  Not on Goku’s level, obviously, but they’re not just stock football players or whatever.  It’s another example of this world being sort of a half-inch removed from reality.  It can’t decide if it wants to be the real world or a fantasy world like the one in the source material. 

Meanwhile, Piccolo and Mai barge into Gohan’s house and kill him.  They came looking for his Dragon Ball, but don’t realize that Gohan gave it to Goku that morning as a birthday present.  Goku took it with him to the party, so it’s not here. 

Okay, so let’s talk about the bad guys.  Mai is basically Mai from the Pilaf gang, but she works for Piccolo here.  She has a hole in her costume, which... I mean I’m not complaining, but I’m starting to see that this movie really uses eye candy as a crutch.  Like, Rey’s pretty good looking in the Star Wars movies, but there’s so much other cool shit happening in those things that it’s not the main thing.  Here, just about all you have to occupy your attention in DBE is ogling Chi-Chi, Mai, and Bulma. 

Piccolo absolutely sucks.  James Marsters wanted this role because he was such a huge fan of the franchise, and I always felt kind of bad for him because he seemed really excited at the prospect of playing Piccolo in the sequels, only for this movie to turn into such a huge flop.  I guess there’s a non-zero chance he’s reading this, so I don’t want to be too hard on him, but there’s just nothing to this character.  He just glowers menacingly, destroys a place, then collects the Dragon Ball and leaves.  He pops up briefly throughout the movie just to remind us that he’s doing stuff, but most of what we know about him comes from other characters talking about him.  He’s mad about being sealed away for 2000 years, but we never learn how he got unsealed.  For that matter, we never learn why he wants the Dragon Balls.  He seems to want to wish for world conquest, but he was doing pretty well on that front 2000 years ago.

Also, we never learn how he knows where the Dragon Balls are.  It’s like how Baby from GT knew where to send his lackeys.  We see Piccolo destroy a Japanese village and then Mai goes down to fetch the Dragon Ball from some lady, and it’s like she knew exactly where to go.  But here, they show up looking for Gohan’s Ball, and it’s like they knew it used to be here, but they don’t know where it’s gone?

Back at Chi-Chi’s place, Goku’s Spider-Sense is tingling, so he runs back home to check on his grandfather and finds him buried under the house.  He pulls him out the wreckage, where Gohan tells him to find all the Dragon Balls to stop Piccolo, and reminds him to “have faith in who you are.”  That’s like the moral of this movie.  That and “the first rule is that there are no rules”.  Just hackey drivel presented like some profound wisdom.  Also, there’s a poem about the Dragon Balls, like the verses etched in the One Ring from Lord of the Rings.  Then Gohan dies of terminal cliche and Goku buries him in a shallow grave.

The next day, Bulma breaks into the house... Well, I guess that’s a relative term, since the house is already half-destroyed.  She accuses Goku of stealing her “promethium orb”, because she tracked it to this house.  Goku realizes she’s talking about the Dragon Balls, and when he shows her his Four-Star Ball, she understands that it’s not the same as the Five-Star one she lost.

Okay, so a couple of things.  First, if Bulma has a Dragon Radar in this story, why is she just now learning that there’s more than one of these things?  Second, after Goku tells her about the Dragon Balls, she just drops the whole “promethium orb” thing.  That seems kind of weird, since she had this whole thing planned where she was going to use them as an unlimited power source.  I can’t see her abandoning the name she came up with. 

Anyway, Bulma is easily the best character in this movie.  She’s not quite authentic to the original character, but she’s constantly pointing guns at people and growling thinly veiled threats.  It’s sort of a half-Bulma, with all the badass two-fisted scientist stuff, but none of the flirty, bratty stuff.

Also, I have to give her credit for the one (1) streak of blue hair, which is more than the other live-action Bulmas ever got.  Seriously though, this is like a symbol of the entire movie.  They wanted to put Bulma in this thing, but they stopped short of giving her all-blue hair.  Like, which is it? Do you want Bulma or not?  And if the answer is no, then why are you doing a Dragon Ball movie in the first place?

So before Gohan died, he told Goku to seek out Master Roshi at Paozu.  As it turns out, Paozu is a big city, and Roshi’s house is located on a weird little island in the middle of a lake in the middle of the city. 

Roshi is played by Chow Yun-fat, which was probably a big “get” for the studio.  He’s also the worst live-action Roshi I’ve seen, and I wasn’t very impressed by the others.  This is just Chow Yun-fat screwing around in a Dragon Ball movie.  He doesn’t have the turtle shell on his back, which isn’t much of a surprise, but he also lacks the beard, sunglasses, and bald head.  He has a waifu cartoon on his shirt, and Bulma finds a bikini magazine in his stuff, and that’s about as pervy as he ever gets.  Seriously, Goku is a bigger horndog in this movie than Roshi. 

And I’m not that fussed about this, since I’m not a big fan of Roshi’s to begin with, but it’s weird to me how all three live-action adaptations went out of their way to include Roshi, but refused to go all-in on the portrayal.  Like, if you don’t want a problematic sex-pest in your movie, I totally understand, but the solution is not to tone down the character.  Now you still have the character in your movie, but you’ve stripped away the only personality he had.

The solution should have been just to do a different story, one without Master Roshi.  Just have Chow Yun-fat play some other character, like the Supreme Kai or whatever else you want.  But if he’s not gonna ogle girls and wear sunglasses and have a bald head, what’s the point of calling it Roshi?

Anyway, Roshi also has a Dragon Ball, and he fills in the others on the whole deal with Piccolo and the eclipse, and whatever else.  There’s a lot of mysticism thrown around with this plot, where I can’t tell if Piccolo’s return was just a quirk of fate or some fufilment of an ancient prophecy or something.  Also, every time Goku touches a new Dragon Ball, he has visions of the future. 

Roshi’s plan is to train Goku to defeat Piccolo, and to track down the Dragon Balls before Piccolo can get them all.  To do that, he takes Goku to some “secret” training ground, but it turns out to be full of kids beating the shit out of each other as they prepare for a martial arts tournament.  Goku runs into Chi-Chi there, and she reveals to him that she’s a martial artist, but none of the others at home know. I don’t understand what the point is to any of this.

So the good guys move on to a different, more secluded training ground.  On the way, Bulma drives into a hole, and this turns out to be a trap laid by Yamcha.  He offers to help them out, but only in exchange for payment.  This seems like a really dumb trap now that I think about it.  I mean, how long did it take him to dig this hole?  And he just assumes someone will drive into it, and that they’ll be rich enough to make this worth the trouble he went to.  I mean, past a point, it’d be simpler to just get a job, right?  Or at least go rob people in a big city, like a regular criminal.

They sit in the hole well into the night, and Roshi tells the story of Piccolo and Oozaru.  He warns that the coming eclipse will bring forth Oozaru, which is why they have to stop Piccolo before that happens.  Why? Isn’t Piccolo strong enough on his own?  The implication is that Oozaru is like his trump card or something, but I don’t buy that.  He killed Gohan effortlessly, and no one else has displayed any greater ability. 

Yamcha thinks the story is dumb, but he has to sit here and wait for them to pay him before he can move on.  Then Roshi just jumps out of the hole and offers him a deal.   If he could do that the whole time, then why did he wait so long to do it? 

Meanwhile, Mai has been following the good guys, and she reports back to Piccolo that Roshi is training Goku to oppose him.  Piccolo then has blood drawn from his arms, which he uses to bring life to... whatever these things are.   They’re like the Putty Patrol from Power Rangers, only even shittier.

Goku just tosses their bodies in lava, and uses them as a bridge to reach the next Dragon Ball.  Don’t ask how we ended up in a lava floe.  Anyway, when he touches the next Ball, he has visions of Oozaru killing the others, so he resolves to defeat Oozaru, and Roshi starts to lose confidence in their plan.  They won’t have time to track down the remaining Dragon Balls before the eclipse, so he heads for Toisan to consult with someone else for Plan B.

That someone is Sifu Norris, played by Ernie Hudson from the Ghostbusters movies.  A lot of geek journalist sites said that Hudson would be playing Mutai-Itoh, the master who trained Roshi and developed the Mafuba technique that defeated Piccolo in the original manga.  But the character’s name in ths movie is Sifu Norris, and while Roshi bows to him in deference, it’s not clear that Norris was Roshi’s teacher.  And he couldn’t have invented the Mafuba in this world, not unless he’s 2000+ years old. 

Anyway, Roshi never took the poem about the Dragon Balls seriously until now, when the signs are finally starting to come true.  So he apologizes for his doubts, and asks Norris to help him prepare another vessel for the Mafuba.  Roshi plans to seal up Piccolo all over again, at the cost of his own life. 

See, here’s why this doesn’t work properly.  In the original story, Roshi told the other characters all about Piccolo’s original attack on the world, and how his old master sacrificed his own life to seal Piccolo away.  That was important, because you need that established up front.  That way, when Roshi begins planning to use the Mafuba himself later on, the audience knows exactly what it means, and how desperate the situation is.  The audience also understands how Roshi would know the technique, as he was one of the only living witnesses to have seen the technique used.

But in DBE, we don’t get that.  We’re only told that the Mafuba is a technique that sealed Piccolo away.  We don’t find out that it kills the user until this scene, when Roshi and Norris say so.  Roshi says he’s the only one who can do it, but we never find out why.  When would he have learned the Mafuba?  Why would he have learned it?  He was never worried about Piccolo until a few days ago.  He certainly never saw it used the first time around, because it was before his time.  And why can’t Sifu Norris use it instead?  He seems more experienced in this sort of thing. 

Meanwhile, Goku meets with Chi-Chi at the Toisan tournament, while Bulma and Yamcha commiserate over the upcoming end of the world.  There is zero chemistry between these two, and Bulma says she likes bad men, so she’s already preparing to dump him for Vegeta, and they haven’t even introduced him yet.

Roshi shows Goku how to do the Kamehameha, and Goku says that he’s heard of the technique, but Gohan never taught him because he wasn’t ready.  Roshi says that Goku still isn’t ready, but he has to learn it anyway because they’re almost out of time.   Well if he’s not ready, then what good does it do to teach him?  This movie really can’t make up it’s mind about Goku’s ability.  We’ve already seen him use ki powers, even when the movie insists that he has no aptitude for this. 

As he struggles to light torches with his ki, Chi-Chi shows up and basically offers to make out with him if he does a good job.  That’s the other weird thing about this movie, it keeps presenting this notion that romantic intimacy makes you better at fireball karate.  I mean, that sounds awesome, actually, but it’s not Dragon Ball.

Later, Bulma finds Chi-Chi in Goku’s room, and she thinks they’re having sex, except Goku’s not in there, and Chi-Chi’s doing exercises somewhere else.  Turns out Mai disguised herself as Chi-Chi.  At the Toisan tournament, she was in a match with Chi-Chi, and managed to get a drop of her blood, which she somehow used to shapeshift into her?  I mean, that’s fine, I can believe Piccolo has special magic that lets Mai do that sort of thing, but I feel like they should have explained it in greater detail.   Anyway, Goku finds the two Chi-Chi’s fighting, and he beats the wrong one, and Mai shoots him.

Goku has a near death experience where Gohan tells him to believe in himself or some shit, while Roshi uses a Kamehameha to revive him.  Uh, okay?

So the bad guys have all the Dragon Balls, which normally means they’ve already made their wish, but in this movie there’s still time, because you have to take the Balls to the Dragon Temple to summon Shenron.  So Yamcha drives the gang over there, and partway into the trip he just reveals that his truck can fly like the DeLorean in Back to the Future II.  So why didn’t he do that before?

The bad guys are already at the Temple, so I’m not sure what the point was of making this like a chase or anything.  Fortunately for the good guys, it seems to take a long time for Shenron to get summoned. Roshi tries to use the Mafuba, but Piccolo shoots a ki blast at him and destroys the magic pot?  Yeah, let’s go with that.

So all this wild shit is going on and Goku’s just been putting on his costume the whole time.  It looks like ass, but it’s a huge improvement over the street clothes he’s been wearing through 80% of this movie.  He goes to confront Piccolo and threatens to defeat him and Oozaru, but Piccolo calmly explains that Goku is Oozaru.  Or rather, he’ll become Oozaru when the eclipse happens.

This is really the closest Piccolo gets to any meaningful characterization.  He doesn’t develop his personality, and we learn nothing about him or his connection to Oozaru or Goku, but at least he gets to talk to another character besides Mai. 

So the eclipse happens and Goku transforms into... a slightly taller, hairier ape-man.  Why the hell did Piccolo need this to happen?  He explains that Goku was sent to Earth in a meteor to hid among humanity until his 18th birthday, when Piccolo would be ready to use him again.  So how long has Piccolo been planning all of this?  Again, we never learn how he got out of the seal from before, so we don’t know how long he’s been loose, or what arrangements he’s been making.  But apparently he had a space baby sent to Earth in preparation for this day. 

Also, what is the connection between Goku and the Oozaru from 2000 years ago?  The movie seems to imply that they’re the same character, but how does that work? They keep saying Goku’s 18, so is he the second Oozaru?  What happened to the first one?

I mean, you have this mysterious figure baked into the lore of this movie, directly connected with Goku, but separated by a vast gulf of time.  It’s almost like...

No. 

No. 

No, we’re not doing this. 

So anyway... Roshi tries the Mafuba and gets his ass kicked, and then Oozaru goes to choke Roshi out, but Roshi somehow gets through to Goku, who then... wills himself back to normal?  Piccolo can’t believe it, and Goku just repeats the line from the start of the movie, when Gohan told him “there are no rules”.  So I guess there’s no point in asking how Goku’s clothes were restored to normal, then.

So they fight, and it looks like crap, and Goku says some nonsense about how he has to be Goku and Oozaru and believe in himself, and I guess that was what had been holding him back.  All this time, he couldn’t properly focus his ki because he didn’t know his true nature, but now he understands what he is so he can do it?  Anyway he shoots a Kamehameha, and it’s dumb as hell.  The poses are all wrong, and then he leaps forward while he shoots it, like he wants to punch Piccolo as he shoots him. 

I mean, how did they manage to fuck up the Kamehameha?  They made it the climax of this movie, and it’s like no one involved in this production had ever seen the movie before.  Either that, or they studied the anime intensively, only to brainstorm ways to “improve” it. 

So Piccolo’s defeated, and Roshi’s dead.  Bulma says she wishes that it didn’t end this way, and Goku’s like “Oh yeah, that Dragon who grants wishes.” 

So they summon Shenron at the temple and holy shit this is bad.  This was the best dragon they could come up with?

So Roshi’s alive again, and Bulma says they have to re-collect the Dragon Balls, but Goku has one more piece of business to take care of.  He goes back to Toisan to meet Chi-Chi and apologize for beating her up before, and she says she let him hit her, so they decide they need to fight to see who’s really better at fighting, as this is the only way their relationship can move forward.  And that’s kind of cute, I guess, but it reminds me too much of the ending of Rocky III.  Also, “The Magic Begins” had a similar ending, but with Yamcha instead of Chi-Chi. 

And then there’s a mid-credits scene where some lady is nursing someone back to health and the guy rolls over and it’s Piccolo.  This was really stupid because they dragged out this reveal like it was some sort of shock.  Meanwhile, everyone knew Piccolo would survive, since he would have been needed in a sequel.  Also, they show him still in one-piece after Goku defeated him, so it’s not like this is a huge twist or anything.  

But, of course, there would be no sequel, so this was the last we saw of DBE Piccolo. 

This movie was a real garbage heap of a film, but there was one positive development that came from it.  Akira Toriyama really didn’t like how this movie turned out, and this probably had a lot to do with him getting involved with the production of Battle of Gods around 2012.  And that movie turned out to be a big success, in part because of Toriyama’s efforts, and this led to the Dragon Ball rennaissance we’re in today.  Dragon Ball Super has been a mixed bag in my opinion, but the movies have been great, and even the worst of Super is still miles ahead of “Dragon Ball: Evolution.”

And... yeah, that’s all I got.  So ends the Gaijin Live-Action Trilogy.  I’ll leave you with the highlight of the series: Puar smoking a cigarette.