Like most other Canadian or American fans my introduction
to Japanese anime and manga was through the Dragon
Ball Z TV series. I remember being mesmerized every time the show was on. I
didn’t have cable as a child and the only time I could watch it was when we
visited my grandma. Lucky for me we visited often. Still, I only caught
episodes sporadically here and there and my friends at school would fill me in
on the episodes I missed. A few years later I got to watch both Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z from start to finish. I loved it. Not just because of
the crazy action and the innumerable types of power-ups. That was all good but
what differentiated Dragon Ball Z
from the rest of the action and brawling anime then and since was the
characters and their zany humour. They’re well designed but they’re also
individualized more than you were used to seeing in anime of that time period.
Looking at a group picture of the main Dragon
Ball Z characters you can easily spot your favourite characters because
they personalities shine through in the way they’re illustrated. It was the
beginning not only of my interest in Akira Toriyama and his body of work but
also of manga and anime. Something that I continue to enjoy to this day though
with a bit less excitement than I had when I initially started to explore
manga.
The story of Battle
of Gods takes place near the very end of the series, somewhere around the
middle of the ten year jump before the final two chapters of the manga. Buu has
been defeated and the Z-Fighters are enjoying their peaceful lives. Many
galaxies away Beerus, the God of Destruction, wakes up after 39 years of sleep.
He set himself an alarm to wake up because of a prophecy he heard that
announced the arrival of a legendary Saiyan warrior. He’s interested in finding
the Super Saiyan God and challenging him to a fight. Accompanied by his aid
Whis, he makes his way to Earth where he thinks he’ll have his best chance of
finding the Super Saiyan God because of the relatively high presence of Saiyans
and half-Saiyans. On Earth both new arrivals crash Bulma’s birthday party.
Eventually Beerus’s temper gets the better of him and the Z-Fighters are once
again Earth’s final line of defence.
I quite liked Battle
of Gods. My summary makes it sound like the plot resembles the plot of many
other Dragon Ball Z stories. It’s
true the series because pretty formulaic. The feel and tone of the movie fits
quite nicely with the tone of the series. The focus isn’t on the action, it’s
on the character interaction. There is an equal amount of time spent showing
the events of the birthday party than there is devoted to the God of
Destruction and his search for the Super Saiyan God. Nearly all the heroes of Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z show up and it’s delightful to see them spending time
together. Emperor Pilaf from Dragon Ball also
makes an appearance. With the aid of Mai and Shou he attempts to steal the
Dragon Balls to become rich. The goofing around that takes place in the story
makes it pretty evident that Akira Toriyama played an active role in the
development of the movie.
Unlike most of the previous 17 Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z
movies, this one fits nicely in the timeline of the show. It’s not an alternate
universe version of characters and stories. It’s set in the same timeline as
the series and deals with the same incarnations of the characters we’ve come to
know and love. To make things better a lot of the voice actors from the show
returned for Battle of Gods. I would
have been happy with another movie that didn’t fit with the show, another movie
that didn’t “matter” but the fact this this one does fit in and feels like it
matters makes it that much more enjoyable to watch. Granted, making a new movie
in this franchise is definitively nostalgic but I don’t mind because it does
something that the last few movies didn’t focus on. It’s refreshing and it
makes it easier to forget the impulse to make yet another movie in this series.
That being said, this isn’t a perfect movie. There are a
number of things I didn’t like and would like to see improved in the 19th Dragon Ball Z movie that is already
rumoured to be in production. The first thing that comes to mind is that the
movie introduces yet another Saiyan transformation form. It’s simply
unnecessary at this point. It’s not nearly as exciting or meaningful as it’s
intended to be. It also seems an odd choice of fighting technique to hinge a
movie on considering how long it’s been since the last movie. I would have been
just as happy to see character perform some of their classic techniques instead
of being ridiculously outclassed and easily defeated.
I also wasn’t a fan of the animation. It was inconsistent
and it didn’t transition well from the more traditional animation to the computer
animation. I like how crisp the animation looks but the computer generated
stuff just sticks out like a sore thumb. It doesn’t belong. Likewise, the
camera angles used in the final battle is a nice touch but it’s too much. In
the movie, characters that have spent years watching high speed battles admit
to not being able to follow the fight between Beerus and Goku, that’s a
problem. If the characters can’t follow the fight how are we, the viewer,
supposed to be able to follow along? The animators’ intentions are obviously to
provide fans with a fantastic battle scene and I appreciate the effort to show
us something we haven’t already seen in the hundreds of Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z
episodes and previous movies but it fails. It’s flashy, unnecessary and
ineffective. I would have preferred a movie made with only a single style of
animation. I’m in support of a sleeker looking Dragon Ball Z but preferably something that also keeps the classic
feel and look of the series.
Even the villain introduced in the films harkens back to
some of Goku’s first adventures. Compared to many of the series’ villains were
actually quite evil while others were simply goofy, yet powerful. Beerus falls
into the latter category. He’s an antagonist, clearly, but I wouldn’t consider
him evil. He’s too much of a buffoon for that and his main interest in the
movie is similar to one of Goku’s own personal interest: he just wants to match
his fighting strength to another extremely powerful being. For someone called
the God of Destruction, destruction doesn’t appear to be on his mind as more
than just an afterthought. He’s still threatening and works well as a villain
because the movie does take the time to establish him as a threat but Beerus
goes around seemingly in an attempt to undo the scriptwriters work and find an
opponent to fight.
The movie is quite enjoyable. Most characters have their
moments to shine. Oddly enough, my disappointment with this movie lies with the
animation and the final battle scenes. You would think that having a new Dragon Ball Z movie would mean a movie
with better animation. That’s only partially true as half the movie is very
good and the other half is terrible. One of the staples of Dragon Ball Z is the battles and the ones in this movie are good
but they’re not nearly as good as I was expecting nor are they as good as what
we’ve seen in the series. The new Super Saiyan form is also unnecessary. Those
problems aren’t enough to make this a bad movie though because the characters’
interactions, including new characters such as Whis and Beerus. It’s goofy fun
and it works because it’s consistent with how we’ve seen the characters before.
More importantly, the fighting and action in the series has plateaued, perhaps
even on more than one occasion. The story formula of the series has been used
to death and it’s nice to see Battle of
Gods play around with that, albeit only a little bit. Dragon Ball Z is a classic and loved anime series not only because
of the action but because of the characters and their odd-ball personalities.
It’s refreshing to see a movie that focuses so much on heroes and villains
goofing off. In many ways it feels like a throwback to Dragon Ball where humour was as much a part as the show as epic
battles in which the universe hangs in the balance.
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