Dragon Ball: Plan to Eradicate the Super Saiyans (OVA Remake, 2010)

This week because I'm still on a major Dragonball hype we take a look at a bit of an oddity within the Dragonball franchise, an OVA originally titled Dragon Ball: Plan to Eradicate the Saiyans which was originally released in 1993, re-released in 94 and then totally remade in 2010. Although each version has slight differences in the way the story is presented the general storyline  remains the same and is quite interesting due to its look at the past of the Saiyans and their planet Vegeta.

The plot begins with a brief history of the Saiyans arriving on the then Planet Plant, originally the home of the Tuffle race, we soon see that the Saiyans began to exterminate the Tuffles, steal their technology such as scouters and eventually conquer their planet. We eventually see that there was a survivor of this attack named Dr Raichi who uses his super computer Hatchiyack to contain the hatred from the Tuffle race. Before he can use the machine however he is weakened from the battle and must escape to the edge of the galaxy, vowing revenge upon the Saiyans.

After many years we see Raichi now in a more alien looking form state his machine is finally ready to extract revenge, he soon locates the last remaining Saiyans on Earth and sends some 'Destron Gas Machines' to the planet which will soon kill the entire human race. With these Gas emitters located across the planet the Z fighters soon find out and begin to destroy them, eventually they reach the final emitter only to find four old enemies waiting for them, Freeza, Cooler, Lord Slug and Turles.

After a short battle they see that each of these enemies is made from the Gas and is therefore immortal, interestingly it is Bulma who rescues them when she creates an agent that stops the gas. The gang now know they have to locate the culprit and because this remake is a shorter version we suddenly see them skip to an unknown planet where Raichi is located.

After making quick work of Raichi we see the super computer taken a physical form and begin to get the upper hand on everyone, with Goku even commenting that he may be much stronger than Broly, after a one sided battle Goku learns that Hatchiyack is left completely open to attack after he uses his Revenge Cannon and with a perfectly timed attack from everyone they finally destroy him and the planet he was on, returning home.

As you can see from that short summary this version of the OVA is rather concise and does tend to rush through the original hour long story but it is still very much worth a watch and has an interesting history behind it which we're going to take a brief look at.

Originally this OVA was released in 1993 on two VHS cassettes as a 'visual guide' to the Famicom game of the same name and served as an animated walk-through of the game. This is pretty interesting as to this day I have never heard an example of an animated walk-through other than this, perhaps it was a way in which to make sure guides would be sold for this game and perhaps many who actually did not own the game still picked up this VHS as it was a fully voice acted and animated feature.

Following this games popularity and the release of Bandai Playdia console the OVA was split in to two separate games, Dragon Ball Z Gaiden: Shin Saiyajin Zetsumetsu Keikaku -Chikyū-Hen and  Uchū-Hen, meaning the earth chapter and space chapter. This was done as the Playdia console was more a home entertainment system for younger children with the majority of its releases being anime themes quiz's with educational value in which the player would press a button and see a FMV play out.

Now I remember a number of years ago there would always be this 'lost movie' of Dragonball and you'd find a 'fan edit' of sorts made up of parts from the Original VHS' and Playdia consoles release of the OVA. From what I can find as there were many options in the Playdia versions of the game resulting in bad endings some people would release a version comprised of the main story and release it for download on sites like Limewire (remember that one!). Because most Western fans were not aware of any Famicom or Playdia game relating to this they assumed it was just another one of the films released for the series but like myself they just had to have it.

If they were anything like myself they would have found a really low quality and poorly subbed version of the OVA, I can remember thinking it was a really cool piece of the franchise because it was so obscure. It's fair to say there was never any reference to this OVA again outside of it's release in the Japanese dragonbox collection in 2003 and a few foot notes in reference material. As it is so obscure there is not much information on how much involvement, if any Toriyama had in the project, I can imagine it was like most of the films in that he may have given some direction on what to do with the Tuffles as he did in the Z series and perhaps some character designs here and there.

The OVA was not really heard of or expanded upon at all after 2003 until the release of the Xbox 360 and Ps3 game Dragon ball: Raging Blast 2 in 2011, I cannot seem to find a concrete reason as to why they decided to reanimate this but regardless I think it was a great way to show not only Japanese fans but fans around the world something new and something they may never have heard of, I feel like the Dragonball universe really has expanded this way a lot recently with Episode of Bardock being released as a Manga and OVA, the new films and Jaco the galactic Patrolman. I honestly don't want it to end, Id love for them to continue this trend.

Interestingly a similar storyline incorporating the last remaining Tuffle storyline is shown in Dragonball GT, much like this OVA we see that the Tuffles created a Machine/Tuffle Hybrid creature named 'Baby' to extract revenge on the Saiyans. Whether or not this saga was inspired by this OVA or just wanted to use the existing Tuffle and Saiyan history is hard to say but we can see clear correlations between the two. Personally I can find some enjoyment in GT because at the start it has the charm and adventure feel of the original series but I did find the Baby Saga overall to be pretty weak other than a few episodes, so I would much rather have this OVA as a representation of a Tuffle based threat to the protagonists, especially as it does not involve the tired formula of Vegeta being turned evil.

What I did enjoy about this was that you can kind of see why Dr Raichi wants to have revenge, his entire planet was taken from him and every member of his race was killed, it's not like he just wanted to kill, to conquer and enslave like Freeza or even because he wants to be the strongest being in the universe, he generally has a motive and reason to attack the Saiyans. While we can argue that the being we see in the film is not actually him but a Ghost warrior representation by Hatchiyack that's gone a little haywire the motive still stands.

I also enjoyed the use of  movie characters such as Slug and Turles who we have never really seen much outside of their respective films, although they turn out to be ghosts it is still nice to see them return, especially in the case of Freeza and Cooler who we have never seen interact at all, although they have been resurrected in some form as seen in the twelth movie and in Freezas case the soon to be release Revival of F. It is also pretty odd to see Freeza working with a Saiyan who looks like Goku, even if it is not really him.

I do believe that this remake is the better version of the OVA to watch not only for its decent animation and because it is much more easily avalible but because it cuts out a lot of the unimportant factors of the original such as the gang splitting up and fighting random looking monsters defending the numerous machines across the world. However the remade version is only thirty minutes long which some people may prefer but I honestly would have liked it to be a bit longer and maybe have the fights last longer but I still enjoy it for what it is.

I actually really enjoyed the designs of the two new villains with Raichi looking quite similar to Dr Myuu and the machine mutants from GT with a more organic mutated humanoid look, his outfit was a little wacky however, I would have liked to see him do more rather than just use a shield constantly thinking that would be alright.

Hatchiyack was a design I really did enjoy because it was rather simplistic instead of giving him horns, a tail and all sorts of other appendages he was just a big dude with a few gem looking parts around him, although I feel like the older version of the OVA coloured him a lot darker which I did prefer to the more pinkish colour we see in this version, overall I thought he looked pretty good. I am aware that in the older version Hatchiyack does have a 'final form' of sorts where he just looks beefier with protruding shoulders and a lot more gems across his body and i'm glad they left that out of this, I felt it looked a little dumb but perhaps if they did include it it would make for a longer OVA overall.

While there is a lot I did enjoy about this OVA there were some things I believe could have been improved, such as the pacing. When we move from act to act rather than showing the characters locating an enemy or making their journey or even discussing where they need to go we just see a brief fade to black and then the next act for example when they realise they need to locate Raichi the next scene is them suddenly there rather than even having something as simple as Goku locating his Ki and teleporting there with everyone, which we know he can do as he does so in order to return home.

I did feel he fights were a little lacking and the main villain only seemed to have the one attack that he would just continue to use over and over, I can't quite remember if he did use more in the older version of the OVA but for this one they really could have improved on him a little in that respect.

Overall I think this is a great little OVA to watch if you have the time, it's not too long but it's also not super important either, I think it's most interesting because of the History behind it rather than the content itself but it does make for a good inclusion of new characters as we've seen from its inclusion with Raging Blast 2. I think this also stands to show how committed Toei have become to the fans worldwide by releasing this to the rest of the world for the first time, it seems they really understand how important this Anime is across the globe and while they may just be capitalising on that popularity at least it means we as the fans can continue to get new content so many years after the show was over.


Thanks for checking this review out, sorry it was a little later than usual.

Next week: I dont even know yet