This week I thought I'd rewatch one of my favourite Dragonball Movies titled The Tree of Might, this was the third movie released during the run of Z in Japan and focused on the arrival of a Saiyan space Pirate who resembles Goku and his group of mercenaries as they want to use the Earth to plant the tree of might in order to produce its fruit which gives a considerable boost in power to the user, thus making them the most feared Pirates in the galaxy, or so they'd hope.
Of course Goku and the rest of the gang would soon put a stop to that and it goes pretty much how you would expect, the gang put up a decent fight, get stomped on, Goku powers up and takes care of the big bad and then they go home, with all being well until the next movie. The plots of these movies remain fairly linear and simple throughout the run of the original thirteen films but I wouldn't say that writes them off as not worth your time.
There certainly those I would suggest staying well away from like the Bio Broly movie, but the likes of the Bojack, Metal Cooler and Janemba movies not only offer interesting villains but also offer up a decent twist on an existing story or something entirely new, Bojack especially rides on the popularity of Gohan defeating Cell and while recycling that story somewhat it does add enough spins on it to keep it fresh.
I would say this film falls in to that sort of bracket where it obviously takes many queues from the First Saga of the show but adds enough to make it well worth a watch, but why would I say this is one of my favourite films in the franchise compared to others?
Now to me this movie was nearing the end of that original series feel presented up until the Saiyan saga, just before characters like Tien, Yamcha and Chiotzu became almost totally irrelevant and I feel like this is one of my favourite of the movies because of these elements. What I mean by this is there was not a focus on powering up to a new form and the enemies seemed like a threat while still remaining just a bit above the protagonists in terms of power, unlike someone like Freiza who was leagues above the protagonists.
It was not so much the Saiyans show featuring other guys as it slowly turned in to as the show went on, there was this focus on other characters more and their efforts to help in the fight against the threats coming to Earth, I've gone on about how I feel about this period a lot but I think it's because I never really appreciated it as much until I saw the original series on UK TV when Z had finished airing.
Turles as a character used to confuse the hell out of me when I was younger and only heard about the movies online, It didn't help that I had this sticker book when I was a kid that gave you a little bit of info on certain characters, I remember there was a family page for Goku and it referenced his two brothers and father. I was so excited at the prospect of another brother who rivalled him at one point but it never happened.
I don't think I was the only one who was confused about this, If I remember correctly a lot of the subs online did refer to Turles as his brother, I'm sure some dubs at the time corroborate this too. It is a little odd that he would look that much like Goku and not be some relation but I guess the answer is a lot of low class warriors from Vegeta look alike. I'd rather that wasn't the explanation however I do like that it supports the idea of Turles being the 'what-if' version of Goku who didn't hit his head as a child.
I felt his group of rag-tag space pirates was pretty neat, although I wasn't sure if the humanoid people were meant to be Saiyans originally or not until a few years after my initial viewing, regardless they were pretty decent being that they gave the rest of the group trouble rather than being easily beaten by everyone they came across. I felt the android looking dude Cacao was fucking bizarre though, but I really liked his design because it's a nice mix between the classic Saiyan battle armour style we're used to but mixed with an organic and chrome looking android. He almost looks more like he belongs in a Saturday morning cartoon as the villain of the week.
So much like most enemies in the show and movies Turles is defeated with the Spirit bomb, which at the time I'm more or less fine with as it was a relativley new technique and this movie takes a lot from the Saiyan saga, but as the movies go on Goku always seems to win with a spirit bomb related move... This can get really tiresome but at least they have moved on from that technique as of late I suppose, there are elements surrounding the use of this move that I did enjoy however.
I liked that everyone didn't just hang back when Goku was gathering energy but they launched an all out assault on Turles even though they knew it was a futile effort. The whole point of the spirit bomb is that it could take a while to gather a huge amount of energy so leaves a huge opening for an attack against the user, most of the time villains won't just hang back and let this happen but something that always annoyed me was that Freiza just stood there for a number of episodes and let this happen. Turles on the other hand goes to attack Goku right away.
Having Goku fail with the spirit bomb first of all was actually interesting and shows he can't rely on it all the time in order to win, but having him then think to use the energy from the tree itself was a good touch, at least it explains how he could get so much energy so quickly right away but then again you could say if he is taking energy from the planet then why wouldn't he have already taken energy from the tree as it was already a part of the planet at that point? I know this is just a movie and the plot is not super important but it I always get a little irked by these sort of things, gotta take Anime seriously right?
The fight scenes in the film were overall some of the best in the movies, rivalled only by the likes of the first Broly movie. While they remain short the way the enemies fight is so much more brutal than anything we had seen at that point, it relied more on actual hand to hand rather than the beam spamming the series is known for. Turles is particularly brutal in the way he smacks people in to the ground and blasts that at such a close range, he also manhandles Gohan pretty fucking regularly throughout the movie, to me Turles is the antithesis of Goku in that he absolutely does not let up and perfectly encapsulates what I think of when I imagine the ruthless Saiyan race.
I think of the early four movies released for Z this is my favourite, the first movie feels like an extension of Dragonball, the second is pretty forgettable and the fourth is almost a total retread of the Demon King Piccolo story but with added movie only power ups like the 'false' Super Saiyan. Perhaps it's because this film focuses more on the early Saiyan saga kind of story line and features a similar group of characters and motives.
I absolutely love the Saiyan saga all round, more so now I have seen the original series because it's that bridge from the original to what Z is more known for, the crazy power levels and constant transformations. The Saiyan saga was the first time in the series that things felt kind of hopeless for the gang, the majority of the team had been killed by Nappa and they still had Vegeta to face after, Goku was no where to be seen and only three fighters remained.
While nobody dies in this film the same group who get killed by Nappa are brutally defeated early in the fight. Goku is around the entire time so it doesn't really convey that same form of hopelessness for the group but I can see that they were attempting to retread that same kind of plot line.
I'm a little unsure if I like the actual plot of the movie, specifically the Tree itself, like I understand why Turles would want to use the fruit to become stronger, because he comes across as someone who has removed himself from the Saiyans and therefore doesn't really care about the pride aspect of his people like perhaps Vegeta would, he is absolutely fine with using artificial means to gain immense strength rather than earning that power outright.
I guess he is even more a mirror of Goku because he is a lower class warrior, he states in the film he has continuously been eating the fruit from the tree after he plants it on multiple planets, so that suggests his gains are only due to that rather than him being strong on his own merit, perhaps he really was as weak as Goku and Raditz were at the start of the show, I think that's pretty interesting.
But I just found the idea of a giant ass tree as kind of dumb, I mean it creates a nice dystopian feel to the Earth visually in the film but it just looked goofy as hell sticking out of the planet like that, I suppose you could go all turbo religion and link it to the forbidden fruit in Eden and how Turles represents the evil surrounding that biblical story but I felt it could have been handled better.
One thing I can't stand about the movies and some of the filler during the latter of the Freiza Saga was Gohans pet fucking dragon, this dumb as fuck puff the magic dragon ass fuck comes swooping in all the time causing a ruckus and getting Gohan into trouble constantly.
I'm glad he gets shot up in one of the later movies, It doesn't help he's included in dumb little dance numbers with Gohan in the Lord Slug movie. Unfortunately he is in the film quite a bit and I feel he offers nothing to it other than something to detract from plot. The one good thing I will say about this Dragon is that I guess it does kind of go back to the way Gohan was with that dinosaur during his training with Piccolo as Gohan is this kind spirit much like his father and will befriend almost anyone or anything, I always thought these training episodes were pretty good.
I thought it was pretty cool that as a bi-product of Turles' ship landing at the beginning near a large wooded area, that it actually set the whole thing a light. It's pretty unusual to have something happen just because an enemy has arrived like this, but I enjoyed Gohan and Krillin using their ki as a means to fight against the flames and put them out, sort of like how Roshi put out the Ox Kings castle fire in the original series.
Don't worry about the forest and all the animals though, they just realise they can use the dragon balls to bring it back to the way it was, which is fine but you'd think if these guys are fighting people all the time they'd wanna save their wish to bring back a whole population or a friend or something right? This wish was totally wasted anyway as the Tree of Might just grew right after and fucked the planet up on a much wider scale than a forest fire ever could.
I can see why GT used the Shadow Dragons as a bi-product of the gang using the balls way too often. While they did use the balls I did like that the opening title screen of the movie showed a montage of them being collected rather than use too much time in that actual film focusing on their collection, so in that respect the pacing of the film was pretty good. The search can be interesting but I think at this point we've seen the journey to collect the balls way too much.
A great point used in the plot this time around was that Goku not destroying most of the planet when he was a child actually benefits the enemy as the seed of the tree needs a suitable host planet with plenty of wooded areas. I feel like that sort of element is usually absent from a lot of things where a positive actually creates a much larger negative for the protagonists, however you could argue the points about the Shadow Dragons creation is pretty much this in GT as I had already mentioned, I'm all for this sort of thing though.
I don't know if it's just me but I always like when a villain asks the enemy to join him/her, it kind of makes me imagine a scenario where the good guy does join them and they fuck up the galaxy together, I guess a lot of the time it's just a desperation tactic where you'll probably end up killed but in the case of Vegeta and Turles when they offer it to Gohan it almost seems genuine as they want to keep the Saiyan race together and keep it strong.
Although the only reason Gohan as a great ape was stopped was because of that dumb dragon, which is somehow an easier way to stop him than his own dad screaming at him, I liked that Goku states the reason he and his son care about the dragon and therefore every living being on Earth is because they're earthlings and not Saiyans, you can tell already that while Goku is still coming to terms with being a Saiyan that he will always identify as an Earthling deep down.
You know as I've gone on I feel like I've listed a lot of negatives about a film I claim is one of my favourites in the franchise, and I still do love this movie and that has not changed but having rewatched it for this review I can see a lot more issues with it than I remember.
That is not to say it is in any way a bad movie and not worth a watch but perhaps like with most of the films you need to know what you're in for while watching it. I think if you're going to rewatch something like the Saiyan Saga then perhaps this film is a nice way to end it all off on as it just feels like a retelling of sorts of that saga anyway, but on it's own merits it is still quite enjoyable.
The fight scenes alone are amazing and way better than some we see much later on in the series, the brutality of it all is exactly what I expect from a warrior race and perfectly encapsulates what I want in a villain, none of this honour bullshit these guys just don't care and will be as ruthless as they need to be to get the job done.
But the main reason I like it I think is because it feels like the last point in Z where the show feels like the original series, I feel like it is a great end point to that era in the show and also nicely sets up the bigger threats to comes like the battle on Namek, Goku remains a man who has discovered his heritage as a member of a warrior race but also remains true to his ethos of being a protector of Earth these are both huge points in the Namek saga that was soon to come.
