Dragon Ball Z: Bojack Unbound
Another Dragon Ball Z movie, and ninth of the DBZ movies. "Bojack Unbound", otherwise known as "Galaxy at the Brink! The Super Incredible Guy!" in Japan, is... a mixed bag. Like most of the pre-Beerus movie DBZ villains, Bojack has as much personality as a dead battery... yet somehow the movie felt fun in a way that none of the previous non-serial movies felt. Perhaps it's because it's relatively unpredictable and lets Gohan get the center stage, even giving him a pretty believable character arc in the process. Perhaps it's because the movie knows that its main villains are doomed to be unmemorable muscleheads, so it spends the first half of its screentime in a fun little tournament. Perhaps it's the fact that it doesn't take itself too seriously, and uses pre-character-development Mr. Satan, everyone's favourite butt-monkey, as a source of comedic relief.
So the first half (or one-thirds) of this 50-minute movie ends up just having a tournament between the world's strongest warriors thrown about by some rich jackass, while most of Goku's involvement ends up just watching through cable-vision with King Kai. We quickly establish this as having taken place after the Cell games -- Bulma quickly drops in with the explanation that Trunks have returned after killing the androids in his timeline, Goku's dead and Vegeta's depressed because his rival's dead. And it's actually a nice buildup to Gohan's supposed role as the 'protector of Earth' now that Goku's dead... something that the Buu Saga and Super would sadly undo.
But anyway, speaking on that terms, the movie itself is fun. The setting itself apparently uses some sort of weird... hologram roller-coaster thing to justify the wackier and prettier settings that they use for the fight? We did get an actual neat fight between Trunks and Tienshinhan, which is definitely appreciated.
The first half has some neat fun moments like Piccolo being underwhelmed at the poor excuse of the Tenkaichi, some 'haha silly Yamcha' jokes, and Krillin just trying to get along... until suddenly the tournament is hijacked by Bojack's goons, killing a poor sumo dude and Satan's apprentices. King Kai quickly gives us the explanation that Bojack and his crew were essentially space pirates that were sealed by the Kais within King Kai's planet, but the actions that Goku did -- bringing Cell to blow up there -- ends up freeing them from their prison.
It's the sort of backstory that is neatly built into the manga/anime's lore, while not being a glaring weird deal like Cooler was (why does no one mention Cooler's existence before and after?). Sadly Bojack and his crew ends up as extremely uninteresting. Bojack's a huge musclehead that manages to be even more boring than the screaming vengeful menace that Broly had, and his trio of goons fall into the same role that many movie villain goons fall into -- tiny turban-headed Bujin is the creepy one, mohawked burly Bido is the brute, and sexy lady Zangya is the quiet one. The three are essentially interchangeable, with Bujin manipulating magical strings to trip people up and Bujin having an actually pretty cool swordfight with Trunks.
Anyway, Bojack's gang curb-stomp Krillin, Yamcha, Tien and Trunks (!), and go to town on Gohan. Piccolo and Vegeta show up, Trunks gets up, and we get some neat moments of Vegeta regaining his battle senses... but everyone gets beaten up. And then we get an actually distressing moment where Gohan gets choked half to death by Bojack... until Goku instant transmissions from the other world, punches Bojack one time, then gives Gohan a pep-talk... and then Gohan goes Super Saiyan 2, and easily one-shots Bojack's crew.
It's honestly a movie that I perhaps enjoy more than I should -- it's honestly a pretty generic anime movie -- but it's got enough fun and deviates ever so slightly from the common trope of DBZ movies... and I think it does help that this particular movie does feel like a mini two-parter "breather" episode that could've been slotted in-between the Cell and Buu saga the way that Dragon Ball Super likes to slot in two-parters and three-parters between larger arcs, the first of the movies that I legitimately feel like it's inconsequential enough and doesn't feel like a huge walking continuity error. I dunno. I guess I'm just a sucker for good Gohan stories? It's also pretty decently animated, too, and honestly if Bojack has more personality beyond "sneering alien warlord" it would be far more enjoyable.
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