Dragon Ball Z: Plan to Eradicate the Super Saiyans [2010]
Hoo boy, I think the story of the creation of this particular OVA (not exactly a movie) is far more interesting than the content itself. You see, after finishing watching 2010's "Plan to Eradicate the Super Saiyans", I found out via the ever-helpful Dragon Ball Wiki that it's a remake of a 1993 Japan-exclusive OVA, and the first that Dragon Ball Z ever received. The original OVA is apparently based on a choose-your-adventure Famicom game, "Saiyajin Zetsumetsu Keikaku" that follows more or less the same plot, and the plot and OVA footage are used for two video games for the Playdia console. And apparently the bare-bones plot of this particular OVA is also used as the basis of one of the major arcs of Dragon Ball GT, too.And you'd think something that has been referenced and remade multiple times would be some kind of super-awesome storyline... and like most Dragon Ball Z stories, it's actually starts off with some pretty great concepts. We're introduced to the Tuffle race... which essentially looks more or less like humans. An army of giant Oozaru Saiyans wiped out the Tuffle race in their universal conquest, and one scientist, Dr. Lychee, creates some mysterious machine called Hatchiyack (literally '800' in Japanese, I think). Fast-forward to the present day, and apparently Lychee decides to unleash his plans upon Earth. The backstory is neat enough, and apparently this series of games and OVAs are enough to inspire the creation of Baby, the first proper villain of Dragon Ball GT, who borrows Dr. Lychee's backstory almost verbatim... although Baby actually, y'know, has a personality.
The presence of Future Trunks and Super Saiyan Gohan places this at happening around the Cell Saga, and Goku mentions Broly, so if we're trying to fiddle around with forcing non-canon movies into the canon timeline, there you go.
Lychee's revenge are these machines that are protected by forcefields and spew this Destron Gas (gee, a smoke machine to conquer the world -- it's a plotline that even rips of Lord Slug, one of the weaker DBZ movies), which manifests in four older villains -- Freeza, Cooler, Slug and Turles -- with the latter three being the main antagonists of their own feature films. Despite this, though, just like Fusion Reborn, the OVA doesn't actually do anything with the villains. They exchange some blows, Bulma shows up and drops the 'antidote' into the smoke machine as a complete deus ex machina, then our heroes just blow up the four older villains.
There's some bullshit justification about how they are acting on 'grudges' or whatever, but it's never really elaborated upon, nor is the weird screaming ghosts in orbs as our heroes teleport all the way to some random deserted planet to face off against the... ghost of Dr. Lychee? There is an interesting backstory behind Lychee, I admit, but in execution he's just a yammering generic doomsday villain with a grudge, gets quickly dispatched by Vegeta, and then is replaced by his super-powerful scientific creation, Hatchiyack... which is essentially just Perfect Cell on steroids, without the cool, condescending attitude or any sort of personality really. At least with Broly you get him screaming bloody vengeance all the time -- Hatchiyack is just soulless and boring. Throughout the fight they figure out that Hatchiyack, despite being 'stronger than Broly', drops all his power to charge up an attack for 15 seconds or some shit, and then after Goku, Gohan, Piccolo, Vegeta and Trunks combine their beam attacks, they kill Hatchiyack. Insert a stupid Chi-Chi-is-a-dumb-mom joke and they roll credits.
It's just such a dry, perfunctory movie that's only helped by a pretty neat animation budget thanks to being done relatively recently, but it's easily the worst Dragon Ball Z special or movie that I've ever seen -- there's no story, the villains are boring, and other than the cool bit with Dr. Lychee's backstory in the first 2 minutes, the movie just feels like a sloppily cobbled-together fanfiction. And for something that's been remade multiple times... yeah. Overall, a pretty bland and boring experience.
Nice bringing up that info about where this movie came from, also you're right, this story is more similar to Baby's than I remembered. I still think Bio Broly movie is the worst though, just because it was an insulting (failed) second attempt at fan service.
ReplyDeleteI had to google just what the hell this movie is all about due to how... bizarre it is when it jumps from the backstory to "old villains are back, oh noes!" to the Lychee/Hatchiyack final battle. Part of my lack of enthusiasm with this movie is how utterly bland it is. Not just because of the plotline was done better in GT, but because it's not even a good execution of what they had.
DeleteI just find it utterly bizarre just how much they loved the Tuffle storyline that they brought it back so many times in so many forms, but never really did anything interesting with it other than Baby -- and Baby, I'd argue, was interesting because of the main villain stuff he did and not as a byproduct of the Tuffle backstory.
I haven't watched Broly II or Bio-Broly. I do plan to watch them sometime soon, since I actually do have old DVD's of them, but I couldn't get through the first ten minutes of Broly II due to how mind-numbingly boring it is.