Movie Review: Dragon Ball Z - Dead Zone

Dragon Ball Z: Dead Zone [1989]

The very first Dragon Ball Z feature is actually perhaps one of my favourite ones so far. Perhaps it feels more like a Dragon Ball movie as opposed to a DBZ movie (which tend to just focus on action and power levels to the exclusion of nothing else) and perhaps I'm just really a sucker for this style of animation, Dragon Ball Z: Dead Zone (or "Dragon Ball Z: Return My Gohan!" in Japanese) is honestly a really neat story that would really work very well as an in-between mini-chapter that takes place a couple of months before Dragon Ball Z begun. 

The plotline of the movie is simple -- Gohan gets kidnapped by bad guys, and Goku's attempt to rescue his son leads to fights against powerful beings trying to fuck up the world. And, of course, once you get past the fact that the main villain's name is (hee hee) Garlic Junior, the backstory they gave him is actually fascinating, being a neat blend of the original Piccolo and the second Piccolo without actually feeling too much like ripping the entire plotline wholesale like Lord Slug or Cooler felt like. 

So you see, Garlic Junior is the son of Garlic, a Namekian (or kami-in-training, because I don't think they actually use the term 'Namekian' in this movie at all) who was disgraced and banished because he doesn't have the right moral backbone to become a kami the way that our Kami does. He then gathers the dragon balls (his henchmen bring Gohan along instead of just stealing his hat because reasons) and wishes for eternal life... and I think is the only character other than the very recent Zamasu to wish for immortality instead of the "restore my youth" deal that most Dragon Ball villains tend to do.

Garlic Junior has a trio of minions -- Ginger, Nicky and Sansho -- and while design wise they're pretty generic Dragon Ball style "demon" minions, they do give us some really neat fighting scenes. Between Piccolo (who is still in full "former villain!" mode here) brutally taking down Sansho and leaving him bleeding, hanging from a ceiling, to the pretty sweet sword-vs-nyoibo battle that took place around 25 minutes into the movie... yeah, the goons do give us some neat little fighting scenes. Add that to the very scenic and fantastical images of Garlic Junior's demonic fortress rising up from the clouds and you get a pretty stylish, fantastical and gorgeous aesthetic overall compared to that of the more sci-fi oriented one we have nowadays. 

One of the biggest visual treats is how gloriously massive Shenron is thanks to the locale, undulating in and out of the sea of clouds, and leading to a very stylish watercolour-deal animation of Garlic Junior describing how under his immortality all the 'demons' will rise up and wreak havoc. 

We also have a neat buildup to the latent power within Gohan, which was the focus of both the Freea and Cell arcs (and sadly fucked over by the Buu saga and early parts of Super). While Gohan's kidnapping was a happy accident, Garlic Jr sees the potential within the kid, which is why they left him alive, since Garlic wants to keep him as an attendant. Gohan's Hulk-rage at the climax of the movie is also pretty important, and Piccolo being around to witness sort of gives him a neat hook to later kidnap-train Gohan at the beginning of the Saiyan arc, doesn't it? And Goku keeping the plotline of the movie secret because Gohan doesn't remember anything is a neat little touch.

Not Pilaf

The best part of this movie is, of course, Kami's involvement. The side-cast that show up are Piccolo and Krillin (who, sadly, doesn't do anything but get bullied around). Back then, of course, Kami was still a pretty big deal. He was, after all, God. And seeing him appear in a flash of golden light and blast Garlic Junior around is actually pretty dang badass in a way that I've never pictured Kami to be. And while, yeah, Goku and Piccolo end up fighting Garlic Junior all by themselves, it's an actual neat bit to show that Kami isn't just going to stay on the lookout when faced with a villain whose origin story is tied closely to Kami's own, with Garlic Senior being Kami's old rival.

There are several weaker parts, of course -- the 'Dead Zone' isn't particularly explained, only that Garlic Junior seals himself with his own technique in an act of hubris of trying to suck everyone else into that. We also have the absolutely unnecessary role of Krillin, who only exists only to be pissed on and to have rocks fall on his head... and Gohan is straight-up drunk for the second and third acts, thanks to eating a magic apple... and... yeah, I'm not sure what they were going with that. Between the Disney-esque acid trip sequence and pissing on Krillin and just drunk-walking around, I'm genuinely not sure what they were trying to go with. 

But still, Garlic Junior is an interesting enough movie villain -- perhaps even being my favourite -- that it's a shame that the movie ended with a far more generic bulked-up form and being sucked into a deus ex machina... and Garlic Junior's reputation ended up being tainted because he actually comes back in the anime for a filler arc that was infamously remembered for being bad. Never actually having seen those parts of the anime, I enjoyed Dead Zone without much prior judgement, even if I did chuckle any time the character shout "GARLIC JUNIOR!" out loud. In a franchise with the silliest English words being used for character names, Garlic Junior takes the cake. His movie's actually pretty decent, though.