Movie Review: Dragon Ball Z - Resurrection F

Dragon Ball Z - Resurrection F

A while back I reviewed Battle of Gods, the first of the two canonical, Akira-Toriyama-penned sequels to Dragon Ball Z. I watched Resurrection F directly after that, but ended up not writing up a review to it. Time will tell if I ever start with Dragon Ball Super, because of how I've ended up letting my JJBA reviews kind of fall on the wayside, but hey, we'll see. 

The general consensus of Resurrection F is that it's... okay. Which is more or less what my sentiments about it is, really. That's why anime-movies as a medium to tell an ongoing story doesn't really work that well, something that the Naruto pre-Boruto movies showed -- it's all invariably just generic 'oh, another in a line of Otsusuki clan members wreak havoc, the good guys beat them!' Thankfully they caught this problem after F, and decided to make it an anime series instead. 

So F takes place after Battle of Gods, and features the return of Dragon Ball Z's uncontested most iconic villain, Frieza, when the remnants of his troops run around to Earth to use the Dragon Balls and bring Frieza back to life. Frieza then decides to boast that since his big Achilles' Heel was that he had been so sure that he's numero uno in the universe, he's going to train now to try and surpass the likes of Goku. Small problem? Goku and Vegeta are also training with Whis at Beerus's plane. Also, y'know, motherfucking Beerus exists. The climax loses a lot of its tension when Beerus and Whis literally show up halfway through to make food jokes and makes it clear that Frieza, in his golden form, is pants-shittingly scared of Beerus and only plot contrivance makes Beerus more concerned with strawberry cakes and not pimp-slapping Frieza. And even then, the likes of Gotenks and Majin Buu don't show up either despite them being a candidate to match Frieza's power levels. It would be something if Frieza turns out to be able to Worf Effect and one-shot them no problem or whatever (like what Beerus did to Buu in the last movie) but their absence here in an alien invasion just felt strange. Krillin even tells Android 18 to stay back at one point -- why, exactly?

This leads to a relatively weak and repetitive fight between the Super Saiyan Blue forms of Vegeta and Goku -- and while I'm a big Vegeta fan and seeing him get equal billing to Goku in this movie, poor Frieza himself never felt like the threat that he used to be. Frieza's afraid of Beerus, Whis is even stronger than Beerus, and both Goku and Vegeta actually have time to take turns to beat Frieza up. Sure, the Earth gets blown up, but Whis literally reverses time immediately. It's a bit odd, really, when the main part of the movie has me going 'okay, can Frieza even put up a decent fight against Goku, let alone Goku and Vegeta?' instead of 'oh my god how do they win against this new foe?' Like, honestly, I'm not sure why the characters are worried when in theory Gohan should be able to take on non-golden Frieza no problem, lack of training notwithstanding.

There's a lot of cool things in the movie, though. The creepiness of Frieza being brought back to life, with an amazing rock star theme song, and him immediately reverting to form and blasting his minions? That's awesomely done. The big early battle royale action sequence of Piccolo, Krillin, Master Roshi, Gohan and Tenshinhan against Frieza's army is amazingly done and a wonder to behold. Master fuckin' Roshi gets in on the action! However, it quickly ends, and we're just left with a sequence that's just 'wait for Goku and Vegeta to show up' and that's easily the weakest part of the movie -- the Goku/Vegeta/Frieza fight may be generic but it's at least a cool action sequence... albeit not one that's particularly innovative.

Oh, and there's this random space cop that's from Akira's other work. He's... okay. A bit in the movie too much for my tastes, but I didn't mind him that much.

I enjoyed it enough as a brief action anime movie, and the animation is gorgeous (though it ended up being a bit spotty around the time Frieza went Golden, but the first half is pretty enough I'm not complaining) but it certainly leaves a fair bit to be desired, especially compared to its predecessor.