Movie Review: Dragon Ball Z - The World's Strongest

Dragon Ball Z: The World's Strongest [1990]

The second movie for Dragon Ball Z, "The World's Strongest" still feels like a fun little transitional phase between Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z, which is a neat bit. It doesn't try to use the super-duper-serious-business tone that the Frieza arc has (and many of the subsequent movies try to ape with varying degrees of success) but it's definitely a fair bit more serious than the idyllic fun that is the original Dragon Ball. Honestly, for a movie that I didn't look forward to watch at all, with a villain that never gets mentioned by anyone... this is perhaps one of the more enjoyable ones. 

The opening is perhaps somewhat iffy, with Oolong (what is it with Oolong getting relatively big roles in these movies?) bringing Gohan to the Antarctic to hunt down the dragon balls for panty wishes, only to witness a crotchety old man, Dr. Kochin, summoning Shenron to blast apart a bunch of 'unmeltable' ice, revealing a laboratory. They are attacked by Discount Saibamen an army of Biomen, and because this is Gohan at his absolute weakest, he fails to amount to jack shit. Piccolo comes to save them, but a trio of more powerful  minions pop up (the Bio-warriors Kishime, Misokatsun and Ebifurya) and beat up Piccolo, Gohan is sworn to secrecy by Oolong. 

Which is a pretty neat cold open, although it does lead to the rather bland sequence of Gohan just listlessly looking into the distance, guilt-wracked with leaving the still-nominally-villainous Piccolo behind. While I could've done without the silly musical-hallucination sequence, it is actually a neat,  subtle character arc for the little crybaby Gohan to actually make a decision to go and save Piccolo on his own.

While all this is going on, the Biomen show up at Kame House, battle Roshi (in a very rare case of Roshi badassery in DBZ material!) and kidnap Bulma and Roshi. The title of 'the World's Strongest' is appropriate because Dr. Kochin and his master, Dr. Wheelo (sometimes romanized as 'Willow') decides that Roshi is the World's Strongest Man, and we get the revelation that Wheelo is the brain of a psychotic scientist, trapped in a jar, and wants the world's strongest body to put himself in. Wheelo's big game plan is to make an army of Biowarriors with the captured Piccolo and other warriors, while putting himself into Roshi's body, out of revenge for the scientific community rejecting his ideas.

While you can definitely draw similarities between Wheelo and Dr. Gero from the Android arcs, there are enough differences and uniqueness to Wheelo (and besides, this movie debuted years before the Android Saga) that honestly the movie feels pretty fresh. The body-snatching plotline is also neat, and I am honestly a big fan of Goku's run through Wheelo's lair of traps. It's done with a neat balance of epic animation and comedy, making it neither feel like filler nor nonsense. Sure, the Biowarriors look like rejects from the Freeza Force army, but they have enough wacky powers between them -- elasticity, electric whips, freeze breaths -- to make the fights entertaining. 

Wheelo decides to use Goku for his body, while relegating Roshi to become another Biowarrior subject... and he sics a brain-controlled Piccolo on Gohan and Goku. Krillin shows up too, only to get whacked around. He actually get to do something this time around, though, being in charge of rescuing people. Dr. Kochin actually gets to fight, too, with a very smooth animation of his arm transforming into a gatling gun. 

Wheelo then reveals that he actually has a body of sorts -- a gigantic robotic body to house his brain, and as he breaks out of the wall, he actually crushes the facility and accidentally kills Kochin in an insanely metal and brutal disintegration. We get some really cool scenes with Goku's power pole, we get some neat Kaioken blasts, Gohan's rage angriness and the triple kamehameha from Roshi and his students are pretty cool. Sure, the ending is a pretty basic Spirit Bomb and a quick "yay we saved the day", but it's still honestly pretty entertaining for such a basic premise of beating a villain of the week. Wheelo is threatening enough with a combination of his army and brainwashing Piccolo, but not too overhyped that the third-act Spirit Bomb victory doesn't feel shoehorned in (looking at you, Broly and Cooler). Add some really neat subtle character moments for Roshi, Gohan and Piccolo, which deals with little character problems, and it's honestly far more entertaining than I thought it would be for a "fight a mad scientist brain" movie. 

Overall, while somewhat impossible to fit into canon (both Goku and Piccolo are alive, but Gohan clearly remembers the Saiyan saga when Piccolo took an attack meant from him) it's still a nice enough romp. And I believe that's all but one of the Dragon Ball Z movies other than Bio-Broly, which is apparently the absolute worst of the bunch, if the internet is accurate? Maybe I'll do a ranking of them all somewhere down the line. Regardless, while perhaps not the best movie out there, it's still a nicely neat little game.