, also known by Toei's own English title ''The Strongest Guy in the World'', is a 1990 Japanese

animated Animation is a method by which still figures are manipulated to appear as moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent celluloid sheets to be photographed and exhibited on film. Today, most anim ...

science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel unive ...

martial arts film Martial arts films are a subgenre of action films that feature numerous martial arts combat between characters. These combats are usually the films' primary appeal and entertainment value, and often are a method of storytelling and character expres ...

and the second feature film in the ''

Dragon Ball Z ''Dragon Ball Z'' is a Japanese anime television series produced by Toei Animation. Part of the ''Dragon Ball'' media franchise, it is the sequel to the 1986 '' Dragon Ball'' anime series and adapts the latter 325 chapters of the original ...

'' franchise. It was originally released in Japan on March 10 between episodes 39 and 40 of ''DBZ'', at the "Toei Manga Matsuri" film festival along with the second ''

Akuma-kun is a manga series written and illustrated by Shigeru Mizuki. Several versions of the manga exist, one of which was adapted into a live-action TV show, and another into an anime television series. In addition, two movies were spawned fro ...

'' film (''Welcome to Devil Land'') and the 1990 film version of ''

Sally the Witch , also known as ''Sunny the Witch'', is one of the popular anime magical girls of what would eventually become a genre in Japan. Due to its characteristics, it may be considered the first shōjo anime as well; while titles such as ''Himit ...

''.

Plot

Gohan is a fictional character in the ''Dragon Ball'' manga series, created by Akira Toriyama. Gohan is introduced as the first son of the protagonist Goku, and his wife Chi-Chi, in chapter #196 "Kakarrot", published in ''Weekly Shōnen Jump'' maga ...

and

Oolong Oolong (, ; (''wūlóngchá'', "dark dragon" tea)) is a traditional semi-oxidized Chinese tea ('' Camellia sinensis)'' produced through a process including withering the plant under strong sun and oxidation before curling and twisting.Zhonggu ...

search for the magical Dragon Balls and their

radar Radar is a detection system that uses radio waves to determine the distance (''ranging''), angle, and radial velocity of objects relative to the site. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, w ...

shows them that the orbs are being gathered by another, unknown party. They investigate near a large wall of ice where

Piccolo The piccolo ( ; Italian for 'small') is a half-size flute and a member of the woodwind family of musical instruments. Sometimes referred to as a "baby flute" the modern piccolo has similar fingerings as the standard transverse flute, but the so ...

is training. Meanwhile, the

mad scientist The mad scientist (also mad doctor or mad professor) is a stock character of a scientist who is perceived as " mad, bad and dangerous to know" or "insane" owing to a combination of unusual or unsettling personality traits and the unabashedly amb ...

Dr. Kochin, having successfully gathered all of the Dragon Balls, summons the eternal dragon Shenron and wishes for Dr. Wheelo and his lab to be released from the ice. The ice breaks away as a building emerges and Gohan and Oolong are attacked by Dr. Kochin's "bio-men". Piccolo saves them but is overcome by three mysterious warriors while Gohan and Oolong escape. Dr. Kochin and his bio-men soon present themselves to

Master Roshi Master Roshi, known in Japan as as well as , is a fictional character from the ''Dragon Ball'' series created by Akira Toriyama. Within the series, he is an elderly martial arts master, born on March 20th, who is the innovator of the technique ...

who refuses to accompany them to Wheelo's lab and defeats the bio-men. Dr. Kochin kidnaps

Bulma is a fictional character featured in the ''Dragon Ball'' franchise, first appearing in the manga series created by Akira Toriyama. She debuted in the first chapter "Bulma and Son Goku", published in ''Weekly Shōnen Jump'' magazine on June 19, 1 ...

to force Master Roshi to pursue them. At Wheelo's lab, Master Roshi is forced to fight three "bio-warriors" but is swiftly defeated. Bulma discovers that Dr. Wheelo's mission is to obtain the body of the strongest warrior on Earth to become the host for his brain, which is currently separated from his deceased body and kept alive by his advanced technology. Bulma informs him that

Goku Son Goku is a fictional character and the main protagonist of the ''Dragon Ball'' manga series created by Akira Toriyama. He is based on Sun Wukong (known as Son Goku in Japan and Monkey King in the West), a main character of the classic Ch ...

will undoubtedly be coming to rescue them and that he is much more powerful than Roshi. Meanwhile, Goku learns of situation and he arrives at Dr. Wheelo's lab and is confronted by Mikokatsun, Kishime, and Ebifurya – Dr. Kochin's three bio-warrior

henchmen A henchman (''vernacular:'' "hencher"), is a loyal employee, supporter, or aide to some powerful figure engaged in nefarious or criminal enterprises. Henchmen are typically relatively unimportant in the organization: minions whose value lies prim ...

. Goku defeats Mikokatsun but is frozen by an ice-like attack launched by Ebifurya. Gohan and

Krillin (known as Kuririn in Funimation's English subtitles and Viz Media's release of the manga, and Kulilin in Japanese merchandise English translations) is a fictional character in the '' Dragon Ball'' manga series created by Akira Toriyama. He is in ...

arrive to help but are no match for Kishime. Goku breaks free from ice with his Kaio-ken technique, defeats the two remaining bio-warriors, and confronts Dr. Wheelo. Piccolo, who has been brainwashed by Dr. Wheelo, attacks Goku. Gohan tries to stop Piccolo but fails, causing his anger to explode, shattering Dr. Wheelo's brainwashing device. Dr. Wheelo is stunned by Gohan's power and desires to steal his body instead. He breaks his

robot A robot is a machine—especially one programmable by a computer—capable of carrying out a complex series of actions automatically. A robot can be guided by an external control device, or the control may be embedded within. Robots may be c ...

body free from the ice wall, subsequently knocking Dr. Kochin down a shaft which kills him. Dr. Wheelo attacks, overwhelms the fighters, and only Goku and Piccolo are left to oppose him. Goku knocks Dr. Wheelo into the atmosphere and begins to form a Spirit Bomb attack. Wheelo interrupts him before he can finish gathering the

energy In physics, energy (from Ancient Greek: ἐνέργεια, ''enérgeia'', “activity”) is the quantitative property that is transferred to a body or to a physical system, recognizable in the performance of work and in the form of heat a ...

for it requiring Goku's allies to distract Wheelo. Goku's successfully launches the bomb and Wheelo is killed.

Cast

A fourth English dub, produced and released exclusively in Malaysia by Speedy Video, features an unknown voice cast.

Music

*OP (Opening Theme): ** " Cha-La Head-Cha-La" *** Lyrics by

Yukinojō Mori , better known by his stage name , is a Japanese lyricist, composer and poet who is affiliated with Amuse, Inc. He has written over 2,000 songs for numerous artists such as Kyosuke Himuro, Takuro Yoshida and Junichi Inagaki and theme songs for ...

*** Music by Chiho Kiyooka *** Arranged by Kenji Yamamoto *** Performed by

Hironobu Kageyama is a Japanese singer and composer prominent in the soundtracks for anime, video game and tokusatsu productions. He is sometimes called Kami (Kei) by his fans. Kageyama got his big break at age 16, as lead singer of the rock band Lazy. By the ea ...

*IN (Insert Song): ** *** Lyrics by *** Music by *** Arranged by Kenji Yamamoto *** Performed by

Masako Nozawa is a Japanese actress, voice actress and narrator. Throughout her life, she has been affiliated with Production Baobab, 81 Produce and self-owned Office Nozawa; she is also affiliated with Aoni Production. Her late husband, Masaaki Tsukada, was ...

*ED (Ending Theme): ** *** Lyrics by

Dai Satō is a Japanese screenwriter and musician. Having begun scriptwriting at a young age and writing scripts for various companies, Satō later focused his attention on writing for anime series. The first major series he worked on was the groundbrea ...

*** Music by *** Arranged by Kenji Yamamoto *** Performed by

English dub soundtracks

The Toonami version replaced "Cha-La Head-Cha-La" and "Ikusa" with Jeremy Sweet's "

Rock the Dragon This list contains known album titles from both Japanese and American releases of anime music from all iterations of the '' Dragon Ball'' franchise. The ''Dragon Ball Z Hit Song Collection'' series and the ''Dragon Ball Z Game Music'' series h ...

" but kept the original Japanese background music, including the insert song "I Lo~ve Mr. Piccolo♡". Home video releases of the Pioneer dub left "Cha-La Head-Cha-La" and "Ikusa" intact. The score for the 2006 English dub's composed by Nathan Johnson. The Double Feature release contains an alternate audio track containing the English dub with original Japanese background music by

Shunsuke Kikuchi was a Japanese composer who was active from the early 1960s until 2017. He specialized in incidental music for media such as television and film. Kikuchi was regarded as one of Japan's most highly demanded film and TV composers, working princi ...

and the original ending theme, "Ikusa".

Box office

At the Japanese box office, the film sold tickets and earned a net distribution rental income of . Overseas in Europe, the film grossed $1,009,767 in Germany, Austria and Poland during 20022003.

Releases

It was released on VHS and

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kin ...

in North America on May 26, 1998, with an English dub, produced by

Pioneer Entertainment (abbreviated as NBCUEJ) is a Japanese music, anime, and home entertainment production and distribution enterprise headquartered in Akasaka, Minato, Tokyo. It is primarily involved in the production and distribution of anime within Japan. The ...

in association with

Funimation Crunchyroll, LLC, previously known as Funimation from 1994 to 2022, is an American entertainment company owned by Japanese conglomerate Sony as a joint venture between Sony Pictures and Sony Music Entertainment Japan's Aniplex that specializes ...

. Pioneer's dub used the original

Ocean Productions Ocean Productions, Inc., is a Canadian media production and voice acting company based in Vancouver, British Columbia, that is part of the Ocean Group of businesses. Ocean Group is involved in intellectual property acquisition and development, ...

voice cast of the TV series. Since then, Funimation was released the Ocean dub of the film on the ''Rock the Dragon Edition'' DVD set on August 13, 2013, it has 53 edited episodes of the TV series, plus two edited films of '' Dead Zone'' and '' The Tree of Might'' as they aired on Toonami. Once their sub-license expired, Funimation also released the film to

in "Ultimate Uncut Edition" on November 14, 2006 as part of a film set subtitled "First Strike", also containing '' Dead Zone'' (1989) and '' The Tree of Might'' (1990), with completely new dub done by Funimation's voice cast. It was later released in Double Feature set along with ''Dead Zone'' (1989) for

Blu-ray The Blu-ray Disc (BD), often known simply as Blu-ray, is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 2005 and released on June 20, 2006 worldwide. It is designed to supersede the DVD format, and capable of sto ...

and DVD on May 27, 2008, both feature full

1080p 1080p (1920×1080 progressively displayed pixels; also known as Full HD or FHD, and BT.709) is a set of HDTV high-definition video modes characterized by 1,920 pixels displayed across the screen horizontally and 1,080 pixels down the screen vert ...

format in HD

remaster Remaster refers to changing the quality of the sound or of the image, or both, of previously created recordings, either audiophonic, cinematic, or videographic. The terms digital remastering and digitally remastered are also used. Mastering A ...

ed 16:9 aspect ratio and an enhanced 5.1 surround mix. The film was re-released to DVD in remastered thinpak collection on November 1, 2011, containing the first 5 ''Dragon Ball Z'' films.

Reception

Other companies

A fourth English version released exclusively in

Malaysia Malaysia ( ; ) is a country in Southeast Asia. The federation, federal constitutional monarchy consists of States and federal territories of Malaysia, thirteen states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two r ...

by Speedy Video features an unknown cast. Outside of the United States, there have been two other English dubs of this film: one in Malaysia and one by

AB Groupe Mediawan Thematics (formerly known as AB Groupe) is a French business group in the field of broadcasting. It was founded in 1977 by Jean-Luc Azoulay and Claude Berda as a music production company, and in 1987 went into the world of television. ...

in France. The Malaysian English dub was released to

VCD Video CD (abbreviated as VCD, and also known as Compact Disc Digital Video) is a home video format and the first format for distributing films on standard optical discs. The format was widely adopted in Southeast Asia, Central Asia and the ...

in Malaysia, while AB Groupe's English dub aired on TV in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and Ireland, as well as seeing a home release to VHS and DVD in some of the formerly mentioned countries. Both dubs use Toei's official English title rather than Funimation's title, and until recently, the voice cast of the AB Groupe dub version was unknown, but then it has been determined that they used voice actors who were involved in French TV shows like ''

Code Lyoko ''Code Lyoko'' () is a French animated series, animated television series created by Thomas Romain and Tania Palumbo and produced by Antefilms Production (season 1) and MoonScoop Group (seasons 2-4) for France 3 and Canal J, with the participatio ...

'', while the Malaysian dub's cast remains unknown.

References

External links

Official anime website
of

Toei Animation () is a Japanese animation studio primarily controlled by its namesake Toei Company. It has produced numerous series, including ''Sally the Witch,'' ''GeGeGe no Kitarō,'' ''Mazinger Z'', ''Galaxy Express 999'', ''Cutie Honey'', ''Dr. Slump'', ' ...

* * {{Toei Animation films 1990s 1990 films 1990 anime films Worlds Strongest Films directed by Daisuke Nishio Funimation Geneon USA Films about genetic engineering Toei Animation films Films scored by Shunsuke Kikuchi Japanese animated fantasy films Japanese fantasy adventure films