is a 1990 Japanese

animated Animation is a filmmaking technique whereby image, still images are manipulated to create Motion picture, moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on cel, transparent celluloid sheets to be photographed and e ...

science fiction Science fiction (often shortened to sci-fi or abbreviated SF) is a genre of speculative fiction that deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts. These concepts may include information technology and robotics, biological manipulations, space ...

martial arts film Martial arts films are a subgenre of action films that feature 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 expression a ...

and the second feature film in the ''

Dragon Ball Z ''Dragon Ball Z'' (''DBZ'') 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'' television series and adapts the latter 325 chapters ...

'' 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 television series, and another into an anime television series. In addition, two movies were s ...

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

Sally the Witch , originally titled , is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Mitsuteru Yokoyama. It was serialized in Shueisha's monthly ''Ribon'' magazine from July 1966 to October 1967. Its 1966 anime adaptation was one of the most popular ...

''. It was preceded by '' Dragon Ball Z: Dead Zone'' and followed by '' Dragon Ball Z: The Tree of Might''.

Plot

Gohan is a fictional character in the Japanese franchise '' Dragon Ball'' created by Akira Toriyama. Gohan is the son of the protagonist Son Goku and his wife Chi-Chi and made his appearance in chapter #196 "Kakarrot", published in ''Weekly Shōnen ...

and

Oolong Oolong or Wulong (, ; ; , "black dragon" tea) is a traditional semi-oxidized Chinese tea (''Camellia sinensis)'' produced through a process that includes withering the leaves under strong sun and allowing some Enzymatic oxidation, oxidation to ...

search for the magical Dragon Balls and their

radar Radar is a system that uses radio waves to determine the distance ('' ranging''), direction ( azimuth and elevation angles), and radial velocity of objects relative to the site. It is a radiodetermination method used to detect and track ...

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

Piccolo The piccolo ( ; ) is a smaller version of the western concert flute and a member of the woodwind family of musical instruments. Sometimes referred to as a "baby flute" or piccolo flute, the modern piccolo has the same type of fingerings as the ...

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 "insanity, insane" owing to a combination of unusual or unsettling personality traits and the unabas ...

Dr. Kochin, having successfully gathered all of the Dragon Balls, summons the eternal dragon Shenron and

wishes A wish is a hope or desire for something. In fiction, wishes can be used as plot devices. In folklore, opportunities for "making a wish" or for wishes to "come true" or "be granted" are themes that are sometimes used. Sociology Several cu ...

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 in the Japanese manga series ''Dragon Ball (manga), Dragon Ball'' and its anime adaptations created by Akira Toriyama. Within the series, he is an elderly martial arts master ...

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

Bulma is a fictional character in the '' Dragon Ball'' franchise, first appearing in the original manga series created by Akira Toriyama. She made her appearance in the first chapter "Bulma and Son Goku", published in ''Weekly Shōnen Jump'' magazine ...

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 Gokū'' in Japan and the Monkey King in the West), a main character of the cl ...

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 is a loyal employee, supporter, or aide to some powerful figure engaged in nefarious or criminal enterprises. Henchmen are typically relatively unimportant in the organisation: minions whose value lies primarily in their unquestioning ...

. 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 Klilyn in Japanese merchandise English translations) is a fictional character in the '' Dragon Ball'' manga series created by Akira Toriyama. He is int ...

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 Computer program, programmable by a computer—capable of carrying out a complex series of actions Automation, automatically. A robot can be guided by an external control device, or the robot control, co ...

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 Energy () is the physical quantity, quantitative physical property, property that is transferred to a physical body, body or to a physical system, recognizable in the performance of Work (thermodynamics), work and in the form of heat and l ...

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

Cast

Although the Ox-King does not appear in this film, the 2008 "remastered" version of the Funimation dub miscredits him as voiced by

Christopher Sabat Christopher Robin Sabat is an American voice actor. Some of his prominent roles in animations and anime include Vegeta, Piccolo, Yamcha, Shenron, and various characters in ''Dragon Ball'', Roronoa Zoro in ''One Piece'', Giroro in ''Sgt. Frog ...

. 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 is a song by Japanese musician and composer Hironobu Kageyama, released as his sixteenth single. It is best known as the first opening theme song of the ''Dragon Ball Z'' anime television series. Columbia released the single on vinyl, cassett ...

" *** 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 2,500 songs for numerous artists such as Kyosuke Himuro, Takuro Yoshida and Junichi Inagaki and theme songs ...

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

Hironobu Kageyama is a Japanese musician, singer and composer. He is best known for his work on anime, video game and ''tokusatsu'' soundtracks. Kageyama first rose to prominence as a teenager in the 1970s as lead singer of the rock band Lazy. Following their br ...

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

Masako Nozawa is a Japanese actress. Beginning work as a child actress at the age of three, by the time she became an adult, voice acting had inadvertently become her main occupation. Throughout her career, Nozawa has been affiliated with Production Baobab ...

*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 groundbreak ...

*** 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. TV series soundtracks ''Dragon Ball: Music Collection'' (1986) is the official soundtrack ...

" 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 that came out 2 years later in 2008 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 A box office or ticket office is a place where tickets are sold to the public for admission to an event. Patrons may perform the transaction at a countertop, through a hole in a wall or window, or at a wicket. By extension, the term is freque ...

income of . Overseas in Europe, the film grossed $1,009,767 in Germany, Austria and Poland during 20022003.

Releases

It was released on

VHS VHS (Video Home System) is a discontinued standard for consumer-level analog video recording on tape cassettes, introduced in 1976 by JVC. It was the dominant home video format throughout the tape media period of the 1980s and 1990s. Ma ...

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 ki ...

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

Pioneer Entertainment Geneon Entertainment (USA) Inc. (abbreviated as Geneon USA) was an American anime, multimedia production and distribution company that was owned by Geneon Entertainment. It was primarily involved in the production and distribution of anime from ...

in association with

Funimation Funimation was an American Video on demand#Subscription models, subscription video on-demand Over-the-top media service, over-the-top Streaming media, streaming service. Launched in 2016, the service was one of the leading distributors of anime ...

. 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 Dead zone may refer to: Science and technology * Dead zone (cell phone), an area where cell phones cannot transmit to a nearby cell site * Dead zone (ecology), low-oxygen areas in the world's oceans * Dead band, the region of insensitivity of a ...

'' 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 ''

'' (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 Blu-ray (Blu-ray Disc or BD) is a digital optical disc data storage format designed to supersede the DVD format. It was invented and developed in 2005 and released worldwide on June 20, 2006, capable of storing several hours of high-defin ...

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 sc ...

format in HD

remaster A remaster is a change in the sound or image quality of previously created forms of media, whether Mastering (audio), audiophonic, Cinematography, cinematic, or Videography, videographic. The resulting product is said to be remastered. The term ...

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.

Other companies

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 television channel business and audiovisual distribution group in the field of broadcasting that is owned by Mediawan. History Mediawan Thematics had its roots under the name of AB P ...

in France. The Malaysian English dub was released to

VCD Video CD (abbreviated as VCD, and also known as Compact Disc Digital Video), (not to be confused with CD Video which is a type of LaserDisc, Laserdisc) is a home video format and the first format for distributing films on standard optical di ...

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'' (; stylized as ''CODE: LYOKO'' in season 1 and in all caps in seasons 2–4) is a French anime-influenced animated series created by Thomas Romain and Tania Palumbo and produced by Antefilms Production (season 1) and MoonScoop ...

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

Notes

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. Slu ...

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