Product Description

A seed of the Tree of Might has been planted on Earth by a group of space pirates. Once rooted, the Tree of Might will devour all life energy, leaving the planet a deserted land where no living thing can survive. Goku and his friends try to destroy the tree but find their power is not enough. Suddenly, they are attacked by the evil space pirates, and Gohan is captured by Turles, the evil leader of the group and a Saiyan! Turles powers up by eating a fruit of the tree and challenges Goku. Can Goku save Gohan and the planet Earth from Turles!?

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #27205 in DVD
• Brand: dragonball z
• Released on: 1998-03-17
• Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Animated, Color, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC
• Original language: English, Japanese
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 60 minutes

Customer Reviews

Very Well Done - Strongly Recommended
For those who's never seen a Dragon Ball Z anime, you may want to start with this one. Dragon Ball Z is very unusual in that it contains incredible action sequence, but has a genuinely sweet spirit that the whole family can watch without anyone being bored, offended or otherwise embarrassed. The fighting sequence is simply stunning - only "Matrix" has come close to imitating its visceral portrayal of superhuman combats. Also, in terms of likable heroes, how can you beat Gohan?

A Clinic in Animation
Love, love, love this movie. Blows me away almost every time I see it. Obviously the title of this review refers to its visual superiority, and that's exactly what it has, in almost every facet. It's puzzling why some people allude to this film as having mediocre animation, because frankly, I think it dazzles in that department. It's on par with any other DBZ movie visually, and that includes "The Return of Cooler," which I believe to be the best of the DBZ movies animation-wise. Maybe I just have awful taste in what looks good, or perhaps I just have no grasp on what good, clean, crisp animation looks like. Who knows really? All I know is that my eyes love what they see when I pop this in the DVD player.

The fight scenes are a little sparse and take some time to get to (I happen to like that, but not a lot of people do), but they're more than worth the wait. There's about a 15 second sequence after Turles takes a bite out of a piece of fruit from the Tree of Might that's about one of the sweetest animated action scenes I've ever seen in my life.

Although I love the way it looks, the sound is pretty delightful in its own right. Pioneer does a good job with dubbing. They leave it relatively untouched and close to its original form, and I like the Pioneer voices a lot better than FUNimation's, especially Piccolo's and Vegeta's.

The sound effects are nice and crystal clear, and I happen to prefer the original score for all DBZ films and episodes, though some of it gets repetitive. I don't really take to a lot of the music that some of these western companies have added, though mainly it's because there's just too damn much of it! I love how in the original form of this anime, there are many points of pure silence, accompanied by only wind whirling in the background or the sounds of the inside of a spaceship. Also, FUNimation and Pioneer (mostly FUNimation) just can't seem to appreciate a scene where no one's supposed to be talking. In the Japanese versions, there are many scenes in which they'll be showing the back of someone's head or their eyes or something and they're completely silent, but FUNimation/Pioneer feels it's incumbent upon them to throw in some voice and it ends up sounding really forced and generic. You never know what type of ambiance silence can create until you watch one of these FUNimation produced movies/episodes in which they just bombard you with music and dialogue non-stop.

Anyway, apart from the impressive visuals and good sound, the story's pretty average, but that's expected since none of the DBZ movies are meant to be linear with the actual plot of the series, rather just side projects done for fun and entertainment purposes. This is why I don't judge these by their storylines/plots, mainly just animation, presentation and general badassedness. This movie excels in all three, so buy it!

^_^ ~*OUTSTANDING*~ ...or was it?
For someone who hasn't been into the whole DragonBall thing for too long, I consider this movie pretty great. Since this was a DVD, I had my first chance to see it uncut and in Japanese, which was worth spending the extra $$ just to see it subtitled and raw (and not to mention it includes some Japanese DBZ songs) ~~King Kia's Japanese voice surprised me since i have been watching the watered-down Cartoon Network version for soo long. The movie had a good plot to the story but not much fighting... ~*BUT the (little) profanity and HuMoRoUs nudity make up for it*~ If you want action i wouldn't really recomend getting this, but if you want a somewhat-comedy, this would better suit you or if you're just a so called *newbie* (kinda like me) it would also be a great item to add to your soon-to-grow DB collection.