Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods

[Ecks]

So, DBZ is back and this time with a movie made by Akira Toriyama that is actually canon with the series (unlike, nearly all the other 13 movies).

No. 1) This is awesome. From what clips I have seen of the movie itself it's exceptionally high quality. It launched March 30th in Japan on IMAX theaters and earned a cool $7 Million USD in Japan alone (on it's opening weekend) placing it at No. 5 on the weekends top world wide box office earnings for said 1st weekend.

No. 2) There will always be a soft spot in my heart for DBZ. The first series I ever truly got into and in my opinion is single-handedly responsible (well, along with Funimation) for the success of anime being widely accepted into the western market. Also I love Akira Toriyama's art style, Chrono Trigger being my favorite rpg of all time.

No. 3) Due to the success and, hopefully, continued success of this movie Akira Toriyama might even continue the Dragon Ball Z series with more canon movies and a new series. Everywhere I've checked people are totally psyched about the possibilities and have been saying that Toriyama will make a new series if this movie is successful, and so far I'd say it definitely is.

I want to see this movie so bad. I actually do own every DBZ movie from Lord Slug to Wrath of the Dragon, and have like 1 or 2 of the first 3 on vhs somewhere...

I actually have a whole box of VHS tapes of the whole DBZ series from The android saga to the end of DBZ. (why vhs? Because when I was younger VHS was just plain cheaper)

In this movie, a god of destruction named Bills comes to earth after being intrigued about the possibility that a sayian might be able to become a 'Super Sayian God' and knows that Goku is the strongest sayian and most likely will be the one to become, if he does become, a Super Sayian God. Which, by the way, is a new super-powerful, super rare form of the sayians. I haven't even seen official pictures or video of it yet even though the movie's been out for several days in Japan.

I can't wait to watch a subtitled version. I probably could find a site that allowed for DLing of it, but at this stage those sites could be virus hubs just waiting to lure in DBZ fans.

I am excited about a new DBZ series. Hell, I'm excited that Akira Toriyama is back in the anime biz.

 

[Elemmire]

Umm, Bardock: Father of Goku is officially canon At least I recall Akira Toriyama saying it was.

 

[Ecks]

"Bardock: The Father of Goku" while it is a movie, yeah, was officially called a 'Feature' so it's actually not one of the official movie releases. It falls more in line with the canon feature "History of Trunks" where it goes into the 'Future Trunks's' background story. Those are canon but not official movies. Every actual movie; Tree of Might, World's Strongest, The Dead Zone, Lord Slug, Cooler's Revenge, The Return of Cooler, Super Android 13, Broly - The Legendary Super Saiyan, Bojack Unbound, Broly- The second Coming, Bio-Broly, Fusion Reborn, Wrath of The Dragon, are official movie releases and are all not canon. Dead Zone .....might be considered canon due to the fact that they did come back to it in the filler saga before the Cell Saga. Not 100% sure on that one. Though most are considered not canon with the series.

However, this new movie "Battle of Gods" is 100% canon with the DBZ series. DBGT does not, and will not, ever count as canon. So, as awesome as some of the small parts might be GT doesn't count for jack, as far as continuity is concerned.

 

[Elemmire]

DBGT was the best one though! :O

 

[Ecks]

Trolls. x_x

 

[Elemmire]

Honestly, I think DB > DB Kai > DBZ > DB GT if I were to rank the anime

 

[Ecks]

I'd sort of agree. Dragon Ball was a really neat show and was fun, introduced us all to characters that persist throughout the entirety of all animes. Obviously some took a back seat due to the fact that as the shows progressed there was less emphasis on actually learning new techniques and more emphasis on powering up to new heights.

DBZ is my favorite. Kai was fun to revisit, but there was absolutely nothing new there so it's hard to honestly compare it to a series. I mean, all it is is a remastered Dragon Ball Z with all the powering up for 10 episodes fat trimmed off. In some respects, scenes that I greatly enjoyed were diminished because of that. Not everything from the fights/combat was shown. Which I thought really sucked a lot out of the Goku/Frieza fight, in a bad way.

GT.. well, it was a good idea with poor execution. Some parts were brilliant and quite awesome. Vegeta with a stash getting down played by his own daughter, great. Trunks being pretty useless and Pan (also useless) taking up most of the show, not so great. It was interesting seeing 17 come back, it wasn't so great what they did with him. Baby had a good concept going, but was a fairly ridiculous bad guy. Dragon Balls emitting negative energy and creating baddie dragon, actually a cool idea I thought. Having some of the Dragons being completely dumb, not as cool. The overall animation felt like they took a step backwards to me. I'm just glad Akira Toriyama didn't actually have anything to do with that. His fail underlings though... oye. I guess it goes to show you can copy the style but not the brilliance.

 

[asiamise]

This makes me happy. I too had a box of VHS DBZ taped off JP TV with commercials and all. We used to rent them from a JP video store in Arlington Heights ILL. I've since gotten the entire run in mp4 format with dual audio, but the original openings are gone replaced with that Americanized generic studio rock version. Cha La Head Cha La and No Ten P Ken missing sucks but whatever I guess.