#dr lychee

So this version starts out with the Saiyan-Tuffle War.  Dr. Lychee is busy putting the final touches on his Hatchiyack weapon, but the Saiyans break in and attack him.  Fortunately for him, he manages to push the big red button right before he falls off the ladder and dies.

As Hatchiyack activates, we see purple smoke billowing up from the corpses of the Tuffle soldiers, and from Lychee as well. 

The spaceship containing Hatchiyack launches into space.  The Saiyans try to shoot it down, but they miss.  I’m curious if they had any idea what was on board.  They may have just thought it was a bunch of Tuffles trying to flee the planet.

Flash forward to the present, and Lychee looks like this now, and he’s ready to begin his revenge plot. Okay, so right off the bat, this is a huge improvement over the original, which wasted a lot of time explaining who Lychee was and what he wanted revenge for.   There were at least three scenes in the original that went over this, and the 2010 version cuts the crap by putting it all in the prologue.

And right after the title screen, we see the Dark Planet appearing in Earth orbit, spewing purple fumes into the atmosphere.  Again, this is a huge help to the story, because in the ‘93 version, the Dark Planet was “at the edge of the universe” or whatever, so Goku had to schlep all the way out there to fight the final battle.  In Plan ‘10, the Dark Planet comes to Goku, so it’s a much quicker process.

Here’s a cool callback to that lady with the baby carriage in Dragon Ball Episode 43.

I think her kid should be a lot older than the one we see here, but maybe Sunglasses Lady had more than one baby, and this is the youngest one.

But the flowers they’re watering start to wilt, and then soon the whole city is afflicted by toxic fumes.  And this is a big, big W for Toei.  My major gripe with the ‘93 version was that they kept talking about the Destron Gas like it’s a major threat to all life on earth, but no one ever got sick from it.  We just saw a bunch of dead trees and Goku couldn’t shoot hand energy, and that was it.  I’m pleased to see Toei took the time to look at the original and address mistakes.  It would have been much easier to just slap a fresh coat of paint on the original, but I’m grateful they went the extra mile.

Then Goku teleports into Bulma’s house with Gohan, where Piccolo, Trunks, and Vegeta are already there.  They know something’s wrong, but they don’t know what, so Bulma turns on the TV and shows them a news report about toxic gas being pumped out of devices sent from a “mysterious dark planet”.  One of the devices is in West City, but there’s several more around the world too. 

And Bulma explains that the toxic fumes are “Destron Gas”, so she already knows what it is and how deadly it can be.  She notes that Goku and Piccolo have some resistance to its effects, and presumably that goes for the other Saiyans as well.   Apparently, you’re safe if you stay indoors, but she projects that all life on Earth will end in 70 days if something isn’t done about it. 

And this is perfect!  The ‘93 version wasted a lot of time dispensing this same information, and it used multiple characters to do it.  Mr. Popo knew one thing, and Dende knew another thing, and King Kai had some more details, and Bulma didn’t seem to know much of anything about it, but they put her in the story anyway.  This time, Bulma has all the information at her fingertips, and all of the characters are there to hear it the first time, instead of showing up later and explaining how they knew what’s going on.  Also, Dr. Brief isn’t zoning out over at the desk, so Bulma gets to use the desk this time!

The good guys wonder who could be responsible for this, and Vegeta speaks up to say that this is the sort of weapon the Tuffles were known for using.  This is my one critique of the 2010 version, because Vegeta really skips over the Tuffle lore laid down by the ‘93 version.  He doesn’t bother to justify he Saiyan’s extermination of the Tuffles, nor does he give the other details King Kai offers in the ‘93 version.  But it’s enough to keep this story moving, and that’s what counts.

So we’re just trucking right along.  The gang heads out to the Destron generator that’s in West City, and Vegeta tries to destroy it, but to know avail.  Then Frieza, Turles, Lord Slug, and Cooler show up, just like they did in the ‘93 version, and they fight.  The important difference is that we skipped the part where Goku’s team destroyed those other four generators in different parts of the world.  It doesn’t matter, since they can’t destroy this one.

Here’s the modernized shot of Trunks killing Frieza, which looks pretty sweet.

One touch I liked is how the dead villains look like they’re turning into the same Destron Gas being pumped out of the machine.  In the original, they turned into colorful wisps of foam, but this is much more consistent.  The implication is that they’re made out of Destron Gas, or they’re at least being generated by the machines somehow.  Each time a good guy kills a bad guy in this fight, there’s a quick cut to the machine pumping out gas, and then back to a bad guy reassembling himself.  It gives some much-needed context as to how these Ghost Warriors work and what it takes to defeat them.

Also, we get new footage of the Z-Figthers succumbing to the effects of the Destron Gas. As in the original, their powers weaken, but in this version it makes a lot more sense, because they don’t get weaker until after they’ve been fighting in close range to the Destron generator. So they’re taking in a bigger dose of the bad stuff, which means Frieza and the others were just rope-a-doping them the whole time.

The bad guys go for the kill, when suddenly Bulma swoops in and carpet bombs the area with Hoi Poi Capsules full of a neutralizing agent she invented to counter the effects of the Destron Gas.  Cool!

She even manages to get some capsules to fall into the generator, which disables the damn thing.   How did she penetrate the force field when Vegeta couldn’t?  Because she’s Bulma, that’s how.

Then she’s like “Go kick Frieza’s ass!” and they do.  See this is awesome, because in  the original version, this whole battle made no sense.  Bulma didn’t show up with an antidote.  They just kept fighting until King Kai told Goku that the bad guys were ghosts, and then they just started winning for no reason.  But this way is much better, because there’s a legitimate reason why the bad guys had the upper hand (they were powered by the machine, which the good guys couldn’t destroy) and then there was a legitimate reason why the good guys could overcome the problem (Bulma disabled the machine that was making he good guys weak and the bad guys strong). 

Then Goku checks in with King Kai, who suggests that the mastermind of the plot must be hiding somewhere.  West City is safe for the moment, but until Goku defeats that guy, the world is still in danger.

On the Dark Planet, Lychee watches the spirits of Frieza, Turles, Slug, and Cooler return to these weird egg things he has all over the place, and he says that they’ve nearly absorbed enough hatred to complete the birth of his “ultimate warrior”.

Then immediately Goku and the others arrive at his doorstep, which is great, since it saves us the hassle of watching them make the trip.  They already know where the Dark Planet is, and it’s not far, so why waste time?  Lychee explains that he’s the top Tuffle scientist, who lives on as a ghost through the power of his “Grudge Amplification Device, Hatchiyack.”

Things pretty much play out as they did in the ‘93 version, but a little quicker.  Lychee doesn’t care if his plot destroys the Earth as long as he can kill as the Saiyans, and while he was hoping the Destron Gas would finish them off, he’s happy to destroy them personally. 

As the good guys try to get through his force field, a bunch of stuff happens with Hatchiyack in the background, but I don’t know what.

Goku takes down the force field, and Vegeta takes out Lychee, just like in ‘93, but then we get this horrible off-model shot of the good guys.  Just wretched.

And then Hatchiyack absorbs Lychee’s Grudge Energy and transforms into a big red monster.    He starts whoopin’ ass and things mostly play out like they did in the ‘93 version of the fight.  There are a few changes, though.

First, Piccolo gets hurt early on, but he’s not so badly hurt that he’s taken out of the fight like he was in the original.  Also, the whole bit where he hands out senzu beans to the others is cut.  It didn’t add anything to the story anyway.

Second, there’s more emphasis on Goku discovering Hatchiyack’s weakness, which I think helped me understand it better.  Maybe it’s just because I’ve watched this fight three times, but it helps to have some of the clutter edited out.  Big H uses his finisher, called the “Revenge Cannon”, on Vegeta, then he tries to use it on Gohan, but Piccolo intercepts it.  Hatchiyack takes down Piccolo and tries to use the Revenge Cannon on Gohan again, but Trunks blindsides him with a kick at the last moment. 

That’s when Goku puts it together, because Trunks’ kick does more than distract Hatchiyack.  It actually draws blood, and Goku senses that Big H’s ki dropped to almost nothing in that critical moment.  And Goku deduces that this is because of the power Hatchiyack needed to charge of the Revenge Cannon. 

So Goku goes one-on-one with Hatchiyack, and just goes with the flow, waiting for Hatchiyack to go for the Revenge Cannon.  Once he does, Goku times how long it takes him to fire the thing, and then dodges it. 

And that makes it a weakness he can exploit at will.  From the way Hatchiyack fights, I think it’s almost like he has to use the Revenge Cannon at regular intervals, but maybe he just likes spamming it because it works so well.  But it takes him 15 seconds to deploy it.  If you attack him during those 15 seconds, he has to start over, and if you attack him right before he fires, he’ll be defenseless.

Third, Goku fills in the others on his plan and then keeps fighting Hatchiyack to give them time to prepare a combined attack.  Gohan doesn’t like watching his dad get beaten up, but Piccolo and Trunks tell him to stay put, or he’ll risk wasting this opportunity Goku is giving them.  In the ‘93 version, I think it plays out in kind of the same way, except everyone’s getting senzu beans while Goku fights, so it’s less clear that it’s part of a plan. 

Finally, Hatchiyack goes for his Revenge Cannon, and all five Z-Fighters count to fifteen together, which is important because it shows that they’ve figured things out for themselves, as opposed to just blindly following Goku’s lead. 

The one thing I don’t get is why they all fired from the same direction.  Wouldn’t it have been more effective to flank Hatchiyack and hit him from multiple angles?  Then again, maybe if they had tried that, he wouldn’t have played into their hands.  The advantage here is that he’s already fired his Revenge Cannon, so he’s committed.  His body is defenseless now, so he can’t cancel the attack or dodge.  He has to see this through and hope his Revenge Cannon can out-power the Z-Fighters’ combined finishers.

And it doesn’t work.  So long, Hatchiyack, you big dead bastard.

Around the world, the Destron Gas Generators are destroyed, and the Dark Planet explodes.  The world is safe again.

Goku teleports everyone back to Earth, and Bulma and King Kai congratulate them on a job well done.

Meanwhile, Chi-Chi wants to know why Goku and Gohan got their clothes all banged up.  Uh-oh.  Wait, was that stream always in front of their house?  And where’s Grandpa Gohan’s house?  It’s supposed to be right next to theirs.  Oh well.

So this version clocks in at about 26 minutes, I think, which is less than half the run time of the 1993 version.  It’s a much smoother viewing experience, thanks to a lot of sensible changes that made the story flow better.  The only catch is that you really wouldn’t appreciate these improvements unless you had just watched the ‘93 version like I just did.  As a standalone special, Plan ‘10 is just sort of this minor curiosity.  Hey, it’s Hatchiyack, and now he’s dead.  I think he got like four lines in the whole thing.

Okay, so I went over the details in my liveblog of part 1, but in brief: this thing isn’t a movie or a special of any sort.  It’s a direct-to-video animation which serves as a walkthrough of a video game released in 1993. This is why the first half was so thin on plot.  So far, it’s just been the good guys battling a bunch of identical monsters as they clear various checkpoints on their way to the main goal. 

At the end of Part 1, it was explained that they would need to go out into space to confront Dr. Lychee, and Part 2 opens with a synopsis of Part 1, but the narrator also explains some stuff that didn’t happen in Part 1, like Goku’s team getting a jewel called “Gekinmum” at an island called “Bunbuku”.  They used this jewel to build their spaceship, because, sure, why not?  I’m assuming this Bunbuku Island mission was a stage in the video game but it wasn’t worth depicting in this OAV.  And yet, they still had to mention it, because it’s part of the game, and I guess players would need to know about it?  I guess what I’m trying to say is that the video game connection really bogs things down a lot. 

So now the gang have to go to the Dark Planet, and they get there.  They just sort of fly through space for a while and then Gohan spots it in the window.  Good eye, kid.

Then this happens, and I have no idea what it means.

Ring of Break-Evil?  Pearl of Break-Evil?  I just want to see guys fight.

So there was a space storm on the way to the Dark Planet, but King Kai helped them navigate through it, possibly with the help of the Ring and Pearl of Break-Evil?  This absolutely sucks.  I hope that video game was fun to play, because it’s really dragging this OAV into the ground.

So they finally reach the Dark Planet, and this robot here is guarding it.  I think his name is God Guardon.  There’s four of these in the game, and you have to defeat them all to get to Dr. Lychee.  In this OVA, we only see Goku fight one, and it’s a pretty quick fight.

The gang all reunites in this one room, and everyone is pretty sure Lychee must be there, because it’s the only room they haven’t checked.

Lychee comes out and delivers his usual spiel about his long-awaited vengeance, and how he plans to have revenge to his heart’s content, etc. etc.  Lychee is a Tuffle scientist, and he’s angry about how the Saiyans, led by Vegeta’s father King Vegeta, conquered his home planet.  So he attacked the Earth with Destron Gas, so that the surviving Saiyans would come to the Dark Planet, where he could destroy them personally.

Thirty years later, I’m not sure anyone remembers or cares about the video game, so the only real value of this OVA is the way it builds upon the Tuffle Lore introduced in Dragon Ball Z Episode 20.  Real quick: The Tuffles had an advanced civilization on Planet Plant, and then a band of Saiyan refugees came to them seeking help.  The Tuffles welcomed them to settle on Plant, and they lived in peace for a time, but then the Saiyan population increased, and eventually King Vegeta led the Saiyans into war against the Tuffles, eventually driving them to extinction. 

That’s what Dr. Lychee wants revenge for, and he points out how the Saiyans repaid Tuffle kindness with genocide.  However, Vegeta responds to this by claiming that the Tuffles treated the Saiyans like slaves.  And this is a big deal, because it’s the first time we’ve seen any sort of justification for the Saiyan side of the war.  Lychee calls the Saiyans unforgivable, but Vegeta calls the Tuffles unforgivable right back.

Lychee just brushes off Vegeta’s accusation, so there’s really no way of knowing the truth about the Saiyan-Tuffle War. Did the Tuffles oppress the Saiyans until an uprising became inevitable?  Or did the Saiyans plot against the Tuffles from the start, biding their time until they could make their move to claim the whole planet?  All I know for sure is that Vegeta doesn’t feel even a little sorry for what is dad did to the Tuffles, and Lychee is quite happy to destroy all life on Earth just to wipe out the last remaining Saiyans. 

So we’ve established why Lychee is doing all of this, now it’s time to get into how.  As he explains it, near the end of the Saiyan-Tuffle War, when the Tuffles were on the verge of extermination, Lychee developed a weapon called Hatchiyack, which could “amplify the energy of spite.”  Lychee’s plan was to use the Tuffles’ collective hatred of the Saiyans to power Hatchiyack.  Once fully energized, Hatchiyack would then evolve into a living creature of its own, one with the power to create Ghost Warriors, like the ones Goku fought on Earth.

The problem was that Hatchiyack would need time to absorb the necessary hatred to complete its evolution, and the Saiyans weren’t going to just wait around for that to happen.  There’s some shots of Saiyan-Tuffle combat during this exposition, and I think the idea here is that it’s depicting Lychee’s efforts to protect Hatchiyack and keep the Saiyans away for as long as possible.  He had Hatchiyack loaded onto a spaceship that he tried to use to escape the planet, but the Saiyans killed him before he could launch it.

So the ship took off, and Hatchiyack flew aimlessly through space, presumably absorbing the hatred of Dr. Lychee as he died. Eventually, Hatchiyack reached the Dark Planet, where it evolved further and built the fortress where this scene takes place.  And it created the Ghost Warriors of Frieza, Cooler, Turles, and Lord Slug. 

Goku puts two and two together and concludes that Lychee himself is a Ghost Warrior, and Lychee confirms this.  Okay, so two questions here.

First, how and why would Hatchiyack create Ghost Warriors of Frieza and the movie villains?  I mean, Hatchiyack would have no idea who those people are.  I mean, is the idea here that Hatchiyack was sitting on the Dark Planet for decades, passively absorbing anti-Saiyan hatred from all over the universe?  I mean, that would explain it neatly, I guess, but they never spell that out in the script. 

Second, why does Lychee’s Ghost Warrior form look so weird?  He’s got blue skin, bulbous growths on his head, and really long fingers.  Oh, and one of his eyes is all white and the other is red.  It’s not like the other Ghost Warriors were distorted this way, so why him?

Anyway, Lychee declares victory, and the fight starts.  He has an energy barrier around himself, but the Z-Warriors attack relentlessly to break through it. 

As they fight, Goku points out that while the Saiyans may have done terrible things, Lychee’s hatred is unreasonable, because he’s dragged the Earth into his vendetta.  Also, while no one in the anime points this out, none of the four Saiyans in this room had anything to do with the Tuffle extinction.   Vegeta seems to think it was justified, but the point is he wasn’t even born when it happened.  Neither was Goku or their respective children.  Lychee is only trying to kill them because there are no more Saiyans left to kill.  I suppose there is a certain logic to this.   Lychee’s not just trying to avenge the deaths of his people, he’s trying to avenge their extinction.  For him, the scales won’t be balanced until King Vegeta’s entire species is destroyed, which means killing innocents like Gohan and Trunks.

As for the Earth, Lychee simply doesn’t care what happens to it.  He’ll gladly destroy every living thing on Earth if it means he gets his revenge.  And you know, that makes sense too.  Maybe the living Dr. Lychee might have had second thoughts about involving the Earth this way, but he died a long time ago. All that’s left now is the hatred he felt for the Saiyans, which has been absorbed by Hatchiyack and used to create this Ghost Warrior.  It’s just a shell of the original Lychee, incapable of pity, or fear, or anything but a burning need to eradicate the Saiyans.

This callous attitude fires up the good guys, and they batter away at his force field until at last Goku can break through it with a Kamehameha.  Then Vegeta follows up with a Final Flash to kill Lychee.  Hooray!

King Kai contacts Goku to tell him the last Destron Gas generator on Earth has been disabled, and now the Earth is saved!   Great work, team!  Let’s go to Dairy Queen!

Then we... roll credits?  Wait, something doesn’t seem right.

Yeah, that was just a fake out.  Lychee reassembles himself and reminds the good guys that he’s a Ghost Warrior and he can just keep coming back no matter how many times he’s destroyed.  Except, no, because if that were true then they’d still be fighting Frieza back in West City. 

The idea here is that if you beat the video game in a certain way, killing Lychee gives you the regular ending, but if you do it a different way, you get the “true” ending, which is what we’re seeing depicted here.  Again, if this thing were a movie, it would suck, because so much of the presentation is built around the premise of being a walkthrough of a video game most of the audience wouldn’t be familiar with.

So Vegeta blows up Lychee a second time, and I guess this is supposed to be different somehow?

Lychee turns into a little glowing raindrop and continues to rave about the Saiyans until Vegeta steps on him.

And that seems to awaken something in Hatchiyack.  Pink lightning flashes everywhere and Goku asks King Kai for an explanation.   According to King Kai, Hatchiyack just absorbed the energy of spite from Dr. Lychee, and this exceeded its capacity.

Okay, I call bullshit.  We already established that Hatchiyack absorbed the hatred of Dr. Lychee when he died back on Planet Vegeta.  That’s how Hatchiyack was able to bring him back as a Ghost Warrior in the first place.  So now we’re saying that Hatchiyack can absorb Lychee’s hatred again and get a power boost out of it?   That’s stupid.  That’s really stupid.

Vegeta likes it, though.

Maybe not.

Okay, so we go through this whole elaborate light show, basically a shittier rip-off of Broly’s big transformation sequence in Movie 8, and what we end up with is this big red guy.  This is Hatchiyack in his final form.  And like Super Android 13, he just sort of clobbers all the good guys and nothing works on him. 

Also he’s got this big power move where he crosses his arms and glows and then he makes a big energy blast. 

Goku even says that this guy is about as strong as Broly, just to really drive home the point that we’re just doing the Movie 8 fight again, only less good.   But he’s found a weakness in Hatchiyack’s design.  That goofy super attack of his takes 15 seconds to charge, and... I’m not sure I understand why that helps.  I think the idea is if you attack him at 14 seconds you can get a free hit in, but it doesn’t quite line up with what they do in the cartoon.

There’s a whole bit where Piccolo is beat up, but he gives Gohan a senzu bean first and then tells him to give the other three beans to the rest of the team, which is very selfless of Piccolo, but why did they only bring four beans on this mission?  Oh well.

Anyway, the four Super Saiyans get healed up and then they count to fifteen and fire their best hand lasers at Hatchiyack, which somehow kills him.

Goku teleports them back to Earth before the Dark Planet explodes, and now that last Destron machine is destroyed for real. 

Oh, and Chi-Chi’s still waiting for Goku and Gohan to come in for breakfast.  Uh-oh!

So yeah, this OAV sucks.  All it has going for it is the mystique of being the “lost” movie or OAV, or whatever people want to call it.  The music is blah, the plot is so thin it only has one side, and the bad guy makes no sense at all.  If Hatchiyack could kill everyone with Destron gas, then why didn’t it just do that?  Maybe there’s a moral there about hatred and revenge clouding one’s judgement, but I feel like we already covered that with Dr. Gero and his androids.  Actually, Hatchiyack kind of resembles Cell in that respect, since they’re both ultimate weapons designed to win a war that already ended a long time ago.  The difference is that Cell’s powers make sense.  He’s cloned from other fighters, including Super Saiyans, so it makes sense for him to fight and defeat Super Saiyans.

For that matter, Hatchiyack and Lychee kind of resemble Broly and Paragus, since they had a similar vendetta against King Vegeta, which ultimately boiled down to luring the four surviving Saiyans to a remote planet and then beating them up until the planet exploded.   The difference is that Broly’s powers make sense.  He’s a Super Saiyan, only stronger, so it makes sense for him to fight and defeat Super Saiyans. 

I could appreciate Hatchiyack as just a big burly dude who’s been filled with all of the Tuffle’s collective loathing for Saiyan-kind.  That’s actually pretty cool, but this whole Ghost Warrior bullshit is where it goes off the rails.  Can you destroy a Ghost Warrior or not?  This OAV is the one that asked the question, and it can’t even make up its mind about the answer.  Did Hatichyack invent Destron Gas?  Is that a Tuffle chemical weapon?  If so, how did King Kai and Dende know about it?

There’s just a lot of half-baked nonsense in this thing.  Every so often, you get thrown a bone, like Vegeta posturing about how he wants to be the one to kill Lychee, or Piccolo feeding Gohan a senzu bean, or Trunks doing sword stuff with that chunk of ice, but it’s all hollow.  It just feels like they’re going through the motions to make a formulaic Dragon Ball Z story.  It’s like how the movies are derivative of the TV anime, only worse.  It’s like Movies 6 through 11 are a TV series and this OAV is the movie they made about it.  Movie squared.

Okay, so we open with Dr. Raichi, or Dr. Lychee, depending on how you want to spell it.  He rants and raves about revenge, then summons a bunch of demonic creatures and releases them from his spooky castle to carry out his dark bidding.  Then we cut to Earth, where Gohan’s been gathering firewood for his family.  Seems that all the trees are getting sick and dying, which is great for firewood collecting, but kind of terrible for everything else. As Goku wonders what to do about it, Mr. Popo shows up and tells them exactly what’s causing this.  The new Kami, Dende, has learned that the Earth’s atmosphere is being polluted by a toxic substance called “Destron Gas”.  Trees have already been affected, and even powerful life forms like Goku and Gohan will die in a matter of weeks unless something is done. 

Gohan suggests that they consult with Bulma over at Capsule Corp., but there doesn’t seem to be much she can do about it.  She has no data on Destron Gas, which... I mean, okay, but Dende already knows what it is.  He knew its name and how long it would take to kill everyone.  Why are we not asking him? 

Oh, let’s be honest, they just included this scene because Bulma looks hot in that chair.  Dende may be a good Kami, but he just doesn’t have the gams to pull off a shot like this one. 

Dr. Brief is here too, with his signature black cat. But he’s just sort of zoning out for no reason.  There’s a lot of vacant stares in this video, but this one is the best.

Okay, so they finally ask Mr. Popo what to do, and he explains that there are four generators pumping Destron gas into the atmosphere.  You have to destroy them all and you’ll solve the problem.  One is in “The Grand Apron”, southwest of East City.  The second is near the pyramid in the desert west of North City.  The third is on Poco Poco Island, home of an active volcano that’s been erupting for over a century.  That’s in the Southern Sea.  Finally, the fourth generator is in the Land of Ice in the far north.

Piccolo shows up and offers to join Goku and Gohan on their quest, but then a couple of monsters show up and attack them.  Goku tries to defeat them quickly with a Kamehameha, but it fizzles out in his hands.  The same thing happens when Piccolo tries the Special Beam Cannon, and when Gohan tries the Masenko.  Popo explains that the effects of the Destron Gas are interfering with their ability to concentrate their ki energy, so the gang has to fight it out the old fashioned way. 

Okay, so here’s my beef with the Destron Gas: It doesn’t make any fucking sense.  It’s already killed some life forms, like the trees Gohan found.  But it hasn’t killed every tree, so how does that work?  Also, it seems to interfere with the Z-Fighters’ powers, but only enough to be mildly inconvenient.  Also, why hasn’t the gas affected anyone else?  Bulma seems to be just fine, at least for now.  Shouldn’t she be coughing or something? 

I guess it did take a toll on Dr. Brief, though.  I just assumed his was high, but maybe the Destron Gas has left him catatonic.

So the gang split up, and Goku finds the first generator in the Great Apron. It’s surrounded by rock, which seems dumb, because how can it spew poison gas into the atmosphere when it’s completely sealed off?  Anyway, Goku punches a hole in the wall, and beats up the one (1) monster assigned to guard the thing.  He destroys the generator without any trouble at all.  Shouldn’t he get weaker from standing so close to this thing?  I mean, the Destron levels ought to be much higher here than back in West City?

In the desert, Gohan makes short work of the second generator, thanks in part to Goku having destroyed the first one.  Now, Gohan can use ki blasts again, and this guy guarding the second generator is no match for him.  So that’s two down.

Before we check in on Piccolo, I should point out that each of these scenes is prefaced with an 8-bit overworld map, showing each character traveling to their assignment.  It’s corny and dumb, but I guess they had to include this so players would be able to figure out where to go in the game?  I don’t know, it doesn’t seem that complicated to me.  Then again, I’m watching the walkthrough, so this is like reading an answer key instead of taking the test. 

The point I want to make here is that stuff like this makes it very apparent that this was never supposed to be a movie.  It’s about an hour long, but a lot of the action is repetitive, and the minion characters are just the same two character models with different color schemes, and the plot is nonsensical, even by the standard of old Dragon Ball films.  Why didn’t Dende say anything before these stupid Destron generators were installed?

So the third generator is on Poco Poco Island, and the monster guarding this one actually planned ahead. He planted land mines all over the island, so Piccolo can’t get anywhere near it. 

And that... is really dumb, because Piccolo can fly.  The monster tries to fly after him, except... the monster can’t fly?  Which would be fine, except, why did he not know that?  Like, he jumps after Piccolo, and then he’s shocked to find that he’s slowing down, and then falling back down. 

And he lands right back down on his own land mines, setting them all off.  Wotta maroon.

This shot of the goof has always stuck with me, because he looks so pitiful here, caught in his own trap.  I guess he’s trying to fire an energy blast?  All I know for sure is that it ends up hitting the generator instead, so Piccolo wins this battle without even touching the island.

Astonished, Piccolo compares this guy’s stupidity to that of Mr. Satan, which is kind of weird, because this OAV is set in that weird period with Movies 6, 7, and 8, where Dende is the new Kami, but the Cell Games probably haven’t happened yet.  So should Piccolo even know who Mister Satan is at this point?  Oh well.

So the three of them meet up at the Land of Ice to take out the fourth generator, and this time there’s a bunch of monsters there guarding it.  It’s enough to keep the good guys busy until Trunks and Vegeta show up to help.

Trunks cuts a bunch of them up with what looks like a sword, but it’s actually just a big icicle he must have found on the way here.  The continuity on this thing is all screwy anyway, so I don’t see why they couldn’t just let him have his sword for this spot.  Yeah, 18 broke it during the Androids Saga, but so what?  Just have him get another sword from Menards or something. 

So the fourth generator actually gets destroyed during the fight, so things turn out better than expected.  Vegeta grumbles that he probably didn’t even need to show up for this one.   See, earlier, Trunks tell the others that the monsters attacked Capsule Corp., presumably to stop Bulma from discovering an antidote to the Destron Gas.  So Vegeta and Trunks saved her and that’s how they found out about all this.  But now it’s over.................

.... or it would be, except Dende calls them to inform them about a fifth Destron generator that he must have missed somehow.  This one is back in West City, mounted on Tongari Tower.  Vegeta was right, he should have stayed home and he could have taken care of the next generator while the others headed back.

But, as it turns out, this fifth generator is protected by a force field.  Well, why this one and none of the others?  When they try to break through it, Frieza shows up and tells them it’s no use.  Wait, Frieza?

Here’s a pretty cool shot of Trunks killing Frieza, courtesy of Trunks recalling this moment as he reacts to Frieza appearing before them. 

So yeah, this OVA is yet another entry in the “what if we brought back LOWARD FUHREEZA SAMA?” stories.  At least this one has Future Trunks in it, and I like how Frieza goes after him instead of Goku or Vegeta, since this was the guy who actually killed him.  Also, I like how incredulous Trunks is, since he literally chopped this guy into pieces.   How could Frieza possibly return?  But he didn’t come along, because Frieza has a posse of movie villains. 

For instance, Lord Slug is here, and he echoes Frieza’s call for the eradication of all Saiyans.  He offers to spare Piccolo if he withdraws, but if Piccolo sides with them, then Slug will show no mercy. 

Turles is kind of an odd-duck in this anti-Saiyan squad, but he points out that he was killed by a Saiyan, so his hatred of Saiyans is that much more profound.  Uh, sure, I guess.

And Cooler is here too.  He also hates the Saiyans, because he’s just a retread of Frieza, who hates the Saiyans. 

So they all fight, except for Vegeta, who doesn’t have a dance partner for this.  You’d think they would have brought in Garlic Junior or Super 13 to make it five on five, but oh well.  Back in his evil lair, Dr. Raichi is pleased with how things are going.  The good guys can overpower their foes, but....

Everytime they land a killing blow, their opponents just turn into foam and reform, good as new.  This really starts to frustrate the Z-Fighters until Goku gets a call from King Kai.

All he really says is that they’re “Ghost Warriors”, and that they aren’t truly real, and this seems to be all Goku needs to know.  He shouts this out to the others, like “Guys, I know what they are!   They’re Ghost Warriors”, and Frieza’s team all get scared like “Oh shit, he figured it out!” Then the good guys just fight them exactly the same way they did before, only this time it actually works.  It is incredibly stupid.

I will give some credit to this spot where Piccolo locks up with Slug, then extends his arms, allowing Gohan to slip in and whistle right in Slug’s face, softening him up for a ki blast from Piccolo to finish him off.  That’s a cool double-team, but I’m not sure it was necessary.   Piccolo was handling Slug just fine before.  Apparently he only needed to hear that Slug was a ghost warrior to finish the job. 

Seriously, a lot of this movie is just characters knowing things for no reason, and then telling the heroes whenever it happens to be convenient for the plot.  And you can get away with that in a video game, where the player is mostly just happy to get more game to play, but when you do it in a movie it looks like you’re just padding out your runtime.  And this isn’t a movie, but when I watch it thirty years later, it’s hard for me to think of it as anything else.

And really, this is probably why Funimation hasn’t dubbed this thing yet, and probably never will.  It’s just not very good.  I mean, it’s not offensively terrible or anything, but it’s a very weak production that was never meant to be anything more than an hour-long commercial for a thirty-year-old video game.  If it weren’t for the “lost movie” mystique, this thing would be dismissed like all the Dragon Ball Heroes trailers, or the cutscenes in the Xenoverse games.  If Toei thinks about this OVA at all, they probably don’t want to license it, and I don’t think Funimation is champing at the bit to localize it.  It just sort of dilutes the brand.

Okay, so the ghost warriors are gone, but they still can’t destroy the fifth generator.   Piccolo suggests that Goku just ask King Kai what they should do, and King Kai lays it all out for them.  Again, why didn’t King Kai contact Goku from the start? He must have been following all of this action, so why did he wait around while Dende told Goku to destroy generators when that wouldn’t actually solve anything.

So this is where King Kai reveals the true mastermind behind the Destron Gas, a Tuffle named Dr. Raichi.  I’m just going to go through his entire spiel, since this is key Tuffle Lore. 

“A long time ago, Planet Vegeta was called Planet Plant and it was inhabited by highly scientifically advanced Tsufuru-jins.  One day Saiya-jins arrived on the planet in a wrecked space ship and asked for help from the Tsufuru-jins.  The Tsufuru-jins allowed the Saiya-jins to come down and settle on their planet, and the two races started to live together on the same planet.

“The Saiya-jin warrior race increased its number over the years, and one day, a man was born with an extraordinary brain which was as good as a Tsufuru-jin.   The man, who was later called King Vegeta, led the Saiya-jins to rebel against the Tsufuru-jins.  Ever since then, the planet was renamed Planet Vegeta, and Saiya-jins had become the rulers.”

Now, this part of the video is really the only interesting part, because it delves into the lore of the Tuffle-Saiyan War, which was introduced way back in Episode 20 of Dragon Ball Z.  This time, some details have changed. The planet was originally called Plant before the Saiyans conquered it and named it after their king, and it’s firmly established that the Tuffles were there first, and they allowed Saiyan refugees to settle there. 

One cool detail in all of this is how the flashback is mostly presented in a couple of still images that pan across the screen.  In this one, we start with the Saiyan ship on the planet, and then a group of Tuffles and Saiyans shaking hands and being friendly, but as we go further down, the Saiyans become more numerous, and less friendly-looking, and the Tuffles look pretty queasy about the whole thing.

Then there’s a second one showing Tuffle soldiers looking frightened, and then Saiyans in oozaru mode, which I guess is meant to illustrate the turning point of their war.

One detail that’s clearly been jettisoned is the notion of Tuffles being only half the size of Saiyans.  In this scene, we can see them side by side, of roughly the same height. 

When King Kai finishes his tale, Goku acts like he’s never heard about any of this before, which is weird, because this is all based on the last time King Kai told him this same story.  Vegeta, on the other hand, is unapologetic about the Saiyan conquest of Plant, and he insists that it was the Saiyans’ destiny to reach Plant and wipe out its inhabitants.  

Trunks and Piccolo have nothing to say, but Gohan points out the real issue with all of this.  Okay, so Dr. Raichi might have a legitimate greivance with the Saiyans, but the people of Earth have nothing to do with it, so why is he attacking them with his Destron Gas?

Goku agrees, and resolves to take the fight to Dr. Raichi.  King Kai informs them that he’s supposed to be at the Dark Planet “at the end of the universe”. 

And so the Z-Warriors plan a trip to the Dark Planet, but Raichi already knows they’re coming, and he’s anticipating their arrival.   Ultimately, it seems that the Destron Gas was just a tactic to draw his enemies to him.