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Dragon Ball Z Movie 2: The World’s Strongest

Movie time again. I made it a point to cover each movie in chronological order of when they aired. In this case, “World’s Strongest” (also known as “The Strongest Guy in the World”) premiered on March 10, 1990, as part of that season’s Toei Cartoon Festival. I’ve written about this before, but the short version is that Toei would produce specials and run them in movie theaters during periods when kids were off from school. I think they did three festivals a year. The point is, a viewer in 1990 could watch Bulma run around in her underwear in episode 39, check this movie out a few days later, and then come back to their TV to watch Bulma in her underwear again in episode 40. So that’s kind of what I’m trying to replicate here. It sounds kind of sad and gross when I put it that way, but it’s too late to stop now.

I mentioned this before, but in the manga, Piccolo only has four fingers on each hand, but in the anime, he’s got five, like all the humans do. Once I noticed this, I started to become more aware of times when Piccolo’s pinky finger would be presented in very subtle ways, almost like the animators were trying to be respectful of the four-fingered design. This opening shot is a really good example of this. Piccolo’s pinky finger is the closest one to the viewer, but you still have to squint to find it.

This isn’t much of a direct sequel to “Dead Zone”, or even the Saiyans Saga, which had just wrapped up before this movie premiered. Even so, there’s little nods to what has gone before. Like Movie 1, this one starts with Piccolo training in seclusion by blowing stuff up. Last movie, it was boulders, but this time it’s glaciers, and it turns out these are much harder to blow up. Piccolo even mentions that the ice here is so cold that it’s impossible to melt, and even his own awesome power can’t scratch it.

This reminds me a lot of the filler episode near the end of Dragon Ball, where Goku went to a mountaintop that was supposed to have snow that was so cold that it could turn fire into ice. Goku went there in short-sleeves, gathered up a big snowball of the stuff, and carried it away in his bare hands, and then it melted in the sunlight. But it could turn the exhaust from a rocket into an icicle. Between this and Ghiaccio in Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, I’m really starting to wonder if anyone in the anime industry knows how ice works.

Meanwhile, Oolong and Gohan are in the area, looking for the Dragon Balls. Oolong checked Bulma’s Dragon Radar earlier, and he noticed that some of the Balls were clustering together, which meant that someone else was gathering them to make a wish. According to his flashback scene, he decided to sieze this opportunity to steal the wish for himself, so he contacted Gohan and here we are.

Okay, so let’s talk about the continuity here. As I mentioned when discussing “Dead Zone”, the DBZ movies sort of do their own thing. They’re not retelling storylines from the anime, nor are they exactly side-stories that could fit in between anime episodes. In the anime, Piccolo is dead, and Gohan is en route to Namek to find a way to bring him back to life, because the Earth’s Dragon Balls don’t work. Oolong hasn’t even met Gohan yet, as far as I can tell. Honestly, I’m not sure that Gohan and Oolong ever meet in DBZ, besides this scene.

I tend to think of this movie as being set in an alternate world where Gohan and the others managed to wish Piccolo back to life without much difficulty. In the canon, Gohan, Goku, and Piccolo won’t be reunited on Earth until much later on, so this movie just doesn’t fit into that continuity. “World’s Strongest” doesn’t know that, and it’s not pretending that it could know that. It’s just telling a standalone story as best it can.

What you end up with, then, is a movie that sort of ties into the anime, but not exactly, and you run into oddities like Gohan and Oolong teaming up. Oolong says he stole the radar while Bulma wasn’t looking, and we see her and Roshi sunbathing, as if she lives with him on his island. That seems a little off to me, but she did spend a lot of screen-time with him during the Saiyans arc, so I can see where the writers took that for granted. What I don’t really understand is why Oolong decided that Gohan was the only one he could count on to help him with this caper. I think the idea is that he wanted someone strong enough to be there in case things got rough, but naive enough that he wouldn’t try to horn in on Oolong’s wish. But how’d he find Gohan, and how did he avoid Chi-Chi?

Also, there’s a weird quirk with the Dragon Radar, where their mystery guy starts out with four Dragon Balls, an then he has the fifth, sixth, and seventh almost immediately. It is possible to hide a Dragon Ball from Bulma’s tech, so I’m guessing the dude already had three balls in storage before Oolong noticed him collecting the other four. What I don’t get is why Oolong didn’t pick up on this. Oolong’s really lazy, so I’d think that if he saw someone gathering the Dragon Balls all the way up in the arctic, he’d give up immediately, because the wish would be made before he could even get there.

And that’s exactly what happens. While Oolong and Gohan are struggling to get up an ice hill, an old man summons Shenron and wishes to have Dr. Uiro “revived”. I like the way “Uiro” is spelled, but I think I’ll stick to “Wheelo”, since it’s the more phoenitc version Funimation used.

Okay, so this wish seems a bit confused. It sounds like this guy is wishing for Dr. Wheelo to be brought back to life, but we’ll later learn that he’s been alive this whole time, but trapped under a bunch of this impenetrable ice.

So he’s wishing for the ice to be melted, right? Well, that’s what Shenron ends up doing for him, but that’s not really what he asked for, is it? This is one thing I like about Shenron. He’s not a Monkey’s Paw, twisting your wishes into ironic nightmares, or Aladdin’s Genie, trying to find ways to wiggle out of his obligations. Shenron will tell you if he can’t do something, and he always seems to do what the wisher wants, even if it’s not quite spelled out in the text of the wish. Dr. Cochin wants Wheelo to be “revived” in the sense that he wants him exhumed from his icy tomb. He doesn’t want him literally resurrected, and Shenron gets that.

Anyway, Cochin is pleased with the results, and he promises that he and Wheelo are back in business and someone’s going to pay.

And here’s a shot of Wheelo’s ice fortress thing.

And here’s the title card.

From a distance, Gohan and Oolong see all of this going on.

Then a Saibaman shows up to eliminate any witnesses. Gohan runs to save Oolong...

... but the Saibaman has backup, and Piccolo jumps in to save the day.

He even kills one just like he did when the Z-Fighters fought the real Saibamen in the Saiyans Saga. I’m pretty sure Cochin’s monsters have nothing to do with Nappa’s Saibamen, but Toei didn’t seem to mind ripping off the design. Hell, they’re practically gloating about it by doing callbacks like this.

Then some bigger creatures show up, and a strange beam of light enevelops Piccolo and he disappears.

Oolong and Gohan wake up in an ice... uh... hole? I’m not sure how they got down here or why they haven’t frozen to death, but they’re basically safe. Gohan is concerned about Piccolo, but Oolong reminds him that Gohan promised not to tell anyone they were ever here.

Gohan agrees, since he doesn’t want his mom to get mad at him. You know, I really hate it when kids in stories get pressured into keeping secrets, or they know something important and no one wants to believe them. Does Oolong honestly think that no one should know about this sinister-looking fortress in the middle of the Arctic? I don’t know how old he’s supposed to be, but I’ve heard he was nine in his first appearance, which puts him around 21 here. He’s old enough to know better, is my point.

Back at Gohan’s house, his parents discuss his recent behavior. Chi-Chi’s worried about him, but Goku’s attitude is “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” I think this is where Goku’s parenting skills get misconstrued. Chi-Chi works herself into a lather trying to give Gohan the best possible upbringing, and most of her worries are for nothing, because Gohan is growing up just fine. Goku understands that--intuitively, if nothing else-- but his conclusion is that we don’t need to worry about it. People see that attitude an mistake it for complacency or indifference. That’s not true at all. If Gohan was truly being a bad kid, Goku would take action. But he’s not being a bad kid, so he doesn’t need to do anything more than he’s already doing.

I’ve seen this sort of thing before, where if you’re not as worried about a problem as the person next to you, the person next to you thinks you’re part of the problem.

Of course, the flip side of this is that Chi-Chi rarely ever worries about Gohan getting stronger, because she figures he’s already superhumanly strong for his age anyway. And if he ever did need to get stronger, Goku would be on top of that, so it literally is not a problem for her. The difference is that Goku never pushes back much on this. He complains privately to himself or his friends, but for the most part he backs off and lets Chi-Chi have her way. I don’t know if that’s because he figures she knows better, or if he trusts Gohan to decide for himself what he wants to do when he’s older. Again, he’s trying to be flexible for the sake of the family, and I think people misinterpret that flexibility for weakness.

While they talk, Gohan is in his room studying. We can hear his parents, but I’m not sure whether Gohan is supposed to be able to hear them or not.

Then he has this whole nutty daydream, sort of like the one from “Dead Zone”, except he’s not drunk this time.

In the daydream, he casts off his usual clothes and dons the homemade Piccolo suit he debuted in Episode 38. I always liked this moment, like he’s just so happy to put on his li’l fightin’ pants and show everybody.

Then we see him marching around the world with Piccolo. The music playing over this scene is “Piccolo-san Daisuki”, sung by Gohan’s voice actress, Masako Nozawa.

Then he suddenly flashes back to Piccolo sacrificing himself to save Gohan from Nappa. Okay, so this movie definitely acknowledges the Saiyan Saga as a thing that happened recently, although this is really the only time it comes up.

Chi-Chi wakes him up and gives him a snack. She worries about him falling asleep while studying, because she’s always worried about something.

Back at Kame House, Oolong is being punished for breaking the Dragon Radar by being forced to cook dinner. That seems like a weird punishment, since he’s not a very good cook. Also, this once again implies that Bulma lives here all the time, and she can’t get dinner anywhere else. So if Oolong’s already been caught screwing around with the Dragon Radar, why doesn’t he just come clean about what he saw up north?

Outside, a bunch of those Saibamen-knockoffs show up looking for Master Roshi. They tell him that he’s been summoned by Dr. Wheelo, and Roshi’s never heard of him, so he says no. When they won’t take “no” for an answer, he clobbers them all with ease. So they’re not even as strong as real Saibamen.

Then Dr. Cochin reveals himself... well, it’s a pretty small island. He would have had to have been standing there the whole time, but Roshi still acts surprised when he starts talking. Cochin asks Roshi to come with him, and Roshi refuses again...

...Until he sees that the bootleg-Saibamen have captured Bulma, so he really has no choice.

This leaves Oolong all alone, and since he recognizes the off-model Saibamen, he knows where they took Roshi and Bulma. So he finally heads over to Goku’s place to fess up. At first, Goku isn’t worried, since Roshi is “the god of martial arts” an he “even won the Tenkaichi Tournament.” So does this mean Goku finally figured out that Jackie Chun was Master Roshi in disguise? I mean, this movie isn’t canon, so it may not matter, but I’m kind of interested if this is a gaffe or a deliberate thing.

Anyway, Oolong explains where he thinks they’ve gone, and how he knows, and that’s enough to get Goku out of the bath.

I guess Chi-Chi’s only mad at Gohan for fraternizing with Piccolo, which is weird because Gohan wasn’t even trying to find him. He just showed up. Goku doesn’t have much to say about this, because he’s more concerned with rescuing Bulma and Roshi. I’m not sure why Oolong’s story escalates the crisis. The only new information revealed here is that Roshi’s captor used the Dragon Balls recently, but maybe that’s enough.

So Goku’s off to save the day. Gohan wants to go with him, but Chi-Chi ain’t having it. This seems a little strict, but we’ve already seen Gohan wander off to the arctic, so I can understand why Chi-Chi has to be so hard on him.

I mean look at this. Goku just left, and Gohan’s already trying to sneak off. What a little rascal this guy is.

Okay, so this is where the movie starts to get pretty bad. I remember Team Four Star’s KaiserNeko just gushing about how good Movie 2 is, and I remember thinking: “Wow, Movie 2? Really?” I just don’t like it very much, and scenes like this are a big part of the reason why. Bulma and Roshi are trapped in the villains’ lair. It’s this huge, dark grey dome, and inside there’s... absolutely nothing? If the lights are off, why are the characters so well-lit? Did the background artists just call in sick that day?

Here’s Dr. Cochin speaking to Roshi from a giant monitor. It’s a little bit better as backgrounds go, but not much. Everything in this fortress is grey on black on more grey, with maybe some dark blue for highlights. Oh, and guess what Roshi and Bulma are wearing today.

Then Cochin releases three creatures to fight Roshi. Kishime is a green guy who looks more like a henchman from the previous movie. Misokatsun kind of looks like a fatter, yellow Dodoria, and he has a flexible body like Buyon from the Muscle Tower arc. Ebifrya looks like he’d be more at home in Turles’ gang in Movie 3, so I guess that makes him look halfway innovative.

The idea here is to test Roshi’s power by having him fight all three of these guys at once.

And they kick his ass. Roshi started out okay, but once they triple-teamed him, it was all over. This concerns Cochin and Wheelo, since they had been under the impression that Master Roshi was the strongest man in the world. Bulma scoffs at this idea, since Roshi hasn’t been the world’s strongest in a long time.

Bulma finally recognizes Cochin and Wheelo’s names, but she read that both of them were killed fifty years ago, during a “sudden weather shift”, which buried their lab in ice and snow.

Also, this area is called the “Tsurumai-tsuburi Mountains”, but Imma keep it real with you, chief, ain’t nobody got time to spell that. Short version is: They two of them did get buried with their lab, but they didn’t die. Cochin then presents Dr. Wheelo...

And he’s a brain in a life support system.

Now, this is one of my other big gripes with this movie. Wheelo’s nothing more than a friggin’ brain. He’s literally part of the background art. The only animation in scenes like this is the bubbles coming up from the fluid in his jar.

This wouldn’t be such a big deal, except this franchise relies a lot on expressive, charismatic villains with big, over the top reaction shots. Think about all the times we’ve seen King Piccolo or Commander Red or Vegeta flipping out or glaring at someone or smirking when things go their way. Dr. Wheelo can’t do any of that. I mean, that’s the point of Dr. Wheelo. His plan is to transplant his brain into Master Roshi’s body, so of course he has to be a brain in a jar that can’t do anything. But his limitations are exposed very quickly. Basically, it’s up to Dr. Cochin to carry the load and express his emotions for him, except Cochin usually has the same goofy look on his face at all times.

Also, a huge chunk of movie is spent explaining Cochin and Wheelo’s backstory, and yet there’s still a bunch of plot holes that never get addressed. How did Wheelo’s brain get transferred to the jar? Cochin did it, which means Cochin was trapped in the lab with him after it was buried in ice. Okay, but when the movie starts, Cochin was seen outside of the lab, making his wish to Shenron. So if he could escape, why couldn’t he figure out a way to take Wheelo with him?

To be sure, it looks like Wheelo’s life support system is embedded in a wall, so maybe there’s ice locking up whatever mechanism would allow Cochin to remove him. Fair enough, except Cochin wished for the ice to be melted, so Wheelo should be as free as a bird. Except Cochin didn’t wish for the ice to be melted. He wanted Wheelo “revived”. He could have simply wished for Wheelo to be given a new body, one stronger than anyone else on the planet. There may be a limit to what Shenron could create for Wheelo, but it’d still be a super strong body, and one limber enough to escape the lab through the same passage Dr. Cochin must have used.

Also, Dr. Wheelo’s brain looks positively enormous. Was he a normal human? I guess he could have been one of those pig-men like Oolong. We really don’t know. Even so, if his big idea is to put his brain in someone else’s body, it sure doesn’t look like it would fit.

I’m not alone on this. When Team Four Star did their Abridged parody of this movie, they played off Cochin as the main villain, with Wheelo as an unwilling participant of his mad schemes. In the end, Goku and the others used Shenron to give him a new body, and the punchline was that he looked utterly ridiculous.

Moving on, Cochin tells Bulma about a woodland near South City that was suddenly turned into a barren desert three days ago.

Turns out that Cochin and Wheelo were the ones who did that. I’m not sure if this was before or after they got their lab thawed out, but it seems to me that if they have a weapon capable of this sort of thing, they could have found some other means to free themselves from the ice. If they even needed freeing, since Cochin could apparently come and go as he pleased.

Wheelo apparently wants to take over the world and remake it in his own image, which is apparently hot pink deserts. I guess if the whole planet looked like this, it would sort of resemble a giant brain, so maybe it makes sense.

Then Wheelo detects a powerful ki. So Wheelo knows how to sense ki? Or does he have a scouter built into his tank? Kind of convenient either way.

Of course, it’s Goku, and Bulma had just explained to them that he’s the strongest person in the world nowadays. So this works out for everyone involved. Goku will either rescue Bulma and Roshi, or he can give up his body to Dr. Wheelo.

I’m confused how Wheelo can sense ki well enough to detect Goku at a distance, but he can’t tell that Goku is far-and-away more powerful than anyone else on Earth. It’s like they didn’t put a lot of thought into this script. This movie wastes a lot of time testing the powers of Roshi and Goku, whereas Raditz was able to figure a lot of this out without actually having to fight everybody.

Back at the house, Gohan has snuck off, and Chi-Chi is all worried about him becoming a delinquent.

Wait, is Gohan flying a plane? By himself?

Yes, that is exactly what he’s doing. I mean, it sort of makes sense, because he’s already been to the arctic earlier in the movie, and I know Oolong can’t fly a plane, but Gohan’s five. What kind of cram school does Chi-Chi have him in, anyway?

So Goku shows up and he’s cold. Those coats they wore in the Super Broly movie? That’s character development right there.

Wheelo sics... that big yellow monster on him, and then a bunch of giant balls with knives on them. Why does he have all this crap to begin with? Did he spend the last fifty years assembling death traps for a secret base no one could even enter?

Misokatsun gives Goku a little trouble, until Goku uses the Kaio-ken to rip through his elastic body, killing him.

There’s sparky wires inside him, which suggests that he’s a cyborg or something

Then the other two gang up on him. The green one has electric tentacles, while the big pink one has cold power.

They actually seem to beat Goku, until Gohan shows up, followed by Krillin. This feels a bit off to me, because Krillin hadn’t even been in the movie up to this point. I guess the later movies pull the same trick, just sort of dumping character in without really introducing them, but here it seems kind of odd. How did he even know what was going on?

The boys put up a good fight, but then they get overwhelmed...

So Goku resorts to the Kaio-ken to break out of the ice and save them. Why didn’t he just do that in the first place?

He clobbers the other two bio-warriors, or whatever you call ‘em, and the three heroes push further into Wheelo’s fortress. Okay, so here you can actually see some stuff in the background, and it looks like the Endor playset I had as a kid, only with big red globes and laser lights. Why did Wheelo build any of this?

Wheelo observes them on the security cameras, I guess. It’s weird because he seems really pleased when ever Goku beats his traps, but at the same time, he’s rooting for his henchmen to defeat Goku so he can take his body. He even seemed to want Goku killed for this, and I feel like he would need Goku to be captured alive in order to do the transplant.

Also, and this is an important point: Goku’s only winning here because of techniques that he knows. A strong as he is, the bulk of his power depends on ki techniques that he had to learn, like the Kaio-ken and the Kamehameha. If Wheelo puts his brain in Goku’s body, he won’t have access to those powers because he won’t know how to use them.

Goku finds Bulma, probably because she’s the only visible object in this pitch black room, but there’s force field that keeps him from saving her.

Bulma fills them all in on Dr. Wheelo, and Krillin wonders how he can still be alive like this.

So Cochin explains it again, and I don’t really think it’s that complicated. Considering everything else they’ve done in this movie, keeping Wheelo’s brain alive seems self-evident.

Also, they spend a lot of time reminding us of how megalomanical they both are. Cochin seems to worship Wheelo like a god, and he considers any action that furthers his agenda to be just and worthwhile, no matter the cost. Wheelo wants a body, but not just any body, he wants the best one he can get. This is an important aspect of their characters, sure, but I feel like the movie keeps harping on this point needlessly. Of course they’re fanatics. They’re mad scientists, after all.

Maybe that’s the trouble with this movie. Villains like Garlic Junior require more setup, because Garlic Junior is literally some creep we’ve never seen before. Wheelo, on the other hand, is a total cliche. A bad guy saving his brain in a jar has been done in a bunch of movies and comics. A villain who steals other people’s bodies is nothing new, and mad scientists who want to destroy the world are nothing new either. It’s new for the Dragon Ball franchise, though, so maybe Toei thought it needed to be explained more than it did. But I feel like Japanese audiences would have been familiar with all of this stuff too.

Then they catch Goku in what I assume was the same energy beam they used to catch Piccolo. Hey, whatever happened to Piccolo, anyway?

Oh, there he is.

Turns out Piccolo’s been mind-controlled. When Goku breaks free of the force field thing, he has to fight Piccolo. Only, that’s kind of a mismatch at this point. The Saiyans Saga definitely happened in this movie’s continuity, and Goku was much, much stronger than Piccolo by the time it ended. This is even demonstrated by how Goku overcomes the same traps that Piccolo couldn’t.

Maybe Goku’s holding back because he considers Piccolo a friend, but it seems like he ought to be able to knock him out a lot more easily than this.

Gohan tries to reason with Piccolo, but he just fires an energy blast at him, so Goku has to deflect it with his own. Cochin gloats that even the mighty King Piccolo has become another obedient servant of Dr. Wheelo’s.

That pisses Gohan off, and he starts to tap into the hidden rage power we’ve seen him use in the past.

Dr. Wheelo is... surprised? Happy? Bemused? Greaaaat villain design, guys.

Cochin doesn’t realize what Gohan’s doing, so he taunts the boy, which only makes Gohan madder. Wheelo orders him to stop, but Cochin doesn’t listen, which seems odd, considering how devoted Cochin is to the guy.

He even tells Gohan to go home and suck on his mommy’s teats. Wooooowwwwwwwwwwww.

Then he shoots a big laser out of his cane.

Then the whole room starts to crack and Wheelo’s brain... glows? What the hell is going on here?

Krillin takes away Cochin’s cane and demands that he free Bulma, but instead...

Cochin turns his arm into a gun. Well, okay...

A bunch of the lab falls apart, but this section looks like it’s in good shape. Piccolo’s mind-control crown shatters too, and I don’t know if that’s because of Gohan’s outburst, or Wheelo’s glowing, or maybe it just got damaged while he was fighting Goku. Anyway, Piccolo’s pretty confused.

Then Wheelo laughs and he seems pleased that he’ll finally have a chance to fight. Okay...

Cochin seems pretty upset about this, and as Wheelo does... something... more of the lab breaks apart, and Cochin falls down a hole.

There’s some giant column down here, and it glows bright yellow for some reason...

...and it fries Cochin when he falls too close to it.

This destroys his skin and clothes, revealing a robotic body underneath. So was he always a robot, or did he put his brain in a robot body? This movie makes no friggin’ sense. This is probably the only truly interesting thing about Dr. Cochin, and they kill him off before they can even do anything with it.

Finally Dr. Wheelo reveals that his life support tank is part of a big robot that he can move around in. So why was it embedded in the wall, then? Was he stuck? Did Gohan’s outburst damage the lab enough to release him? Did Wheelo do this himself and he just didn’t need to do it before?

Also, woof. The robot design is pretty good, except it’s color scheme is just black with dark green highlights. It never feels like we get a good look at this thing, because it’s always in shadow.

I mean, here’s a slightly better view, but ugh.

This wouldn’t be so bad, except the backgrounds are just as dark as Wheelo’s robot body, so you can barely see what he’s doing most of the time. This shot is okay, but he’s standing still.

Anyway, he says that if he has Goku’s body, he wouldn’t need this “ugly” one. So is that what this is all about? Does he just want to look handsomer? Because if he thinks Goku is stronger than the body he has right now, then picking a fight with him is a pretty stupid idea.

Piccolo swears to avenge himself, and Wheelo is... angry? Worried? Tired? This guy absolutely sucks.

Roshi, Krillin, and Goku try a triple-Kamehameha on Wheelo, but it doesn’t work. Hey, good luck figuring out what Wheelo is doing in this shot.

Wheelo uses... some part of his body to hit Master Roshi. Have I mentioned what a stupid idea it was to have Roshi wear all black for this movie?

Then Dr. Wheelo does...uhhhhh... Yeah, fuck this. You’re on your own, kids.

Gohan tries some stunt that involves the Nyoibo, and he reveals that he’s had the Nyoibo stowed under his cape the whole time, but he misses.

So Goku picks it up and Piccolo saves Gohan.

Fuck this movie.

Oh, good, Piccolo shot his energy blasts at a piece of asphalt, no wait, that’s Dr. Wheelo.

Ugh...

Finally Goku stops horsing around. I forgot the exact sequence of events, but he used the Nyoibo to trip Wheelo, probably setting him up for Piccolo to bombard him, and now he’s gonna use Kaio-ken Times Three, like he did against Vegeta.

In the Big Green Dub, this sequence was hilariously dubbed with the lines “I WANT THE MAGIC STICK!” followed by “NOW I WANT TOTAL POWERRRRRR!”

This shot of Goku’s foot looks cooler than every frame of Dr. Wheelo in this rassum-frassum movie.

Goku charges heroically at... Is that Dr. Wheelo, or a section of the wall?

At some point he manages to tear off one of Wheelo’s lobster claws, but that’s about the only sign of damage I can pick out.

Then he goes for a Kamehameha to finish the bastard off.

Wheelo counters with his own blast, and for a second he seems to have the upper hand until...

... Goku uses Kaio-ken times four, which jacks up his Kamehameha to the point where it blasts Wheelo into the sky.

Krillin congratulates Goku for beating him, but Goku says it’s still not over. “Don’t you remember the Vegeta fight, Krillin? We’re taking cues from that, remember? He’ll try that fake moon thing next, and you’ll need to get Yajirobe to cut off his tail.”

Wheelo decides to just blow up the whole planet, I guess using the same super-weapon Cochin was talking about earlier. I thought he wanted to rule the world, not blow it up, but maybe he figures it’s not worth it if he can’t beat Goku.

So his big power core thing starts glowing again. Why doesn’t Goku just blow that thing up?

Instead, he starts setting up a Spirit Bomb, because that’s what he did against Vegeta.

Wheelo is... confused, I guess. How does he know what Goku’s doing from the ground?

This is one of the better shots of Wheelo, and he still looks terrible. He’s not even indoors, and Toei still insisted on the murkiest color scheme possible.

One of the artists took pity on me and snuck in this really nice sunset for me. Toei probably fired him for it. “This frame is completely unacceptable! Now the audience knows where the sun is! You’ve sucked all the mystery out of this film!”

Goku tries to first his Spirit Bomb....

But Wheelo shoots at him first. He misses by like, several hundred yards, but this is enough to make Goku hold off anyway.

So Piccolo, Gohan, and Krilln fly up to keep Wheelo busy so Goku can ready his attack. They get a few decent hits in, except Krillin for some reason.

“Oh, crap!” Krillin says, “I’m in the movie ‘The World’s Strongest!’“

Finally Goku has the Spirit Bomb ready to launch. This is kind of a big deal, because we never really got to see the technique executed as intended during the Vegeta battle, because Goku got hurt and had to hand off the power to Krillin. So this movie is notable for showing what might have been.

It deflects Wheelo’s red death laser...

And as it passes by, Gohan and the others can sene the combined energy of all the people in the world. I like that cocky dude in the cowboy hat. He has no idea that Goku borrowed a bit of his energy to beat Wheelo, but he’s still confident that it’ll help kick his ass. Also, the Black lady to the right of him may be the best rendition of a Black person in all of Dragon Ball. I wish it wasn’t so obscure.

I was thinking about how the Red Ribbon Army had an officer named Brown, and we never got to see that character, and I tried to imagine what Brown should look like. I never got very far, but I thought it’d be cool if they had another lady in the RRA, and that lady looks pretty much like what I had in mind. Haven’t settled on a rank or uniform yet. She’s a work in progress.

Anyway, the Spirit Bomb hits Wheelo and he finally dies. “Son Goku!” he shouts. Remember the face Vegeta made when Goku blew him up with the Spirit Bomb? Yeah, Wheelo can’t do that. Good riddance.

For some reason the lab explodes too? Well, at least it’s not all black and grey, so good.

Everyone’s pretty happy about this victory. You’d think they’d all be freezing right now, but no one in the anime industry knows how ice works.

Goku spots Piccolo walking away, and thanks him for his help. Piccolo just says Gohan did a good job, and Gohan’s all “He knows my name!”

The narrator threatens that a new Dr. Wheelo might show up some day, and gosh I really hope not. At least give his robot suit a flashier paintjob.

Roshi gives Wheelo some credit. He did say Roshi was the greatest in the world.

And Bulma’s like, “Yeah, the greatest lecher, amirite?”

Then they all laugh, and it’s a little disconcerting. It wasn’t that funny, guys.

Bulma’s like “No, seriously, Master Roshi belongs in jail.”

And that’s the end. Thank goodness.

I’m sorry if this was your favorite DBZ movie and I was a little too rough on it, but man, I just don’t care for this one. The plot just doesn’t make sense, the final battle shamlessly rips off stuff from the Goku/Vegeta battle, and the main villain is barely visible for most of the action. Wheelo and Cochin don’t add much to the lore of DBZ either. With Garlic Junior, you got a peek into Kami’s backstory, and Turles offered a hint into what other Saiyan survivors might have been up to after Planet Vegeta was destroyed. Wheelo’s just as mad scientist from fifty years ago who got snowed in one day. He has all thes extremely powerful weapons at his disposal, but he blows them all on a mad scheme to beat Goku, specifically because Goku is strong enough to overpower him. It’s one thing for the baddie to underestimate the hero, but Wheelo wants Goku to be stronger, and then he fights him anyway.

Now, to be fair, it’s got a few good things going for it. The idea of a mad scientist giving Goku this much trouble is a good one. At lot of Wheelo’s methods ended up being employed by Dr. Gero a few years later. So if nothing else, Wheelo serves as a good proof-of-concept for the Androids arc.

There’s also something to be said for the villain’s goal being to exploit Goku personally. Usually the bad guys don’t even know about Goku, or they only hate Goku and want him dead. Wheelo sees Goku as raw material for his evil plans. This didn’t get developed much, but it’s a smart idea. I kind of wish Wheelo had put his brain in someone else’s body, just to demonstrate that it was possible. Like, even if he was stuck in Bulma’s body, that’d still be a big improvement over staring at a brain in a jar. Goku could still fight a giant robot, but at least Wheelo would have a face and hands to act with.

I also dig the idea of opening the movie with the bad guy making a wish. Cochin’s wish seems kind of pointless in hindsight, but at the very least, he took the Dragon Balls off the board for the rest of the movie. This way, no one else could make a wish.

This is a pretty action-heavy movie, so if you’re willing to forgive the drawbacks I mentioned earlier, you can at least enjoy all the fights. Personally, I’d prefer one really good long fight over several smaller, less decisive ones, but diff’rent strokes for diff’rent folks.

There’s a lot of really pretty visuals in this movie. They’re sort of ancilliary to the main story, and I’m not sure they’re necessarily better than those found in any of the other movies, but they’re worthy of recognition. I’ll ust post a few down here to close us out with some positivity.

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