It’s the beginning of Dragon Ball retold for the 3rd time in a movie made for the series’s 10th anniversary during Dragon Ball GT.
Dragon Ball: The Path to Power
It’s the beginning of Dragon Ball retold for the 3rd time in a movie made for the series’s 10th anniversary during Dragon Ball GT.
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Any thoughts about the upcoming new Dragonball series?
Glad it’s taking place after Buu and not GT. I’m glad none of the newer Dragon Ball stuff has really acknowledged that series.
well,the Shadow Dragon were actually an interesting concept.They relied too much on the Dragon Balls in so little time,so they gotta suffer the consequences for this,right?
Besides,I’m okay when GT stuff is used for the games.It’s more content that way.
I like that they’re also pulling stuff from the movies.
yeah, i like a number of ideas they had in GT, like the shadow dragons, but overall GT could have been done much better.
Also, this might be a controversial opinion, but I loved the design for SS4. It maybe just me but I love the idea of Goku looking more monkey like, reminiscent of Sun Wukong. But then again i was pretty much raised on the legend of the Monkey king, so my opinion might be obscured by my love of Journey to the West. Still though, I kinda wished the SS4 wasn’t really associated with GT.
I Love SS4!! That probably one of the thing I like in GT..and the video game content.
well, they could of almost went with the Dragonball AF idea and inserted the SS5 Goku concept. which I thought his design was actually pretty cool. at least it’s better than the super saiyan god concept with the new movie which is just making hair blue. with the white hair and green kilt at least he looked like a god instead of just a pallet swap in which we already have enough of with Mortal Kombat. it’s just as lazy as making Frieza gold because of (insert reasons here because I wont do it for you).
I haven’t watched this review yet and I will in a few hours, once I am past cooking supper, no matter what I will watch this but I just wondered… I’ve never seen any of these Dragon-Ball cartoons before, does that matter?
Thanks.
Technically this was the fourt re-telling of the story, since there is the original manga. Said manga also didn’t have Dr. Flappe, so no continuity error there. Althought you could say, if we get nitpicky, that this video was focusing on the anime version so you get off the hook this time Phelous!
Well I didn’t really count the manga as separate from the anime adaptation of it for simplicity sake. Plus, yeah, this was more about the anime versions.
Oh Ocean Group, your dub of Dragonball Z will live on in the next dimension. Though honestly, I completely forgot that Tien claimed his arm would grow back… but he did show that he could spontaneously grow extra arms in Dragonball, so maybe that’s where they got the idea from.
I never really cared for the non-serial Dragonball movies. I don’t think any of them are objectively bad, but I never really liked the idea of just repeating the events of a previous story arc but with new villains. I will however admit having a soft spot for Fusion Reborn, if only because it’s so darn goofy.
Haha that’s probably giving them too much credit. I wonder if he did that move after his arm was smashed off there if he’d have multiple stumps on that side.
I always loved the stupid “try to soften the blow” lines in early DBZ.
Yeah, DB movies are just so strange.
No mention of Dragon Ball: The Magic Begins??? For shame!!!!!
Honestly of all the Dragon Ball movies I felt like Curse Of The Blood Rubies was the only decent one of them all. It’s close enough to the original story yet deviates enough that I could see it as its own entity. Mystical Adventure and Sleeping Princess In Devil’s castle were just WAY too far out there. At least with the Z movies they seemed like they COULD be plausible even if they didn’t completely match up with the timeline, with the DB movies it’s like they didn’t care about confusing the bejesus out of their audience.
Hey, I mentioned A LOT of damn versions of DragonBall in this. It’s hard to mention EVERYTHING, lol.
Maybe sometime though I’ll talk about Magic Begins some, like if I ever do the Korean one…
Great review there, you should do the other Dragon Ball movie that should not exist, Dragon Ball: Evolution.
I do remember the original DB a bit, like when Goku did his first Kamahama wave and it was vastly smaller but did break a car.
Yamacha, almost Siro the greatest Dragon Ball character, that was the best.
I have actually never seen any Dragonball anything. I suppose I need to do what I did with Fist of the North Star; a marathon. I am not too happy about the lack of head explosions though. Any recommended order? Extras like this film not necessary on the list.
Hearing dubs is usually painful, but I see why people kind of like these. I am a Swede however so subs it is.
I would personally advise you to read the original manga, since that way you don’t get any filler scenes/story arcs or bad voice acting. Then, if you are hungry for more, watch the recent movies (Battle of Gods and Resurrection of F), since those actually had a lot of involment from series creator, Akira Toyriama, and are considered by many to be canon.
Yeah, I’d agree with MikeMan about the filler. If you do want to watch instead of read though, just be ready to skip several filler things. The original DragonBall isn’t as bad for it as Z got though. Stuff like when they’re going to Namek, you can pretty much skip to when they get there after they leave and after Goku is fighting Freiza and goes SSJ you can skip to like near the end of the fight, or else the planet is about to explode in 5 minutes for like 5 episodes, haha.
Kai is suppose to cut out a lot of that but I’ve never actually watched Kai…
Kai cut out the fake-namek episode, the HFIL and spa filler from snake way, the entire garlic jr arc, and when Vegeta and Nappa went to that bug planet to name a few. (kinda sucks that that also included the filler episode with gohan and his dinosaur friend though)
and since Kai is showing on Toonami now a days instead of Nick or the CW4Kids(formally known as KidsWB) we don’t have to worry about weird censorship choices such as Blue Mr. PoPo
Or just watch Dragon Ball Z Abridged.
this was a great review, i thought of watching this movie before but decided to put it off for a while thinking it was just anouther anime movie where they recreate the first season of a show and add/remove a few things. i did love that they made bulma’s hair lavander in this movie to match the original style & trunks’s hair
movies for long running animes are pretty common with not fitting into the time line too well, especially with shonen jump series such as this, one piece, bleach, and even the really good stuff like Yu Yu Hakusho and Hunter X Hunter
also i’d actually argue there’s still a good amount of really good and popular kids shows that don’t talk down to kids or make all guns shoot lazers or anything that was in literally every other 90s cartoon, examples such as nick TMNT, steven universe, etc.
Oh yeah, I don’t mean to say they ALL talk down to kids, it’s just seems there is a lot of focus on pulling that crap these days though.
The Dragonball dub was so watered down that I thought it was 4Kids who did it. Funimation didn’t earn my trust back until they got their hands on Slayers & hired the old voice staff back.
I remember some of the best cartoons with mature or macabre content…Batman TAS, Superman TAS, X-Men, Gargoyles, GI Joe, Carmen Sandiego, Ren & Stimpy, Rocko’s Modern Life, Invader Zim, Addams Family TAS, Beetlejuice TAS…..
also i’m glad i’m not crazy/the only one who remembered when Tien threatened to grow his arm back XD
When do you think you’ll finish mortal kombat conquest?
Another Konquest is coming out after this, it’s on the Patreon right now.
Oh wow, the timing of this couldn’t be better. I’m in the process of rewatching the entire franchise (everything animated, so including GT but not Evolution) and I’ve JUST gotten to this movie. Gonna watch it then watch your review. Looking forward to it!
Nice! Hope you enjoy it!
To date I’ve still never watched through ALL of GT. Just skipped around a lot because I couldn’t stand it. It wasn’t even dubbed back when I saw most of it.
Is it just me or does the theme sound a little bit like Pachelbel’s Canon in D?
Yes, a review involving my favorite anime of all time! Thanks Phelous! Now I feel as strong as a Super Saiyan elephant!
I got out of the Dragonball game a few episodes into GT, but I probably would have hated this anyway. The lack of Mercenary Tao was probably the most fatal error, but not by much. And even if they thought to include Gero as Eighter’s creator, you just know they’d make him fight Goku or something silly like that.
reminder that MEX DUB IS BEST DUB, specially hearing you gringos call picoro picolo, yeah i know opinions and shit but im used to my dub so yours is inferior jk obviously
Phelous,
After several years of admiring your content I have finally decided to register on here to leave this comment. Each time you review something I am familiar with, unlike with many other web critics, I never have to fear you misunderstanding the material. With what must be pains-taking research and care, you give even the crappiest of nostalgic excrement its fair day in court. Demonstrating a true believer’s nerdy dedication, you get the facts right and even surprise me with new revelations for those already very familiar with the subject.
For this reason, I place you above Nostalgia Critic and AVGN. They are great, but they spend too much of their time on drawn-out jokes and skits that take up half of the episode. You do that too to a lesser extent, but spend way less time on it and tie it more closely to the video’s topic. Those guys used to do videos more that way when they were younger.
It was in looking for a Skinned Deep review that I first found you, and yes, I found you on TGWG before Doug. At the time you held a monopoly on video reviews of that particular ‘film’. You really impressed me by verbalizing my own reaction to it. More recently your BZ and toy reviews continue to cover new ground that can’t be found anywhere else.
Thank you so much for all these years of joy and keep it up man!
Thanks a lot! I do try to make myself at least somewhat familiar with material I’m gonna talk about, in Dragon Ball’s case it wasn’t too hard though since I was pretty into that back when the English dub was coming out.
I find it kind of obnoxious if a review constantly harps on something pretty superficial about the material so I try to avoid that.
Like if I’d spent a bunch of time making constipation jokes about the screamy power up or the over played over 9000 thing.
That’s funny you found me through that Skinned Deep review. That movie killed me the 1st time I saw it.
Thanks for leaving a comment and glad you’re still enjoying my stuff!
Thanks for replying 😀
Yeah man, I think you hit the Dragonball review out of the park. It was interesting, funny, and still had class. Yes, thanks for not beating the dead horse of the DBZ memes. Letting a joke overtake the review completely means its more of a plea for attention than a review.
Skinned Deep is so painful… I can believe that you almost died watching it. My then GF (now wife) and I rented it once on a whim and didn’t make it all the way though. In the spectrum of bad-good, it soars into the negative end, way past campy charm and indie shortcomings, and deep into the territory of potential POW torture devices. We endured into the part about her being held prisoner and the money soup… ugh.
I have been wondering though. Do you know anything about the poor guy that had SD branded on him?
The DragonBall jokes I was the most excited about getting to use for this were the cover up for what just happened lines from the Ocean dub. Those were so ridiculous, “Too bad it’s Sunday”.
Nah, I never heard anything else about the SD branded guy, I just remember reading back when I did the review that they’d really done it.
I don’t really like the GT very much honestly (Dr. Slump’s reboot fell flat on me partly because of that), but the fact that they just bothered with pretty much redrawing the same story on a super-condensed manner and not bothering to even make a reference to the inconsistencies, as you said on the video, strikes me as particularly lazy. I didn’t remember much of DB but I felt this movie wasted my time more than telling me the story, so I would honestly recommend someone to watch a couple chapters of the series instead of the movie and they’d get as much fun imo.
I really, REALLY enjoyed Battle of the Gods although Beerus’ design and Goku’s transformation were really meh for me (as well as the mentioned GT aspect), but that and Avo/Kado’s OVA are some of my all time Dragon Ball favourites. For me the series really shines when it goofies it up instead of just showing two dudes straining and shouting at each other for 60 minutes straight *cough*Broly*cough*.
I don’t really like the GT look*
Beerus’ design I liked, but that’s more to do with the Ancient Egyptian vibe of it.
I totally agree about Broly. I never found him interesting. Almost the entirety of his dialog anytime he shows up: Kakarotto! Unless he’s feeling more English dub that day and he might say Kakarot!
Really Broly!? You don’t say?
I consider the first Broly movie a cool concept but it is true that it does not live up to its full potential. This is only made worse by Broly fans who like him for the dumbest reasons. Makes me a little ashamed of being a fan of Dragonball.
My flatmate and I have different opinions on Dragon Ball. I like the comedy bits, he likes the shouting matches; which it’s the typical dichotomy in DBZ I guess.
Not looking up to Resurrection of F. Seems like another shouting movie after the excellent BotG.
I’m not sure if i’m the only one, but I perfer Dragon Ball over Dragon Ball Z, I don’t know.. It has more of a “Adventure” feeling to it then “I’m going to beat up that guy” plot it always end up to.
Okay, what is going on in the world?! I started watching Dragon Ball for the first time in early April. And now a new series has been announced, and this review. How is it every time I get into something, something about it happens. When I got into Turtles the new movie came out (dear god), when I watched a bit of Power rangers they announced the new movie. Why is this happening?! I’m also watching Dragon Ball Z now, and am right stuck in the Cell games saga. Really confusing with all the time travel stuff. Also I’m considering watching GT, and want to hear some more opinions of it. Bear in mind, I’m only considering watching it.
“Uegh! You just wait till it grows back!” So that’s where Toriko got that joke from.
The best Dragonball movie is “Dragon Ball: The Magic Begins” or according to the VHS I have, “Dragon’s Pearl.”
Bulma’s dad must have invented the Pokeball.
Aw, we all know Bulma wouldn’t go to jail for murder or seducing a minor, because she’s rich, & rich people “will not fair well in prison.”
“Dirty fanny” would have received epic lols in the UK, just like the way Aussie’s think my coworker’s name (Randy Bird) is the funniest name for a girl ever.
You have to love how a flirt like Bulma is named after the world’s most modest piece of underwear.
I’m still trying to figure out why they named their Hadouken after a Hawaiian king.
::Stares at Puar smoking puppet:: Oh please tell us you’re reviewing the Korean movie in the future.
::Stares at Ghostbusters’ eyes:: They all look high, evil, or have the worst contact lenses ever.
Shameless plug here, but if anyone here liked Dragonball, you should consider trying Hunter x Hunter (References the ever loving shit out of Dragonball Z & GT, & is arguably better) & Gensoumaden Saiyuki (Goku with completely different friends). Or if you want to know what Dragonball would be like if you mixed it with Food Network, replaced Gon with Kenshiro from Fist of the North Star, substitute dragon balls for monkey testicles, & threw all seriousness out the window, there’s Toriko manga (Just skip the anime, it doesn’t follow the story & it barely covered the first arc of the story).
Japan has really good relations with Hawaii. Japanese emigrated to the Hawaiian islands back in the 1800s and make up a good portion of the population even today. They both had a lot in common such as being Pacific island nations with monarchies (pre WWII.)
I have not heard Toriyama confirm this but I think it is pretty obvious that Dragonball takes a lot from a anime/manga called Kinnikuman. Of course there’s the “Journey to the West” connection but the rest is Kinnikuman. I would even cut out Superman because Kinnikuman has some Superman stuff in it as well. Heck, even Kamehameha is in Kinnikuman.
I’ve noticed that the Hawaiian & Japanese languages share a bond that no other languages have.
Woops, I meant that no other asian languages have with Polynesian languages.
I would not use this movie to introduce somebody to Dragonball. I would say Sleeping Princess in Devil’s Castle is a better candidate for something like that. There is no Eternal Dragon in that movie but it got good comedy, action and it’s short.
Hey Phelous, have you ever seen the movie Dragonball: The Magic Begins? The movie is not nearly as bad as people make it out to be. The main problem with it is the low film budget, being made in Taiwan, but I can see there was a lot of effort put into the movie. Better than the other live action Dragonball movie, Dragonball Evolution. Far better.
I love that movie. I just love low budget kung-fu flicks with real props & stunts. Highly recommend The Story of Ricky for a good lol.
If Dragonball Evolution is my only other option for a live-action Dragonball movie then I am willing to overlook certain shortcomings (like production values.) I can actually watch “The Magic Begins” in one shot and be entertained. That’s something.
To this day I have not seen Dragonball Evolution in its entirety, I just get too angry when I watch it for 10 minutes and leave. Some of these things do not even have to do with it not following the Dragonball story, a good amount of the time it’s just a terrible movie. I never knew a movie could be painful like this.
WHAT IS GOING ON?!
I’ll open by saying that I only recently discovered your videos, but almost immediately I came to love and respect your reviews primarily because, among other things, you do the research and know the material when you talk about it (see: being aware of the case history behind Amityville Horror).
That’s why the comment made about five minutes into this video disappoints me.
Now, I’m not a fan of GT. GT was stupid. It watched like somebody’s bad fanfic come to life. That said, just because something was bad does not make it okay to misrepresent its content. I don’t like the 2003 version of He-Man, but I would never claim that it has an Orko shower scene (sorry for the mental image. Here, have some brain bleach!)
What am I going on about? Well, at around the five minute mark, you say that Black Star balls are what’s created if a Namekian makes balls before he splits into two people.
That is wrong.
It wouldn’t be a problem, except that your next two minutes are a joke founded on that very premise–that the Namek Elder must’ve created black star balls because he didn’t split. Except that’s not how it works–Kami created the Black Star balls by choice. Making them so destructive was an intentional decision on his part. Remember, this was before he expelled his evil side, which became Piccolo Sr, and remember what Piccolo Sr was like? Yeah, that used to be half of Kami’s personality. It does not follow at all that Elder Namek would’ve had the same issue, because we have no reason to believe he had that kind of a sadistic, destructive streak.
The reason I’m whining like a little bitch about this is because jokes based on bad information aren’t funny, they’re annoying. To be fair though, I’m assuming this was an honest mistake–GT doesn’t exactly spell this out for the viewer, rather it kinda expects you to put the pieces together yourself (and I might’ve missed it had I not watched it during a Dragonball binge marathon).
Other than this one little part, I honestly otherwise liked the review. Path to Power was my least favorite of the original Dragon Ball movies (my favorite was actually Sleeping Princess in the Devil’s Castle) and most of your observations about it and the Dragonball universe are spot-on. It’s just that one part is so off that it sticks out.
Just sayin’
I’ve never heard that explanation for it. My joke is based off of what they said in the show, at least in the Japanese subtitled one I watched. If there’s some extra info out there about THAT being the real reason those got created it just another problem, because, as far as I know anyway, it’s not in the show. It wasn’t me purposely misinterpreting something to make a stupid joke.
If you want to go with he made those because he had evil in him, it’s still pretty stupid, Piccolo Sr wanted to rule the world so blowing it up with a wish wouldn’t suit his purposes very well.
Those balls shouldn’t exist anyway without their original creator still being around, Kami might have fused back with Piccolo but they stayed Piccolo, that original Namek never returned.
Oh, wow, I actually never thought about that. You’re right, no matter how you slice it the Black Star Balls should simply not exist.
… Maybe they were made by a bootleg Kami called Robert Kami? 😉
That Korean film looks awful. Do you have any plans to review that in the Near future?
Yeah, I might just do that at some point.
The stupidity of Bulma being embarrassed by her name despite advertising it on her clothes sorta reminds me of how the Harmony Gold dub changed her named to Leela, but her clothes still said Bulma. The Bulma/Bloomers jokes probably would’ve worked better in the Big Green dub where her name is Blooma. Honestly, I’m surprised this movie didn’t get a Big Green dub, considering every other DB movie and special did.
Also, Phelous, have you ever considered making a top 10-20 list of the dumbest moments from the Ocean dub? Aside from the sheer number of death cover-ups, there’s plenty of other things to make fun of, such as Vegeta claiming that Bardock was a brilliant scientist and Goku thinking Vegeta killed his grandfather.
Yeah, doing a list like that would be fun, that’s something I’ll probably do before too long.
The holy fuck I just murdered a child bit was fucking hilarious. It was so funny that I actually finally decided to make an account on your site just to make this comment explaining how hilarious I thought it was.
Haha, thanks!
Oh right, I do remember ever watching this movie… but it didn’t stick with me that much. And yeah, I agree with you that this was the moment they could have introduced Dr. Gero’s involvement with the Red Ribbon Army, not to mention that a lot of the humor that the series had back in the day has been lost quite a bit due to not explaining stuff more properly.
Thanks for the review, Phelous.
Great review, Phelous! I laughed at each “I can see their parachutes” joke – mainly because I can totally see Ocean Productions using similar censorship lines if they had dubbed Path to Power back in the day. I went ahead and shared your video on a Dragon Ball forum I frequent (www.kanzenshuu.com), and I hope to see more Dragon Ball-related reviews from you in the future. Maybe you could track down some dopey Z-Fighters bootlegs?
I will admit I cringed a little when I saw those “Orange Brick” DVDs behind you. I can’t stand the cropped aspect ratio and digital noise reduction on those. Of course, North American Dragon Ball Z home video releases are a huge clusterfuck overall, so I don’t blame you for going with the most visible and inexpensive option for collecting the show. I just wish Funimation hadn’t cancelled the Level Set Blu-rays. Those were pretty much perfect.
Thanks! Oh yes, I have a few DragonBall bootlegs so they’ll be coming on BZ.
Orange Brick set, yeah it’s got it’s issues but they were a way better price than any of the other ways to collect it at the time. Also I liked the English VO with Japanese soundtrack option which was new with those. I actually didn’t watch any of the new uncut version of the 1st episodes until that set because I HATED the music they did for those, droney music like that kills anything for me.
Phelous should see the Big Green dub,it’s wayyyyyyyyy worse than this.
https://twitter.com/Phelous/status/611184773415989248
Yes yes Im finally here.