Review for Dragon Ball: Season 5

Introduction

In twisted, DVD release strategy style, we end at the beginning, or at the end of the beginning, as Manga Entertainment conclude their release of the first Dragon Ball series, after having released Dragon Ball Z, Dragon Ball GT, and just last month, the most recent Dragon Ball Z feature film. But Dragon Ball is where it all began, and with Season 4, it slipped out of my wacky comedy comfort zone to start resembling the Dragon Ball Z that hardcore Dragon Ball fans like the most. So much for perverted comic antics when you have King Piccolo threatening the destruction of the world. But with this final collection, I’m keeping my fingers crossed that we’ll have one final expiation of comic mirth in the style of the first few seasons of this show, as I find that’s the only Dragon Ball that I actually like.


A young girl named Bulma wanted a boyfriend. For some reason, she decided to go looking for the seven Dragon Balls, which when collected summon the eternal dragon Shen Long, which will grant one wish. The Dragon Balls are then scattered to the four winds once more, inert for a whole year before they can be gathered and wished upon again. Her search led her to an isolated mountain, where dwelled a young boy named Son Goku, trained in the martial arts by his late grandfather, possessing a magical staff, sporting a monkey’s tail, and suffering from a ‘time of the month’ that you wouldn’t believe. Goku also had the four star Dragon Ball, his last remaining memento of his grandfather, one that he wasn’t too willing to part with. Which is why he wound up travelling with Bulma as she looked for the other Dragon Balls. But they weren’t the only people looking to have their ultimate wishes granted, there are some other, more nefarious characters out there too.


In the previous collection, Goku had finally defeated King Piccolo, but at significant cost. Not only were Muten Roshi, Chaozu, and Kuririn dead, but Piccolo had also slaughtered the dragon Shen Long in his depredations, meaning that the Dragon Balls no longer worked. As we begin this collection, the sage Karin offers Goku a glimmer of hope, when he tells him that Kami-sama has the power to resurrect Shen Long. The problem is that the divine one has never consented to give an audience to a mere human. But Goku has more problems than just resurrecting his friends, as in his dying gasp, King Piccolo spewed up an egg, and that egg has hatched into Piccolo Jr., driven by the need to avenge his slain parent.


Dragon Ball concludes with 31 episodes across 4 discs in this final fifth collection.

Disc 1
123. Lost and Found
124. Temple Above the Clouds
125. Earth’s Guardian Emerges
126. Eternal Dragon Resurrected
127. Quicker than Lightning
128. Secret of the Woods
129. The Time Room

Disc 2
130. Goku’s Doll
131. Walking Their Own Ways
132. Hotter than Lava
133. Changes
134. Preliminary Peril
135. Battle of the Eight
136. Tien Shinhan vs. Mercenary Tao
137. Anonymous Proposal


Disc 3
138. The Mysterious Hero
139. Rematch
140. Goku Gains Speed
141. The Four Faces of Tien
142. Kami vs. Piccolo
143. Battle for the Future
144. Super Kamehameha
145. Junior No More

Disc 4
146. Goku’s Trap
147. Goku Hang On
148. The Victor
149. Dress in Flames
150. The Fire Eater
151. The Outrageous Octagon
152. Mystery of the Dark World
153. The End, The Beginning

Picture

This takes me back some. Back when I first started reviewing anime on DVD, it all looked like this, sourced from tape masters of varying condition, and mastered on disc with NTSC-PAL standards conversions. The Australian Madman release that is the source of these discs was made 10 years ago, while the anime itself is from the mid-eighties. It’s a simple but effective animation, which does what it needs to get the gags across. The tape origin shows in the transfer, which isn’t overly afflicted by visible interlacing or blended frames. Then again, the softness of the videotape origins tends to mask all that. You might expect that with as many as eight episodes on a disc, that will tell in the compression, but other than macroblocking being a little more obvious in large expanses of colour, the Dragon Ball discs get off pretty lightly.

Sound

You have the choice between DD 2.0 Stereo English, and what I assume is 2.0 Mono Japanese. Given its vintage, expect a rather thin, and occasionally shrill original language experience with the odd moment of hiss as well. Those early Funimation releases via Madman actually used to come with two subtitle tracks, dubtitles to go with the English dub, and a translated English track to go with the Japanese audio. It’s interesting to see how the anime was re-versioned for the US television audience.


The quality slips a tad in this final collection, with the Japanese audio in episode 129 severely afflicted by intermittent distortion and pops, and even a video glitch to go with one of the worst pops. And from episode 123 onwards, small subtitle errors start creeping in, with mistiming, and occasional typos.

Extras

The discs present their content with animated menus, and there is no Marathon Mode. Oddly enough, Dragon Ball doesn’t need it, with its short, gag filled stories, with a couple of very agreeable (in Japanese) theme songs. You can tell from some of the shows trailed on the discs that they are sourced from a vintage release from Madman.


Disc 1 offers twelve character profiles of regulars and arc specific guest characters, and also has trailers for Full Metal Panic Fummofu? Volume 1, and Gilgamesh Volume 1. Disc 2 merely has those same character profiles again.

Disc 3 offers twelve character profiles, as well as trailers for Beast Wars: Transformers Season 2, and Chrono Crusade: Volume 1. And once again, disc 4 merely repeats those character profiles.

Conclusion

I was bored! I haven’t been this bored since the latter seasons of Dragon Ball Z. In fact, as so often happened with that series, while watching this collection of episodes, I fell asleep during the Goku vs. Tenshinhan rematch, missed a whole episode and when I woke up I didn’t even realise until most of the next episode had passed. Then I skipped back to realise that I hadn’t really missed anything at all. Fights stretched out over multiple episodes, lots of standing around, pontificating, flashbacks, commentators on the sidelines, recaps... This really is Dragon Ball Z, and I’m surprised it wasn’t sold as Season 1 of that series, instead of Season 5 of the original Dragon Ball.


The original Dragon Ball does hang on for dear life for the first ten or so episodes of this collection, with the aftermath of the Piccolo Daimao fight, Goku learning of the existence of Kami-sama, the one person who can resurrect Shen Long, bring back the Dragon Balls, allowing everyone who Piccolo killed to be brought back to life. And then it transpires that Piccolo left a little Piccolo Jr. to exact his revenge, and time is once again running out for the world. So it is that everyone starts training up for the next Tenkaichi tournament. For Goku, that’s a set of standalone episodes where he has a new form of training each week under the careful guidance of Mr Popo. There’s a little of the original humour here, my favourite being the Time Room episode, where Goku goes back to meet the young Muten Roshi, who’s still a pervert. But the original show has waned by this point, the humour is gone, the frantic pace, the pratfalls, the slapstick; it’s gradually getting more and more serious as time progresses.


Then by episode 132, Dragon Ball dies, and Dragon Ball Z is born, as we have a three year time skip, Goku finally, finally grows up after being stuck as a toddler for six years, and we get the characters that most everyone recognises from the first season of Dragon Ball Z. We get the final Tenkaichi tournament of the series now, Goku’s final chance to win, and after a couple of comedy battles, culminating in Goku vs. Chichi, a battle to the engagement, the real meat of the show arrives with the Goku vs. Tenshinhan rematch, followed by Goku vs. Piccolo Jr. The era of the martial artist wielding chi has waned, and has been supplanted by the era of the superhero. Everyone is firing blasts of energy all over the place, from their eyes or their palms, and everyone can fly. The earth rends, mountains explode when these characters do battle, and for the first time, the fate of the world is at stake, an imminent disaster will ensue if Goku doesn’t beat his opponent. By the time it’s all over, the whole island has been laid to waste by the battle. It’s so Dragon Ball Z that I just didn’t care anymore.


The series concludes on something of a whimper for both Dragon Ball, and Dragon Ball Z fans, with an arc that precedes Goku’s marriage to Chichi. She wants to wear her mother’s wedding dress, but Gyumao’s castle catches fire, one of those pesky mystical fires that can’t be doused, so Goku and Chichi go on an epic quest to the verge of the next life to find a way to quench those mystical flames and have their marriage. The action here isn’t big enough for Z fans, while original Dragon Ball fans will once again be disappointed at the lack of humour. The wedding too is a disappointment, almost an afterthought in the final episode, and none of Goku’s friends are there. You’d want to see Bulma, Muten Roshi, Kuririn and the others one final time...


Dragon Ball started off strongly 153 episodes ago, the kind of wacky comedy show that I have a lot of time for, but in the last two seasons of its run, it morphed into Dragon Ball Z. So at least Dragon Ball Z fans know which seasons of this show to buy.