Hi I have no idea how to start this. It’s 12:30 on a Monday and I want to make this unique, so let me just start by saying that I love Dragon Ball. It’s just so freaking awesome and I’m a nerd so those two factors kind of work hand-in-hand with one another.
What does that have to do with anything? Well buckle in people, because I recently watched one of the movies for the first time and words cannot express how much I enjoyed those 50 minutes. The action, the pacing, the animating style, the comedic lines and expressions. It was all just so great I felt like a child in the theater again. I’m getting a little ahead of myself so let’s take this story from the top, and by top I mean let me jump around until you have all the information and THEN I’ll tell you about my experience. Ready? Go!
Update it is no longer 12:30 on a Monday, but in fact four or so weeks later. I stand by everything I just said and I just finished watching the movie again. Just thought I would share! Okay enough of present me; back to past me!
Totally Seamless Transition
Okay I was told last week to find a movie that I was yet to see and as previously stated I really love everything Dragon Ball (except for GT but that’s a story for another time, so I’ll let someone else rant about it in the hyperlinked post). Soooooooo…. I got to thinking, how can I incorporate my love for this animated show from the 90s with this assignment? Well there’s 24 movies in total and I’ve seen maybe four. Now I’ve seen plenty clips from many of the movies simply because I’ve been a fan of the show for so long, PLUS I watched a YouTube short on someone ranking Dragon Ball movies months and months ago, but there was one movie in particular that piqued my curiosity and excitement with the poster alone. That movie was none other than Dragon Ball Z: Fusion Reborn.
Why this movie eluded me for so long I have no idea, but the poster alone was enough to pique my interest and therefore I had to watch it.
Being busy with work and everything else in life, I needed an excuse, and then along came this assignment! Perfect! Okay so I learned about it through a TikTok and decided to watch it, but what is it actually about? Well according to the VERY RELIABLE IMDb:
The universe is thrown into dimensional chaos as the dead come back to life. Now Goku and Vegeta must track down the cause of this uproar
Holy. Nerd. Freakout. I was so beyond ready to sit down with a snack and watch this movie.
Experience!
Anticipation
Wait what? Anticipation? Yes! I saw that short MONTHS ago and I finally got around to watching the movie. I was actually so excited to watch this movie that I made it my mission to avoid any and all spoilers to the best of my ability until I saw it. Clip on Instagram? Skipped. YouTube recap video? Reloaded the page. Brother tried to show me a video? Slapped (legally I have to say I’m kidding). Finally getting to the movie, the action kicked off right away. I was sitting at the edge of my seat (literally) as the two heroes made their way to hell and started fighting the bad guy and I was always thinking “holy crap what’s going to happen next this is CRAZY”.
The thing that really created this feeling of anticipation was the consistent action while simultaneously acting in a somewhat unpredictable manner. I mean the heroes were fighting, the ground opened up, the heroes went to hell, one fought a monster, the monster was kicking butt, the hero transformed, he won but actually didn’t because the monster got stronger… you get the gist. Through this craziness I never once was bored, and the anticipation of “and then what happened” was getting me excited and eager to continue watching. When the movie was over, I just wanted to watch more (so I watched another movie).
Connection (previously Ambivalent)
Round two, people! Connection is honestly such a boring word, but when it comes to picking between connection and ambivalent, I’m going with the pronounceable option!
Now previously, I stated that Ambivalence was, “In simplified uneducated terms, it means to feel conflicting emotions simultaneously about a person or a scenario” (Lizondro, 2024). Man he sounds like a poet. Anyways, when I first worked on the assignment, I thought that Ambivalence was the perfect word, but an itch in the back of my mind and a conversation with the boss said that it was ALMOST perfect. Now for context as to what scene I’m actually talking about, here’s another quote from everybody’s favorite poet: definitely not me!
As the movie concluded, Vegeta (one of the heroes) lost his body once again and was forced to return to the dead as a bodiless spirit, since canonically he died and was only able to come back as a result of the barriers between worlds being shattered. Lost yet? Yeah I was too, but that’s what IMDb’s whole “dimensional chaos” means! Anyways… WHY NO LET VEGETA STAY! On one hand I was happy that the monster was defeated, but on the other hand I was so freaking sad that one of my favorite characters from the entire show just *vanished* AGAIN! I actually rewinded the movie after it was done and watched when he first appeared again just so I could see him again!
Now how was this feeling of connection created? Simply put, it’s created by making dynamic characters that make the viewer actually CARE about them! Vegeta, who was originally a villain in Dragon Ball, became such an iconic and admirable character that seeing him come back made me so happy and then watching him kick major butt (got to keep this PG) had me fist pumping and rooting for him! By the end when Goku said “goodbye, my friend”, I was about ready to send an email to the creators and say “hey maybe don’t kill off my favorite character, thank you”.
“Hey you didn’t change that paragraph at all” some of you may be noticing, and that’s intentional because reading it back, it still describes exactly how I feel. This character has been years in the making and is still an unfinished story, since there are more chapters of the books still being written. As I said before, he went from villian to icon, and now has been developed to the point of making viewers feel something whenever he DOES something! (I still miss the word ambivalent just for the record).
How to Help an Audience Discover Dragon Ball Z: Fusion Reborn and Other Movies Like This?
That title does NOT role off the tongue. Also why is tongue spelled like that? TONGUE.
Anyways, I think for starters and most obviously, fans of the Dragon Ball anime as well as anime in general would certainly get a kick out of watching the movies. Even if something like Fusion Reborn is from 1995, I personally really loved the style of the 90s as well as how the characters I’ve come to love in the newer renditions of the show remain consistent even back in the day! Besides, who doesn’t love a bunch of martial artists kicking the crap out of a bad guy for fifty minutes?
I think IMDb’s website is a good way to reach audiences, since these movies are all connected through category sorting such as “more like this”, since people looking up one movie are likely to stumble across the others and fall down the rabbit hole like I did!
In addition to this, I watch all of my anime on a possibly-maybe-could-potentially be illegal website, and when you search something like “Dragon Ball”, there’s a couple pages of results. Although most of the results are from the Dragon Ball franchise, there are some other shows that are similar either by content or title. By looking for movies like I did, viewers can come across other shows similar to what they were originally searching for, and vice versa!
Work Cited
“Dragon Ball Z: Fusion Reborn.” IMDb, IMDb.com, 4 Mar. 1995, www.imdb.com/title/tt0142236/.
Polynomial, et al. “Word for Feeling Conflicting Emotions Simultaneously.” English Language & Usage Stack Exchange, 1 Mar. 1957, english.stackexchange.com/questions/49476/word-for-feeling-conflicting-emotions-simultaneously#:~:text=Ambivalent%20(adj.),ambivalently%20adverb.
“Watch Anime Online with Dub and Sub for Free.” 9anime, 9animetv.to/. Accessed 25 Sept. 2024.
Ice. “Ranking Every Dragon Ball Movie.” YouTube, 23 June 2023, youtu.be/WobeNbUh3jQ.
begum, naziia. “Dbz Vegeta Says Goodbye.” YouTube, 13 Apr. 2013, youtu.be/4sNpMG5AEEU?si=yETdirKsc2F2jzWm.
Post Credit Sequence!!
I never got to the picture in the beginning as promised, so essentially that’s Goku at Super Saiyan 3 and he’s kicking Super Janemba after Janemba transformed into Super Janemba after being beaten by Goku in Super Saiyan 3.
See? I explained it, you’re just lost!
