All images courtesy Planetnamek.com

Dragonball Z is probably the most popular subject that no one’s heard of. Recently, it sat atop yahoo and Lycos’s lists of top searches. (Well, after all the various porn searches, which they leave out.) So, we’ve decided to write a review so that we can add "DBZ" to our keywords and get more hits... I mean, so we can thoroughly critique this .... thing.

You know it’s the truth. Do you really think the Japanese built the world’s second biggest economy out of a few worthless islands by playing games about Italian plumbers who eat shrooms and fight evil turtles? Of course not. There’s gotta be hidden purpose to the likes of Super Mario and DBZ.

Yes.

But back to the show. It isn’t all massive energy blasts from funny looking people at aliens. Every now and then, it cuts from the battle to save the earth (earth is always getting screwed in Japanese cartoons -- it’s mandatory, sort of like how looking around an abandoned mansion in your underwear at midnight is mandatory for horror movie) to fascinating scenes that have absolutely nothing to do with the plot. Such as a baby with purple hair peeing on the head of a fat man, or a sea turtle beating up thugs. Meanwhile, earth is in danger of blowing up, but that isn’t important. We must now focus on the turtle, in a humorous interlude about as funny as an Albanian stand-up comic. (Ever noticed how people whose countries get destroyed biannually never get heavily involved in the humor industry? Of course, they always have John Belushi. Oh yeah, I forgot. John Belushi isn’t funny.) There are plenty of other instances of bizarre humor. Akira Toriyama’s way of naming characters after botched English pronunciations of musical instruments, vegetables, and dairy products comes to mind.

Once the pressing issue of that old man looking for porn magazines is resolved, it’s back to the climactic battle for the future of earth. Or something like that. The “Z-fighters” struggle against great odds. Then they summon the “eternal dragon,” which can be done after catching all the Pokémon dragonballs and saying the magic words. Once the dragon is summoned, they wish for something incredibly pointless. Instead of asking the dragon to just lay the smackdown on whatever villain is fast approaching, they ask the dragon to resurrect a few hopelessly weak guys who got killed the previous season to help them. Yeah, that makes sense.

In case you’re wondering about the afterlife that these people are getting wished back from, it’s just like this one. Only you have a little white ring hovering over your head, don’t have to work, and have no problems. Which is why the characters invariably want to come back to earth, where they are beaten constantly.

The characters of this great series can be divided into four groups. Evil people, the hero, former evil people who have inexplicably changed sides, and the hero’s friends. The latter two groups have one purpose and one purpose alone. To get beaten into a bloody pulp while waiting for the hero to arrive. The hero, though he’s the only remotely normal looking person on the entire show, is actually an alien. You might think that his looking just like a human and his being having children by a human would preclude his being an alien, but that’s just because you don’t understand the greatness that is DBZ. It’s not a Japanese children’s cartoon from the 80s. It’s a way of life.

The hero’s name is Goku. This is a play on the word “carrot.” Goku has a son. His son has a tail. (Everything you have heard about aliens is wrong. They aren’t skinny little green things with big eyes. They’re just people with tails. They also possess the ability to turn into giant monkeys and blonds.) Oh, and Goku is also the least interesting character ever created. He shows up late for everything, too. This creates the need for the second group of characters which is...

And you thought I was kidding about the monkeys.

The friends of Goku. Their job is to act tough, wonder why Goku hasn’t shown up yet, and then get beaten into unrecognizable piles of organic tissue.

Among them is the strongest man in the world. Don’t let this fool you, as humans can’t fight worth [insert synonym for excrement] on this show. The world’s strongest man is a three-foot tall bald guy who lacks a nose. (I don’t whose idea that was, but I bet they’ve gotten canned by now.) He’s supposedly very slick -- at least for a monk -- but all he really does is get killed. I think he holds a record in that department. Oh, and his name is “Krillin,” and he looks like a monkey. Later in life, he marries an android and has several children. Moving on...

We have the second strongest human being. I’m pretty sure he has a name, but it’s not worth remembering. The only noteworthy thing about him is that he has three eyes and gets killed on a regular basis. His friend, also “human,” is named Chow Mein or something like that. Chow Mein is a foot tall, has white skin, and red circles on his head. Don’t let his non-threatening appearance fool you, though. He’s just as capable getting beaten beyond recognition as the others. Somehow, these two are human, yet carrot-boy isn’t. Three mile island?

Though all of these guys have the glorious role of punching bag for evil, Krillin is undoubtedly the star. In one series of episodes, weak bad guys come down and fight him and the son of carrot-boy. They proceed to beat the stuffing out of Krillin. This succeeds in getting son of carrot-boy p/oed enough to release his “hidden power” and kill the bad buys. Next come the intermediate guys. Krillin has miraculously revived enough to get beaten unconscious again, so that carrot jr. can bust out with the “hidden power again.” Krillin pitches in one last time, when they super-bad guys toss him off a building. Hidden power. Yadda yadda. BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

Incidentally, the previously mentioned bad guys were all named after food seasonings. Doesn’t get much better than that.

(Have you noticed that I’m running out of printable synonyms for “beat down?”)

The third class of characters includes former bad guys who are now good guys. Most were capable fighters who narrowly lost to carrot-boy. Then, for some reason or another, they become good. After which point all they manage to do is get beat down like Krillin. (Krillin is the role model. Everyone on the show want to be like him.) The real reason for all these changes of heart is that Akira Toriyama is too lazy to create new characters. Hence, once a bad guy is defeated, they become good. The same laziness is the cause of the dragon balls. If not for them, Toriyama would have to create a whole new cast everyone season. But with the Dragonballs, he can just resurrect the old ones over and over again.

Akira Toriyama, you’re my hero. I wish I could paid for doing that.

Most prominent of the former bad guys is a green alien named “Piccolo.” (Though Krillin and three-eyes were supposedly bad at one time as well. However, I’ve never seen that part of the series, which means it doesn’t exist, and you’re an idiot for asking about it. Even though you didn’t.) Once, he was a demon that was pure evil. But then he got beat by the carrot, met a whiny little kid, and realized that being pure evil was bad. So he became good.

From then on he was an integral part of the beat downee brigade. I mean, Z-fighters.

The other formerly evil guy is supposedly a real badass. He’s also named after the word vegetable. “Vegeta.” Apparently, the no one saw any contradiction here. Anyway, in keeping with “no normal characters allowed” doctrine -- a tenet of animé, by the way -- he’s got the biggest widow’s peak I’ve ever seen. It takes up his whole head, with the bottom fourth being reserved for facial features. Is there anyone left who doubts that this is an art form?

Anyway, Vegeta shows up and decides to destroy the world, because apparently destroying the world is profitable. (Ask PG∓E.) Unfortunately, he loses to Carrot-boy. From then on, he is determined to kill him, and therefore fights on the same side as Carrot-boy for the rest of the series. Ho, hum.

To be honest, it isn’t quite like that. Vegeta actually does want to kill carrot-boy, but there’s always someone ahead of him in line. This angers him in no small measure, and he tries to kill the guy ahead of him. Unfortunately, Vegeta has spent too much time hanging out with Krillin, and it’s rubbed off on him. The result? Vegeta proclaims himself the strongest warrior in the universe, then dies pitifully. Eventually all of this forces him to entertain the possibility that maybe he really isn’t the strongest warrior in the Universe. (Of course, he has to get killed twice before it really hits him.) So he becomes good.

"I am the strongest soldier in the Universe."

So, to summarize, the evil people, once good, become utterly pathetic and inept. I’m sure there’s a moral here.

Now that we’ve gotten the cast taken care of, let’s move onto the plot. Generally, I spend more time on the plot and less on the characters, but DBZ doesn’t really have a plot, so I’ve had to improvise.

The plot goes like this. Good guys chill. Goku is missing. News arrives of a bad guy. All the good guys train. (Which, by the way, consists of beating themselves up until they get stronger. Or better at getting beat up.) Evil guy arrives. Carrot-boy doesn’t. Friends of carrot get beat up. Former bad guys get beat up. All is lost! The world is finished... But wait, Goku shows up! So now, in a thirty-second period that extends over twenty episodes, the evil guy is vanquished and earth is saved. The Carrot-boy goes away, those killed get wished back, and everything starts over. Beautiful.

From left to right, Vegeta, some other guy, carrot-boy/Goku, Krillin, Three Eyes, Piccolo, son of carrot boy, some other guy...

Overall, DBZ is a good show if you want to achieve a lower consciousness. Just sit back, and watch the bright colors flicker across the screen. You can achieve a slack jawed trance in no time. BAM! BOOM! POW! POW! KICK KICK! PUNCH JAB BOOM!

Now that’s quality.

Then there’s the parts where they actually talk. That’s when you change channels. Fortunately, such interludes are few and far between, thus enabling a grateful humanity to watch an entire episode without having to think once. Considering what happens when people think, I’m convinced this is a good thing.

However, the trance has a downside that makes me think something sinister is afoot. Once, I discovered upon awakening at the end of an episode that I was missing a button. Another time, a sock was gone. And another, a hubcap disappeared off of my car. This trend is alarming; pretty soon my VCR will vanish. This is obviously all the work of the embittered Japanese, who, unbeknownst to most, are still plotting world domination. But it’s too late for me. I’m already hooked on the bright colors. Pretty soon my house will have disappeared, and I’ll be out on the street. Then I’ll have to buy the damn videos and watch them one frame at a time just to get that high, since I won’t have a television anymore. All the while I’ll be cursing those crafty bastards at FUNimation, the company responsible for all this, while people walk by and stare.

Run while you can! There’s still time to save yourself! Run away! Run away!

Rating: one star, on a scale of negative five to five.

--KCaliban    

To DBZ fans, this might sound harsh, but look on the bright side. Gundam Wing weighed in at negative four. (For those of you who read this review and wondered why it got such a high mark, DBZ breaks into positive territory because at times there are some pretty good episodes. The one where Cell -- an evil green guy -- is defeated was quality entertainment, as well as the sequence in which the Androids were absorbed by Cell. In those spots there wasn’t all this reliance on carrot-boy. Also, it was cool watching the good green guy get tossed into the ocean. Yeah, I’m making no sense right now, and have no idea what I’m talking about. Forgive me. I just watched an episode, and the effects are still lingering.)

Note: All but one of the images where shamelessly stolen from planetnamek.com, a fine site to which we are very grateful. (I’ve always thought it easier to beg forgiveness than ask permission. If they are unwilling to grant forgiveness, we'll take them down.) The other was sent to me by a friend of mine, who insists that he didn’t steal it. However, since he’s a lying, unscrupulous weasel, I have my doubts. If the group shot is yours and you don’t want to see it up or you want us to credit you, just drop me a line, and the situation will be remedied.