DRAGON BALL Z IS BACK ON TOONAMI!

OH YEAH! Tomorrow night Dragon Ball Z is back on Toonami with Cooler's Revenge! All is right with the universe because DBZ is back on on Toonami for the first time since the April Fool's prank of 2012. Yes this is huge, it must be celebrated all must recognize the awesomeness that is Dragon Ball Z on Toonami. For those of you who don't understand, Dragon Ball Z was the headliner when Toonami started, the only reason it stopped was because they ran out of episodes, and unfortunately Toonami's popularity went down with the loss of DBZ. They tried, man, they even ran the original Dragon Ball and GT, the series that followed Z and was much maligned, but was still better than nothing so we watched anyway. Dragon Ball Z was what brought the vast majority of fans for anime in general out in America, and without this show, we probably wouldn't have any of the other good stuff that followed. Many anime creators admit they were influenced by Dragon Ball Z, including all of the Big 3, Bleach, One Piece and Naruto. Naruto has obvious superficial resemblances to DBZ and One Piece even had a crossover. Of course, my own story, 7th Moon is influenced by DBZ, in particular, Kichiku and Douji who were directly influenced by Android 16 and Gohan during the Cell Games as mentioned in an earlier blog post. Since my dream is to make it on Toonami, none of what I've done with this project would have even begun without Dragon Ball Z.

The one thing that kinda sucks is that it's a movie for just one night. It's not just that it's only one night, it's that movies are non-canon. In America, when a cartoon is popular, Hollywood makes a live-action movie where they try to make it better but instead change it entirely beyond recognition and alienate the fan base. In Japan when a cartoon is popular they create an original story that involves the cast from the series and does their best to avoid contradicting anything from the series, but most importantly, it's all done by the same cast and crew who do the series so it looks like it's part of the series and retains the awesome factor of the parent series. However, in  many cases, the movies do have a critical contradiction in that they happen within timeframes that make them impossible to fit in to the time line of the canon series. For Dragon Ball Z the only exception is Dead Zone, which took place between Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z and was later retconned in a filler arc known as the Garlic Jr. Saga. This means that the incredibly popular Broly the Legendary Super Saiyan doesn't fit in the series either. Consider the characters that are present in the movie, and the fact that all of the Saiyans can go Super Saiyan and that all of them are alive. Since Gohan doesn't go Super Saiyan until he trains for the Cell Games and Goku dies during the Cell Games, Broly happens within those ten days between trianing in the Time Chamber and the Cell Games. But Goku and Gohan aren't in constant Super Saiyan, so that doesn't quite work either. What really happened was Broly was made at about the same time as Cell Games so they gave everybody full powers and glossed over the fact that Goku was dead in the canon timeline. Now I haven't seen Cooler's Revenge, so I don't know where this fits, perhaps it fits within those three years between Trunks warning about the Androids and the Androids actual arrival, but mostly this is just niot going to fit, something is going to be off. Having said all that,it's still DBZ on Toonami, so it's still every kind of awesome.

Now, if you don't know what's going on in the story (possibly because you haven't watched this show since it ended it's American run on Toonami about a decade ago) let me remind you and get you caught up. The main character of Dragon Ball Z is Goku, one of the last Saiyans in the universe. The Saiyans were a powerful race of warriors used by a tyrant named Frieza to clear out planets so he could take them over and claim them for his empire. However, the Saiyans grew too strong too fast, and Frieza got scared, particularly because of one Saiyan in particular, Bardock, the father of Goku. Bardock had a freak accident on one mission that caused him to see a vision of the future when Frieza destroyed the planet Vegeta, home of the Saiyans. Bardock dared to fight Frieza in an attempt to stop this but instead he made Frieza lose trust in the Saiyans and blew up the planet. As it happens, four Saiyans survived this disaster, Prince Vegeta, his care taker Nappa, Bardock's other Son Radditz, all of whom were on a mission, and finally Bradock's two day old son Kakarott. Kakarott was relatively weak for a Saiyan so they decided to send him to Earth because Earth was decidedly weak and even for a weak Saiyan, Kakarott would be able to kill everyone on planet Earth by the time he was in his twenties. Around that time Radditz goes to check on his brother expecting that Earth will be the new seat of the Saiyan Empire that they can rebuild after the destruction they have wrought on the local populace. Instead Radditz finds that his brother has settled down wth a human family. When he landed on Earth he bumped his head and got amnesia and was found by Son Gohan, one of the rare few humans who was actually stronger than a baby Saiyan and he adopted Kakarott. The whole amneisa thing as a non-issue, he never figured an infant had any memory of where he was from in the first place. He named the baby Goku and raised him as his own, and Goku grew up to be a martial artist and go on amazing adventures, fighting the entire Red Ribbon Army single handedly and fighting the demon king Piccolo. Radditz is incredibly pissed off to find that the mighty destroyer has married Princess Chichi and has a half-breed son with her. Goku fights to save his son with the help of Piccolo, the demon king who was the only other being strong enough to get Radditz's attention while he scanned for his brother. Piccolo wanted to kill Goku and take ove the world, but if Radditz beats him to it, that's a problem so he needs to get Radditz out of the way. Piccolo manages a twofer, but Radditz leaves him with the ominous bad news that the other two Saiyans will be coming in a year to finish what he started. Piccolo then trains Gohan, Goku's son that he named after the man who raised him and Goku is wished back with the Dragon Balls. Nappa is defeated and killed for his dishonor and Vegeta is defeated as well, but comes up with a plan for revenge that involves crawling back to Frieza to recover then go afte the Dragon Balls on planet Namek. As it turns out, Piccolo isn't really a demon, he's actually from the planet Namek as is his other half Kami, guardian of the Earth and creator of the Dragon Balls. Piccolo was killed in battle with Nappa and Vegeta and with uim went Kami and the Dragon Balls, so everybody has to go to Namek where they have their own Dragon Balls that can also grant wishes and can bring back all of Goku's friends who died fighting the Saiyans, or grant immortality to Vegeta or Frieza whoever finds them first. Fortunately, Gohan finds he Dragon Balls and uses the wishes to bring bac Piccolo and the Dragon Balls of Earth which in turn saves everybody and leaves Frieza behind to fight Goku one-on-one. Now the battle on Namek is a big one, Frieza's right and left hand men, Dodoria and Zarbon as well as the elite Ginyu Force all fight Gohan, Vegeta, Piccolo, Goku and Goku's friend Krillin a dwarf who is surprisingly the strongest human on Earth when you don't count any of the aliens, and Frieza goes through four or five transformations before Goku finally kills him, at last avenging the entire Saiyan race. Or least it would seem Frieza was dead, somehow the bastard survived in space, got picked up by his father King Cold, and was cybernetically restored so he could seek revenge on the Saiyans on Earth. Then this other guy Trunks shows up out of nowhere and finishes off Frieza and Kng Cold once and for all. As it turns out Trunks is actually the son of Vegeta from the future, but that's a whole other story. The point is, Cooler is Frieza's brother and now he wants revenge for Frieza and comes to Earth for Goku. Trunks isn't actually in this one, and from what I just checked on Wikipedia, apparenly neither is Vegeta. Oh well, doesn't matter, the rest of the story is still relevant, Frieza's dead because of Goku, Cooler wants revenge, tune in tomorrow to find out how it goes down!