Dragon Ball: Mystical Adventure

"Dragon Ball: Mystical Adventure" is the third and final entry of the original Dragon Ball movies. The previous two movies played out more as recaps of the series with a changed villain. Mystic Adventure does keep this tradition intact, recapping the Roshi Training, RR Army and 22nd Tournament, but it does so with a creative twist.

This one, more than any of the other Dragon Ball movies, feels like it takes place in an alternate Dragon Ball timeline. The characters are there, but their positions are all different. We have Chatsu running the Red Ribbon Army, with the Crane Hermit and Tao at the command. Pilaf and the gang help build a dragon radar for the army. Bora is there as a contestant for the martial arts tournament. And hey, let's throw in Korin, Major Metallitron and Arale in there as well.

The story centers on Chatsu wanting to collect the Dragon Balls to find his lost wife. Meanwhile, Goku and Krillin are participating in the emperor's martial arts tournament. In actuality the emperor is being fooled by the Crane Hermit to collect the Dragon Balls so he can make his wish. This is at conflict with Bulma, Yamcha and the gang who are also searching for the DragonBalls.

Hearing the description of the set up, you may already notice the main problem with the story. At a 48-minute runtime, that is a lot of material to stuff into one movie. It is a lot of fun for Dragon Ball fans, but admittedly really confusing to those who aren't. And for both crowds it is very rushed.

Still a ton of fun, brings in the DragonBall magic, but it needs to take a breath, it is like one really long run on sentence that just abruptly ends.

Takes place after Goku and Krillin finished their year training with Master Roshi. As they head for the World Martial Arts Tour. They'll soon learn there's trouble upon the royal palace, where Master Crane & Mercenary Tao are both plotting something that involves harming Prince Chaozu who is also searching for something he lost.

Out of all 4 movies this one is the most alternate reality of the Original DragonBall. The roles of Chaozu, Tien, Mercenary Tao, Upa, Bora, & Master Crane are entirely different in this movie. Even General Blue & Sergent Metalic are completely different people.

Not only are the characters taking part of unique role plays. The feature shows an alternate meeting of Upa & Bora as well as a different visit to Penguin Village. It's the same flow as the other 2 movies. Only the word "Alternate" would best describe the story to it. Because everything about it is alternate from head to toe.

If you liked the first 2 which had different flows too. Then you'll mostly likely like this one too. Only down side is it's the same length as the first two. Making you wish that there was a Director's Cut of this movie.

As a long time fan of Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z I am excited to see this finally find release in the United States. This movie spins off of the early Dragon Ball Tournament Saga very smoothly with a short scenic summary of Goku and Krillin's (Kuririn) training under Master Roshi. There is a lot of good fun and some nice action sequences, including tournament fighting hosted by Chaozu. Familiar Dragon Ball characters are there, including Bulma, Oolong, Yamcha and Pu'ar, and some new characters are introduced, including Tien and the aforementioned Chaozu. Very funny and overall quite enjoyable, though uncut this may be a little too suggestive for many children. I highly recommend this to all Dragon Ball or DBZ fans as well as any fan of lighthearted anime; I actually enjoyed this movie more than many of the Dragon Ball Z movies that follow it.

For Akira Toriyama's Dragon Ball series, the set of films to be released during its run hasn't been the best. Curse of the Blood Rubies (1986) was more or less a summation of the first season despite it leaving out some key elements. Sleeping Princess in Devil's Castle (1987) was more of a recap of the first few episodes of the second season. So to expect this film to follow any kind of order for the third round would be improper. This third film was released towards the end of the eighth season. With that said, the alignment of how this story sits is going to be all kinds of jumbled parts thrown together. Is it better than the others before it? That's debatable as there are parts that still don't make a lot of sense.

The story is like the other films where the characters known from the show are in an alternate timeline. This time Chiaotzu (Monika Antonelli), Tien's (John Burgmeier) loyal companion now acts as an emperor. Tien, Mercenary Tao (Kent Williams) and Master Shen (Chuck Huber) serve under his wing. Their goal is to locate all dragon balls so they can find Chiaotzu's long lost wife. Meanwhile, Bulma (Tiffany Vollmer), Yamcha (Chris Sabat), Krillin (Laurie Steele) and Goku (Ceyli Delgadillo) are working to collect the dragon balls too. Along their travels they encounter Upa (Kara Edwards) and his father Bora (Dameon Clarke). Together they help Goku and friends to help collect the mystical items to help make their wish come true. Directing this feature goes to Kazuhisa Takenouchi who has also worked on the show and the Sailor Moon series.

Writing the original script for Japan goes to Yoshifumi Yûki who also wrote for the previous two films as well as two Dr. Slump movies originally created by Akira Toriyama. Working on the English version of the script is Neil Bligh who also worked on Curse of the Blood Rubies (1986). From an English dub cast perspective, the people attached are the preferred among many. All actors listed are the ones who voiced their characters throughout the series, that is except for one. Again as to why Stephanie Nadolny was unavailable considering she voiced Goku in the show doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Ceyli Delgadillo who also played Goku's voice in the previous film Sleeping Princess in Devil's Castle (1987) just doesn't cut it. From a storytelling angle the amount of coverage this movie tries to cover is too way long a span.

There is no consistency as to how the stories are being readjusted. Curse of the Blood Rubies (1986) seemed like it had an idea by condensing a season into one movie. Sleeping Princess in Devil's Castle (1987) didn't even try for the whole season two. The story here is now trying to cover everything that happened from season three to season eight. That's a lot to cram in and the bulk of it really covers parts of season four, five and seven. Making things even more random is that Arale from Dr. Slump appears in this movie as an easter egg so to speak. The inclusion of the character is played just as a comic relief foil to Mercenary Tao. Obviously it was put there for a reason but it wasn't necessary.

Visually speaking, the animation looks as good as always. Although every decade has its moments of strangeness and wonkiness, anime in the 80s and 90s are quite appealing. Also as expected this movie has Motoaki Ikegami as the credited cinematographer. The question of why, remains to be answered. Motoaki Ikegami also did the same for work for the last two films. Lastly the music once again supplied by the talented Shunsuke Kikuchi knows no faults. The music seamlessly blends with the scenes show on screen and it's all fun to watch and listen. This is also one the rare cases where themes from the show are recycled in for the feature bears no issue. It's not always a good thing but Kikuchi's music really doesn't need a substitute for the work.

The look of the film, the sound and majority of the US voice acting are now where they should be. Yet the actor for Goku still couldn't be nabbed. Additionally, the writing to this feature is just very bloated with multiple scenes and characters that are trying to recap highlights fans remember from the show.

This is the third and final Dragon Ball movie released during the series' run on Japanese TV. Like the first two Dragon Ball movies, this movie re-tells pivotal moments that took place during the TV series. This movie re-tells Goku and Krillin's first trip to the World Martial Arts Tournament. In the movie, however, Goku, Krillin, Master Roshi, Turtle, and Launch are off to a small country known as Mifan, where the tournament is held and the winner recieves not only prize money, but is granted an audience with Mifan's emperor, whom is Chiaotzu. However, the heroes discover that the Chiaotzu's right-hand men, Master Shen, General Tao, and Tien, are conspiring to get the Dragon Balls to abdicate Chiaotzu from the throne and rule the kingdom themselves. In this DB movie, the villains and much of the supporting characters are characters from the TV series rather than original one-shots. This DB movie is by far the most martial-arts oriented as the series was beginning to lean towards that more over adventure and comedy. But this DB movie has the best combination of martial arts and comedy and is always filled with high-energy fighting scenes and hilarious comedy re-created from pivotal moments in the TV series. This movie first appeared in the U.S. on syndicated TV in 1989 when it was combined with the first movie into a single TV-movie pilot, which was done by Harmony Gold (creators of Robotech) in the first of two attempts made to get the DB TV series released in America. In this Harmony Gold TV pilot version, the characters had radically different names. When the series finally became a success in the US when aired on Cartoon Network, FUNimation re-dubbed it, making it more faithful to the original Japanese counterpart.

GRADE: 4 out of 5 stars