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duhragonball · 5 years

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Dragon Ball Z Movie 5: Cooler’s Revenge

Movie time again. This time it’s Cooler’s Revenge, which premiered on July 20, 1991, between the airdates of Episodes 99 and 100. The original title was “Dragon Ball Z: The Incredible Mightiest vs. Mightiest“

I found the timing of this movie very strange, because the whole plot is direct sequel to the events of the Frieza Saga, which didn’t end until Episode 107. In Episode 99, Frieza is still fighting Goku on Namek, and he feels pretty confident about his chances. A few days after that episode airs, you go to the theater and see this movie, where Frieza’s already dead and his brother goes after Goku to take revenge.

On the other hand, the manga had already moved on to the next arc by this time. Chapter 333 was published on July 16, 1991, and it features Goku meeting Future Trunks, right after he finished killing Mecha-Frieza. So this movie apparently presumes you read the comics. Or, if you’re anime-only, maybe it assumes you kind of know which way this Frieza thing is going to turn out.

The movie opens with the destruction of Planet Vegeta. You know, they really got their money’s worth out of that Bardock TV Special, didn’t they. I think this is the fourth of fifth time they used this footage for flashbacks, and it was less than a year old at this point.

From a distance, a second spaceship observes Frieza destroying the planet. They apparently have really great cameras if they could get such a good close up of Frieza’s face.

The crew also notices a single spacecraft escaping the planet’s destruction. I guess they patched into some camera inside the ship? Their leader orders them to destroy it, but then their boss belays that order. He sees this Saiyan baby as an oversight on Frieza’s part, and he refuses to clean up Frieza’s mess for him. As Cooler puts it, Frieza planted this seed, so he can reap the harvest, whatever that might be.

And there’s the title card. We’re underway.

On Earth, Goku’s parting the ocean outside Roshi’s house, and Roshi thinks about how much stronger Goku is since he returned from Namek.

Back at Goku’s house, Chi-Chi brings Gohan some Tang and tries to chase Icarus away, but then Goku does that last one for her. He’s all “Hey, don’t bother Gohan, Icarus. He’s gotta do his homework!” Chi-Chi assumes this means Goku has a fever.

She’s so worried about this that she drinks Gohan’s Tang. Rude.

Turns out Goku does have a fever, and the only prescription for that fever is camping. He want Gohan to hurry up and do his homework so they can goof off in the woods somewhere. I guess the TWO camping trips from Movie 3 didn’t scratch that itch.

Meanwhile, on some other planet, Cooler’s men report that Frieza was killed by a Saiyan named Son Goku. Cooler is astonished and outraged, and he resolves to go to Earth and kill Goku as soon as possible. Not because he cares about Frieza, but because he insists on restoring his family’s honor.

Flash ahead to the camping trip, where Krillin is making curry over a campfire. He sends Gohan to get some more firewood and.... does Gohan have his tail? Huh.

Elsewhere, Goku catches a big-ass fish that Krillin’s gonna fry up to go with the curry. This does sound like a fun time, actually.

But then the bad guys show up. The big green one, Dore, grabs him by the tail, and questions how this kid could have killed Frieza, since his power level is 50. Salza, the blue one, notes that his reading it probably low because of his tail being grabbed, but that’s still pretty weak.

Then Goku shows up, and they introduce themselves as Cooler’s Armored Squad. The brown one is named Neiz, by the way.

Goku fights all three of them at once, and does pretty well, but then their boss shows up and he mistakes him for Frieza.

Then Cooler tries to shoot down Gohan, who’s flying nearby, so Goku has to go save him...

... only to take a ki blast to his back.

Despite this, he manages to fire back at Cooler, who deflects it. Then Goku nd Gohan fall in the river and get lost in the water. Cooler’s men are satisfied that they must be dead, but Cooler isn’t convinced. Goku survived his attack, and had enough power to strike back, which means he’s tougher than most Saiyans. He orders his men to find Goku no matter what.

Gohan manages to get Goku into a cave, but he’s still in rough shape.

Making matters worse, Cooler’s men decide to carpet bomb the whole forest to flush Goku out. All the end up doing is sealing off the cave Goku’s hiding in.

Later, Cooler’s goons report that they must have vaporized Goku by now, but Cooler won’t be satisfied until they bring him a body. He notes that he could have just blown up the whole Earth and killed Goku that way, but he wants to kill Goku in person, as he feels this would be the only way to satisfy his family’s honor.

That night, Krillin, Oolong and Icarus search for Goku, and Icarus manages to sniff out Gohan’s hiding place. Krillin digs them out, being careful to suppress his ki so the bad guys’ scouters won’t pic them up. Goku insists that he should take care of the animals first.

But Krillin has already delegated that task to Oolong and Icarus. Only trouble is that Oolong starts a rockslide while he’s freeng that bunny rabbit, so Krillin has to use a ki blast to save him.

Fortunately, Neiz nearly collides with a pterodactyl as he chases down the scouter blip, and he decides the pterodactly must have been the source of the disturbance.

So Krillin sends Gohan and Icarus to Korin’s Tower to get some senzu beans. Meanwhile, Goku sleeps on a deer while a bunch of otehr animals gather ‘round him to make him look cuter, I guess.

Gohan makes the trip via Icarus, because if he flew on his own power it would tip off Cooler’s guys. But when he makes it to Korin, Korin chews him out for not climbing the tower like everyone else i supposed to do. Gohan started about halfway, because he was riding Icarus. This scene is kind of weird, because Gohan’s never even been here before, and Korin seems pretty content to mess around while Goku’s life is at stake. Does he not sense Cooler’s presence on the planet? This is an emergency.

So Gohan agrees to go back down and climb the tower from the ground, but then Yajirobe tosses him a whole bag of senzu beans. He and Korin argue about it, and eventually Korin admits that he was just going to give Gohan the beans for being honest, so Yajirobe just stole his thunder.

On the way back, Icarus is pretty worn out, so Gohan gives him a senzu bean to rejuvenate him. But it works a little too well, because Icarus ends up flying so fast that he creates a signal on the bad guys’ scouters.

Gohan tries to fight the Armored Squad by himself, and he doesn’t too badly, but there’s three of them and one of him, and soon the numbers game catches up with him. It’s a really well-animated scene, though.

Then Piccolo shows up to help, because by now it’s become a DBZ Movie tradition.

Piccolo sends Gohan on ahead, but the squad sends Dore after him, so Piccolo shoots a ki blast at Neiz. Neiz can suck his entire head into his chest, though, so the blast misses him...

Only Piccolo wasn’t aiming at him in the first place. The blast locked onto Dore and followed him until it killed him. Piccolo, you magnificent bastard.

Neiz manages to catch Piccolo in some sort of paralysis field, so Salza heads after Gohan, leavng Neiz to finish Piccolo off.

That turns out to be a huge mistake, because Piccolo somehow manages to turn the attack back on Neiz, killing him instantly.

Then Piccolo chases after Salza in the forest. You know, this movie’s really good. Even this middle part has plenty of cool visuals and action sequences.

Piccolo does some stretchy arm stuff, and Salza makes a ki blade on his arm that can cut through trees, but ultimately Salza only survives thanks to a timely assist from Cooler, who zaps Piccolo with ki beam.

Later, Gohan returns to his dad with the senzu beans... but then Salza shows up and zaps them into ash before they can use them. Whoops.

While Krillin fights Salza, Gohan remembers that he still had one more bean in his belt, so he digs it out and feeds it to Goku.

Salza makes short work of Krillin and Gohan, and then he checks for Goku... when his scouter explodes.

Goku’s back and he’s pissed.

Then Cooler shows up and sets off an explosion under Piccolo. What a jerk.

Salza tries to punch Goku while he’s distracted, but it does absolutely nothing. Welcome to Goku Town, jackass.

Salza gets knocked into some rocks when Goku powers up, and then Goku and Cooler fight. It’s mostly even, though it looks like Cooler is holding back somewhat. Once he’s satisfied that Goku really is strong enough to have beaten Frieza, he decides to step things up a bit.

He reveals that while Frieza had four forms, Cooler has a fifth, which means he can become even stronger.

I mean, I get the idea of having your new villain one-up the last villain, but this sort of goes against the notion of Frieza’s transformations. The “final form” he used was his natural state, and the weaker forms were ones he devised to help suppress the bulk of his immense power. Cooler is starting out in his “final form”, and he claims to have a transform that will make him stronger instead of weaker. I think Toei might have gotten it backwards.

Still, the fifth form looks pretty cool.

Cooler just beats the shit out of Goku at this point. Goku can barely do anything against the guy. At one point he tries the 20x Kaio-ken Kamehameha he used against Frieza, but Cooler just leaps into the blast, swims through it, and comes out the other side to punch Goku in the face. Wicked.

Satisfied that he’s beaten Goku, Cooler decides to go ahead and blow up the planet.

Goku collapses onto the ground, and then he spots a bird that must have been hurt during Cooler’s invasion.

Then Goku gets up and heals the bird. How the hell did Goku do that, you may ask.

Because he’s the Legendary Super Saiyan, that’s how.

Cooler tries to fire a blast down at him, but before he can even bring down his arm, Goku’s already floating next to him and grabs him by the wrist. “Bitch, you thought--?”

Then he tries to punch Goku, and that does absolutely nothing. Welcome to Super Goku Town, you grape-flavored dumbass.

Goku only hits Cooler a few times before he gets the picture. This was the power Goku used to defeat Frieza, and Goku is about to use it on him.

So Cooler fires a huge blast at Goku. It doesn’t hurt him at all, but that wasn’t the point. The point was to use it as a diversion...

... so Cooler could make a big energy ball to destroy the whole planet. Baically, Cooler is a lot like Frieza, only he’s much more direct. He doesn’t waste nearly as much time on this stuff, although he could have done this half an hour ago and saved himself some trouble.

Instead, Goku stops the attack before it hits the ground, and then he mucles it up and launches it back on Cooler with a Kamehameha. If you’re watching the dub version, “Revelation” by American Pearl plays over this, and it’s petty awesome.

Cooler ends up getting launched into space, and eventually he realizes he’s headed for the Sun. That’s what you get for hurting innocent birds in Super Goku Town, you lowlife. Also, Piccolo and so forth. Mostly birds.

As Cooler dies in just about the most awesomest way possible, he realizes that he made the same mistake Frieza did. Frieza failed to intercept Goku’s spaceship when he was a baby, but Cooler let it go too. And now Goku’s defeated them both. So their whole family is a bunch of losers.

I really dig this. It’d be good enough to see the bad guy blasted into the sun like this, but on top of that, we see him realize the extent of his folly. Cooler believed he was even more cruel and ruthless than Frieza, but in the end he was brought down by he same sloppiness that plagued Frieza. He insisted on searching for Goku and giving him a chance to recover when he could have just blown up the planet from the start. And look where it got him.

Somehow, the explosion causes the whole sky to light up and then go dark before everything goes back to normal.

Everyone congratulates Goku on his victory, but they wonder what happened to Piccolo. Then they hear someone digging out of the rubble...

But it’s Salza. He’s like “I lived, bitch.” Then a Special Beam Cannon comes out of nowhere and kills him.

Elsewhere, Piccolo takes a drink of water and goes “No you didn’t.”

How did Piccolo recover from his injuries? He didn’t get a senzu bean, and Cooler worked him over pretty badly. Oh well.

And that’s the end.

Just to touch on continuity a bit, this one almost fits into the canon, because you could set it right after Future Trunks warns Goku about the Androids. It doesn’t seem too unlikely that Goku would take a camping trip as a break from training for the Android menace.

The only real continuity problems that arise are things like Gohan still having his Namek-era bowl cut, and growing his tail back. It’s not impossible, but it seems rather unlikely.

More importantly, it doesn’t add up that Goku seemed to wait until the very end of the movie to turn into a Super Saiyan. In the Future Trunks episodes, he revealed that he could transform at will. In this movie, it feels like he couldn’t transform until the situation became desperate enough. Also, it seems odd that Frieza’s brother invaded Earth and Tien, Yamcha, and Vegeta didn’t get involved at all. When Mecha-Frieza came to Earth, everyone sensed it immediately.

Nevertheless, this is one of the better entries in the movie series. The animation is really excellent, the visuals are pleasing and colorful, and the plot is satisfying enough to compensate for the somewhat unoriginal villain. Frieza has an older brother who’s stronger than he is? And where was he until this movie happened? Why doesn’t he rule the universe instead of Frieza? It’s the sort of thing a fan would make up as a gag, like El Hermano, Jiren’s evil brother from the Latin American DBZ fanbase. Only Cooler really hapened, and he got to be in a movie. Two movies.

Still, Cooler does have a certain charm to him as a guy who wants to be a better version of Frieza. My only complaint about him is that he’s voiced by Ryusei Nakao, the same voice actor who played Freza. That makes sense, sure, but it’s also pretty dumb, becaue the character was already a Frieza clone to start with. Giving him the same voice just makes things worse. Funimation got it right by casting a completely different person to play the part, and punching up Cooler’s self-esteem issues. Also, the dub had the cool soundtrack. If you want my advice, watch the dub version, but the original Japanese is still a good experience.

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