So, probably a quick bit of context. I watched ‘Dragonball Z’ back in the 90s and early 2000s on TV, and caught pretty much the entire series that way. I watched most of ‘Dragonball GT’ in the mid 2000s as well, but I missed quite a few episodes and eventually gave up on it. Due to the cost of the season sets in the UK up until recently, the last time I had any dealings with anything ‘Dragonball’ related was probably 2005/2006. Then due to some VERY lucky breaks, I somehow managed to secure the entirity of ‘Dragonball’ (DVD), ‘Dragonball Z Kai’ (Blu), ‘Dragonball GT’ (DVD) and all the ‘Dragonball Z Movies and TV Specials’ (Blu) for approximately £190 ($250)…I was a very happy boy.

Me and my partner recently finished watching ‘Kai’, her for the first time, and me revisiting it in its new ‘condensed’ format. and as of last weekend, we both caught ‘Dragonball’ for the first time and really enjoyed it as well. and; with us moving onto the Movies and TV specials next. I figured it was probably as good a place as any to start slightly out of order, by watching ‘Bardock – The Father of Goku’ as, being fresh off the back of ‘Dragonball’ I figured it would play as a nice bookend, acting as both a prologue to the ‘Z’ movies, and an epilogue to ‘Dragonball’, filling in the gaps that were never really explained in the series while introducing the main players for the first couple of arcs in ‘Z’.

Clocking in at around 40-50 minutes, its a fine enough little special in which we’re given much more information about the Saiyans as a race, a better look at how Freiza operated prior to the events on Namek, some nice cameos from ‘Z’ characters shortly to be better introduced. and a plot revolving around Bardock and his gang, working for Freiza, and Bardock himself gaining psychic powers that reveal terrifying glimpses into his future, and the future of his planet.

I’ll be honest? I thought this one was fine enough, but I dont think i’d go out of my way to catch it. Its a fine enough little short story with some really nice moments dotted throughout. But I cant say I absolutely fell in love with it, it feels a tad rushed at times, and I was hoping for a bit more time on Planet Vegeta to really help give the audience just…a bit more of an idea of who or what the Saiyans were culturally…instead a good chunk of the special is just Bardock figuring out whats happening to him, and then an equally big chunk is him trying to warn people of imminent danger. Like; its fine…but I just wish there was a bit more to it, even if there was just a bit more character development for Bardock, his gang and Gokus mum…it all just feels a bit surface level, with just the occasional spark of genuinely moving moments.

The visuals are delightful throughout, with some incredible art design and the animation for the fight Choreography is solid too! The dialogues pretty solid, Freiza and Vegeta probably steal the show though with several foreshadowing moments and some definite character highlights.

I think the only other thing that spoiled this one was, on the Bluray version theres an option to listen to the Japanese audio with the original Japanese scoring…or the English dub with THE most horrendous early 2000s ‘Sum 41’esq pop punk…stuff. i’ve heard in a LONG time…a third option of the English dub with the Japanese soundtrack would have really been the best of both worlds and probably would have made me score this higher, because the English soundtrack is WAY too overbearing for this.

All in all? this is just a nice little extra in my opinion, not essential, but if you’ve watched all of ‘Dragonball’ and ‘Dragonball Z’ you’ll probably get a kick out of seeing stuff that was alluded to in both the main series acutally get a bit more fleshed out and ‘realised’. Probably worth catching once if your working your way through the various series…but definitely not ‘must see’. Your milage may vary…But I had a fun enough time!

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/dragon-ball-z-bardock-the-father-of-goku/