Notable as being the last Dragonball Z movie before the time skip post ‘Cell Games’ ‘Bojack Unbound’ is a bit of a strange movie in all honesty. Painfully close to being a Dragonball movie thats almost unhappy to be one.

The plot picks up a year or so after the events of the Cell Games, and a new world martial arts tournament is set to take place, but this time with a twist! as the semi finalists planned for the tournament are being imported from a galaxy far far away! naturally the ‘Z’ fighters all sign up, apart from Goku, who’s dead still…and weirdly Vegeta who decided it wasnt worth his time.

We fly through the tournament with relative ease until we’re down to four finalists including Gohan, Trunks and Krillin. But when the reach the semi finals, rather than some medium powered aliens meeting them. We have Bojack. an alien/demon who is allegedly about as powerful as Perfect Cell (give or take) who was previously known for his attempts to destroy the galaxy. He was defeated and sealed away in a star by the Kais, but with Goku destroying King Kais planet, the seal has been broken and Bojack is now ‘Unbound’ (see what they did there?)

With that, the gang must work together to take out Bojack and his crew before they destroy the earth and carry on their galaxy destroying plans…Oh! and Mr. Satans in this one, as he’s supposed to be the challenger they face in the finals…he’s comic relief for the most part.

The more I think about this one, the less enthused I am by it. The plot feels almost like a throwback to the early DBZ movies like ‘Dead Zone’ and ‘Tree of Might’. Its weird seeing an alternate take on the ‘world martial arts tournament’ given that around this same time, the exact same plotline would happen in the official anime as part of the Buu saga.

The weirdest part of all of this is the absence of Goku and Vegeta…and the sudden ‘stop/start’ involvement in the narrative. Goku is dead. he cant leave the afterlife, its an established canonical fact. And as such he spends most of the film just kind of…describing what the audience is seeing, and eventually they just full on break the rules of the series so that he can have a quick ‘saviour’ moment.

Vegeta is shown for the most part nowhere near the tournament, but then he randomly shows up, gets his ass kicked and then leaves again. Piccolo dips from the tournament all together and only shows up to aura farm, get beaten up, and then leave again.

And probably my biggest gripe, the tournament of power stuff is done and dusted within about 15 minutes of the runtime. I’ll be honest, id have just quite happily watched a ‘tournament of power’ movie with Bojack as the final villain. But they hand it off so quickly, as if IT’S getting int he way of a good story. when the reality is they burnt through there one good thing to get to an extended fight scene with almost no variety.

It feels like a conflicting narrative between the studio, the writer and the editor. With the writer wanting it to be a more ‘Gohan’ and lore driven story, the studio demanding Goku, Vegeta and Piccalo get SOME action in for the trailers, and the editor wanting to keep things on a steady course in line with how the series usually flows.

It results in a, not unpleasent, but very messy ‘thrown together’ feeling movie. This is a DBZ film that feels like its kids playing with action figures.

Bojack is hardly the most original villain in the series, And because of the pacing being the way it is, we never really feel bedded into the who these people are and why they’re doing what they’re doing. the pacings all over the place and tonally its massively inconsistent.

The Mr. Satan segments are fun enough, but its basically just a repeat of the Cell games ‘schtick’ sometimes lifting whole gags adhoc and just doinf them again. He doesnt really get to do all that much and his redesign isnt really my cup of tea.

While I can say the art direction and visuals here are nice, with the back half and SS2 Gohan looking particularly incredible, this is very much ‘Nice video, shame about the song’ a strong creative piece with almost nothing new to say or do.

Not one I can really actively recommend. I’d say its ‘inoffensive’ if your already watching the movies, you’ll probably get on fine with this. But if you’re looking to just watch ‘The Best’ this aint it.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/dragon-ball-z-bojack-unbound/