DBZ Movie 1, "Return My Gohan" (Deadzone)

The Summary

The movie starts off with Gohan reading a butterfly book, when he is called by his mom for dinner. Gohan comes running when he is interrupted by the Ox-King. Gohan switches his course and goes over to his grandfather. The Ox-King slowly starts to moan and falls down face first into the ground. Gohan runs crying to his mother who tells Gohan to go into the house when she sees the mysterious figure behind her father. Gohan starts to run into the house after his mom tells him to, but is stopped by another figure walking into the doorway of his house. ChiChi gets into a fighting stance and launches herself at the figure who knocked out the Ox-King. She is easily blocked and sent reeling back into the ground, unable to get back up due to the extreme pain. ChiChi, and the Ox-King, with their remaining energy before they pass out, tell Gohan to run, and to not stop.

The scene now switches over to Goku, who suddenly senses that their is trouble back at his house. He jumps up out of the water dragging a huge fish behind him. By the time he reaches the house, Gohan has already been captured and taking off to wherever the mysterious captors are taking him. Goku immediately sets out on the Flying Nimbus following Gohan's energy signature. The scene now switches over to Gohan and his captors, who we finally find out are Garlic Jr.'s henchmen. They kidnapped Gohan because Gohan had the fourth dragon ball on his cap. After they have taking the fourth dragonball, Garlic Jr. assigns two his henchmen to go out and find the remaining to dragon balls left, and the other two to watch after Gohan.

We next find Gohan running around outside, when he finds something that he thinks he can eat. He immediately stuffs it down his throat, before the guard assigned to him can stop him. The guard becomes very panicky, saying that the fruit would cause Gohan to "see things". True to the guards warning, Gohan almost immediately starts to hallucinate, first seeing a huge playful looking dragon type creature. Gohan starts to run all over the place, thinking that he is followed by many different friendly creatures. He finally stops at the base of Garlic Jr's throne and immediately falls asleep. As the scene starts to switch, you can hear Garlic Jr. saying that Gohan was no ordinary little boy.

In the next scene, the two henchmen sent off to find the remaining two dragonballs have returned, completely successful in their mission. The dragonballs are assembled in a circle and Garlic Jr. summons the Eternal Dragon. The Eternal Dragon materializes from the dragonballs, and asks what Garlic's wish is. Garlic Jr. wishes for immortality, and is immediately granted it. After the wish has been granted, the Eternal Dragon disappears, and the dragonballs are seen scattering back throughout the earth.

Garlic Jr. starts to walk back inside amid the Chants of "All hail Garlic Jr. the new ruler of the universe", when suddenly Goku appears and yells "Where is Gohan". The henchmen, being the complete imbeciles that they are, start to chant "Where is Gohan" which finally alerts Garlic Jr. to Goku's presence. At just that moment, Kami materializes out of nowhere, and gives a brief history of who Garlic Jr. is and why is he so hell bent on conquering the entire universe. After the flashback, Goku immediately goes into a fighting stance; jumps off a wall, and goes inside the building where Gohan is being kept. The Guards follow after him and manage to get in front of him. All three of them power up, and immediately go after Goku. They initially start to pummel him, but after being knocked back, Goku starts to get a little bit angry and goes after all three of them in a furious frenzy of punches. He knocks all three of them back, but they recover quickly and start to launch their Ki projections at him. Just as the Ki-blasts are about to hit him, another Ki-Blast appears and knocks the others out of the way. Goku looks up and there is Krillin. After a brief hello, how are you, another figure appears, and it is revealed to be Piccolo. Piccolo reveals that he is there to take Revenge on the henchmen, who had in the past, surprised him and beat him to near death. As the fighting starts to begin again, Goku tells Krillin to go get Gohan and keep him safe. Krillin immediately sets off up the stairs but as soon as he gets up to where Gohan is, one of the guards comes after him, but before the guard can get to him, a blast from beneath, fired by Piccolo, crumbles the floor, and drops the Guard down to Piccolo. Thanks to that blast Krillin is able to get to Gohan and tried to find a safe place for the two of them, while down below the Battle rages. Piccolo manages to quickly subdue his opponent, while Goku is fighting the other two guards. After a fast and frenzied battle, Goku uses the powers of his staff to knock one of his opponents into a mountain, and then fires a Kame-Hame-Ha at the other opponent, who immediately overcame and knocked into the other guard that Goku was fighting. With them out of the way, Piccolo and Goku rush to Kami's aide. They turn to Garlic Jr. and tell him that his time is over. Garlic Jr. starts to laugh and then powers up to his more powerful form. A long battle ensues, with the tide of the battle switching back and forth between the two reluctant allies, and Garlic Jr. Finally Piccolo and Goku manage to both fire a powerful Ki-Blast at Garlic Jr, who is sent flying into a wall, and is quickly buried underneath tons of falling debris.

After a brief moment of rest, and a few words spoken by the guardian of the earth, Kami, Piccolo challenges Goku, and Goku replies that since he has no choice, to bring it on. The two fighters start to battle when Garlic Jr. suddenly erupts from the debris and opens a portal to what is known as "The Dead Zone". The two fighters are knocked off their feet and start to fly through the air. Goku manages to grab ahold of a concrete column, and just as Piccolo is about to be sent flying into the portal, Goku grabs ahold of his foot, stopping him from entering that feared realm.

The episode now shows Krillin with Gohan in his arms, trying to get out of the crumbling building, when a huge block of concrete roof falls on top of his house, causing him to drop Gohan and then lose consciousness. Gohan is sent flying towards the Dead Zone when he suddenly stops and lands on the ground. Garlic Jr. realizes that Gohan must be incredibly powerful and starts to charge up a Ki-Blast, right about now Gohan releases all of his rage into one massive energy blast that hits Garlic Jr., sending him into the Dead Zone. With Garlic Jr. now trapped in the same place he summoned, the portal to the Dead Zone falls apart and calm is restored to the now debris strewn battlefield.

The now battle weary fighters are seen saying their good-byes, and staring in wonder at Gohan who finally comes back to consciousness. Gohan starts to praise his father for getting rid of Garlic Jr. No one seems to want to mention that Gohan was the one responsible for Garlic's defeat and banishment into the Dead Zone.

In the closing scene we find Gohan and Goku heading home on the Flying Nimbus, and Goku thinking to himself that he was not going to tell Gohan just yet about what he did, but that he was going to tell ChiChi how powerful Gohan really was.

The Review

The animation in this movie, while not as good as the actual DBZ regular episodes, was still outstanding. Their were some great animated scenes, one of my favorites was after Gohan ate the Hallucinogenic fruit, and started to see all those different creatures. That was pretty good the way that looked. Another one of the better parts of the movie was right at the end when Gohan defeated Garlic Jr. and sent him into the Dead Zone. Watching the Dead Zone fall apart like that was pretty neat.

Dialogue in today's movie was pretty decent, although nowhere near as good as even the worst DBZ TV episode. There were just to many grunts and moans to make it all that good. The voices for Garlic Jr. and his henchmen were pretty good, but that was just about the only shining part of the entire dialogue. The Eternal Dragon's voice was as usual, excellent, but not as Good as other times he has been summoned.

The music was great however, a nice change from some other DBZ movies that I have watched. The music, was in fact, one of the best parts of the entire movie. It just went so great with scene, matching the intensity, the drama, and the happiness at each twist and turn in the movie. The music was complete the saving factor in today's episode, giving it a much better rating in my view than what I would have given this movie if it had, had bad music.

My final thoughts on today's movie was that, although not the best one I've ever watched, it was definitely ahead of most of other ones. It was suspenseful, and gives us one of our first glimpse into Gohans true power.

Hiro Gives "Return My Gohan" Movie a rating of

5.5 Dragon Balls out of 7

-Hiro