Dragon Ball Z: The Tree of Might

Dragon Ball Z: The Tree Of Might
Japanese box art
Directed by	Daisuke Nishio
Produced by	Chiaki Imada Tamio Kojima
Screenplay by	Takao Koyama
Based on	Dragon Ball by Akira Toriyama
Starring	See below
Music by	Shunsuke Kikuchi
Cinematography	Motoaki Ikegami
Edited by	Shinichi Fukumitsu
Production company	Toei Animation
Distributed by	Toei
Release dates	July 7, 1990 (1990-07-07) (Japan)
Running time	60 minutes
Box office	¥1.25 billion (US$8.4 million)

Dragon Ball Z: The Tree of Might, also known by its Japanese title Dragon Ball Z: The Decisive Battle for the Entire Earth (Japanese: ドラゴンボールZ 地球まるごと超決戦, Hepburn: Doragon Bōru Zetto: Chikyū Marugoto Chōkessen) or Toei's own English title Super Battle in the World, is the third Dragon Ball Z feature film. It was originally released in Japan on July 7, 1990, between episodes 54 and 55 of DBZ, at the "Toei Anime Fair" film festival, where it was shown as part of an Akira Toriyama-themed triple feature titled Toriyama Akira: The World (the other two films were anime versions of his one-shot stories Kennosuke-sama and Pink).

Plot

Gohan, Krillin, Bulma, and Oolong are spending a peaceful day camping, but that night a huge fire breaks out in the nearby forest. Using their ki, Krillin and Gohan put out the fire and use the Dragon Balls to restore the forest. Unbeknownst to the group, the fire was started by a space probe landing. The next morning the space pod begins scouting the area and it is soon revealed that it was sent by a Saiyan, Turles, who has chosen the Earth to plant the Shinseiju (lit. “Tree of Godly Might”). The Shinseiju absorbs the world’s energy, storing it in its fruit, and whoever eats it is granted godlike power.

Turles' minions land and create a fissure in the earth to plant the seed. Kai recognizes the Shinseiju and warns the Z Warriors of the Earth’s imminent devastation if they don’t destroy it immediately. The Z Warriors head out, but their attacks don’t even leave a scratch on the Shinseiju. Turles' minions soon appear and a battle breaks out as Tullece/Turles watches on from their space ship. The Z Warriors attack with all they have, but it soon become apparent they are no match. Turles soon notices the young Saiyan Gohan and appears before him, trying to convince him to join him and help him conquer the universe. Gohan refuses, so Turles decides to kill him, but Piccolo intervenes. Unfortunately he is no match for the Saiyan and is sent flying. When he saw Gohan's tail grew back, Turles decides to have a little fun and creates an artificial moon, forcing Gohan to look at it and transform. Goku notices this and comes to help, only to be attacked by Gohan in Ōzaru form. Hire Dragon appears and calms Gohan, but after seeing this, Turles shoots Hire Dragon. Gohan goes into a frenzy and quickly turns on Turles. Turles decides he’s had enough fun and fires a massive ki attack at Gohan, but Goku severs his tail return him to normal just in time so that the attack misses Gohan.

Enraged at Turles for treating Gohan like this, Goku quickly defeats Turles' minions and heads off to take on Turles. Goku and Turles' one-on-one showdown begins and Goku has Turles on the ropes. However, the fruit of the Shinseiju has finally developed and Turles grabs one, taking a bite. With the sudden surge of power, Turles quickly turns the tables on Goku, but the Z Warriors come to his aid. As they take on Turles, Goku begins to form a Genki-Dama, but the Earth barely has any energy left.

Energy from the Shinseiju suddenly flows into Goku and the Genki-Dama is complete. With the remaining Z Warriors defeated, Goku confronts Turles and each unleashes their final attack. Goku’s Genki-Dama overwhelms Turles' ki attack and hits him head on, sending him flying through the Shinseiju. The massive Genki-Dama also destroys the Shinseiju and its energy is returned to Earth. With peace returned, the group enjoy another camping trip.

Turles

Turles, the movie's main villain.

Turles (ターレス, Tāresu, "Tullece") is the featured supervillain in this film. He is a low class Saiyan with somewhat grey skin and bears a striking resemblance to Goku, and can be considered an alternate version of Goku if he had never found peace on Earth, however, his in-universe story has varied from dub to dub. In some dubs their resemblance to each other is because when it came to identifying the lower class breed of saiyans many of them would look alike (Not all, as Bardock's team did not look the same, and Gohan does not have the same look as Goku, although his brother, Goten, does), yet, on other dubs, Turles is simply the long lost twin brother of Goku sent on a mission like Goku was before the fall of the Saiyan planet by the hands of Frieza. In the German dub of Bardock – The Father of Goku, Bardock mentions Turles is his brother. Rather than Turles being Goku's brother, and he is his uncle instead.

He roamed the universe under the planet trade organization, but went defunct after discovering the Tree of Might seeds, which are capable of taking away the planets energy to supply power to the fruit it grows, able to enhance one's own strength exponentially. He quickly assembled the Turles Crusher Corps, a band of rebels who had terrorized several planets before, and began to conquer planets for himself before along with his squad of henchmen, make their way toward Earth to check up on the Saiyan, Kakarot (Goku).

Upon arriving on Earth, he planned to plant the seed of the Tree of Might, but finds resistance from the Z Fighters. While fighting Goku, Turles eats one of the fruits and he greatly overpowers him gaining the upper hand, even able to destroy a Spirit Bomb. With the planets energy slowly deteriorating, Goku creates another Spirit Bomb from the immense energy of the Tree of Might and uses this to kill Turles and destroy the tree. In Budokai Tenkaichi 2 and 3 he is given an exclusive Oozaru form for the game.

Cast

A fifth English version, produced and released exclusively in Malaysia by Speedy Video, features an unknown voice cast.

Music

• OP (Opening Theme):
  • "CHA-LA HEAD-CHA-LA"
    • Lyrics by Yukinojō Mori
    • Music by Chiho Kiyooka
    • Arranged by Kenji Yamamoto
    • Performed by Hironobu Kageyama
• ED (Ending Theme):
  • Marugoto (まるごと^?, "The Whole World")
    • Lyrics by Dai Satō
    • Music by Chiho Kiyooka
    • Arranged by Kenji Yamamoto
    • Performed by Hironobu Kageyama ft. Ammy

English dub soundtracks

1997

• OP (Opening Theme):
  • "Rock the Dragon"
    • Performed by Ron Wasserman^[2] and Jeremy Sweet^[2]
• ED (Ending Theme):
  • "End Title"
    • Performed by Ron Wasserman^[2] and Jeremy Sweet^[2]

The score for the 1997 Saban TV version was composed by Ron Wasserman (although credited to Kussa Mahehi and Shuki Levy for contractual reasons).^[3] The background music and opening theme "Rock the Dragon" were recycled from his Saiyan / Namek Saga dub soundtrack.

2006

• OP (Opening Theme):
  • "Dragon Ball Z Movie Theme"
    • Performed by Mark Menza
• ED (Ending Theme):
  • "Dragon Ball Z Movie Theme"
    • Performed by Mark Menza

Funimation's 2006 in-house dub featured a new score by Nathan M. Johnson. However, remastered releases contain both English audio tracks with the Johnson soundtrack and original Japanese score.

The 1998 Pioneer release, 2003 AB Groupe dub and Speedy Video dub all kept the original Japanese songs and background music by Shunsuke Kikuchi.

English releases

The title card used for Saban's three "The Tree of Might" TV episodes from 1997.

It was first dubbed in English by Funimation Entertainment in association with Saban Entertainment and Ocean Productions.^[4] This dub edited the film into a three-part television episode, which first aired in North American countries during November 1997^[4] as part of the show's second season. Funimation later sub-licensed the home video rights to the movie to Pioneer Home Entertainment who, also in association with Ocean Productions, re-dubbed the movie and released it uncut on VHS and DVD on March 17, 1998, featuring the then-current English voice cast from the TV series, dialogue closer to the original Japanese script, and the original Japanese background music.^[4]

On November 14, 2006, the movie was re-released on DVD, dubbed by Funimation's in-house voice cast as part of a movie box set titled "First Strike," also containing Dead Zone and The World's Strongest. It was later remastered and released in a Double Feature set with Lord Slug on Blu-Ray and DVD on May 27, 2008. The film was released to DVD again on November 1, 2011 in a remastered box set containing the first five Dragon Ball Z movies.^[5] The edited 1997 dub finally made it to DVD in Funimation's Rock The Dragon Edition collection, instead of the uncut 1998 dub which never aired on Toonami. On this release, the 1997 dub was not presented in the episodic format in which it originally aired, but rather as a stand-alone movie.

Other English dubs were also made by French company AB Groupe and Malaysian company Speedy Video. These dubs, which are notorious for poor voice acting, were never released in North America. While the Malaysian dub's cast remains unknown, it has recently been discovered that English-speaking actors living in France were involved in the AB Groupe dub (see above). Some of these voice actors were also speculated to have dubbed animated shows produced in France, such as Code Lyoko and Chris Colorado.^[1] Other actors such as Christine Flowers, Matthew Géczy, Mirabelle Kirkland, Barbara Scaff and Allan Wenger were also thought to have taken part in this particular dub, but they have since been ruled out.

Content edits

Funimation's first dub of The Tree of Might done in association with Saban Entertainment and Ocean was heavily edited for content and length, just like their original dub of Dragon Ball Z.^[4][6]

• In order to spread time for the movie to be a three-part episode, several scenes from the series were added, such as when the Eternal Dragon is summoned, when Turles, his henchmen, and Piccolo make their first appearances in the film, and most of King Kai's scenes.^[6]
• Blood was completely edited out in the movie and the violence was toned down as well. For example, scenes where a character was punched or kicked hard were blocked by flashes of light.^[6]
• The scene where Turles forces Gohan to transform into a Great Ape by holding his face and forcing him to keep his eyes open at the power ball was edited, but Turles held him by his shoulders instead. At the same time when Gohan looks at the power ball, absorbing its Blutz Waves through his eyes and beginning to transform into a Great Ape, no heartbeat sound effect were heard in the Japanese and English uncut versions, but were digitally edited in background in the English edited version. During that same scene, when Gohan's tail grows out of his pants after he was pinned to the ground by Turles, the sound effect of it ripping through his pants were also edited.^[6]
• The scene where Turles has his foot on top of Goku was edited, but Goku's face under Turles' foot wasn't shown.^[6]
• The scenes where Gohan is nude, after he reverts from his Great Ape form, were edited, but he was covered up by some means, such as adding extended lighting to the scene where Goku catches Gohan after cutting off his tail or adding a digital bush in front of him during the scene where he is awakened by Icarus. They did, however, forget to remove or censor a shot when Gohan is lying naked in Goku's arms, but it is barely noticeable.^[6]

References

External links

• Official anime website of Toei Animation
• Dragon Ball Z: The Tree of Might at the Internet Movie Database
• Dragon Ball Z: The Tree of Might (three-part television episode) at the Internet Movie Database
• Dragon Ball Z: The Tree of Might (anime) at Anime News Network's encyclopedia