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duhragonball · 5 years

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Dragon Ball Z Movie 12: Fusion Reborn (3/6)

So Janemba’s messing with King Yemma, cutting off his authority over the boundary between the living and dead. Yemma knew this would have dire consequences for the universe, and we see that manifest on Earth, where dead people are suddenly back from the grave. For example, this family is at a cemetary to visit their grandfather’s grave, only to find him alive and well in his burial clothes no less. He’s not a ghost or any other sort of apparition either; he has feet and everything.

Elsewhere, an older man named Romeo has a similar experience at the grave of his deceased lover, Juliano. Or Julianne? I don’t know. You’d think they would have called her “Juliet” to play in with Romeo, except in the play they both died young. Here, Romeo survived, and he’s and old man.

But Julianne hasn’t aged at all in the past sixty years since her death. It kind of makes for an awkward reunion.

Incidentally, Romeo has a crucifix, so this marks the first official appearance of Jesus Christ in Dragon Ball. We’ve seen crosses and the name “Jesus Christ”, but this is an actual image of the Son of God Himself. “But Lord, why are there no footprints in the sand during the most difficult parts of the journey?” “Because that was when I Instant Transmissioned you, lol.”

Speaking of crosses, here’s Dracula, and I guess he was dead, until he came back today. But he still has a wooden stake in his heart, which... okay why does he want it removed if it’s not killing him? Why can’t he just take it out himself? Also, if Janemba’s powers are causing dead people to come back to life, shouldn’t Dracula turn back into a human?

Meanwhile, some horde of invaders on horseback marches through traffic. I think these are supposed to be Mongols, but I dunno.

They kind of get their thunder stolen when a second army of tanks shows up, let by Adolf Hitler. I mean, it’s not quite Hitler. His uniform is bright purple, and the real Hitler wouldn’t be leading a battalion of tanks into action. But this movie never bothers to give him a satirical name, like “Dunkoff Shitler” or “Adenoid Hynkel” or whatever. So I just refer to this guy as Hitler. Same as that vampire from a minute ago.

In any event, this guy’s obvious resemblance to Hitler is why his scenes were edited out in several countries, which have laws against depicting Nazi imagery. For what it’s worth, the movie doesn’t really lose much with these scenes taken out.

Also, there’s just straight up zombies running around, which I don’t really understand, since Hitler and Julianne are fully alive. But that’s the chaos of Janemba for you. He’s not purposely doing any of this. This is just the result of him cutting off King Yemma’s power to regulate the dead.

But don’t worry, folks, Gohan’s here and he’ll save the day, right after he finishes eating.

Goku may be dead, but his legacy lives on in his sons, Gohan and Goten. Chi-Chi doesn’t mind doing all the dishes from the boys’ meals, but she does miss her husband at times like these.

So Videl offers to help with the dishes, but Chi-Chi’s like, no way, you’re a guest in this house.

But somehow we end up with Videl doing the dishes in the next scene. This is one of my favorite animations in this movie. With the sound effects, I could watch a loop of this all day.

Chi-Chi is impressed, so she tells Videl that she’ll make a fine wife.

And Videl’s all “Marriage? Gawrsh!” This is adorable. She’s so worked up that she drops a dish.

But Chi-Chi doesn’t mind, because she still thinks Videl is cut out for married life. In the manga, Chi-Chi wants Videl to marry Gohan so she can get a chunk of that sweet, sweet Mr. Satan fortune, but in this movie, I almost feel like she’s proposing to marry Videl herself. “Marry me, Videl, so I may never have to wash a dish again!” “Wh-what about Gohan?” “What about Gohan?”

Then Videl breaks more dishes, but before she can clean them up, she gets a call from the Satan City Police, who inform her that the dead have risen and are overrunning the town. Also, they ask her to contact Great Saiyaman. Videl’s like “No problem, I’m at his house now. I think his mom is coming on to me.”

“Stay away from my mom, Videl.”

Meanwhile, in Otherworld, Goku and Pikkon’s championship match is interrupted when a giant crystal sprouts out of the ring.

The Grand Kai believes the disturbance is coming from King Yemma’s domain, and he sends Pikkon to investigate. But Goku doesn’t want him to go, since that would mean he’d win the tournament by forfeit. So the Grand Kai orders Goku to go with Pikkon, and that works out, since Goku can teleport there.

When they arrive, they find everything all messed up.

Yemma somehow contacts them from within the barrier around his domain, and he points out Janemba on the roof.

Pikkon tries to ask Janemba to cut the shit, but Janemba either won’t cooperarte or he can’t understand him. When Pikkon loses his patience, Big J flicks him into one of those floating jellybeans he made.

This catches Goku’s interest, and now he’s happy that they left the tournament for this, since Janemba seems like an even greater challenge.

Janemba seems to agree to tangling with Goku, so he suggests that Pikkon see to Yemma while Goku lures Janemba to hell, where he’ll be out of the way.

I’m not sure if there were already jellybeans in hell, or if Janemba brought a bunch down with him.

Otherwise, Hell has experienced its own bizarre changes. I’m not entirely sure what’s changed, since we only saw it twice in the entire run of the anime up until now, but I’m pretty sure all those humanoid-looking figures weren’t there before.

Janemba grabs a few and turns them into mini-clones of himself.

Goku thinks they look cute until they all start ganging up on him.

Fortunately, Goku can just beat them away with a few roundhouse kicks, and they all vanish. The bad news is that the big Janemba won’t be that easy.

Back on Earth, Gohan’s having tons of fun clobbering zombies.

Videl’s doing pretty well against them too, but the real question is: Why is this happening, and how do they stop it? Gohan isn’t sure, but he’s confident that it’ll all work out with the two of them together.

Videl’s charmed by his answer, but then--

Some jagoff intrudes on their moment.

Oh look, it’s this asshole. Yeah, Frieza’s back and he’s in this movie too, along with Dracula, Hitler, and Jesus. For those of you keeping score, that means Steel Ball Run, Hellsing, and Resurrection F were all inspired by this movie.

Frieza is surprised that anyone on Earth knows him by name, so Gohan unmasks to reveal that he was the kid with the bowl-haircut on Namek.

Videl’s completely smitten here. “Wow, he’s wayyy dreamier than his mom!”

So Frieza’s decided to kill Gohan as revenge for Goku defeating him. You’d think he’d be mad about Future Trunks killing him, but he was friends with Gohan too, so it still works. The part that doesn’t work is this punk-ass bitch running around in Movie 12 like it’s still Movie 3.

So Frieza sics a surprise army of henchmen on Gohan to soften him up. Of course, it makes perfect sense that all the top Frieza soldiers would be here, and that they’d still be loyal to Frieza, but there’s also a lot of Movie 1-5 henchmen too, and most of them don’t even know Frieza. Still it’s not hard to believe that they could be persuaded to join his side.

But Bojack seems pretty hard to swallow. Out of everyone in this scene, he’s definitely stronger than Frieza ever was, so why isn’t he calling the shots here?

Anyway, waves of henchmen, Frieza’s invincible, what will Gohan do now?

FREE-ZA FREE-ZA FREE-ZA FREE-ZA

Hadou ooana GALAXY Yudan wana PARASITE

FREE-ZA FREE-ZA FREE-ZA FREE-ZA

Obienaku wa warera min

DIE!DIE!DIE!

So yeah, everyone sees Gohan END Frieza with one fraggin’ punch, and they all turn chickenshit and run away. Even Bjoack, I guess, which only makes sense, because Gohan punched a hole through him in Movie 9.

Videl’s like “Wow, it’s kind of weird how all of these dead people came back to life, and presumably we can’t kill them again because they’d just come back, and yet Frieza was the only jerk in this whole movie who got exploded and stayed dead from all of this.”

Then Gohan does his victory poses, and Videl swoons off-screen. In the dub, they changed the ending dialogue to suggest that Gohan and Videl made out shortly after this scene, and Goten and Trunks saw it. It’s not in the Japanese script, but come on. How was Videl not al over this dude after this? We know it happened.

Meanwhile, Mr. Satan is punching zombies someplace else, and he’s pretty pleased with how well he’s doing, except there’s no one around to watch him in action, so he moves on to find his grateful public.

Fortunately, he won’t run out of zombies anytime soon.

Meanwhile, Goten and Trunks are helping out by gathering the Dragon Balls, They find the seventh one on a golf course.

But Goten gets hit with a golf ball while he’s there. Irritated, he decides to hide the ball to get payback on whoever sent it his way.

But he hides it in the hole, so the golfer thinks he made a hole-in-one and he’s sobbing with joy. This doesn’t have much to do with the movie, but what’s great about Fusion Reborn is that you can expand on almost any scene and make it part of the wider story. Maybe this guy’s a dead Frieza Soldier who got the call to mobilize and he said “Fuck that, if I’m alive, I’m gonna hit the links one last time.” Or maybe he’s just a regular dude, but the lady there is his dead wife, who’s come back to tell him that the accident wasn’t his fault, and it’s okay for him to move on with his life. Or they’re both alive, but the golf course gets destroyed by Cell during his epic battle with Tiencha.

Back at Capsule Corp. Gohan summons Shenron. For some reason, in the dub, she tells him he’s “the only one who can,” and I’ve never understood that. Maybe she means that Gohan’s the only one who understands the crisis well enough to make the right wish to Shenron, but she could still call the Dragon. She’s done it before several times.

It’s funny how this is the first time Goten and Trunks have seen Shenron, even though the plot of Movie 10 was them gathering Dragon Balls specifically to see Shenron. That’s how big a disappointment Movie 10 was. Meanwhile, Movie 12 is so awesome that it pays off ideas from other movies.

Videl might have wished for a handsome BMF with cool shades...

But Shenron can’t grant a wish that’s already come true. Let’s just pause here to drink in this majestic shot of Casual Friday Great Saiyaman.

...

Nice.

I’m just gonna put it here again. It’s great.

So Gohan explains the situation to Shenron and asks him to put all the dead people back where they belong, which Shenron says is a simple task.

But then he says he can’t do it after all. Goten complains, and Trunks silences him before Shenron can take offense.

Now, in the dub, Shenron gives a more thorough explanation. He can move the dead back where they belong, but with King Yemma out of commission, there’s nothing to stop them from simply coming back. I think that logic is strongly implied in the subtitles, but it’s not quite so clear. In any case, this is beyond Shenron’s power. It wouldn’t be if Yemma were on the board, but if that were the case, there’d be no need to involve Shenron in the first place.

So that leaves everyone feeling pretty dejected. The problem lies in Otherworld, and if Shenron and Gohan can’t fix it, then they’re out of options.

And while they ponder what to do next...

...Shenron awkwardly asks if there’s anything else he could do for them while he’s here.

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