The Verse: KA ME HA ME…HUH?

Get ready for another battle to shake the heavens! That’s right, a new Dragonball Z movie is slated for later next month. That means more yelling, more carnage, and more kamehameha’s than ever as Goku and his gang face off against another threat to the Earth.

Written and designed by Akira Toriyama, the mastermind behind the entire Dragonball universe (no not GT), we can expect a lot of what we loved about the series of past as well as the movies of present. Last year’s “Battle of the Gods” movie was a large success in Japan and helped re-spark the fanbase here in the states as well. The additions to the DBZ universe can be seen in the latest game incarnations also, including the similarly titled “Battle of the Gods” and this years release, “Xenoverse” (I’ll have a proper review on that later).

For anyone that has seen the recent trailer for this movie knows the main antagonist is now Frieza, the space tyrant who died by Future Trunk’s hands shortly after the Namek saga. The interesting part here is that Frieza now has a new transformation up his sleeve, one we have yet to witness. I don’t want to spoil anything so I will let you see for yourselves.

Now, I know what your thinking. A golden Frieza, that’s awesome, right? WRONG. What in the hell was Toriyama thinking with this design. It’s very basic and uninspired. I mean come on, you kept him in the same final form just with gold armor and purple skin. Do a simple google search and you will see tons of fan concepts that look absolutely stunning. Even in the new Xenoverse game in which you can customize your own character you have access to amazing Frieza designs. How did any of that not make it here? It’s like Frieza powered up and became a pokemon. [Vegeta voice] This is madness!

I will be interested to see how Frieza came across this transformation. By the way, his older brother Cooler in the older DBZ movie claimed he found a fifth form too and it looked way “cooler” (pun intended). So Cooler finds a way to turn into a giant Shredder and Frieza finds his way into an episode of Pimp My Ride. Frieza has now become walking jewelry.

I suppose palette swaps are going to become the norm now as even in last years Battle of the Gods, the newest Super Saiyan transformation left some fans underwhelmed. I will agree with Toriyama in the sense that Super Saiyan devolved into basically who has the longer hair after the Cell saga but seriously you took Goku and made him a “god” by simply dropping a little muscle and offering red hair? So basically it’s a glorified kaioken attack I presume.

Say what you want about Dragonball GT but at least the character design took risks. Super Saiyan 4 was heavily criticized for not being tradional but at least it was different and even to this day name one person who does not choose a Super Saiyan 4 character extensively in any DBZ game. The character design is intimidating. Seeing Goku Super Saiyan 4 for the first time was epic. It is an evolved form of the Giant Ape, after all.