Okay I know I've posted a lot today (and a lot about dbxv2) but I JUST GOT THIS LIL GUY!!
VEKU!! i already have a few of these lil guys collected (i've got a puar, a zeno-sama, a buu, a janemba, and an icarus) but i had been farming for a fat gogeta for a while :D
One of the criticisms I’ve seen about this movie (From Team Four Star, because they seem to be the only ones still sleeping on how cool Movie 12 is), is that the Veku vs. Janemba part takes up too much of the film. I find this absurd for a couple of reasons.
First, it illustrates the immense risk involved with the Fusion Technique. If you screw it up, you may end up worse off than when you started. As far as I can tell, Veku has greater power and stamina than Fat Gotenks, and he lasted a lot longer against Janemba than Goku or Vegeta did individually, but he’s still in deep trouble, and things could have gone even worse depending on how badly our heroes botched the pose.
I think the presumption here is that Goku and Vegeta should have pulled it off on their first try, allowing time for an epic fifteen-minute brawl with Janemba to close the movie. But that’s not how Fusion works in this franchise. It’s a high-risk/high-reward manuever. If you get it wrong, it’s a disaster, but if it works, you can overwhelm an opponent in minutes, if not seconds.
The second objection I have is that every gorram one of these movies wastes a bunch of time on goofy stuff. Movies 3 blows like a third of its runtime on a camping trip that has nothing to do with Turles or anything else. And then Movie 5 goes on another camping trip,because I guess they still had camping stuff they hadn’t used the first time around. Movies 1 and 2 had friggin’ musical interludes.
The only exception I can think of is “Mystical Adventure”, which has a frantic pace very similar to “Fusion Reborn”, but I feel like that whole part set in Penguin Village was kind of a weird diversion, even if it did function as the climactic battle of the movie. The point is that even if Veku was a big waste of storytelling time, it’s well inside the bounds for these movies. And it’s not a waste of time, because this is part of the effort to master fusion.
Anyway, when we last left Veku, he had fled Janemba to hide in what’s left of the Needle Mountain in Hell. But now Janemba’s tracked him down. To attack him, Big J uses a spike from the mountain and somehow transforms it with his weird powers, making it extend towards Veku like a spear.
It’s kind of hard to get this across with just screencaps, but you can tell by the look on Veku’s face that he’s in deep trouble.
But then at the last possible instant, Veku’s fusion expires, and he splits into Goku and Vegeta, avoiding the impact.
Janemba is shocked. Maybe he didn’t realize Veku was his previous two opponents fused together? Before he can figure this out, Goku and Geets sucker punch him and fly away,
I don’t know how smart Janemba is supposed to be, but by now he’s probably figured out that Goku and Vegeta are trying to combine together to keep fighting him.
As they run away, Vegeta is livid. He didn;t like the idea of fusing with Goku in the first place, and that was when he thought it might actually work. Then he goes through with it, and it ends up making them weaker.
Then King Kai contacts Goku telepathically, and explains how Vegeta screwed up the last part of the pose by not extending his fingers. Goku’s all smiles, because now that they know what went wrong, they just need to try it again and it’ll work perfectly.
But Vegeta’s outraged that he would even suggest doing all of that a second time. Bad enough that he had to do it once, and it nearly got them killed. Well, they’re already dead, but you know what I mean. Don’t you? Look, Janemba’s not trying to tickle these two, that’s all that matters.
But they have to do it again, because this is still their only hope of winning. They just need to get the pose right this time, because now there’s no margin of error.
Trouble is, Janemba’s onto them now, and they can’t do the fusion dance because he keeps shooting ki blasts at them. WIthout the element of surprise, or a decent place to hide, they won’t have time to fuse, properly or otherwise.
But then...!
Fuck yeah, Pikkon’s here! I guess he sensed all the trouble they were having, or maybe the Kais asked him to run interference for Goku and Vegeta. Yeah, that must be it, since he already knows what Goku is trying to do.
So Goku’s all grateful to Pikkon, and he thanks him as they move to a safe distance.
And I love this dirty look Vegeta gives Pikkon before he leaves. “Look, I don’t know who you are, but you stay away from my rival, thot.”
So now it’s Pikkon vs. Janemba, and you’d think he’s screwed, right? I mean, he got clobbered by Janemba’s first form earlier in the movie, so what good can he do against this red version?
Ah, but Pikkon knows exactly how to keep this guy off-balance, because he’s been dealing with Janemba’s barrier all this time, and so...
I’m pretty sure “mental defective” isn’t quite what Pikkon called him in Japanese, but verbal abuse is verbal abuse, and it works! Janemba’s skin cracks up just like that barrier did.
I’m not quite sure what to make of this image. Is this just shadow, or is the idea that Janemba is hollow on the inside, like a Faberge Egg? I like that idea, even if it’s not what they had in mind. Janemba’s made of the spiritual waste of a buttload of wicked souls. For all his power, he’s just a shell of a person. Maybe that’s why he’s vulnerable to harsh words. He can’t stand being called out for what he is.
Then Pikkon shoots ki blasts at him, and I don’t understand that at all, because that didn’t do anything to the barrier, so why even try it on Janemba himself? The insults were working, buddy. Just call him a tiny-handed idiot and tell him his red trucker hat makes him look like an even bigger jackass than that stupid combover on his scalp. Tell him that he’ll go down in history as a total joke, and he’ll rank among world leaders somewhere between the Roman Emperor who married his horse and the other Roman Emperor who clubbed amputees to death while pretending to be a gladiator. Sorry, I got distracted there for a minute.
But Pikkon doesn’t do any of that, and I guess his harsh words are only effective enough to surprise Janemba, and maybe only hurt him a little bit. Like the barrier around Yemma, Janemba seems able to withstand it to some degree, so he does the disassemble-y relocation trick, reappears behind Pikkon...
And boxes his ears! Owwwwwww!
But meanwhile!
OH YOU DIDN’T KNOW?
Janemba would probably finish Pikkon off right here, except he’s seen that blinding light before, which means....
.... This thing! What is it? What does it mean? I dunno!
But then we see this badass mofo right here. Who be bad now, Janemba? WHO BE BAD NOW?
Pikkon looks over and sees that the fusion worked, and he breathes a sigh of relief as he passes out.
So they did it. Vegeta didn’t want to do this, but it worked. Now he can defeat Janemba, but as part of Gogeta, not as himself. There’s something kind of bittersweet about this, because there were no options for Vegeta to retain himself in this. In death, he was doomed to lose his identity as a disembodied soul. Restored as he was by Janemba’s tampering, he was too weak to fight Janemba on his own, which was the only thing that would have given his temporary resurrection any meaning. He could have run away, or even helped Janemba to preserve his own existence, but doing that would betray his principles, and that would erase his identity too.
The Saiyans are extinct. Goku and Vegeta were the only ones left, and they’re both dead in this movie. They’ve been dead for a while now, as far as I can tell. But what they stood for, their ferocious martial skill and their boundless courage, will live on. That’s what this is about for Vegeta. He’s already gone, but he can at least see to it that someone can rise up to defeat a monster like Janemba. If that warrior doesn’t exist, then he can at least fuse with Goku and create him.
And when this is over, that’ll be it for Vegeta. He’ll go back to hell, and eventually be reincarnated as a dolphin or something. Eventually, even the legacy of Vegeta will fade from living memory, and no one will remember who and what he once was. This moment can stand as a coda to his fleeting time in the universe. Z stands for the end.
But not yet. Not yet.
Somehow, Goten and Trunks can sense their dead father’s fusion and it inspires them to do their own fusion. I’m not sure why they didn’t just do this in the first place. Given the crisis on Earth, maybe they didn’t want to risk using fusion early, in case they might be too tired to do it later.
I also don’t understand why the boys need to go to these lengths to beat Hitler and his army of zombie Nazis, but they did it anyway. Well now you got Gotenks, dummy. Shoulda just stayed in the bunker.
Gogeta only gets a few lines in this movie. Really, he doesn’t get a whole lot to say anywhere, because he has so few appearances. This is his debut, of course, and then Toei brought him back for the fuck-finish of Dragon Ball GT. Then he came back in 2018′s Dragon Ball Super: Broly, where he got a lot more time to shine, but it was after a 21-year drought.
Anyway, Janemba seems to know this is serious business, because he takes one look at Gogeta and powers up.
So other than promising to avenge Pikkon, all Gogeta has to say in the original script is this: I am neither Goku nor Vegeta! I am the one who will destroy you!” That’s how it was worded in Budokai 3, anyway.
In the dub, Gogeta’s lines are a little different. First he says “I am not Goku or Vegeta! I am Gogeta! It’s over, Janemba. I’ve come for you!” Then he says in this shot: “Every force you create has an echo. Your own bad energy will be your undoing.”
I dunno, the lines are memorable enough that I managed to quote them without looking, but I would have preferred they stuck to the Japanese script more, mostly because Schemmel and Sabat sounded so cool playing Gogeta in Budokai 3. That was the problem I had with the later Funimation dubs. By 2004 I was playing video games that covered movies and GT episodes I hadn’t seen yet, and when Funi! finally adapted those scenes, they never seemed to hold up to the video game performances.
In any event, I feel like there was a push at Funi! to have Gogeta a) identify himself for the audience, and b) provide some sort of explanation for what was about to happen next. I’m not sure this was necessary. Does it really matter if Gogeta says his own name? Lobot was never identified in Empire Strikes Back, but I still know who he is. As for the rest...
Well, these streaks of light jump from Gogeta and hit Janemba in the chest, leaving craters in his body. At the same time, Gogeta slides forward, moving behind Janemba.
Then he just turns around and drives his knee into the back of his neck, twice. Janemba manages to turn around, but he just eats a kick to the face for his trouble.
Then he raises his hand, and turns around to stare at Janemba, who doesn’t get it until...
Gogeta makes a glowy, sparkly ball with his hand. Actually, Janemba seemed to sense this before it happened, so I guess he has some idea what’s going on here.
Now maybe this is some variation of the Spirit Bomb, perhaps combined with some technique of Vegeta’s. All I know is that this ki ball shrinks and disappears, and then Gogeta closes his empty fist. But there’s light coming out of the fist, so yeah.
Anyway, it scares the hell out of Janemba, so he knows something’s up.
So he charges Gogeta, who throws his attack, but it just looks like harmless sparkles, and Janemba doesn’t even slow down once it hits him.
But you can see how nettled Janemba is. He’s clearly afraid of Gogeta, for one reason or another.
When he closes the distance, he throws a punch, and it looks like it connects. Gogeta doesn’t block it, and he doesn’t flinch. Dude doesn’t even move.
And for a moment, it looks like Janemba’s doing okay, and then he suddenly looks shocked, and his whole body begins to sparkle.
Then his back explodes. Ouch.
In the games, this movie is called the Stardust Breaker, which I never totally understood until now. The glowing orb always distracted me from the fact that the attack itself looks like stardust, and stardust explodes out of Janemba’s wound, and Janemba himself seems to dissolve into stardust. The breaker part speaks for itself, though.
This shot confuses me, because it makes it look like Janemba’s fist never actually made contact with Gogeta’s face, although the previous screencap suggests otherwise. Maybe Big J took a step backward after the attack got to him. In any case, Gogeta ain’t hurt, and Janemba’s body is disintigrating.
All he can do is scream as he fades away.
And Gogeta just watched like he knows exactly what’s going on.
And then the Tank Clerk reappears. Did Gogeta plan all of this, or is it just a lucky break?
Anyway, the Tank Clerk takes one look at Gogeta and runs in terror. We can see from the scenery that things are already returning to normal. All those jellybean things are gone.
And Gogeta seems amused by the Tank Clerk’s panic. The kid has no idea what just happened, and maybe that’s for the best. So it’s a weird fight, and very short, but I think that’s what makes it so captivating. We didn’t need a long martial arts clinic to put Janemba away. The whole idea of this movie is that Janemba is this anomaly in creation, and that it would take something more than just a powerful warrior to beat him. If punching were enough, Goku could have handled this on his own.
This is why I’ve never been a big fan of Gogeta vs. Broly as a scenario, because no matter how strong Broly is, he’s still one Saiyan, so having Goku and Vegeta combine into this otherworldly character to beat one Saiyan kind of cheapens the concept. It should be reserved for villains like Janemba, Omega Shenron, and Majin Buu, who demonstrate bizarre powers that defy reality.
This is also why I’m not crazy about the dub’s effort to explain the Gogeta/Janemba fight. It sort of defies explanation. What makes Gogeta look so awesome here is that he not only beat Janemba in a few seconds, but he seemed to know exactly what he was doing the entire time. It’s like his fused mind could sense exactly where and how to strike. Why did he bother kicking Janemba in the neck? Was that somehow part of his offensive, or was he just getting his measure? We’ll never know. That’s what makes it so cool. Gogeta’s a man of mystery. In thirty minutes, he won’t even exist anymore.
I think a lot of Gogeta’s mystique was calculated as a response to Gotenks. When Goku first spoke of Fusion in the main story, he seemed confident that if he could fuse with Gohan or Vegeta, they would beat Majin Buu easily. But that would be a fusion of adult Super Saiyans. Gotenks is a kid, and the results haven’t been as great. So this movie sort of shows what Goku originally had in mind. With greater experience, Gotenks could eventually reach the same heights...
But as a kid, he’s limited to bizarre techniques based on whatever he thinks is cool. Which is why he’s doing the Super Ghost Kamikaze Attack again, only this time with 100 ghosts instead of one or ten.
And it works. The ghosts blow up all the bad guys, but it’s only a hint of the incredible things Gogeta is capable of.
Thirty minutes later, the fusion expires, and hell looks like it’s back to normal, right down to the bloody pond. Vegeta smiles at Goku and tells him he never wants to do that again, but somehow you can tell he doesn’t quite mean that. It reminds me of his farewell to Future Trunks in Dragon Ball Super, where he says he never wants to see him again. It’s not that he hates the guy, it’s more that he wants Trunks to become strong enough to handle his own problems without having to use the time machine to get help. Likewise, in this movie, the only way Vegeta could ever return to fuse with Goku is if another Janemba popped up, and he doesn’t want that to happen.
Goku says he’ll see Vegeta “later”. I don’t know if that’s supposed to be ironic or if Goku’s just not thinking, or maybe he’s got some faint hope that Vegeta will return somehow and Goku will meet him again somehow, some way.
Anyway, Vegeta fades out, which is kind of sad, but the smile on his face is a nice consolation.
And all the dead people on Earth fade out the same way. So that takes care of that.
King Yemma’s back in business, and all is right with the universe once again.
Videl and the boys head back after a long day of punching the undead. They don’t know what happened or why, but at least it’s over. But Goten and Trunks claim to know who saved the day. I guess they figure their fathers fixed things in Otherworld, since they could sense them fusing.
But they won’t tell, I guess just to mess with Gohan and Videl. So why couldn’t Gohan sense Gogeta’s ki if Goten and Trunks could? Oh, right, he was making out with Videl the whole time.
Anyway, Gohan chases the boys, anxious to learn their secret, and Videl gets flustered because they’re leaving her behind. This background is gorgeous.
Oh my gosh this is such a good movie.This scene doesn’t even matter and it’s still beautiful.
So that wraps things up, right? Wrong. There’s just one last piece of business...
No one made any wishes, so Shenron’s still waiting patiently in Bulma’s front yard. D’oh!
And then the credits roll, including this shot of Goku from Movie 8, for some reason.
I posted caps from the credits earlier, but hot damn I like these. And the ending theme is just magnificent. This is such a good-ass movie. No wasted motion, villain shows up in the first ten minutes, and there’s tons of stuff going on that’s all tied into the main plot, so the supporting characters can get their hero moments in without getting in the way of the main players. There’s tons of action, plenty of comedy, and the visuals are gorgeous from start to finish.
The only complaint I could possibly have is that it’s too short. A story like this could have easily been expanded into a 90 minute film, or even longer. You could have Goku and Vegeta botch a second fusion attempt, or just pad out the fights that are already in the story, or add some other characters running around dealing with the dead villains. Piccolo and Krillin fight Dr. Gero or something. Dabura and Broly try to gang up on Gohan and he gets some bloody satisfaction. Shoot, have Videl beat up some Red Ribbon Army guys. By now she’s probably strong enough to take most of them. And of course, Tiencha vs. Perfect Cell.
But you know, as a 50-minute affair, this thing rocks. I’ve sat through movies three times as long that weren’t even a third as good. It’s just so good. Ahhh...
