Movie 1: Return My Gohan

This movie is set just before the Raditz fight in DBZ. Piccolo and Goku are enemies, and they still fight constantly, with Piccolo’s plan for world domination, and Goku’s plans for saving the earth. The power levels are comparatively low in this movie to most of the rest, because neither Goku nor Piccolo have trained with King Kai yet. 

Dragon Ball Z, Movie one, starts off with Piccolo doing his usual training. He is blowing up a few mountains, when the smoke clears, we see Piccolo standing with a gleeful grin on his face, he says, “Goku, this time I’m going to finish you off for good.”

Then, without warning, some dark figures surround the Namekian. It is impossible to identify them at this point, but they are all very strong. Piccolo can sense them all. There is one coming behind him, and one coming in front of these. He doesn’t sense the third one though, who makes him pay by coming underneath him, and delivering a blow to his stomach, sending him sprawling through the air, backwards. Piccolo recovers, and turns round to find his attacker. Before he can do anything else though, another one of the dark figures comes behind him, and dropkicks him down to the ground. Piccolo makes a rapid decent, but manages to recover from the fall fairly early. He looks around once more, and gets a face full of fists coming from all angles. The three attackers were too fast for Piccolo, and nailed him down towards a cliff. As Piccolo is falling, he sees one of the men, standing tall on a rock, with his cloak blowing in the wind. As Piccolo falls, he says but a few words – “You animals.” Pretty rich coming from a guy who doesn’t care how many people he hurts as long as he achieves world domination. He slams against the cliff hard, and before he can so much as move, all of his opponents fire an energy beam at him from their palms. He screams as the beams close in on him, and then there is an almighty explosion, where all that can be seen is white, because of the brightness of the beams. The smoke rises to an extremely high altitude, and then the leader of the pack stands on a rock, laughing to himself, and congratulating himself, knowing that if Piccolo is dead, then that must mean Kami is too.

The scene goes to Kami’s lookout, where Piccolo’s twin is on his knee. “Piccolo has been killed by Goku” he says weakly, thinking that the Earths hero has eliminated the Namek.

The title screen comes up, as to does the opening song. Not much to write about seeing how the theme song was in Japanese rather than English, but on the whole it is a bit of a waste of space. All it does is introduce the characters by showing pictures of them in action, similar to the English equivalent, at the start of DBZ, but the Japanese one pales in comparison to it.

After the long-winded intro is over, we go to an isolated forest. Birds are chirping, and it is generally very peaceful. The picture floats over to a small cluster of houses in the clearing of the forest. Gohan is studying, with his dragon ball hat on. Remember, at this stage in the series, Gohan is as of yet, very weak. He comments on what he is reading, until Chi Chi calls him for dinner. “Mmmmm, my favourite time of day!” says Gohan excitedly, as he closes his book, and runs towards the house. He stops upon seeing a car coming towards him though. Upon closer inspection, he sees that it is Ox, Gohan’s granddad. He waves at Gohan, and the little half-saiyan calls his mom telling her that Ox has arrived. She comes out and says hello to Ox in a very surprised tone, because she wasn’t expecting him.

Ox gets out of his car, with a load of presents in hand. Gohan’s little face lights up with surprise and excitement upon seeing these gifts. “Your mother told me to give you nothing but books Gohan. I never knew books could be so heavy though!” Gohan laughs at Ox’s comments, but then Ox drops a book on his head, making his dragon ball hat fall over his eyes. Ox drops more presents, then stands there, empty handed, with an extreme look of agony on his face. Gohan pulls his hat up, and looks at his granddad, feeling very scared. Ox drops to the ground, almost squashing Gohan. Chi- Chi runs towards him to see what’s wrong. Sinister music plays, and we see a hooded figure, with a red robe on. His face is obscured by the hood, but you can bet that he is a bad guy. Chi-Chi interrogates the figure, asking him what he wants. The figure replies, “I want the thing on the kids head, the dragon ball.” Gohan runs over to his mom, burying his face in her skirt.

Chi-Chi orders Gohan inside, and panicky, he does. She rips off her apron, and prepares to fight. (Her power level is about a third of what Goku’s is at the point in the series). We get our first good look at the bad guys face here too. He has a green, skull-shaped face, with very tight skin. His eyes are red, and he bares a grin, laughing at Chi Chi’s attempt to scare him by threatening him with a fight.

Gohan runs in, but we see someone sitting on the roof. Gohan stops in his tracks. Another man walks from inside the house. This man is about the height of a regular man, but his hair is white, and spiky, almost like a ghoulish fiends would be. His plain white eyes are wide, and looking straight at Gohan. Round his neck is a large, yellow necklace, complied of what look like jewels. His ears are pointed like a Nameks, but his skin is a dull, grayish, green colour. He puts some sort of food in his mouth, using his sharp claws. Chi-Chi doesn’t know who to go after – The hooded figure in front of her, or the person terrorizing her child. She makes up her mind, and runs at the hooded figure, diving in, and going for a kick. The hooded figure merely extends their arm though, and brushes Chi-Chi away, making her land very hard.  She rolls and bounces a few times, before coming to a stop. Gohan goes running at her, crying his eyes out.

As Chi-Chi hits the ground, we see Goku, emerging from some water. He can sense that something is wrong, and jumps out of the water (butt naked) then grabs his clothes, and makes his way towards the location where his wife is at.

Ox and Chi-Chi advice Gohan to run, and he does just that, still wailing, and with tears streaming down his cheeks. He can’t escape though, because the villains seem to prop up wherever he runs to.

Goku bursts onto the scene, seeing his wife on the floor, and he goes straight over to her. Chi-Chi tells him about the people kidnapping Gohan, and after getting all the information he can from Chi-Chi, Goku becomes annoyed, as Chi-Chi drifts into unconsciousness.

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