Dragon Ball Z: The Tree of Might

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Dragon Ball Z: The Tree of Might, also known by its Japanese title Dragon Ball Z: The Decisive Battle for the Entire Earth (Japanese: ???????Z ?????????, Hepburn: Doragon B?ru Zetto: Chiky? Marugoto Ch?kessen) or Toei's own English title Super Battle in the World, is a Japanese animated science fantasy adventure film and 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).

Video Dragon Ball Z: The Tree of Might

Plot (Funimation version)

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 strength, Krillin and Gohan put out the fire and save the animals. The next day, the group find the Dragon Balls using the Dragon Radar, and summon the wish-granting Eternal Dragon, Shenron, to restore the forest. Afterwards, Gohan befriends a purple dragon which he and Krillin rescued from the forest's destruction by the fire and names him Icarus. 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 Tree of Might. The Tree of Might 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. In the Other World, King Kai recognizes the Tree of Might and warns the Z Warriors of the Earth's imminent devastation if they don't destroy it immediately. The Z Warriors head out and find the Tree of Might. They fired their energy attacks at it, but they don't even leave a scratch on the Tree of Might. To make matters worse, Turles' minions soon appear and a battle breaks out as their master watches on from their space ship. The Z Warriors attack with all they have, but it soon become apparent they are no match. Gohan, arriving on Icarus, also joins in to help his friends out.

Noticing Gohan in the battle, Turles learns that the young boy is a Saiyan and appears before him. After claiming his knowledge of Goku whom he calls by his real name "Kakarot", he attempts to convince Gohan to join him and help him conquer the universe. Gohan refuses and tries to attack Turles, but he blocked his punch and prepared to kill him as an endeavor to change his mind. Luckily, Piccolo intervenes to confront Turles in an effort to save Gohan. Unfortunately, Turles tricks Piccolo into catching Gohan, and appearing from behind him, the evil Saiyan blasted the mighty Namekian away, leaving Gohan right where Turles had him. When he saw Gohan's tail grew back, Turles decides to have a little fun and creates an artificial moon (Power Ball), forcing Gohan to look at it and change into a Great Ape. Goku notices this and comes to help, only to be attacked by the now-transformed Gohan. Just as the Great Ape begins to crush Goku, Icarus appears and calms Gohan. But after seeing this, Turles shoots Icarus, causing Gohan to go into a frenzy, and this time, quickly turns on Turles. Dodging Gohan, Turles then fires a massive energy attack at the Great Ape, but Goku severs his tail with a Destructo Disk, returning 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 his foe. The two Saiyans' one-on-one showdown begins and Goku has Turles on the ropes. However, the fruit of the Tree of Might 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 (except Gohan who is exhausted after his Great Ape transformation) come to his aid. As they take on Turles, Goku begins to form a Spirit Bomb, but the Earth barely has any energy left. While Turles defeat the remaining Z Warriors, Goku then fires his Spirit Bomb at him, but Turtles shoots another energy blast that blocked the bomb and then knocked out Goku.

Surprisingly, the energy from the Tree of Might suddenly flows into Goku and the Spirit Bomb is recreated. Goku confronts Turles and each unleashes their final attack, but Goku's Spirit Bomb overwhelms Turles' attack and hits him head on, sending him flying through the Tree of Might and destroying them both. Now that the Tree of Might is gone, the stolen energy is returned to Earth. With peace returned, the group enjoy another camping trip.

Maps Dragon Ball Z: The Tree of Might

Turles

Turles (????, T?resu, "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.

src: dragonballwiki.net

Cast

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

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Music

• OP (Opening Theme):
  • "CHA-LA HEAD-CHA-LA"
    • Lyrics by Yukinoj? Mori
    • Music by Chiho Kiyooka
    • Arranged by Kenji Yamamoto
    • Performed by Hironobu Kageyama
• ED (Ending Theme):
  • Marugoto (????, "The Whole World")
    • Lyrics by Dai Sat?
    • 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 and Jeremy Sweet
• ED (Ending Theme):
  • "End Title"
    • Performed by Ron Wasserman and Jeremy Sweet

The score for the 1997 Saban TV version was composed by Ron Wasserman (although credited to Kussa Mahehi and Shuki Levy for contractual reasons). 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.

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English releases

It was first dubbed in English by Funimation Entertainment in association with Saban Entertainment and Ocean Productions. This dub edited the film into a three-part television episode, which first aired in North American countries during November 1997 as part of the show's second season. Funimation later sub-licensed the home video rights for 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 more accurately translated from the original Japanese script, and the original Japanese background music.

On November 14, 2006, the movie was re-released on DVD, re-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; this dubbed version of Tree Of Might was based on the less accurate, censored script from the 1997 Saban version, rather than the more accurate, uncensored one from the 1998 Pioneer version, and had a new replacement score composed for it. The movie, with this dub, was later re-released on a Double Feature set in a cropped widescreen format with Lord Slug on Blu-Ray and DVD on May 27, 2008 with the original Japanese soundtrack reinstated into the dub. The film was released to DVD again on November 1, 2011 in another widescreen cropped box set containing the first five Dragon Ball Z movies, once again using Funimation's dub with the Japanese soundtrack. The edited 1997 dub finally made it to DVD in Funimation's Rock The Dragon Edition collection. 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 on the final disc of the set, alongside the TV edits of the uncut dubs of The World's Strongest and Dead Zone.

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. 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 dub of Dragon Ball Z.

• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• The scene where Turles has his foot on top of Goku was edited, but Goku's face under Turles' foot wasn't shown.
• 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.

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References

src: www.anime-covers.com

External links

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

Source of the article : Wikipedia