Movie Number: 1

Other Titles: Ora no Gohan wo Kaese

Written by: Takaeo Koyama and Akira Toriyama

Directed by: Daisuke Nishio

Characters:

• Goku
• Gohan
• Piccolo
• Garlic Jr.
• Chi Chi
• Ox King

Summary: Garlic Junior is out looking for the Dragonballs to wish to be immortal. In doing this, his minions comes across Gohan and his family (minus Goku who has gone fishing). They beat up Chi Chi and the Ox King and kidnap Gohan. Goku returns home, finds out what happened, and goes in search of Garlic Junior to defeat the bad guys and save his son.

Commentary: My one big problem with the DBZ movies is that they do not fit very well into the Dragonball Z TV show timeline. Also, this being the first movie of the DBZ series, it still retains the goofiness and cuteness of Dragonball, right down to the adorable little song Gohan sings during a drug-induced splendor (watch it and you'll know what I'm talking about). Like I said, the song is adorable and funny, and since this is so early on in DBZ, Goku still uses a lot of hand-to-hand combat, which is much more interesting than the constant, "I'll hit you with my chi blast, and then you'll hit me with yours, and then I'll build up even more chi and shoot that back at you and then..." This movie is certainly entertaining, but not too deep. Great to watch if you really don't feel like thinking too much.

Rating: 5/10.

Reason for Rating: Cute, funny, decent action, but short and rather shallow in storyline.