Dragon Ball Z Movie 07: Kyokugen Battle!! Sandai Super Saiyajin

Intro
Yet again, this is for Dragonball Z fans. If you don't ike the episodes I highly doubt you will like this movie and would waste your time reading on. If you do like the episodes, feel free to continue reading. If you have not seen Dragonball Z t all then I recommend watching it first, atleast up to the end of the Android / Cell Saga, this kind of fits in with it.

Story
The story of this is basically the most powerful android Dr Gero has created (that they have seen so far) and yes you guessed it..they have to kill it, the action is pretty ... much right the way through the film it gets moving pretty quick. It's pretty much an hour of combat.

Animaton
The animation wasn't bad, nothing special, the typical Dragonball Z animations.

Sound
As this is a movie and most movies d have, for Dragonball Z. The sound was better than the series but not the best from the movies.

Characters
Same as you'd expect from Dragonball Z. Won't explain it more as I really don't think you will enjoy this movie if you did not like Dragonball Z.

Enjoyment
This was my second favourite Dragonball Z film and I have watched this various times.

Dragon Ball Z Movie 7: Super 13 is by far the most mediocre Dragon Ball Z movie of all time.

It has all the average Dragon Ball Z movie cliches:
- Piccolo comes to save Gohan
- Vegeta comes to save Goku telling "Only I can kill Kakarot."
- Spirit Bomb is used as a trump card
- trying to replicate things from the ongoing story with Android 13 being like Cell who absorbs other Androids to transform
- Krillin gets punished

The selling point of the movie is that 3 Super Saiyan are featured for the first time and are simultaneously fighting 3 Androids of Dr. Gero. Androids 13, 14 and ... 15. That's it.
Apparently Gero's Super Computer makes pretty much all the decisions for him as Gero was killed at the start of the movie after setting 17 and 18 free.
This movie features some interesting things. While 14 and 15 aren't very memorable, we learn quiet a bit about their personality as they look for Goku in the shopping district. Goku and Trunks were pretty much handy capped forced to lure the enemy to a different location.
It's not the first time a battle in an icy area being featured, but it was a nice scenery change since in the previous movies that area wasn't fully taken advantage off. Not that this movie does much with it. But they do make some cool ways for character to enter the battle.

The visuals and overall action was good. I enjoyed Vegeta vs. 14 and Trunks vs 15. While their end in similar ways, it was still enjoyable to see. The music and animation is also very fluid.

Android 13 as a character started ok. But after his transformation he just grunted and said "Son Goku!" like he is Broli from Second Coming or something.
Besides the points mentioned earlier, the main antagonists transformation just isn't believable. He starts of as a slim guy with long white hair. But absorbing 2 cores and 2 chips of his fallen comrades allow him to become a blue Hulk with Vegeta's hairstyle, orange hair and yellow eyes. He also lost his eyebrows. There is no foundation in design that justifies why he looked like that nor why he changed that drastically.

And his power also seems pretty random like all Androids introduced so far, minus Cell. The reason Cell worked is because he was made of the components and knowledge of the strongest fights, capable of draining energy of other beings and transforms by absorbing other androids who stabilize himself. Also his transformation felt more organic. While Android 13 doesn't feel like he deserves to be strong enough to fight a Super Saiyan.

The fight against Android 13 also felt very boring. Every character that tried to fight him did the same thing. Much a few times before being blasted away. Sure, it wasn't all boring since there are some iconic scenes like the finale and the infamous punch in the balls, but these are very minimal and can't make up for the rest.

Btw, what happened to Android 17 and 18? They appeared at the start of the movie and where completely gone. I assume they joined a skater gang or something and enjoy life.

One thing that bothered me since I watched this movie is Android 13's technique. That weird red ball that can apparently destroy half the planet... Is that suppose to be impressive or terrifying after characters beat up several characters that can one shot a planet casually? It's just stupid.

I feel this movie would have better worked as a filler arc. Like instead of a movie, we could have a filler arc between the 3 year time before the Androids arrive in which the weaker group of Z fighters try to locate Gero with the Dragon Balls only to end up fighting weaker Androids that cause already lots of problem. This could be great simply because we didn't see Yamcha, Tien and Chaotzu put their training into work.

Overall the movie is decent. Bombastic finale, some good action, good soundtracks and animation. But the characters are pretty much forgettable like most of the fight against Android 13. And the cliches as well as most of the secondary cast being worthless like Gohan, Krillin and Piccolo.

You know, before I watched any Dragon Ball Z, I often imagined how bad the franchise could be, given its less than favourable reputation. I decided to download some of the Dragon Ball Z movies partly out of curiosity and partly to watch something that wouldn't require much concentration when I'm eating dinner. This is the first one that I watched. Having seen it, I have to say it did not disappoint. In other words, it's as bad as what I was expecting and did indeed provide something to watch that require near zero concentration.

"Super Android 13" has lame jokes, bad voice acting, and worse ... of all, a storyline that could have been written by simpletons: Robots programmed to kill Goku. That's it. Seriously! It's a pretty poor effort even for an action film. There's practically no character development (or even characterisation) to speak of, and barely any dialogue, just continuous battling. But since it's an action anime, it would have been redeemable if the action is even half decent. Alas, it isn't. It's ridiculously unimaginative, and follows the usual hero keeps powering up till he wins patterns with impressive faithfulness. If there's anything that I hadn't seen before, it's the ultra-fast-exchange-of-blows style battles... but the movie used it so much (like 90% of the time) that by the time it finished I was already bored of it.

*sigh* I can see why this "movie" is only 45 minutes long. It would be hard to make anything longer than this with the kind of material that this anime has to work with.