Reviews

Jun 7, 2015
Overview:

Although I feel DBZ Movie 4: "Lord Slug" is the worst DBZ movie, DBZ Movie 6: Cooler's Return AKA "Clash of of 10 Billion Powerful Warriors" is another one of the 3 truly awful DBZ movies. This is the movie I will be discussing today, before wrapping up my trilogy of reviews with DBZ Movie 11: Bio Broly.

Plot: 1/10

Warning Spoiler!!!

The general consensus is that Cooler's Return has the single worst plot of any DBZ movie. I fully agree with this conclusion. After being blasted into the Sun with a Kamehameha, A small fracture of Cooler's skull including his eye has somehow managed to escape the Sun's tremendous gravity and travel an unbelievable distance into deep interstellar space. In the void of interstellar space, the skull fragment collides with a super advanced alien computer chip, which is drifting way out in deep space because...reasons. This computer chip uses Cooler's remaining brain (even though we can see VERY little if any brain survived) to construct a giant mass called the "Big Gete Star" out of astroids and self replicating nano-machines. This giant, grey blob called the Big Gete Star happened to be near the new Planet Namek, so Cooler took control of the Gete star and commanded it to attach on to Namek like a giant tumor and drain the planet's energy. Even if we were to buy the bullshit about Cooler's skull fragment escaping the Sun's gravity, how in the HOLY FUCK did the skull fragment travel far enough to be near New Namek when it collided with the computer chip!!? New Namek wasn't even located in the same quadrant of the Universe as Earth. If you were to divide the entire Universe into 4 giant chunks, this is another quadrant and probably BILLIONS of LIGHT YEARS away! In less than 1 year, Cooler's skull fragment with no "warp drive" or teleportation managed to travel a couple Billion light years distance! Even by the idiotic standards of DBZ, that is fucking preposterous!!! At the same time Cooler's blob attacks Namek, the Z fighters just happen to be on vacation there using a ship....even though it was an important plot point in the Future Saga that they had no idea where it was in the series and only Goku could travel there using "Instant Transmission", which locks onto a Ki signature and teleports to that Ki source. The Z fighters then fight against Cooler and his clones in order to save New Namek.

Action: 5/10

Goku and Vegeta fight against an army of Mecha-Cooler clones and the rest of the Z fighters all fight against lame cyclops robots. I will give this movie credit for being the only DBZ movie in which our heroes must fight a massive army instead of a single powerful opponent. That was actually a kind of neat idea. I also give it credit for including more of the other Z fighters and giving them a tad of action instead of JUST getting their asses kicked in 2 minutes. Unfortunately, we don't actually get to see the fight between the Cooler Army and Goku/Vegeta. I'm serious! The fucking movie fades to black and we see Goku and Vegeta tied up inside the Big Gete Star after presumably being beat up offscreen. Cooler attempts to drain their energy, but apparently they still have so much energy left that it overloads the computer's systems and causes the Gete Star to explode along with all the Coolers. That's really what happens! This is by far the STUPIDEST villain death in all of DBZ. It isn't satisfying, it is completely anti-climactic, and it wasn't even given any kind of foreshadowing or anything to make it acceptable.

Animation and music:

Like with Lord Slug, the animation and music are average here. They aren't terrible, but not notable either. The only interesting sequence of animation in this movie is Cooler using nano-machines to regenerate parts of his body after repeatedly getting blown apart. That...actually looked kind of awesome! Other than that, I don't really have any praise left.

Overall:

Deciding which is worse between Lord Slug and Cooler's Return is a VERY difficult decision, but I think Cooler's Return is the SLIGHTLY better movie for a few reasons. Firstly, the movie at least had the concept of the Z warriors fighting a massive army of opponents, which DBZ honestly had never tried before this point and never really tried again until the new movie "Resurrection of F". Secondly, at least Cooler looked a lot...well...cooler than Lord Slug! Despite just being a watered down version of Freeza's character with no independent personality traits, quirks, or anything to set him apart besides an extra transformation, fans of DBZ actually LIKE Cooler. He kind of looks badass and gives us another member of Freeza's unusual race, which we learn VERY little about during the manga or anime. It is hinted in the anime filler that Freeza's race is the "Arcosians" that North Kai said gave the Saiyans their technology and ran the Planet Trade Organization. Although this has never been stated in the manga or confirmed by Akira Toriyama himself. Lord Slug on the other hand, is just a lame ripoff of King Piccolo that NO ONE thinks is badass and no one actually wants to learn more about his character. That is why Cooler got 2 different movies and Lord Slug only got 1. Of course Broli got 3 because he is BY FAR the most popular movie villain. Lastly, this was the first DBZ movie to take place away from Earth and set the stage for the vastly superior Movie 8. All previous DBZ movies used the same formula of: evil dude comes to Earth and Z warriors must kill him. This movie at least "sort of" broke the mold and allowed a TINY bit more creativity to go into DBZ movies, which ultimately allowed for the zany, off the wall fun of future movies like DBZ Movie 12: Fusion Reborn. Conclusion: This isn't a good movie by ANY stretch of the imagination, but it isn't quite as bad as Lord Slug. If you are a diehard DBZ completionist and feel the need to watch this movie, just relax and try not to think too hard!
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
What did you think of this review?
Nice Nice0
Love it Love it0
Funny Funny0
Show all
It’s time to ditch the text file.
Keep track of your anime easily by creating your own list.
Sign Up Login