Sean Akizuki's Fantasy Critic

I'd like to recall some guilty pleasures I had in the past. Aside from Power Rangers -- Dragon Ball was another franchise that Toei relied on for a cash grab! In fact, I'm actually wondering if Dragon Ball has become as overmilked as Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers . It was that feeling of being left out if you didn't have any things the other children had. I remember whining over not having a SNES or the other systems. It was also because of the Dragon Ball Z games -- most of them aged badly. It was more on buying a game related to Dragon Ball Z than a good game. It may have been crappy BUT you know -- you gotta have it to fit in. The other children would even brag about how they were able to play with the Kamehameha or brag about the Dragon Ball Z games they had. We had a PSX in the early 2000s. Yeah, it was that time when the PS2 was too expensive. I'm thankful that I never had everything I wanted either. It taught me that if I want something then work for it. To ...

As a child, I remember watching four Dragon Ball Z movies, which were edited into two movies. One was called The Greatest Rivals,  which was a combination of Cooler's Revenge and Return of Cooler. Another one combined both The Return of Broly and Bio Broly . I didn't even realize that these movies aren't canon if you try to look at even the minor details. Please remember Dragon Ball Z specials like History of Trunks  and Bardock: the Father of Goku are TV specials. Dragon Ball Z Anime also later managed to retcon Dead Zone from a non-canon film by creating the Garlic Jr. Saga. I wouldn't be surprised if some editing was done in the process.  So what's the purpose of the Dragon Ball Z movies? It seems to be a series of what-if scenarios. Let's think of some interesting what-ifs that were created by these movies. Here's what I could name of what-if scenarios that were made, and here are the only ones I'm familiar with... and let's think of th...

It's no secret that I purposely skipped watching Dragon Ball Super nor do I intend to rewatch all the Dragon Ball episodes. My argument is usually because it's gone too long and it can be easy to get lost. I'd like to focus on how Frieza became a fanservice villain because of his popularity. True, there can be moments when Frieza is often pitted against his Movie Only brother Cooler whose fifth form is theoretically more powerful. However, one can't argue that Frieza has become a fanservice villain throughout the years. Frieza was finally defeated during the Namek Saga. What happened next was that Frieza became a fanservice of sorts. Cameos here, cameos there. It seems Frieza was simply given cameos because of how popular the villain has become.  Frieza's popularity might be why he also made non-canon movie appearances. Cooler's own concept was already a contradiction of sorts. The events in  Cooler's Revenge and Return of Cooler can't fit in. Cooler is...

I've read it somewhere that Akira Toriyama said that Frieza was born of King Cold ALONE. So, one must wonder about Frieza's unnamed race. Sure, we can see that Frieza's race is obviously lizard-like and may have been born from eggs. I assumed at some point that King Cold had a mate. I assumed that King Cold's unknown wife laid eggs and out came Cooler and Frieza who were born simply minutes apart. Though, events in the Dragon Ball Z movies about Cooler were simply hard to fit into the series' canon. It seems Cooler will always exist as a what-if scenario than canon material. I guess Frieza will always be the lone son of King Cold for a reason.  I decided to do some research. Some reptiles give birth by live birth. Others lay eggs. In some cases, some real-life lizards reproduce asexually. This is a very interesting thing from National Geographic in regards to asexual reproduction . Though the trait is left to females only but Dragon Ball Z has plenty of screw logi...

If there was one unnamed race that sparked my interest, it was Freeza's race in Dragon Ball Z . Here are the known ones in the Anime: Frieza   The self-proclaimed emperor of the universe, Frieza. He appeared after the Saiyan saga, revealing that he was running an organization that enslaved planets and sold them to the highest bidder. Despite his puny size, he was small but terrible. He frequently gave an appearance of weakness to deceive his opponents but showed how terrible he really was.   Freeza revealed his first transformed state which was a giant version of himself. He was beaten by Piccolo but...   He revealed a second transformation in which he had an unusually shaped skull. This was pretty frightening.     Frieza revealed his third transformed state, which is said to be his true form. He was sleeker and back to his normal size. However, this form is no joke. This is where he gets really mean. Goku only met Frieza in this form. He was hit ...

As I was thinking of a good nostalgic post - I felt Dragon Ball Z would be a good one. I confess I haven't been updating on Dragon Ball Super while realizing Dragon Ball GT is no longer considered canon. Now, I'd like to write about the Dragon Ball Z saga which I felt was more of a massive toy commercial. It would be the Buu Saga. One may argue that the Cell Saga had some unmet potential (like how King Cold was too easily destroyed when he's Frieza's father), the Dragon Ball Z movies tend to have missed potential due to how non-canon they are. Now, it's time to talk about the final arc of Dragon Ball Z which felt more than a toy commercial and unfulfilled potential. I'm not saying there aren't great moments. I still felt that the Buu Saga had a great start. For instance, Gohan himself has had years of lack of training and must regain his powers. There's also the survival of the Universe at stake since the legendary Buu monster is about to be unleashed. T...

The Lost Media Wiki Here's a memory from the 1990s when I would be 11-12 years old. Granted, I really hated how RPN-9 gave a really bad broadcast of Dragon Ball Z in contrast to what GMA-7 did with the bad Tagalog dubs. Okay, I've been skipping the Tagalog dubs and I think the English dub is rather decent. RPN-9 had really bad scheduling of Dragon Ball Z so I never saw the Frieza Saga UNTIL GMA-7 aired much of it. However, school days prevented me from seeing more of the saga. It's a good thing Cartoon Network Philippines managed to show more of it.  There wasn't much of a choice back then. Internet was still DIAL-UP (and I really HATED that memory). All there was available was the cheesy licensed dubs by one Filipino company after the other. Who can remember watching the cheesy English dubs by Telesuccess Productions? There was also Creative Products Corporation that managed to get Toei Ltd.'s permission to create two "movies" based on four NON-CANON Dra...

In January 1981, the X-Men franchise featured the alternate reality daughter of Cyclops and Jean Grey known as Rachel Summers. The word of Rachel was practically devastated by Sentinels and it's a world caused by what if former villain Senator Kelly was assassinated. The setting in itself is very dark and dystopian. Later on, a few years later, Toei Ltd's Akira Torimaya may have read some Marvel Comics, probably decided to make his own version of Cable with Future Trunks, and mix the Days Of Future Past storyline into Cable with Future Trunks! A look at Future Trunks' timeline shows how humanity managed to succumb to a mechanical menace. The Androids practically rule the future and destroy it for fun. Future Trunks tries to go to a time machine to undo the future - pretty similar to Cable except nobody serves as the role of Mother Askani. Future Trunks goes into the present timeline, meets his alternate reality father (like how Rachel meets Cyclops), and discusses how his d...

Copying stuff from each other is just pretty normal, right? Dragon Ball Z was an Anime that really copied a lot of popular culture stuff. Son Goku is obviously based on Sun Wukong. Eventually, stuff from other popular culture got absorbed. Toei Ltd. had a partnership with Marvel during the 1980s. Some stuff Tokusatsu copied from Marvel. We have the Japanese Spiderman which is NOT part of the Marvel continuity but its own or how Bazoo in Dengeki Sentai Changeman is the show's version of Ego the Living Planet. Not to mention, Toei Ltd. also had a partnership with Hasbro when its animation studios in regards to G.I.Joe (Sunbow era) and Transformers Generation One . So, it's really no surprise that they kept copying stuff. Soon enough, the Cell Saga with Dragon Ball Z has some Marvel influence (and other influence) in it. Perhaps the most obvious is that Future Trunks' storyline is clearly copied from Days Of Future Past in X-Men. Future Trunks might be a nod to Cable from the ...

After I have written about two rather AWFUL Dragon Ball Z -based games - I'd talk about the greater games that made me throw away those two games. This is the Dragon Ball Z Budokai Tenkaichi trilogy which allows you to relive the stories of the Dragon Ball Z franchise. Although not exactly complete (and there's no arcade mode) but this game has a different fighting mechanic. The full 3D gameplay makes use of unconventional ways of entering special moves (such as pressing L2 + Triangle + Up together) or pressing a button to fly or go down. In fact, the game is simplified such as doing the basic attack to doing a super move is the same for every character - that is entering the command. The second to the third game did introduce the concept of transformation. The transformation concepts would actually have certain characters go into different phases. Some transformers are irreversible (ex. Frieza and Cell) while others could revert back to base form (like the Saiyajin characters...

The 90s have some good memories and some bad ones too. I was thinking about the PSX era when it was marred with SLOW LOADING TIMES. Then, you can also consider some Dragon Ball Z games for the PSX. I could cite these were the following... Dragon Ball Z Ultimate Battle 22 I remembered owning this game in the 2000s even if the game came out in 1995. The game does sound good on paper. However, the more I got into the game - the more I realize that while it can be fun against a friend but the single player is extremely lacking. Sure, I could go ahead and skip those pre-fight dialogues on the OPTION MENU but I'd like to talk about why I hate the game now. Remember when you went to the one player game? The problem is that you had to fight ALL 22 (or 27 if you put the cheat code in) characters rather than some random characters and a final boss. It really isn't enjoyable fighting all those 22 or 27 characters. Also, I'd like to say that the slower pace of the fighting doe...

While I don't find myself really rewatching Dragon Ball or Dragon Ball Z (except for selected arcs) - I wanted to make a bit of plot recycling. Gohan was actually supposed to be the "new Goku" but may have been in his father's shadow. Gohan did beat the much stronger Cell but I guess the popularity of Goku and Frieza is hard to match, right? Gohan would later get weakened in the now non-canon Dragon Ball GT. Now, one plot that was actually reused would be the two heroes marrying the ugly guy's hot daughter. Should we really Ox King as ugly? Maybe, maybe not. All that's known is that he has a beautiful wife and sired a beautiful daughter whose a xerox copy of her mother. We need to consider that most children are a combination of both parents for better or for worse. Even some ugly people are born from attractive parents and vice-versa. Brigitte Lin's children are half of her and half of her ex-husband which means they're neither as pretty nor as...

Today is Jason David Frank's birthday. Hurrah! Well I wanted to give a comparison between him and the fictional character Hercule or Mr. Satan as he's known in Japan. I remembered watching Dragon Ball Z back then and I still can't forget how Hercule makes the "grand entrance" as the "world champion". He even stole Gohan's victory against Cell and claimed himself as the world champion. The world has been having an impression he's their hero while the real heroes remain hidden. In short, he stole what's rightfully due to the champions of Dragon Ball Z. How is Jason David Frank and his fans the same? JDF himself tends to brag how "great" Tommy is and you have fandoms who tend to have JDF as the only color of their spectrum. Want to say how great MMPR is? They use JDF never mind Burai's the real true badass legend who makes green with evil... well green with evil... with a really sinister laugh . Tommy's laugh was just f***i...

I know Dragon Ball Z has Frieza as one of its most iconic villains if not the most iconic one. But there's some criticism I could offer towards Frieza's characterization. If there's one thing that I could say is that Frieza's actually pretty immature for somebody who's older than Vegeta. I think that one thing that Akira Toriyama may not want to admit is why Frieza's given a very small size. While it may be a message that looks can be deceiving considering that he does look harmless but there may be a bigger picture to that. One can argue how cruel Frieza is but he's not exactly all that mature himself. Consider the fact that he frequently murders someone whenever he has temper tantrums, reacts negatively to criticism, whenever something defeats his ego or just any petty reason that leads this petty tyrant to go on rampage. Not so many people criticized him and lived to tell about it. When he realized that the Saiyans would one day be more powerful he de...

I remembered in Dragon Ball Z that stated that Frieza's fourth and final form is actually his true form. This may contradict to what Cooler said in "Cooler's Revenge" which may mean that in actual canon, Frieza's the only son of King Cold and Cooler may just be a what-if scenario of Frieza having an older brother. So what's being said is that Frieza's first three forms were actually made to help him control his power levels. It seems to be a common fad in comics where a powerful villain's powers may sooner or later work against him. This scenario is almost similar to how Apocalypse's body in X-Men will soon lose its capacity to house his essence. Frieza may actually be suffering from the same problem for all we know. He's stated that he only used his first three forms to help him control these powers. In a way, he's actually suffering from the similar condition that Apocalypse is suffering from. The more powerful he gets the more he can...