I saw the HD version of dubbed DBZ Resurrection of F was finally out in the wild, so I went ahead and gave it a watch. Seeing a throwback to Frieza was nice, since he was kind of the major DBZ villain of my childhood with how often the Frieza saga ended up being used for repeats. Seeing the direct relation to the last movie was fairly interesting too.
The good:
- Fighting was cool
- Goku and Vegeta's friendship was accurate and showed nice progression during the Frieza fight from where they were at the end of the Kid Buu fight
- The Galactic Patrolman character was kind of fun
- Animation quality was solid, as is usually expected with movies
- Frieza's Hell was some great stuff
The meh:
- I really didn't need to see Master Roshi fight as if he had any relevant power
- Same as above but in regard to Tien
- "Oh, Android 18, I know you're stronger, but how about you stay with the kid and I'll go fight?" says the perpetually too weak Krillin
- Vegeta fought for all of 30 seconds maybe
The bad:
- What in the hell happened to Gohan? He went from being someone could fight Majin Buu before to not being able to handle Frieza in his weakest form. Huge step back in power relevancy.
- Frieza's "weakness" was forced for the sake of being able to conclude the movie without Goku having to find some new level to ascend to.
- The end of the fight, the whole time reversal thing, was probably the cheapest thing ever. "Oh, the planet blew up. But it's okay. This son of a bitch here can reverse all of time up to three minutes back because why the fuck not when the godly pair is already so OP."
- Purposefully not calling in Trunks or Goten because...reasons. Just one of them would have been stronger than Tien, Krillin, and Roshi combined, but sure, let's ignore that because animation budget.
Overall, the movie wasn't bad. I understand parts of the bad because they probably wanted to give members of the cast who had largely been ignored practically since Dragon Ball some time to shine. I get they needed some excuse for Frieza to be defeated, and that having Goku ascend yet again after he just did one movie previously would have been a little bit off. I understand that whether or not Goku or Vegeta fights, it's basically the same deal at this point. I still would have liked to see Vegeta get some revenge and not get sidelined for basically the entire fight though.
Resurrection of F basically just has the weaknesses that most DBZ movies have since they don't have 20 episodes to draw things out, on top of weakening the overall experience by calling in Earth's least impressive mighty warriors.
I give it a 7/10 as a DBZ movie, and more like a 6/10 as a general anime movie experience.
