Lord Slug Movie - Dragon Ball
Dragon Ball Z: Lord Slug (or Dragon Ball Z: Son Goku the Super Saiyan) is a Japanese animated martial arts, science fiction film. It is the fourth Dragon Ball Z movie feature that was released in Japan in 1991 at the Toei Anime Film Fair. The Lord Slug movie is directed by Mitsuo Hashimoto, produced by Chiaki Hamada and Rikizo Kayano, written by Takao Koyama, and has music composed by Shunsuke Kikuchi. The cinematography was done by Masaru Sakanishi and Motoi Takahashi while editing was handled by Shin’ichi Fukumitsu.
Plot
Piccolo meditates near a waterfall, Gohan and his pet dragon Icarus approach while Gohan whistles a song he had learned recently. Piccolo feels excruciating pain when he hears the song because Namekians have particularly sensitive hearing. He tells Gohan to stop, leading to Gohan apologizing, though they are interrupted after sensing something incoming from space.
Back at Capsule Corporation, Bulma and her father discover a meteor heading towards Earth and they calculate that it will destroy Earth on impact. While the public began to panic, Goku and Krillin rush to intercept the meteor and attempt to knock it off course by using Kamehameha wave blasts. Unfortunately, the attack wasn’t effective at all.
Instead of hitting the Earth, however, the meteor does not strike Earth, but instead passes right by Earth and explodes after the nearly catastrophic event. When the dust subsides, an unusual spaceship appears on Earth. An army of reinforced soldiers marches from the ship, declaring Earth to be governed by their leader’s rule, Lord Slug.
The soldiers terrorize citizens who laugh at them, Gohan and Chi-Chi then appear to fight the soldiers, who they discover have a sensitivity to light. Chi-Chi was quickly defeated and Gohan’s hat with the four-star Dragon Ball is lost when Slug takes it from him. They reveal their mission of “Terra-Freezing” the Earth and make it their star cruiser. Gohan gets knocked down by Slug’s henchmen and Slug, after reading Bulma’s mind, learns about the Dragon Radar and decides to deploy his henchmen to look for the other Dragon Balls.
Lord Slug’s soldiers successfully bring in the other Dragon Balls and they summon Shenron to have Slug’s wish granted. The old Slug makes the wish for eternal youth.
After Slug launches the Terra-Freezing device, dark clouds begin to cover the sky, blocking the sunlight to make the place suitable for Slug and his soldiers, even though the lack of the sun makes it dangerous for Earth.
Meanwhile, Goku lies exhausted after an encounter with the meteorite and Yajirobe finds him, Yajirobe provides Senzu beans to Goku and Krillin.
Gohan goes to fight Slug’s men once more at Slug’s base. Though he is able to defeat some of Slug’s men, Gohan gets injured in the process, causing Piccolo to come in and rescue Gohan from being slain. Slug’s top soldiers then appear: Angila, Wings, and Medamatcha. The group begins to battle with Piccolo and, though Piccolo was able to kill Wings, Gohan is drained of his energy by small clones created by Medamatcha. Piccolo defends Gohan by throwing himself in front of Gohan and taking what would have been the final blow. The two are then almost slain by Medamatcha and Angila until Goku and Krillin arrive just in time. The pair kill the other elite henchmen, causing Slug to intervene himself.
Slug blasts Krillin and throws him aside to begin his fight with Goku. Goku gets enraged by the damage and destruction caused by Slug, allowing Goku to partially access his Super Saiyan form (this form is often called Pseudo Super Saiyan). The power boost gives Goku a reasonable advantage in the fight, allowing Goku to break Slug’s arm. Slug, however, is able to regenerate his arm. After this, he removes his helmet and reveals that he is a Namekian.
While Slug begins to grow into Super Giant, King Kai contacts Goku and tells him that Slug is the last Super Namekian (a division of Namekians) and that he had developed an obsession for power and was banished as a young child.
The fight continues on with Slug’s additional strength & Goku’s incredible speed, resulting in a tie. Finally, Slug grabs Goku and begins crushing him, though Piccolo intervenes by pulling Slug’s antennae, a known weakness. This made Slug let go of Goku and focus on Piccolo instead.
Piccolo recalls that Gohan’s whistling caused him intense pain earlier that day. Figuring that Slug had the same weakness, Piccolo rips his ears off and lets Gohan whistle once more. As such, Slug is weakened, even in his Super Giant form. To help Goku make the final blow, Piccolo transfers his power to Goku.
Slug blasts Gohan away and destroys his ship during the struggle while Goku manages to use Kaio-ken to fly straight through Slug’s stomach, defeating him. Next, he flies up to the sky to prepare a Spirit Bomb to obliterate the Terra-Freezing device and Slug tries to chase after him.
Goku then immediately fires his Spirit bomb at Slug, which directly knocks him straight to the Terra-Freezing device, which causes it to explode. Slug is defeated and the dark clouds begin to dissipate.
After the battle, Yajirobe gives out Senzu beans to everyone. Meanwhile, Master Roshi is unaware of what’s happening because he slept throughout the event. He wakes up after his slumber and wishes for something interesting to happen.
Music
The opening theme song for the movie is “Cha-La Head Cha-La”. while the insert song is “Kuchibue no Kimochi” (“The Feeling of Whistling”) and the ending theme song “‘ Ya’ na Koto ni wa Genki-Dama!!” (“There’s a Genki-Dama in Bad Things”) are used as well.
Releases
The Lord Slug movie was released on DVD and VHS on August 7th, 2001 in North America. The movie was later digitally remastered as a Double Feature set together with The Tree of Might for Blu-ray and DVD on September 16th, 2008. Meanwhile, on November 1st, 2011, another remastered box set was released that included the first five Dragon Ball Z Movies.
Links
Dragon Ball Series
Dragon Ball Z Series
Dragon Ball Kai Series
Dragon Ball Super Series
Dragon Ball GT Series
Super Dragon Ball Heros
Akira Toriyama