Written By: Paul Pescrillo
Battle of Gods picks up where the series Dragon Ball Z left off as Goku, voiced by Sean Schemmel, is training on King Kai’s planet. He overhears King Kai and Supreme Kai talking about Lord Beerus, the God of Destruction, who has awakened early from his 50 year hibernation after only 39 years. Goku learns that Beerus is the most powerful warrior in the universe so naturally Goku wants to challenge him. He soon gets his wish as Lord Beerus, voiced by Jason Douglas, and his servant Whis, voiced by Ian Sinclair, appear on King Kai’s planet.
King Kai is stunned by his presence, but soon learns that Lord Beerus is here to see Goku. Lord Beerus has been looking for the legendary Super Saiyan God and he believes Goku is the one he’s looking for because he was the Saiyan who defeated Frieza. As we know, Goku has not achieved this level, but that won’t stop Goku from challenging Beerus to a sparring match to gauge his power. Beerus accepts, so Goku transforms to Super Saiyan 3 and charges at Beerus. With just two hits, Beerus knocks Goku out cold. Dissatisfied with Goku’s strength he proceeds to Earth to try to find the legendary Super Saiyan God.
As the story rolls on, Beerus invites himself to Bulma’s party and tries to learn if one of the other Saiyans is the Super Saiyan God. However, after a certain situation arises, Beerus becomes angry and threatens to destroy the Earth unless the Super Saiyan God appears. Will Goku ever become a Super Saiyan God? Will Beerus destroy the planet? We could answer these questions, but we suggest you check on Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods in theatres this August.
Dragon Ball Z: Battle of the Gods is well worth the watch. This 85 minute movie was directed by Masakiro Hosada and written by the creator of the series: Akira Toriyama so an authentic Dragon Ball feel can be felt throughout this film. However, the film is not without its faults and it likely lacks appeal to anyone who is not very familiar with Dragon Ball Z. As expected, the movie played fan service to DBZ fanatics by including numerous characters from the Dragon Ball universe. This wasn’t jarring, but it felt like most of the characters were useless and just there to say one or two lines. There was another particularly out-of-place scene where that paid homage to Dragon Ball. We won’t go into how they did this, but the scene just seemed to serve no purpose aside from additional fan service and takes away from the story of the film. That being said, there’s a lot of positives as well. First and foremost, the animation in this movie is beautiful, even on the sample DVD. Funimation did a great job with the English dub. Jason Douglas in particular, was the perfect choice for Lord Beerus. His performance brought the character to life. However, what really made this film and what lead us to our final score, was the Battle between Beerus and Goku. Their final battle was action packed Dragon Ball Z at its finest. It is also intellectually stimulating and has absolutely stunning animation. It is a sight you should behold on the big screen. This is why we here at ToonamiFaithful.com give the movie Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods a 9 out of 10.
Be sure to go see it in theatres starting August 5th (check your local theatres for showtimes) and let us know what you think by commenting below or using the hash tag #ToonamiFaithfulReview on Twitter.