Synopsis: A brief opening shows a castle surrounded by a dense forest, where it's said an extremely beautiful princess has been sleeping for several millennia. As the princess slumbers, a number of demons are shown to be around her and the castle, seemingly keeping guard... Picking up where the last film left off, Goku has split off from Bulma and the others and makes his way to Muten Roshi's island, intending to seek training from the old hermit. Like in the main series, Roshi isn't interested in training Goku for free. Before his terms can be set however, their conversation is interrupted by the arrival of Kuririn, who is also seeking training from the old man. Things play out mostly the same as in the main series until the price of Roshi's training is brought up. Rather than leaving the judgment of a proper girl to the boys, Roshi instead asks for a particular girl – the 'Sleeping Princess of Devil's Castle'. Long ago, so the legend says, there was an extremely beautiful young girl who was kidnapped by a lecherous demon and locked up in his castle. Thousands of years passed without anyone coming to save her, and the girl is said to have continued to sleep all alone in a dark room in the castle. Kuririn asks if the girl is really that pretty, and Roshi says that legend says that those who have seen her are so taken by her beauty that they are rendered unable to move. Elsewhere, a blonde woman is shown to be reading a book also describing the princess, and smirking. Roshi tells the boys that whoever manages to bring the princess back to him will win the right to be his pupil, and the boys enthusiastically agree. Kuririn asks where the Devil's Castle is, and Roshi points far to the west, telling them of a range of five mountains called the Devil's Hand. Goku thinks this will be fun, while Kuririn vows not to get beaten by such a runt. Goku starts to call kinto'un, but Roshi stops him saying that using it would be an unfair advantage over Kuririn who has no such ride, and tells them both to get there by using only their own bodies. The boys agree, though Kuririn makes it a point to tell Goku that this is a race so if he sees Goku in any danger, he won't be helping him. The boys begin, and Kuririn promptly trips Goku before diving into the water to get a head start. Roshi laughs as he watches, thinking about the Sleeping Princess. Goku quickly overtakes Kuririn's swimming speed, though Kuririn is able to take the lead once more due to being chased by a hungry shark. The boys continue their race, on foot through a long field, through forests, and even over a bridge where Kuririn tricks Goku once more, cutting the bridge and leaving Goku presumably to die by falling into the river below. With his rival that he just couldn't manage to outrun taken out of the race, Kuririn takes a load off by catching a ride with a bus, and eventually even riding on the head of a buffalo leading a stampede. Out of nowhere however, Goku catches back up and runs right past the herd, surprising Kuririn. Back on his island, Roshi is relaxing and listening to the radio while looking at one of his dirty magazines, when Bulma shows up and surprises him. It seems she, Yamcha, Oolong, and Puar decided it was time to pay Goku a visit since it's summer vacation, but they're disappointed to hear that Goku isn't there. Bulma deduces that Roshi must've sent him off for something indecent, but Roshi says he sent him along with another prospective pupil to the Devil's Castle (though he catches himself and tries to explain it away as a theme park). When Bulma asks where that is, Roshi gives them the same directions he gave Goku and Kuririn. At long last, Kuririn reaches the peak of a mountain just outside of the Devil's Hand, and is saved from falling by Goku, despite Kuririn's earlier assurances that he wouldn't do the same for him. Goku points out the Devil's Hand, and the two rush through the horrifying looking landscape, searching all over for the castle. Goku finds what seems to be an entrance through a giant fanged mouth sculpture, and the boys go inside of it. Inside Devil's Castle, a mysterious voice tells it's master that the sun has finally gone down, it's master merely laughing Traveling via plane, Bulma and the others have reached the area of the Devil's Hand as well, but they're not alone. As Yamcha notes how hard it is to fly through such thick fog, the plane is suddenly attacked by flying demons who break through a window, forcing the plane to spiral down to the ground. Now inside the Devil's Castle, Kuririn remarks about how scary everything is, as he even gets spooked by an immovable statue. The statue's eyes however turn to follow the boy's progress as they go further inside, unaware that they're being watched by someone, seemingly a human. As a monster movie plays on a TV, Bulma wakes up in a luxurious bedroom, separated from the others. As she turns around, she comes face to face with a weird looking little man, before the castle's master, Lucifer, introduces himself. Bulma is immediately taken by how handsome the man is, but when he asks how she is she says he's been treating them terribly as guests by having 'demons' attack their plane – that's going too far, even if this is a haunted house. Lucifer laughs and apologizes, inviting her to a dinner party to make amends. Bulma agrees as she is starting to get hungry, and Lucifer motions to his butler, the strange man from before, who leaves to 'make preparations', starting with grabbing a gigantic needle. As Lucifer starts to escort Bulma to the dining room, Bulma asks where Yamcha and the others are, and the small man remarks that they didn't seem as appealing. Goku and Kuririn eventually come to a large room, where they are suddenly run over by a hoard of marching demons. A large red one wielding two weapons and a ribbon stays behind, and while Goku demands the Sleeping Princess from him, a tiny winged demon starts biting his leg. The tiny demon keeps interrupting Goku and Kuririn's efforts to ask the larger one where the Sleeping Princess is, and eventually the larger demon begins to attack them just as the marching army storms back through as well. Kuririn is able to trip up the army while Goku deftly dodges the larger demon's attacks, and he even succeeds in sending the demon flying into a pillar before returning to help Kuririn fight the other demons. Though the boys are successful in defeating a large amount of them, the larger demon begins another counterattack on Goku using it's ribbon, and Kuririn takes this opportunity to escape. As Lucifer escorts Bulma, he asks her how old she is, and she responds happily that she's 16. The short man carrying the needle remarks that it's been a long time since they had vintage 16-year-old, catching Bulma off-guard. Lucifer explains he's talking about the drink that will be served tonight, and they finally arrive at the hall which, in addition to being filled with demons, has a large ornate hole in it's ceiling, and a stairway leading to another luxurious looking bed. Bulma starts to think that this all looks a little too real even for a masquerade party, and Lucifer introduces everyone to Bulma, describing her as their “guest” for the evening. This causes all of the demons to clap and laugh uproariously. As Bulma is seated in a throne, Bulma once again asks where Yamcha and the others are, only for Lucifer to reiterate that only “delicious” guests are brought here. As Bulma spots the large needle again and starts to get the idea, Lucifer's face turns demonic and he says that, for the first time in a long time, they'll be able to toast with a young girl's blood. Strange ropes restrain Bulma to the chair, and she cries out for someone, anyone, to come save her, and her cry is heard by Yamcha, Oolong, and Puar, who are all wandering the castle. Meanwhile, Kuririn, who had been attempting to either find the Princess or get out of the castle, is captured by a pterodactyl like demon. Goku hears his cry and chases after him, abandoning his fight with the demons from before. Kuririn bites the pterodactyl demon's foot and starts to fall, and Goku at last calls for kinto'un, flying to save Kuririn just in the nick of time, leaving the pursuing demons behind. Goku tries to sit Kuririn on kinto'un, but he falls through and has to be saved a second time, prompting Goku to chastise him for thinking bad things all the time. Watching all of this, the large red demon points to it's feet and channels it's own method of flying, a pair of fireballs, and along with a group of flying demons armed with guns, they renew their attack on Goku and Kuririn. As the chase continues, Goku eventually flies back through the area where Kuririn kept falling, and leads the red demon to it's demise when a large creature that kept trying to eat Kuririn emerges for a third time to eat the demon instead. Back in the castle's hall, the small man is dabbing at Bulma's chest with gauze in preparation to drain her blood with the large needle. Lucifer continues speaking to his demons, saying that tonight is the night that they'll finally wake the Sleeping Princess from her five-thousand year slumber, and her radiance will grant them eternal darkness. He proposes a toast to the Princess, and two demons overhearing this start to protest somewhat, almost getting caught by the others. Before Bulma's blood can be drained, Goku and Kuririn crash-land through an exploding wall and land in the curtained bedchambers, and Lucifer orders his men to protect the Princess. Kuririn starts to search desperately for her, but all he and Goku can find are a large blue crystal the size of their heads. Out of nowhere, the blonde lady drives through on a one-wheeled motorcycle and introduces herself as Lunch before making off with the diamond known as the Sleeping Princess. Lucifer orders his men not to let any of them escape as Goku and Kuririn start to pursue Lunch, Goku not hearing Bulma or the two demons cries for help. One of the demons approaches Bulma and says that he's Yamcha, but the other demon has already reverted to Oolong, causing Puar – who had been transformed into just a demon's head to make Yamcha look like a demon – to revert as well, leading to all of them being captured. As Lunch tries to make her escape, her hair causes her to sneeze and crash upon returning to her blue-haired form, and Goku grabs the Sleeping Princess, happy at first that this means he'll be able to get training at last. To his dismay however, Lucifer has taken Kuririn hostage and will kill him if the Princess is not returned immediately. Goku returns the diamond much to Kuririn's surprise, and the demons rush Goku and try to take him out, eventually succeeding when the tiny winged demon from before bites Goku's tail, draining him of all his strength. Kuririn watches with dismay as the boy he himself had tried to leave to die is beaten for saving him. With everything back in order, Lucifer restarts the ceremony to awaken the Sleeping Princess, and opens the hole in the ceiling to allow moon to bathe the diamond in light. Bulma has been restrained in the chair once again, while Goku and all of the others, including Lunch, have been stuck in a wall being watched by the tiny winged demon. Oolong curses Kame-sennin, wondering how any of this is a theme park, while Lunch just wonders where she is. Oolong asks Puar what he's doing, and Puar notes that the full moon is pretty. Hearing that, Goku glances up at the moon and starts to transform into a giant ape much to the horror of his friends even as his transformation frees them and forces the tiny demon to flee. Lucifer takes hold of the now red Sleeping Princess, smiling until he hears Goku's roar. Goku chases his friends and smashes things along the way, and eventually captures Lunch. Kuririn mentions that Goku's tail seems to be his weakness, so he and Yamcha latch onto it and weaken him just long enough for Puar to turn into a pair of scissors and cut off the tail, returning Goku to his normal form. Lucifer is confused by what just happened, but his assistant tells him that the sun is beginning to rise, meaning their work is almost at an end. While Goku wakes up outside and realizes his clothes and tail are gone, Lucifer reveals the true purpose of the awakened Sleeping Princess is to serve as a power source for a gigantic laser he's going to fire at the sun and destroy it, leaving the land in eternal darkness that will be perfect for monsters like him and his men. Before he can fire the laser however, Yamcha, Kuririn, and Goku (now clothed in Oolong's overalls) rush in and attack. Goku and Kuririn dodge energy balls fired at them by Lucifer while Yamcha takes out Lucifer's assistant and frees Bulma, who yells for Goku to take out the laser before it's too late. Goku charges a kamehameha and fires it just as Lucifer hits the button, and the laser unfortunately seems impervious to Goku's attack as it begins to charge. Goku's kamehameha destroys the surrounding floor however, and everyone is forced to retreat. As the laser falls, it's aim is thrown off, and instead of firing at the sun, it fires at Lucifer, killing him instantly, as well as destroying much of Devil's Castle. The next morning, Yamcha and Bulma congratulate Goku on a job well done, and Kuririn shyly tries to thank Goku for saving him. While everyone is happy to have survived, it's revealed that only two mountains of the Devil's Hand remain, resulting in a peace sign like appearance. Goku and Kuririn return to Roshi's island with Lunch in tow, and the old man mistakenly believes that she must be the Sleeping Princess despite Kuririn trying to tell him what really happened. Roshi praises the boys and says he'll make them his finest pupils, and takes Lunch inside so that she can get comfortable. While the boys celebrate, Lunch sneezes and reverts back to her blonde form briefly, firing a gun at them until a passing bee makes her sneeze and change again. Lunch asks if she did anything bad, but everyone slowly takes a few steps back away from her. Review: Phew, that's one lengthy synopsis. As you can probably tell from it, this movie was leagues beyond it's predecessor in terms of what it brings to the table, and as a result brings a lot more to detail and talk about. It also makes for a much more thrilling experience in my opinion, as a good chunk more of this movie is entirely original...though I certainly wouldn't say it absolutely sticks it's landing either. Right away, you'll notice this movie picks up right where the last one left off. This is a narrative device that we'll see just once more before the movies take an entirely different approach moving forward, and while the other movies are a little more ambitious, it's a little sad to see this go away honestly. The movies developing their own similar but uniquely different storyline from the main series was something that would have given the movies a more connected and thriving life of their own I think, though it's easy to see why that wouldn't have been as easy to do once they reached a certain point. I'll touch on that when we get to the third film however. In addition to continuing off of the last film, this movie also slides itself fairly well into the narrative of the main story as well as it can. The next big thing for Goku to tackle was finding a girl for Roshi, and this movie picks up that narrative torch and runs off with it into an entirely different direction than the original manga's take, and somehow manages to end in roughly the same place the manga did anyway. It's pretty impressive, actually. The entire backstory for this movie, the Sleeping Princess, might not be that much deeper on the surface than the previous movies' hook, but it does give a lot more room for a narrative to unfold around it. Having a princess that's connected to some old legend is a great hook for a series like Dragon Ball, and having it turn out to be a bait-and-switch situation allows for even greater dangers to unfold than the ones we already had at hand. What starts off as a rather mundane quest to 'get a girl' suddenly becomes 'let's stop these demons from blowing up the sun', and that's just wild. It's not without it's drawbacks though, namely why nobody seemed to question how the Princess would still be alive five thousand years after she was supposedly taken. Nothing in the legend says anything about a spell or a curse being placed upon her, just that she was kidnapped. So even if she was alive somehow, she would be absolutely ancient, older even than Roshi, which probably puts her well out of the range of interest for the old-timer. Even once the reveal is made though, that then just leaves another problem: why has it taken Lucifer this long to try to blow up the sun? He's had the Princess this entire time seemingly, and all it took was a full moon to charge it. Nothing implies that particular night is special beyond a regular old full moon, it's not like it was a blood moon or anything. Bulma's blood is also inconsequential to their plans as all it would've been would have been a nice drink to have after they achieved their goal. It's just weird that this all happened right as Goku and everyone ended up going to the area, and even weirder that he had only NOW tried to do anything. Lucifer's a more threatening villain than Gurumes, but man is he stupid. There's not really much I can say about most of the established cast in this movie as most of them are basically the same as they were in the previous one and the main series, though I do want to mention that Lunch's introduction, as well as the introduction of her sneezes, are so much better than what was done with her in the main series. It's not even a contest. Sure, she never really explains that she changes when she sneezes, but considering her explanation in the original basically amounts to “Oh yeah, that thing you just saw me do, that's what happens when I do the thing you just saw me do”. It's like night and day. It's interesting that Roshi has Goku and Kuririn set out specifically on their own two feet as well, something he didn't require them to do when searching for a girl before. I think it's pretty likely that in this version, he probably viewed this task of bringing him a girl as the first act of their training itself rather than something that came before it, because that's the sort of requirement or limitation that he does all throughout their actual training. This is further reinforced by their race featuring some of the same varied sort of running and threats that their milk delivery training does. Realistically that's probably just another way the movies always pull from the source material thematically, but it still makes this section work really well as early training for the boys. Another weird thing though is Bulma and everyone else showing up on Roshi's island, as it presents a weird bit of conundrum in regards to how much time has passed. Their visit in this movie is probably inspired by the throwaway line during the 21st Budokai where Bulma mentions they tried to visit Goku during his training but missed him due to Roshi moving them to another island, but in that scenario it's never said exactly when they tried to visit him. It could have been at any point during the months Goku spent training, and that works fine. Here though? It's only been a few days probably since Goku split off from them, but they already say they miss him and wanted to drop by. Given how much time apart these characters often spend from each other, that just doesn't really work. As soon as we reach Devil's Hand and then Devil's Castle, the movie's aesthetic changes entirely, and it looks great and unique as a result. Gone are the big, open, brightly lit areas we've been accustomed to so far in the series, and in their place are dark, gothic looking structures and areas that feel almost at odds with Toriyama's character designs. Rather than clash however, these leaves the whole area feeling as unnatural and otherworldly as a place filled with demons should, and really adds to the atmosphere of the rest of the story moving forward. Eventually we're introduced to our main two threats of the movie, Lucifer and an unnamed (in the film itself at least) big red demon. Of the two, the big red demon probably gets more actual screen time as well as serving as a more direct threat, leaving Lucifer a bit lackluster in some ways. It doesn't help that his hair is designed to look vaguely similar to Goku's for some reason, and considering how often that design is going to be copied over to new characters later on, it's little wonder the character tends to be a bit forgotten in the grand scheme of things. The red demon however lends itself well to some great fight moments in the film, from it's dual-wield weapons, to it's own method of flying, and especially it's attacking ribbon. It's almost a shame when he gets chomped. Where Lucifer does finally get to shine is in the film's closing acts, which is unfortunate because this is where the film's originality starts to peter out unfortunately. After a promising moment where Lucifer uses Kuririn as a hostage against Goku, everyone is captured and imprisoned...just like in the Pilaf arc. Goku sees the full moon and starts to transform...just like in the Pilaf arc. Goku's rampage threatens the female member of the group in particular, and he's only stopped due to his tail being cut off...just like in the Pilaf arc. Don't get me wrong, the first movie had a ton of scenes that were ripped almost verbatim from the manga. But this movie, outside of it's opening act (and then later in it's closing moments), was almost entirely original, so to see it so blatantly ripping off the source material again grinds everything to a halt, and honestly feels almost like a slap in the face. This is especially true when you realize all of this basically happens just to get everyone back where they were before: facing off with the demons to stop them. The only thing that's really changed is who's in possession of the Princess, so overall it really just feels like a pointless few minutes, and it's a shame. Thankfully, the movie manages to redeem itself somewhat with the reveal of Lucifer's grand plan of blowing up the sun. This naturally is somewhat taken from Roshi blowing up the moon at the tournament, right down to Bulma (in the place of the announcer) fretting about the wrong sorts of things were that to occur. Unlike the previous material though, this is changed up ever so slightly to where it feels less obnoxious by comparison, and as a result it saves the movie from the hole it just dug itself into, at least a little bit. Overall, this movie is a drastic improvement over it's predecessor in just about every way possible. Even it's closing act skewing a little too closely to the source material isn't enough to fully detract from that, and it likely feels all the worse only because of how good and original the material preceding it was. The film's greatest strength is definitely it's gothic dressings, and it's something that I think the overall brightly colored Dragon Ball universe could use a little more of every now and then. Maybe one day we'll get that horror themed Dragon Ball arc. Maybe one day. Until next time! Favorite Scene: The whole section where Kuririn tries to outrun Goku is an absolute delight, especially with Goku continually catching up to (and sometimes even passing him) despite Goku taking the less speedy path in some cases. Next Time: Tie a Red Ribbon around the old oak tree, it's been-
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About the AuthorAspiring author and big anime/manga fan, just trying to do my best in the world. For more details, go to About Me. Archives
September 2022
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