Frieza Youth!

Clobbering fans rejoice! According to anime blog Canned Dogs we can expect a new 35 minute DragonBall Z animated movie. The fight feature is written by series creator Akira Toriyama, set two years after Goku abandons everyone he loves to train a stranger, this shitkicin' short purports to feature Vegeta's long (never?) lost little brother - hopefully sporting another vegetable pun nom de plume. Introducing a previous unmentioned super sibling for reformed one-man-genocide Vegeta, despite stretching plausibility beyond breaking point, is quite a canny move on Toriyama's part. Who doesn't prefer the original nasty little Napoleon Prince from the Namek end of Z (as seen above) to the simpering character growth family man who closed the saga? Don't we deserve to see a naturalised order-taker superman brought low by his insufferable on-message kid brother? Disaster Year 20XX expects howling disappointment from new bro the second he finds out big V has bred with an 'under race'.

Good vibes are also being sent standout series scenarists Daisuke Nishio's way. Who dat? Apart from a chap who I hope has mucho involvement with this new project, Mr Nishio is responsible for two of the best adaptations of Toriyama's manga - Movies 6: Clash! The Ten Billion Power Warriors! and 7: Extreme Battle! The Three Great Super Saiyajin!* Although only broadly patterned after themes rather than content in Toriyama's serial; both yarns feature exemplary fraught super-battles in bleak existential wastelands. Ten Billion Power Warriors in particular ups the Western hero tic melodrama into abstraction as mech might multiply men avalanche out of heat haze desert plains, whilst our heroes get some Butch and Sundance fatalism. Much more in keeping with Toriyama's nearly finale Namek saga than the endless logic pits, and sub-par animation, the hyper elongated TV series stumbles around.

*After doing some further credit digging it appears we have an info conflict on this movie's director credit. The Funimation dvd lists Nishio as the director, but Anime News Network credits one Kazuhito Kikuchi. Hmm. I know which horse I'd back, and it ain't the folks publishing the merchandise. ANN ain't 'the internet's most trusted anime news source' for nuthin'. Oh well, at least Movie 7 isn't the one I spun purple about.