When a series has existed as long as Dragon Ball has, its bound to have a lot of avenues to take outside of just its anime portrayal. Since its creation, Dragon Ball and later versions like Z and Super have been one of the dominating animes throughout the world, along with its high popularity in videos games and especially merchandising. With a franchise this big, it’s hard to think that its introductory series, Dragon Ball, is not as well-known as its predecessors, mainly due to the lack of coverage outside of Japan. Because of this, its movies have mainly been overshadowed as well, with most of them mainly sticking to retelling the original show’s plot with a few new changes to spice things up, and in 1996 after Z had officially been finished for a while, Dragon Ball: The Path To Power was released to the world. In this world, a young boy with a tail named Goku (voiced by Stephanie Nadolny) quite literally bumps into a young teenage girl named Bulma (voiced by Tiffany Vollmer). Once the two get to know each other, Bulma reveals that she’s searching for these items called Dragon Balls; mystical balls that when all seven are gathered have the power to grant the collector whatever wish they choose. Deciding to tag along, the two come across some odd characters, including a shapeshifting talking pig named Oolong (voiced by Bradford Jackson), a wild bounty hunter named Yamcha (voiced by Christopher Sabat), a wise old martial arts teacher named Roshi (voiced by Mike McFarland) and a peaceful humanoid android nicknamed Eigther (also voiced by Mike McFarland). Together, they work to find the Dragon Balls while being hunted by The Red Ribbon Army, a terrorist group looking for the Dragon Balls themselves. Coming out at a time when Dragon Ball Z was done, the film was pretty well received as it was also a feature made for the 10th Anniversary of the series. The movie feels like it would offer much more to veterans than it would to newcomers, since as a basic movie goes, it has some glaring issues that are hard to overlook.

The story itself seems to be a basic retelling of the original series of Dragon Ball, mainly the first season yet with changes made to the main threat and pace of each moment. The mere idea of adapting a show into a movie is a tricky and even slightly silly concept to do, as condensing a show into an hour long format means that a lot of substance has to be removed, leaving moments that could make appropriately built up feeling weightless and out of nowhere. This would normally not be a problem if it made its own story up, but since this seems to be a close comparison, the scenes feel very segmented and not many of them really connect into making a flowing narrative. The pace of each scene seems to drag things out too long, and yet nothing is really developed by the end of the movie, it feels like a slideshow of the show’s best hits which will work great for fans as it’s a new way of viewing something familiar, but newcomers won’t feel properly brought up or even that fulfilled by the end. Moments that could be character-building and could work in creating a cinematic picture seem to be the moments not connected to the original series, as it’s the new material that seems to get pushed aside leaving room for moments that seem to bring the movie to a halt. While it does seem poorly handled, it can’t be denied that it captured the spirit and energy of its original show; while not going as crazy or off-the-wall as it does, it has an atmosphere to it that doesn’t feel like its all shouting and fighting, it does try to be creative and be about characters and adventure. While the story is paced poorly and not the best structured, it’s hard to say that its unfollowable or even that badly done, it can work perfectly fine if someone is already aware of the show or is incredibly lenient.

The characters suffer a similar problem with the story, in that the rushed nature of the product keeps them from being fully fleshed out. They feel like simple archetypes that could work perfectly fine, but they feel like they’re written for a show still, where their motivations and personalities can’t work in such a short time if you want to reintroduce them. Even some of the characters prove incredibly pointless in the grand scheme of the movie, contributing nothing to the plot but were relevant in the show so they have to be here. It slows down the development for the story that they could be telling and instead keeps going back to the previous story that is already known about. Goku is a fine protagonist though it seems like his wild nature and anti-social behaviour gets watered down to just laughing a lot, Bulma and the other side characters are fine but don’t seem to have that much purpose, and the villains are horrible underutilised and come off as very forgettable and bland. The only character that seems to have more of a purpose is the android named Eigther, who develops a legitimately sweet relationship with Goku, leading to some of the better moments of the movie. But scenes like that are very few and far between, leading to an ending that could have been far more tragic and poignant if it didn’t come out of nowhere and resolve itself just as quick. All the voice actors are good, they’ve been doing these voices for a long time and returning to younger versions of the characters don’t seem that difficult for them to do.

The biggest draw for this movie is in its animation department. Though the show has been through several different animation companies and people with various different levels of quality, this may be the best the property has ever look, even in recent times. The animation company behind this movie was Studio Ghibli, the company behind various famous anime movies like Spirited Away and Grave of the Fireflies, as well as having animation director, Mamoru Hasoda, the man responsible for movies like The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, Summer Wars and Wolf Children. With these two animation giants behind it, it’s not surprising that this movie looks as amazing as it does. The visuals on display for about 95% of the movie are downright breathtaking with gorgeous backgrounds, vibrant colors, smooth expressions, and dynamic camera angles all throughout. It has amazing speed, timing, flow, liveliness, and above all character. Though the style is very clear and popping, the sketchy backgrounds and defined character outlines still capture the style of the original Dragon Ball feel, complementing each other perfectly. There’s a few scene where it just looks like a normal episode of the show, but they are very rare and really unnoticeable. The music for the movie is not the strongest, in that there’s so little that it was doing fine without it, and the ones that are chosen are poorly placed in and seem to fade out pretty quickly, not being really that effective aside from a operatic piece during one of the final moments of the movie and the closing song which is actually pretty catchy.

Dragon Ball Z has had many movies under its belt and many of them have not worked as full-fledged movies because of their overreliance on action and almost no story. Dragon Ball, which is much less about action, doesn’t suffer from that problem, so even with issues, it handles itself better than others of its type. Even though the story’s structure needed to be fixed up and better suited for a cinematic running time, it’s hard to say that this movie does anything that bad. It has some remarkable visuals and it seems to get the characters down pretty well even if they’re not used appropriately. It’s a bit of a mess, but it’s a harmless beautiful looking mess. Just ignore the movie’s strange obsession with a teenage girl’s underwear and it will be perfectly passable to watch. Decide for yourself if this is what you wish and see if it makes you want to watch the beginning of an anime era breaker.