@Amazon.com
Hello to everyone here at Digital Chumps. My name is Michael and I'll be a new reviewer on the site. I've been an anime fan and viewer since second grade when I discovered a strange show with different animation than I was used to seeing called Sailor Moon. Now at the age of 25 I have been given the opportunity to spout my advice about random anime to the internet! So thank you for the chance, and I hope to enjoy many more reviews in the future.
With a strange sense of serindipity the first movie I get to review is "Dragonball Curse of the Blood Rubies" on DVD from Funimation. I actually owned a vhs copy of this movie in the early 90s when this first came out, though there are easily dramatic differences between the new version and old. This movie is essentially an alternate origin movie for Dragonball as all the main characters meet in essentially the same way they do in the original tv series - though obviously things are rushed a bit since the movie itself is only 50 minutes long.
The Greedy King Gurumes who treasures the very valuable and rare Blood Rubies has fallen under a curse to be constantly hungry and only finer and finer foods have been able to abate it though nothing leaves him truly satisfied. Having heard of the power of the magic dragon balls he sends his two minions Bongo (the tough brute) and Pasta (the red haired no-nonsense female) to find the dragon balls so he can wish for his hunger to be finally sated from the eternal dragon. Pansy is a character unique to the movie, a young girl from King Gurumes' kingdom she leaves in search of the legendary Turtle Hermit to help free her kingdom from the greedy Gurumes. On the same hunt for the dragon balls is Bulma who quickly encounters Goku and shortly after Oolong (who is attempting to either eat or marry Pansy depending on either the english dub or the japanese audio) as well as Yamcha and Puar. Adventure ensues!
The animation style shows its age despite any digital cleanup that's been done, since it originally was released in 1986. Originally I was wavering on the two groups a movie like this could appeal to. On the one hand is the die-hard dragonball fans. If you really have to own every single version of Dragonball and Dragonball Z that ever existed then this might be for you, otherwise if you're just a fan of the series it could do with a rental. The other group this might appeal to (I originally thought) was a younger group. However anyone considering such a thing should be aware that this is the unedited version of the movie, and being true to the original dragonball series the movie has scenes of violence such as Bulma drawing a gun and actually shooting Goku, Bulma pissing herself, Oolong being an admitted panty thief, and Master Roshi wanting to take a "peek at your supple boobies." So while this is still generally acceptable as a children's show in japan, there are cultural differences in showing this to a younger generation to introduce them to anime. But this is really just a matter of opinion.
So in conclusion, if you like Dragonball or would just like a bit of a nostalgia rush Dragonball Curse of the Blood Rubies is worth a rental, but it doesn't really stand the test of time.
