Superhero Media: Dragon Ball Z - Tree of Might

Although I was in the exact right group of nerdy boys in early high school when Dragon Ball Z hit Australia through the morning "Cheez TV" programme, it was actually only when I brought some the DVDs with my birthday money that I really saw any of it. You see, I lived pretty far away from my snooty private school, so had to leave home more than an hour before Dragon Ball Z aired, and I was more concerned with recording Pokemon at that moment in time. Consequently, until years later, my ideas about what Dragon Ball Z was were informed by second-hand information, glimpses of the opening theme caught on tape and some of the DBZ "Movies" that my local Asian Grocery had on VHS with dodgy English subtitles. As a result, what I thought DBZ was, as opposed to the reality of the programme, was some pretty weird shit. I'd actually recently started noting down some of these false assumptions in a document I keep for ideas about superhero games, when I found some old writing on my hard drive that was from that time, when I happened to sit down to watch Tree of Might. Now, I had thought that The World's Strongest was the first of the DBZ films I had seen, but now I think it must have been Tree of Might. 

Sorry if that was a bit long-winded to get to talking about the film, but I really don't find Tree of Might to be all that interesting in terms of narrative and character. The main antagonist for the film, Turles, has the same design as Goku and much of the same drive as Vegeta, wanting to gain enough power so that he isn't taking orders from anyone anymore, only using the Tree of Might rather than the Dragonballs. What I probably do like about Turles and his crew is their variety of design, which is greater than most other such henchmen group in the series, but also that the Earth is pretty disposable to them. Yes, Turles' plan is to destroy the Earth, but doing so is secondary, the Earth will be destroyed as a mechanical consequence of chasing the goal, rather than the destruction itself being the goal. In a way, it reminds me of comic villains like Galactus, who is undeniably destructive, but is not malicious in his doing so; of course, Turles is almost pure malice, but his choice of the Earth as a place to plant the Tree is more about the planet's isolation than anything personal. 

Although much of the regular Z Fighters join in the fight against Turles's minions, they have little to no effect in the battles of Tree of Might, even Piccolo, who, in these halcyon, pre-Super Sayain days, is meant to be the second strongest of the team, is rendered useless by the Kaio Ken and Spirit Bomb. I like the odd, non-canonical, place that Tree of Might occupies, where the broader cast is available but the Sayians haven't overrun the entire narrative, it's a fun balance between the comedy of Dragon Ball and the action of DBZ. It may well be that because I saw the films like Tree of Might and The World's Strongest early in my Dragon Ball viewing that I tend towards the lower-powered stories of the series, assuming that my first exposure was the best said media had to offer. I'm fairly sure that this isn't the case, as nostalgia doesn't really function for me like that and I literally have two Bachelor's degree majors in analysing media, so my brain works a little different when watching or reading something, even something as camp and banal as DBZ. I don't think I'll be returning to this one anytime soon.