Dragon Ball Z: Lord Slug

One of the feature-length instalments of the Dragon Ball Z series. A ship arrives on Earth. Those inside do not introduce themselves; they set up machines at once and begin altering the planet. The aim is not settlement. The planet's orbit and climate will be broken, the sun cut off, and the world rearranged to their own requirements. Who Slug is becomes clear later. He is Namekian, of the same kind as Piccolo. From there the film is a series of fights. Krillin, Gohan and the others come out in turn and are beaten in turn. Goku comes out. He is not enough at the first meeting and loses the fight. Then a transformation happens. His hair changes, his power rises, and this is presented as an intermediate state before the series' well known great transformation. What the narrative is interested in is not story but fighting: close to an hour is almost entirely combat, and the plot supplies only a reason. The weak point arrives as a sound. Namekians turn out to be unable to bear whistling, and that is used in the last section. The running time is short. The production was prepared for showing as part of a cinema programme and runs around fifty minutes. The film has no place in the series' chronology. The events do not fit the main narrative and nobody mentions them afterwards. Masako Nozawa, Toshio Furukawa and Kenji Utsumi are among the voices. Mitsuo Hashimoto directed. Who it is for: anyone following the series and anyone who likes Japanese action animation of the 1990s. Who it is not for: anyone who does not know the series; the film explains nothing and introduces no one.