Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods (2013)

Now the Anubian “Beerus” is like most cats and even if he is the god of destruction he likes a nap! For some reason, though, he has asked his debonair vizier “Whis” to wake him after an wholly insufficient 39 years and so his master is groggy and grumpy. He perks up a little, though, when he learns that “Frieza” has been vanquished by the aspiring young “Goku”. Perplexed that this young Saiyan could defeat someone far superior, he decides to go and find out about the rumours of a Saiyan god - at last a challenge worthy of walking him up for. Where better to start than on the tiny home planet of the Kai King where the young “Goku” was known to be living. Sure enough, there he is, but he’s not really much of a combatant and so the irked god decides he will go to his home planet of Earth and, well, squash it. Luckily for mankind, his arrival coincides with a rather lavish birthday party and both he and “Whis” like a bit of the all-you-can-eat. Meantime, “Goku” has to figure out just how the dragon balls might be able to help. Perhaps the legendary dragon “Shenron” can be summoned and explain - but when he does, it poses quite a quandary for the youngsters who are finding that the lack of pudding cups is really tempting the now bored “Beerus” to just do his worst then go home for some milk and another nice fifty year snooze. Can they figure out the dragon’s clue in time? It did take me a while to get the images of Justin Chatwin and Chow-Yun Fat from 2009 out of my head, but once that was done we are left with an amiably entertaining mix of Japanese and Egyptian mythology that’s spent a decent amount of time on quite a fun script, plenty of vibrant action and lots of sushi! The style of the animation is admittedly very basic, and in many ways has the look of a 1970s cartoon to it, but there are plenty of characterisations here and the story allows for lots of mischief to mix in with the spirit bombs, energy attacks, and interplanetary travel as we build to a dual of momentous proportions. I think the Egyptian pantheon is my favourite, amalgamating as it does animalistic and human behaviour and traits into some superb fodder for animators, and here Masahiro Hosodo let’s his artists tell us a good old story of good v evil that doesn’t really require us to know much about the earlier “Dragon Ball” stories. It also benefits from not concluding in the fashion you might expect. Remember - it’s never a good idea to hog all the puddings!