Dragon Ball Movie 2: Majinjou no Nemurihime

While it's starts of similarly to the first Dragon Ball movie in that it's a semi retelling of part of the TV show set in an alternate universe and has a similar issue of not having enough explanation to stop newcomers from being confused, Sleeping Princess makes much better use of the concept with the vast majority of the movie being completely original rather than simply retreading old material like in Curse of the Blood Rubies.

While the plot is mostly a very basic affair with a similar charming and light-hearted vibe to the previous movie and TV show, the Gothic style of the setting the ... movie takes place in the design of all of the creatures is excellent and different from the typical Dragon Ball style. I think that really helps the movie stand apart from others in the franchise give it a very unique feel, which to me made it much more interesting and entertaining.


I doubt it would convert anyone who hates Dragon Ball or be a great jumping off point for people just getting into Dragon Ball, but if you're a fan it's definitely worth the time and despite its rating, in my opinion it is one of the better movies in the whole franchise.

Review of the Dub movie.

Pros:
1. The Vampire was a cool designed villain, not like the usual cliche anime movie villain.
2. He had an alright motive, blowing up the sun to create permanent darkness for him and the demons.
3. Very cool art design for the "Devil's Hand". Very spooky design and it gave off some Fantasia "Night on Bald Mountain" vibes.
4. We get to see more of Goku being a Great Ape.
5. Launch is in this movie, so I gotta list this here because she is such a cutie!

Cons:
1. The dub voice in this movie for Goku is terrible, he sounds like hes always whispering ... and exhaling at the same time.
2. The dub voice for Bulma wasnt very fitting in my opinion. I don't know why they couldn't get the original voice actors, seeing as Master Roshi and Krillin have their respected voice actors.
3. The first 15 minutes are basically scenes we have already seen before in the anime. Like the first movie it is a retelling, this time of how Goku and Krillin become Master Roshi's students. I am not a fan of these retellings. I would rather see something new and original not recycled story.
4. Bulma is a damsel in distress in this movie and she trusts a very vampire looking man named LUCIFER. She also walks into the coliseum looking room filled with demons in the stands and doesn't seem scared and acts like nothing is out of the ordinary. Like seriously? Bulma isn't that dumb, as she is an inventor.
5. Even though I put Goku turning into a Great Ape into the pros, I also have to list it here as it only lasts a little over a minute before Puar turns into a giants pair of scissors and cuts Goku's tail off. I want more Great Ape epicness please!
5. The whole Sleeping Princess thing was confusing. First of all, why is this blue crystal called the sleeping princess? How did they come across it? The purpose for it was that they needed the crystal and the blood of a girl (coming from bulma) to power up a canon to take out the sun. Why did they have to use this specific canon? Couldn't they just make a canon that used normal explosives?
6. All of the demons used guns. Instead of using..I don't know maybe their claws or teeth? Nah, give them the human creation called guns!
7. There was plenty of fan service of Bulma's breasts, including 2 close ups, the demons were even joking about them, and not to mention the recycled scene of Oolong transforming into Bulma to show Roshi her boobs.
8. Krillin really didn't do anything in this movie and was a big burden to Goku who had to save him countless times, even Yamcha did more in this movie than Krillin.
9. The ending. Goku managed to blow up the canon as it was about to shoot the moon, thus resulting in a big explosion. It does not show what happens to the vampire, so it is assumed that he perished in the explosion. But what about Goku and the gang? How did they all get out of there? It is not explained.

This movie has not much going for it other than the actual cast of Dragonball, and very little is done to make this really stand out animation wise from the series. A movie is supposed to have some level of grandiosity, but this really didn't have that at all. The movie felt slow, and there were noticeable points of reused animation such as the vampire's attack. Shots were dragged and panned needlessly, and it feels like for the era, especially for a movie, that is sorta lazy. The strongest comparison is probably Angel's Egg for me, whose animation is nothing but near masterful, with much ... of the same architectural and world styling that this movie had, yet really come alive.

The strongest thing going for it is the pseudo Garlic Jr. precursor. It's pretty clear some of the ideas were reused, the whole "invading the world and filling it with demons" and even the main Vampire guy is obvious very Garlic Jr, with "garlic" even being the Achilles heel of a vampire. Hard to wonder if they didn't look at this movie and think, as I do, "wow this could be done far better". Garlic Jr is a great arc, to be clear.

I watched the dub, so that may skew things, but at the same time I'm not a big fan of Dragonball's general audio compression that exists in pretty much any digital copy you are going to find. Perhaps on TV it wasn't as bad, but the peaking makes it nearly unwatchable in Japanese with the high pitched voices.