Hogan Reviews

The third DBZ film, “A Super Decisive Battle for Earth” or “The Tree of Might”, holds a special place in my heart as, for whatever reason, I’ve always loved Turles / Tullece as a villain. I think it was the voice work for the original pre-FUNimation dub of the film that sold it, and then when I got into the Japanese dub hearing Masako Nozawa do an evil version of her Goku voice didn’t hurt my opinion either. Much later on I found out that all of the “Tullece Crusher Corps.” had a paragraph of backstory written for them as well, weirdly fleshing them out too. But fun villain cast aside, is there much else to like about Movie 3? Let’s find out!

Gohan, Krillin, Bulma and Oolong are out on a camping trip when a mysterious space probe lands and starts a forest fire, and although they manage to put it out the damage to the local area is massive, leaving many animals without their home (including a purple dragon that Gohan befriends and latter names “Hiya Dragon”) This leads to something of an extreme response where they collect the Dragon Balls and wish for the forest to be restored, which makes up our opening credits. With things back to normal all seems well, but the owner of the probe in question, a surviving Saiyan known as Tullece, has declared Earth to be the perfect planet to grow the “Tree of Might” and so soon makes planetfall and watches as his henchmen plant the tree. As Yamcha joins Goku and his family when his new car was damaged Goku hears the voice of King Kai, who tells him of the Tree and how all life on Earth will son dry up and die. Goku, Gohan, Krillin, Piccolo, Tenshinhan, Chiaotzu and Yamcha all soon converge on the Tree and try to destroy it, but its impervious to their Ki attacks, and to make matters worse, Tullece and his “Crusher Corps” arrive and soon square off with them.

If you’re not hearing the opening notes of the original DBZ dub opening immediately upon seeing this screenshot, then you’re of a different generation than me..

As the side characters do battle Tullece himself takes out Piccolo and finds Gohan’s existence interesting, palming off his visual likeness to his father as “us lower-class types tend to look similar” or something hand-wavey like that. When the kid refuses to join him he throws a Power Ball into the sky and intentionally turns Gohan into an Oozaru and then laughs as the boy tries to kill his own father, only the appearance of Hiya Dragon calms the beasts mind and stops his rampage. Tullece shoots the dinosaur leading to Oozaru Gohan turning on him, forcing his hand to fire an attack to kill him, but Goku manages to cut off his tail and turn him back into a boy. Meanwhile Yamcha is defeated by former space bounty hunter and cyborg Kakao, Tenshinhan and Chiaotzu and defeated by a combination of Rezun and Lakasai (who were members of the lost “Beanz” race who Tullece restored to life from fossils… yep.) and Daiz (who was the leader of a resistance group against Tullece when he invaded his home world of Kaborcha but joined him when he was offered a place in the Corps after his planet fell) and Krillin is defeated by Amond (notorious criminal who was in prison on the Planet “Nutz” when Tullece invaded) With Piccolo still down that just leaves Goku to fight Tullece and his entire Crusher Corps by himself…

Still love these henchmen designs, even if I’m not sure how they all have Frieza Force armour… I guess Tullece stole a bunch at some point?

In case you can’t tell, I do love this one. 40-ish minutes of not much else other than fighting, so not really any different from the other 12 in this series, but something about the character designs, the moody, apocalyptic backgrounds and Saiyan Arc character progression complete with all the Earthling characters being used for the final time in the films (Krillin not included, obviously… or the single Tenshinhan appearance in Movie 9…) sets this above a lot of them in my mind. Once again, no way this fits in any continuity, it would have to be a timeline where King Kai didn’t forget to count the time it would take for Goku to head back down Snake Way and therefore Goku and co. beat Nappa and Vegeta without any casualties, and thus didn’t head to Namek or anything. … Also a Saiyan called Tullece who coincidentally is a visual (in every way) representation of “What if Goku hadn’t hit his head and therefore became an evil Saiyan?” survived Planet Vegeta’s destruction “by luck”, as his bio states. I guess he wasn’t so lucky in the regular timelines!

Overall Thoughts:

Tullece turns Gohan’s face into a new puzzle game. “It’s like a Rubik’s cube, but better!” he claims.

“The Tree of Might” is a personal favourite of mine, but even putting that bias aside it’s still obviously one of the better DBZ movie offerings. The villains are fun and have unique designs (apart from Tullece, obviously…) the background art is great and all the Earthling side characters get roles and fights as well, again, for the final time before the majority of them are dropped from the film series. Easily in my top five of the DBZ films, though admittedly not at the very top…

All of Tullece’s minions attack Goku at once and he handily beats them all by himself in a scene that still annoys me (you could’ve thrown the good guy side characters a bone by having them get a few wins, surely?) but Tullece himself proves too much, especially when he eats one of the fruits from the Tree of Might and gets a power boost. While the evil Saiyan is distracted Goku tries for a Spirit Bomb but it’s easily countered by Tullece (yep, same fake out two films in a row!) thanks to there just not being enough life left of Earth to create one. The rest of the good guy cast all come together to fight Tullece as Goku lies defeated… until he realises the Tree of Might itself is offering its power to him too.

Tullece gets hit by the force of the energy he himself gathered in one place. Poetic justice!

Revived and now with a full power spirit bomb charged (at least in terms of how the move originally looked in the Saiyan arc, before it became a massive sphere…) Goku and Tullece square off under the Tree, where the Spirit Bomb easily tears through Tullece’s attack and sends up flying up the tree in the white zig-zaggy energy stream that the early Spirit Bomb does, destroying the tree and Tullece himself and spreading the Earth’s energy back to nature once again. A short while later everyone joins in on the camping fun, happy in the knowledge that Earth is safe once more.