PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *metaphysical*
The third DRAGONBALL Z cartoon-flick cycles back down to the mediocrity of the first movie, though this time the movie's main villain, one Turles, does hail from the original manga. I may have read the original story long ago, but TREE OF MIGHT feels as if its writers simplified it down to the basics, so as not to involve the continuity of the animated teleseries.
According to this movie, main hero Goku has yet to encounter any persons of his native race, the Saiyans. He's been living on Earth, entirely unaware of his heritage and begetting his half-Saiyan offspring Gohan on Earth-girl Chi-Chi. Then along comes the star-cruiser of Turles and his small coterie of henchmen. Turles' only interest in Earth is to plant the mystical Tree of Might, which can suck all the energy out of a planet. The Tree then converts this energy into a fruit, and anyone who eats the fruit will have his body infused with great power. (Possibly the manga-artist drew on Asian folklore-tales involving magical fruits for this science-fiction reworking, but no exact parallels suggest themselves to me.)
Unfortunately, as with the first anime-movie of the franchise, the fight-choreography is unexceptional and there's no great drama between Goku and this evil scion of the hero's race. Turles succeeds in draining a lot of Earth's energy and eating the Tree's fruit, thus putting the hero on the ropes. But for some reason Goku can drain enough energy out of the Tree to defeat Turles, which feels a bit of a cheat.
As in the last two entries, the wish-power of the Dragonballs barely has any direct impact on the story.
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