Dragon Ball Z Movie 15: Fukkatsu no "F"

This is a review of the extended edition, unlike Battle of Gods I wouldn't consider this cut to be essential, it's just a bit of flashback fanservice and an ad for the Future Trunks television arc, nothing serious. This canon sequel to the previous film, Battle of Gods, continues to deliver a fun and engaging followup to Akira Toriyama's legendary shonen manga. Whereas Battle of Gods treaded similar ground to Yo! Son Goku and Friends Return!, with a nice balance of slice of life and fighting, this movie is all about the fights, which isn't really a bad thing! Once again I'm very pleased to see side characters get focus, most notably Krillin who has a nice little scene with his wife, Jaco who was nice to see animated and Master Roshi out on the battle field kicking ass! As far as a film where the conceit of the thing is bringing back the most popular villain from the dead, Fukkatsu no F essentially delivers on everything it needs to. The world progresses logically, we get to see Goku and Vegeta pushing themselves to the next level of strength, Frieza feels consistent and love-to-hate as ever. Once again the Super Era seems to have a healthy level of self awareness, recognizing Goku and Vegeta's flaws directly in the text, rather than between the lines, Beerus and Whis also feel right at home among the core cast, I really like them! It's not all sunshine and rainbows, the production side can still be a little rough. The effects animation was definitely better this time around, and generally the fights and characters were smooth and on model, but the use of CG, especially in the crowd scenes remained an eyesore. This is a marginal improvement over BoG, but not quite where a film in a series this big should be. The music was a bit all over the place in this one, some of it I really liked (specifically Frieza's surprise death metal theme!) but some cues felt a bit out of place. Finally, and most glaringly, there is a form in this movie that was not built up to properly, this is probably my biggest issue with the plot of the film. Still, this stuff isn't enough to kill it for me, and it shouldn't be enough to kill it for you. I'm excited to keep moving forward into the Super era of Dragon Ball!