Bardock – Father of Goku plugs a minor continuity hole in the Dragonball Z saga and is notable because it is the only Dragonball Z film or TV special which most fans accept as canonical. I enjoyed the dubbed film enough to overlook its flaws - and at its best, Bardock harkens back to American Silver Age comic books.
As Dragonball Z fans know, series protagonist Goku is really an alien unknowingly sent to destroy earth. In the series earliest episodes, creator Akira Toriyama didn’t include much information about Goku’s planet – in fact, he didn’t mention Goku’s alien origins at all! Toriyama included more science-fiction as he moved the series away from its comedy emphasis, and soon fans knew more than they ever dreamt of knowing about Goku’s backstory. We learned that Goku was part of a super-race called the Sayians, a savage race of people recruited by an intergalactic villain named Frieza, and encouraged to destroy entire planets. Frieza’s warriors came across as an evil version of DC Comics’ Green Lantern Corps, and Frieza himself echoes Marvel Comics’ Gallactus.
Bardock’s plot details the last destructive missions of Bardock, a minor Sayian warrior and father of Goku. Bardock looks almost exactly like his son Goku will look upon maturity, and is an sadistic and ruthless vandal. Toriyama prefers to redeem evil characters, and Bardock is no exception. An alien curses Bardock with the gift of Second Sight and, thereafter, Bardock is troubled and frightened by visions of his future. Originally as dense as his son will often be, Bardock becomes aware of how much Frieza actually fears and despises the Sayian race. To make matters creepier, Goku also visits his father in hallucinatory form, and asks his father to turn away from evil while he still can. Bardock’s fellow Saiyans treat him as a pariah when he tries to convince them of Frieza’s intention to destroy their entire race in a fiery genocide, and is driven to finally confront Frieza alone. The climax of the film, in which Bardock fights warrior upon warrior and attempts to destroy the all-powerful Frieza, nicely parallels another Silver Age storyline – renegade Green Lantern Hal Jordan did much the same thing in attacking his fellow Lanterns and attempting to destroy his alien overlords.
In theory, this is the sort of film that should not work. Dragonball Z fans already knew the conclusion of the story, since Bardock must lose his fight in order for Goku to come to earth. Bardock succeeds, because the film allows for ample character development. Bardock is a true Tragic Hero who becomes enlightened too late to prevent disaster, yet his self-awareness symbolizes a kind of redemption. The destruction of Bardock’s world parallels the destruction of Krypton, and in both cases a miraculous Superman is born out of shortsighted disaster. Even though the end of the story is already fixed, Bardock features a wonderful cycle of degeneracy, enlightenment, destruction, and rebirth.
I’ve written more words about Dragonball Z than about any other animated film or television show, and I’m always amazed at how such a popular, mainstream series can contain so many moving, dramatic moments. Even the Dragonball Z films usually pack a potent dramatic punch. The Dragonball oeuvre contains few outright duds, and the best of its films (Brolly, The Dead Zone) are as entertaining and as well-animated as any anime films. Bardock is certainly one of the best Dragonball Z films, and that says a lot.
American distributor Saban is entirely to blame for Bardock’s few flaws. As is typical for Saban, the entire soundtrack was wiped clean and new music was added. Saban ruined the earlier Dragonball Z titles by imposing a Power Rangers-style faux-speed metal. Here, Saban opted to interject an entire album’s worth of Green Day style punk pop rock. The songs themselves aren’t bad, but are totally out of place in a Dragonball Z film - and there wasn’t anything wrong with the original soundtrack in the first place. Saban pulled a similar trick (with similar-sounding songs) with Digimon: The Movie, but that kind of gimmick really isn’t called for with Bardock. Unless you’re a fan of modern poppy punk like Green Day or the Offspring, the unnecessary musical interludes will annoy you.
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