Dragon Ball - Curse Of The Blood Rubies (Japan 1986)

Rating: **

This is a bizarre, super compacted, alternate telling of the "Dragon Ball" story, which uses a lot of recycled animation from the original series. An evil king is ravishing the land and looking for the dragon balls. Bulma meets Goku (the same way as before), Goku's dragon ball gets stolen by the bad guys, and Oolong and a cute farmer's daughter join the team. They all stumble into Yamcha and Poir's domain, but Bulma saves the day. Everyone goes to master Roshi's island and Goku gets the flying Nimbus. Then they all go to the evil king's palace, destroy the king and make a wish that the land be peaceful again. Cheap production and totally pointless. Why? The very existence of this episode is a mystery, as it serves no purpose and falls completely outside of the established continuity. But it's obviously not a complete hack job either, judging from the amount of original animation. It boggles the mind...