Dragon Ball Z: The Tree of Might

Plot

Gohan, Krillin, Bulma, and Oolong are spending a peaceful day camping, but that night a huge fire breaks out in the nearby forest. Using their ki, Krillin and Gohan put out the fire and use the Dragon Balls to restore the forest. Unbeknownst to our heroes, the fire was started by a space probe landing. The next morning the space pod begins scouting the area and it is soon revealed that it was sent by a Saiyan, Turles, who has chosen the Earth to plant the Shinseiju (lit. “Tree of Godly Might”). The Shinseiju absorbs the world’s energy, storing it in its fruit, and whoever eats it is granted godlike power.

Turles minions land and create a fissure in the earth to plant the seed. Kai recognizes the Shinseiju and warns the Z Warriors of the Earth’s imminent devastation if they don’t destroy it immediately. The Z Warriors head out, but their attacks don’t even leave a scratch on the Shinseiju. Turles minions soon appear and a battle breaks out as Tullece/Turles watches on from their space ship. The Z Warriors attack with all they have, but it soon become apparent they are no match. Turles soon notices the young Saiyan Gohan and appears before him, trying to convince him to join him and help him conquer the universe. Gohan refuses, so Turles decides to kill him, but Piccolo intervenes. Unfortunately he is no match for the Saiyan and is sent flying. Turles decides to have a little fun and creates an artificial moon, forcing Gohan to look at it and transform. Goku notices this and comes to help, only to be attacked by Gohan in Ozaru form. Hire Dragon appears and calms Gohan, but after seeing this, Turles shoots Hire Dragon. Gohan goes into a frenzy and quickly turns on Turles. Turles decides he’s had enough fun and fires a massive ki attack at Gohan, but Goku severs his tail return him to normal just in time so that the attack misses Gohan.

Enraged at Turles for treating Gohan like this, Goku quickly defeats Turles minions and heads off to take on Turles. Goku and Turles one-on-one showdown begins and Goku has Turles on the ropes. However, the fruit of the Shinseiju has finally developed and Turles grabs one, taking a bite. With the sudden surge of power, Turles quickly turns the tables on Goku, but the Z Warriors come to his aid. As they take on Turles, Goku begins to form a Genki-Dama, but the Earth barely has any energy left.

Energy from the Shinseiju suddenly flows into Goku and the Genki-Dama is complete. With the remaining Z Warriors defeated, Goku confronts Turles and each unleashes their final attack. Goku’s Genki-Dama overwhelms Turles ki attack and hits him head on, sending him flying through the Shinseiju. The massive Genki-Dama also destroys the Shinseiju and its energy is returned to Earth. With peace returned, our heroes enjoy another camping trip.

Turles

Turles (???? Tullece) is the featured supervillain in Dragon Ball Z: The Tree of Might. He is a low class Saiyan with somewhat grey skin and bears a striking resemblance to Goku, and can be considered an alternate version of Goku if he had never found peace on Earth, however, his in-universe story has varied from dub to dub. In some dub their resemblance to each other is because when it came to identifying the lower class breed of saiyans many of them would look alike (Not all, as Bardocks team didnt look the same, and Gohan does not have the same look as Goku, although his brother, Goten, does), yet, on others dub, Turles is simply the long lost twin brother of Goku sent on a mission like Goku was before the fall of the saiyan planet by the hands of Frieza. In the German dub of Bardock The Father of Goku. Bardock mentions Turles is his brother. Rather than Turles being Gokus brother, and he is his uncle instead.

He roamed the universe under the planet trade organization, but went defunct after discovering the Tree of Might seeds, which are capable of taking away the planets energy to supply power to the fruit it grows, able to enhance ones own strength exponentially. He quickly assembled the Turles Crusher Corps, a band of rebels who had terrorized several planets before, and began to conquer planets for himself before along with his squad of henchmen, make their way toward Earth to check up on the Saiyan, Kakarot (Goku).

Upon arriving on Earth, he planned to plant the seed of the Tree of Might, but finds resistance from the Z Fighters. While fighting Goku, Turles eats one of the fruits and he greatly overpowers him gaining the upper hand, even able to destroy a Spirit Bomb. With the planets energy slowly deteriorating, Goku creates another Spirit Bomb from the immense energy of the Tree of Might and uses this to kill Turles and destroy the tree. In Tenkaichi 2 and 3 he is given an exclusive Oozaru form for the game. Turles is voiced by Masako Nozawa, Ward Perry in the Ocean Group English dub, Chris Patton in Funimation English dub.

English release

It was first dubbed in English by Funimation Entertainment in association with Saban Entertainment and Ocean Productions. This dub edited the film into a three-part television episode, which first aired in North American countries during November 1997 as part of the shows second season. Funimation later sub-licensed the home video rights to the movie to Pioneer Home Entertainment who, also in association with Ocean Productions, re-dubbed the movie and released it uncut on VHS and DVD on March 17, 1998, featuring the then-current English voice cast from the TV series, dialogue closer to the original Japanese script, and the original Japanese background music. On November 14, 2006, the movie was re-released on DVD, dubbed by Funimations in-house voice cast as part of a movie box set titled "First Strike," also containing Dead Zone and The Worlds Strongest. It was later remastered and released in a Double Feature set with Lord Slug on Blu-Ray and DVD on May 27, 2008. The film was released to DVD again on November 1, 2011 in a remastered box set containing the first five Dragon Ball Z movies. The edited 1997 dub finally made it to DVD in Funimations Rock The Dragon Edition collection, instead of the uncut 1998 dub which never aired on Toonami. On this release, the 1997 dub was not presented in the episodic format in which it originally aired, but rather as a stand-alone movie. Other English dubs were also made by French company AB Groupe and Malaysian company Speedy Video. These dubs, which are notorious for poor voice acting, were never released in North America.

Censorship

Funimations first dub of The Tree of Might done in association with Saban Entertainment and dubbed by the Ocean Group was heavily edited for content and length, just like their original dub of Dragon Ball Z:

Music

North American

The score for the 1997 Saban TV version was composed by Shuki Levy. The 1998 Pioneer release kept the original Japanese music. FUNimations 2006 dubbing featured a new score by Nathan Johnson, and remastered releases contain both English audio tracks with the U.S soundtrack and original Japanese score.