Legend: A Dragon Ball Tale Fan Film Wins Me Over With Smooth Animation Despite Odd Characterization

Legend: A Dragon Ball Tale turned out to be a fun, nicely animated short, and the smooth animation was the most impressive thing about it in my opinion. I was a little bit confused about the characterization, but as an alternate timeline fan project it earns that freedom.

I had more requests to give my thoughts on this fan film than almost anything in quite some time, and I could not think of another fan project with this level of hype. I had only seen the trailer before sitting down with the full thing, which runs about 11 minutes.

A dedication to the children of the 90s

The non-profit fan film opens with a dedication to every child who believed they could train in a hundred times Earth's gravity, and to every artist who taped Dragon Ball Z and paused it to draw their favorite heroes. I know a lot of people who did that, and when I was in school it was the thing. The message also thanks Akira Toriyama. I don't know if he will ever see it, but I hope someone shows him. It is a cool message, and I like it a lot.

Legend sends Goku down a different timeline

The story starts around the 23rd tournament, with Goku failing to remember Chi-Chi and his promise to marry her. Then it goes somewhere new. Vegeta appears as a king, which made me think Planet Vegeta was never destroyed in this timeline, though I was only speculating at that point. There is no Raditz in this version, so Goku does not even know he is Kakarot yet. I was "intrigued about where this story's going."

Broly shows up too, an old school Broly, and in one frame he is so much bigger he looks like a titan. Vegeta even pulls off a Kamehameha.

The animation and fight scene were the standouts

"I really like how smooth the animation is," and the fight scene is pretty good for fan animation, which is usually an issue. The style is not the Dragon Ball style. It is more of a hybrid American and Japanese look. I also enjoyed the remixed music from Super, and the blood, which Super Hero also has.

A Vegeta voice I liked for different reasons

The Goku voice sounds like the familiar dub Goku, but the Vegeta voice does not try to copy the familiar dub Vegeta, and I really like that. It is an older, mature voice that I think would be great for Moro or Granolah.

My one reservation about the characters

I kind of wish the filmmaker had done his own thing with different characters, because Vegeta was not really a hero at this point in the series, and Goku was not that strong. Still, "with fan films you can kind of do whatever you want." It is fan fiction, and it is what it is.

A post credit scene features the filmmaker, who explains the team made it without a budget, purely out of enthusiasm for Dragon Ball Z, and that it took four years. It was fun, and I am looking forward to seeing more.

Should fan films like this stay closer to the original characterizations, or is an alternate timeline the perfect excuse to break them?