Frieza is dead. Goku is home. Everything is fine. And then Frieza's older, taller, somehow even more evil brother shows up, looking for revenge.

This week on Toonami Absolution, Alyx, Jon, and Sam cover Dragon Ball Z: Cooler's Revenge (1991), the fifth DBZ film and the one that introduces one of the franchise's most beloved non-canon villains.

The film opens with a flashback that recontextualises everything we know about Goku's escape from Planet Vegeta: turns out Cooler's ship detected the infant's pod leaving the system, but Cooler opted to let it go.

However, when Cooler learns that Frieza has been destroyed by a Saiyan, he summons his (surprisingly French) Armored Squadron and heads to Earth to finish Goku off once and for all. In a surprising break from tradition, Cooler nearly succeeds, leaving Gohan, Krillin, and eventually a Piccolo to hold things together long enough for a Senzu Bean to arrive.

But Cooler has a trick up his sleeve, turns out Frieza isn’t the only one in the family who can transform!

We dig into why Cooler is so cool, how this film sidesteps many of the DBZ films' problems, how it uses Piccolo and Gohan more effectively, how the numerous dubbing firms handled the movie, and where Cooler's Revenge stands in our ongoing DBZ movie ranking.

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Toonami Absolution is a weekly podcast where Alyx, Jon, and Sam revisit the Toonami and Adult Swim shows that made them, and you, you.

From the block's early days with shows like Space Ghost: Coast to Coast and Transformers: Beast Wars to the imported anime that made Toonami and Adult Swim appointment television for a generation of kids, such as Cowboy Bebop, Sailor Moon, and Dragon Ball.

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