General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

Dragon Ball Z: Wrath of the Dragon (ドラゴンボールZ 龍拳爆発!!悟空がやらねば誰がやる)

Dragon Ball Z: Wrath of the Dragon (ドラゴンボールＺ龍拳爆発!!悟空がやらねば誰がやる, Doragon Bōru Zetto Ryū-Ken Bakuhatsu!! Gokū ga Yaraneba Dare ga Yaru, lit. "Dragon Ball Z: Dragon Fist Explosion!! If Goku Won't Do It, Who Will?"), also known by Toei's English title Dragon Ball Z: Explosion of Dragon Punch, is a 1995 Japanese animated film and the sixteenth theatrical feature based on Akira Toriyama's Dragon Ball manga, the thirteenth released under the Dragon Ball Z banner.¹ It premiered in Japan on July 15, 1995 as one of the entries in the 1995 Toei Anime Fair, and it was the final film of the original Dragon Ball Z theatrical run before the franchise's later revival.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Japanese title	ドラゴンボールＺ龍拳爆発!!悟空がやらねば誰がやる (Ryū-Ken Bakuhatsu!! Gokū ga Yaraneba Dare ga Yaru)¹
Release	July 15, 1995 (Japan), at the 1995 Toei Anime Fair; English dub released in the United States on September 12, 2006¹
Position in series	16th Dragon Ball film, 13th Dragon Ball Z film; preceded by Fusion Reborn and followed by The Path to Power¹
Director / screenplay	Mitsuo Hashimoto (director), Takao Koyama (screenplay), original story by Akira Toriyama²
Running time	51 minutes (some Japanese listings give 52)¹^•³
Gross revenue	¥1.70 billion¹
Central characters	Tapion, a legendary hero, and Hirudegarn, the phantom monster split between his upper and lower halves⁴
Timeline placement	After Kid Buu's demise; Dragon Ball: Daizenshū 7 places it around Age 774⁵

Spoilers

Story

The plot begins on a distant planet, where a young boy named Minotia is crushed under the foot of a giant creature as a villainous laugh sounds in the distance.¹ On Earth, Gohan and Videl meet a mysterious old man, the sorcerer Hoi, who tells them that a legendary hero sleeps inside an old music box that cannot be opened. Even Goku cannot turn the box's handle, so the group gathers the Dragon Balls and summons Shenron to open it.⁹^•³

The hero who emerges is Tapion, a warrior from the planet Konats who became a legend in the South Galaxy. A thousand years earlier, Tapion had used a legendary flute to calm the phantom monster Hirudegarn that attacked his world, sealing the monster's lower half inside his younger brother Minoshiya and its upper half inside his own body; to prevent resurrection, Tapion had himself sealed inside the music box.⁴ Hoi's request was a trap: the seal's breaking, together with Hoi's revival of the lower half, sets the monster's two halves on a path to reunite.⁴^•¹⁰

The lower half appears in a city and rampages like a kaiju film monster, and Gohan and Videl's attacks fail because the creature turns ghostly and intangible when defending.¹¹^•¹² Tapion's flute can suppress it, but the force drawing the halves together grows until the upper body breaks free of his body and Hirudegarn revives in full.⁴ Goku and the others fight the monster and struggle, until Goku strikes the one instant in which Hirudegarn becomes fully solid and destroys it with a new technique, the Dragon Fist.¹³^•¹¹ With his duty complete, Tapion departs, entrusting his legendary sword to Trunks, who had come to see him as an older brother.⁴^•¹⁴

Cast and characters

Masako Nozawa voices Goku, Gohan, and Goten, with Ryō Horikawa as Vegeta, Takeshi Kusao as Trunks, Mayumi Tanaka as Krillin, Hiromi Tsuru as Bulma, Yūko Minaguchi as Videl, and Masaharu Satō as Master Roshi. New characters are voiced by Hiro Yuki (Tapion), Shigeharu Matsuda (Hoi), and Shin Aomori (Hirudegarn).¹¹^•¹⁵ In the 2006 Funimation English dub, Sean Schemmel voiced Goku, Kyle Hebert Gohan, Laura Bailey Trunks, and Christopher Sabat Vegeta.⁵

Production

The film was directed by Mitsuo Hashimoto and written by Takao Koyama, with music by Shunsuke Kikuchi and character designs rooted in Akira Toriyama's original manga; Toriyama is credited with the original story, and the official character showcase notes that he designed the Tapion and Minotia characters.²^•⁶ Production credits at Toei list Tomio Anzai as producer, and the film was distributed by Toei.¹ One Italian pressbook for the Dragon Ball Z films attributes the direction to Daisuke Nishio instead, while Toei's own lineup page and Japanese film databases credit Hashimoto.⁷^•³

The film was the first in the theatrical Dragon Ball series to use Dolby Surround for its sound effects, according to the Pia film database.⁸ It was also the last of the original run: the following year Toei released Dragon Ball Z: The Path to Power (March 2, 1996), after which the theatrical series paused for nearly two decades.⁷

Release and reception

The film opened in Japan on July 15, 1995 and earned ¥1.70 billion.¹ Funimation's English dub reached the United States on September 12, 2006, and the film was also released on VCD in Malaysia by Speedy Video under the subtitle Explosion of Dragon Punch.¹^•⁶ On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes it holds an audience score of 83 percent from more than 1,000 ratings, with no critic reviews tallied.¹⁶ Japanese users on Filmarks rate it 3.4 out of 5 across nearly 5,900 reviews.¹⁷

Continuity and legacy

The film is set after Goku's defeat of Kid Buu, and Dragon Ball: Daizenshū 7 places it around Age 774, within the ten-year gap before the 28th World Martial Arts Tournament.⁵^•¹⁸ Like the other original Dragon Ball Z theatrical films, it is generally treated as outside the manga's continuity, since Trunks's sword has a different origin in the main story and later series such as Dragon Ball Super ignore its events.¹⁹^•²⁰

The Dragon Fist itself became one of the film's lasting contributions. The technique debuted here and was used only rarely afterward, a point Japanese viewers have noted with some regret.³ A Japanese retrospective on the technique's origins clarifies that although Toriyama contributed the designs of Tapion, Minotia, and Hirudegarn, the move and the battle staging were created by the anime production staff rather than by Toriyama in the manga.²¹

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026