Frieza may be Dragon Ball's, most well-known supervillain, but he wouldn't be the last of his family we'd see.
On this edition of Dragon Ball in Depth, we look back at the character history of Frieza's older brother:
The arrogant and powerful Cooler.
*Japanese speech*
Although not a part of Akira Toriyama's original manga series,
Cooler is an important character to the Dragon Ball Z anime movie continuity,
not only because he provided a unique twist on one of Goku's greatest foes,
but also because he's the first villain to be the centerpiece of not one, but two Dragon Ball Z movies.
Like with almost all Dragon Ball Z movie villains, the concept of Cooler was created by
Takao Koyama, but the actual character design was drawn by series creator
Akira Toriyama himself, the same goes for Cooler's Armored Squadron.
However while Toriyama provided basic character designs for the previous movies, this marked the first time
that he fully designed all of these characters,
including height charts and colors, making it extremely easy for the anime staff.
Cooler would be voiced by Ryūsei Nakao, whom also voiced Frieza, but portrays the character
accurately as an older and more mature brother; the same goes for Andrew Chandler who portrayed Cooler in the dub
Cooler's design is very similar to that of his younger brother Frieza in his fourth form however
he's much taller and does appear older with different colors.
Cooler himself states that this is indeed his fourth form and unlike his brother
he can rise to a higher fifth form, but more on that later.
Most of the fan base could easily figure out that Cooler's name pun
followed the ice name puns of his family, like Frieza and King Cold however
There is actually a deeper story to this as was explained in Daizenshuu 6.
His actual name is Coola, but Cooler isn't really incorrect.
Producer Kozo Morishita was worried that naming him Cooler would be too direct, and
recalled that in his hometown of Shizuoka
you say "meshi demo kūra", which translates to "let's chow down", and thus felt the name Coola would work.
Wacky Dragon Ball history that nobody cares about except the uber nerds like me.
Cooler's first appearance came in the form of the fifth Dragon Ball Z theatrical movie
entitled "Tobikkiri no Saikyō tai Saikyō", which translates to "The Incredible Strongest vs. Strongest".
When it was dubbed by FUNimation it was simply called "Cooler's Revenge". A little too simple if you ask me.
In the film we find out Cooler was present during the final days of Planet Vegeta and Bardock's one-man revolt.
During these events, Cooler's ship detected a lone shuttle carrying baby Goku to Earth.
He was alerted of this but decided against killing the child
because this region of the universe was under the jurisdiction of his brother and wanted him to deal with his own mess.
This mistake would prove to be costly for his entire family. About 27 years later,
Cooler would discover, to his shock, that his brother was defeated at the hands of a "Supa Saiya-jin" (Super Saiyan), and
decides to hunt down his brother's adversary and restore honor to his family.
He traces Goku to Earth and while he and his friends are camping, Cooler and his Armored Squadron of Dole, Salza and Neiz,
attack our heroes and Cooler
paralyzes Goku with a single blast to his back, leaving him out of action for the majority of the movie.
Later on in the climax of the film after taking a Senzu that Gohan got for him, Goku makes a comeback and faces Cooler
one-on-one.
This is when cooler reveals that he was able to reach a higher form than his brother, a fifth form.
Although I feel that this form looks absolutely badass,
what bothers me about this form is that it's a contradiction to what was in the manga
Frieza's base form his, birth form, is his fourth form that we see in the series and his previous
three forms were created by Frieza to conserve his power.
So is Cooler's fifth form his true birth form or something he achieved through training his body to reach higher levels?
The latter makes more sense, but is contradicted in 2015's Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection 'F',
when the revived Frieza reveals that after training for four months, he unlocked a new evolution:
Golden Frieza.
Which leapfrogged him over the majority of the series villains.
So are these two brothers just mutants who can manipulate their bodies at will and
just decided to choose two different ways to change their bodies?
There's no sense in overthinking this it's just a contradiction.
After all, this is a DBZ movie, which isn't part of the continuity and shouldn't be seen as such.
Anyways, Cooler's fifth form reveals to be a challenge for Goku, but he bounces back,
transforms, and fires Cooler into a star, never to be seen again...
for about seven months until this film's direct sequel: "Gekitotsu!! Hyaku-Oku Pawā no Senshi-tachi",
aka "Clash!! Ten Million Power Warriors", also known as "The Return of Cooler", depicts, well,
the return of Cooler.
Borrowing ideas from a number of other science fiction and comic book sources, the film explains that although
Cooler appeared to die after being blasted into the sun,
Cooler's remains somehow were able to merge into a living mechanical machine called [???],
I mean the Big Gete Star,
fusing with Cooler's essence and allowing him to take control of the nanotechnology and
essentially build himself a new cybernetic body called Meta-Cooler, not Metal-Cooler, that's a mistranslation.
Cooler would take the Big Gete Star to planet New Namek to enslave the Namekians and use them to fuel the craft.
Enter Goku and his friends, who arrived to save the day. During their fight, Cooler not only proved that his new body was
tremendously more powerful than even the fifth form we saw in the last movie, but also, he was a much smarter fighter,
actually learning the Instantaneous Movement.
Did Cooler make a pit stop on planet Yardrat before hitting New Namek?
The movie doesn't say, but he became the first villain in the series to learn the technique followed by Cell and Majin Buu.
This time Vegeta joined the fight, and together he and Goku were able to defeat Meta-Cooler,
but are horrified to discover that he was only one of 10 million Meta-Coolers.
The true form of Cooler's consciousness would be deep inside the Big Gete Star.
Cooler attempted to drain Goku and Vegeta of their "ki", and use it to power the Big Gete Star,
but Goku and Vegeta ignited their bodies and overloaded the system. After this,
Goku and Vegeta had one final showdown with Cooler and put an end to him once and for all, and save the Namekians
We are unsure of how many planets Cooler actually is in control of but the highest number stated is 256 and
this information came from Daizenshuu 6 because Dore is from planet Cooler 256,
in fact the other members of his Squadron appear to be born from planets that he was in control of
previously, with Salza hailing from Planet 98 and Neiz from Planet 6.
Cooler's Armored Squadron is basically his version of the Ginyu Force.
The name puns for his henchmen are based on condiments with Salza being "thousand island dressing",
not "salsa" as many folks believe,
Dore is "dressing" and Neiz is "mayonnaise" like "mayonese".
The concept of Cooler was always a cool idea, no pun intended.
Much like his little brother Cooler had his own branch of the empire,
presumably put together by King Cold, but we don't know that for sure.
Cooler has shown to have somewhat of a sibling rivalry with his baby brother however his personality differs greatly.
While Cooler is nowhere close to being a nice guy and is by all accounts a ruthless and vile dictator just like his brother,
Cooler always came off more mature, intelligent, and focused than Frieza.
Cooler never allowed his paranoia or his ego to get the best of him and truly wanted to test his skills against Goku,
rather than just toy with him.
Unlike Frieza, Cooler appears to be more respectful and calculating,
but he still has that same arrogance and considered himself the most powerful in the universe and
would have never thought to have lost to a mere monkey, but he did, twice.
Although Frieza is my favourite villain in Dragon Ball, Cooler has a special soft spot with me,
because when I first was collecting fan subs back in the late 90's, the two Cooler movies were the first
fan subs that I owned in Japanese, years before they got a FUNimation home release,
and I would watch them over and over again. So there's that special
nostalgia with this film that will be in my heart forever.
With that said thank you for watching and I will catch you down the road.