True, being hit or miss is a fair assessment thanks to just what sort of convention it was. And that's a good point, sometimes it did work better when used in the series than for what it was originally made. The example you mentioned in particular stands out as working for other kinds of scenes like tragic ones.MasenkoHA wrote: ↑Sun Mar 31, 2024 9:44 amIt's a mixed bag. I just recently got finished rewatching the Saiyan arc and the overreliance on music from the first Z movie once Vegeta and Nappa arrive on earth is highly noticeable. I wouldn't go as far as saying it doesn't fit but it does have a feeling of "this music was intended for something else" more often than not. On the other hand, there were definitely music cues introduced in the movies that work better in the series than their original context. Gohan's Super Saiyan 2 theme in Z movie 9 got put to better use as "The Lone warrior says goodbye" music in the Boo saga. The Chorus of Doom while somewhat atmospheric in its usage in Sleeping Princess in Devil's Castle gets put to more chilling and dramatic effect for Piccolo and Kami's deaths, Krillin getting skewered by Freeza, and Vegeta's first death.
One that works about the same in the movies as in the show was Movie 2's Piccolo theme variation that was used in Piccolo vs 2nd form Freeza, since it also had some of Dr. Willow's theme in it, and that motif was mainly attached to Freeza.
The Dead Zone theme from Movie 1 also never really felt like anything that specific, being used quite a bit before and after the Super Saiyan transformation. And for the latter scene, it was a missed opportunity to introduce the Super Saiyan theme within the context of the series as a development of the theme established in the Saiyan Saga.