... I figured it was time to show off the differences in both the plot and the characters. Yes I'm a nerd who owns the full run of the manga and the full series on DVD.
And because of me being a nerd and knowing the series by heart, I feel obliged to point out the differences between the characters in the movie and in the series. And so here they are.
MAJOR SPOILER WARNING...
Son Goku
When Goku appears in the original series he's a ten year old boy who lives alone in the forest after the death of his adoptive Father Gohan. His ticket away is when Bulma trespasses onto the property because Goku owns a Dragonball, which he considers a cherished keep sake that reminds him of his late adoptive father. Goku goes along with Bulma because of the prospect of there being more Dragonballs like the one his late adoptive father left him. Goku who by then never knew about the fact that there are two genders is mystified by Bulma and the fact that her body is so different from his own. He develops a way to tell the gender of a person who he meets by touching them between the legs and not understanding why people go angry when he does so.
In the movie Son Goku, is a high school student who runs a karate Dojo left by his adoptive father Gohan, who's still alive in the movie but dies later on. Aside from that he has very little in common with the character from the cartoon. Goku is being picked on by the popular kids in school. He has a love interest in the person of Chichi.
speaking of which...
Chichi
Chichi first appears in Dragonball as the warrior princess daughter of Gyu-Mao (Ox King), a former student of Muten Roshi and a personal friend of Goku's adoptive Father Gohan. Chichi is then a girl in her early teens who's very shy, emotive and volatile. Chichi meets Goku when he picks her up in the desert after Gyu-Mao tells him that he send Chichi to retrieve Muten Roshi. After retrieving her, Goku does what he always does when meeting a person, checking their gender by feeling between her legs. After Chichi beats the snot out of him she begins to wonder with Goku being the first who touched her there, if he's the one she's destined to marry. She proposes and Goku, having no idea what marriage is, agrees. They meet up again later in the series when both in their late teens and Goku, who has been taught that one has to keep true with what they promise proposes to Chichi and they marry.
In the movie Chichi's royal background is completely erased, not to mention the way she fell in love with Goku after being touched by him in her intimate spot.
Bulma
When Bulma arrives on the scene of the original series she's a sixteen year old girl, who's a mechanical genius. But she's also very uncertain about herself, never having a boyfriend before and thus questioning her own physical beauty. Her reason for searching the dragonballs is to be turned into a beauty queen and having more luck with the boys. When meeting Goku, Bulma gains an unofficial little brother. When their journey takes them through the desert she meets her first love interest: Yamucha with which she had an on-off relationship until meeting Vegeta several years later.
In the movie Bulma is a loud teenager who shows up out of nowhere and drags Goku into finding the Dragonballs with her.
Yamucha (Yamcha)
In the cartoon, Yamucha is a desert bandit who survives by robbing people who pass through the desert. By living alone with only his shape shifting cat Pu-ehr as company, Yamucha has grown up with a terrible weakness towards girls, literally freezing up when one is near. His first encounter with Goku and Bulma is when they stop near an oasis and Bulma takes a nap. Goku and Yamucha start fighting after Goku thwarted Yamucha's attempt to rob them of their vehicle but the fight is cut short when Bulma awakes from all the noise of the fight and comes out of the car to see what's going on, freezing Yamucha by just appearing in front of him. Yamucha decides to follow Bulma and Goku, intrigued about the dragonballs that might cure him of his weakness towards girls. When they all are captured by Emperor Pilaf and held in the same cell Yamucha overcomes his weakness but it's only after escaping from that cell that he realizes that he doesn't need the dragonballs anymore, he and Bulma then start a relationship.
In the movie, Yamucha indeed is a bandit who redeems himself but nothing of what he is like in the cartoon.
Piccolo
In the series Piccolo came to be when a wise hermit who wanted to become guardian of the planet was told by the previous guardian that his soul had been tainted by the dormant evil in his being. And so the hermit used a special technique to split himself in two separate beings: his good side became Kami, the guardian and his evil side became Piccolo the evil king. Piccolo was defeated by master Mutahitou, the sensei of Muten Roshi, who gave up his own life to imprison Piccolo. Piccolo was then set free by Emperor Pilaf who thought that in Piccolo he would have a valuable ally in conquering the world. But Piccolo had other plans and went after Mutahitou's students because they might hold the secret technique used to imprison him, killing them one by one. Eventually after murdering both Goku's sensei Muten Roshi and Goku's training partner Kuririn (Krillin) Piccolo fought Goku and lost. Before Dying Piccolo send out a little offspring, that became the Piccolo in Dragonball Z who eventually stepped away from the evil that his father had created him for.
in the Movie Piccolo is indeed chasing and murdering the students of Mutahitou and seeing as how Goku's adoptive father Gohan is a student of Muten Roshi, he's on the hit list as well. Otherwise, there's not a lot that the cartoon Piccolo and the movie Piccolo have in common.
