Searching for the Dragon Balls, Goku comes to a desert region where he hears the legend of the moving lake. There, Goku rescues Namu as he is attacked by monsters. Namu has gone upstream to investigate why the river has dried up! After discovering that Giran and his tribe had damned up the river, Goku breaks the dam with a Kamehameha, but this time a sandstorm buries the river!! The villagers despair, but after the sandstorm leaves, it leaves behind the legendary lake.

After the Dragon Radar is stolen by a thief, Goku spots it in a secondhand goods store. A Dragon Ball signal shows up there! However, the Dragon Ball that Pilaf and co. buy from the store owner is a complete fake! The store owner also tries to sell a fake to a mysterious army who are searching for the Dragon Balls, but they see through this and shoot him. The real Dragon Ball turns out to be in a bird’s nest on the roof of the shop!! Startled by the sound of gunfire, the bird flies off with the Dragon Ball.

The army that was searching for the Dragon Ball was in fact Captain Silver’s Red Ribbon Army unit. Silver and Pilaf go after the Dragon Ball. The Dragon Ball turns out to be inside the stomach of a monster that Gyumao defeats. Hearing that Goku is coming, they prepare a reception for him. Pilaf makes Shuu into a fake Goku, and enters the village, but the Silver Corp. attacks! Taking advantage of the confusion, Pilaf gets the Dragon Ball and flees to his moving base. Having reunited with Chichi, Goku perceives that something is amiss, and hurries to the village!!

Giving his parting words to Gyumao and Chichi, Goku goes after Pilaf and co. Meanwhile, following the signal on the Dragon Radar, Silver discovers Pilaf’s secret base. Calling for reinforcements, Silver commences a general offensive! Having infiltrated the base, Goku also hurries to where the Dragon Ball is!! Pilaf is forced to flee, but the moving base he is riding in is hit by the combined attacks of the Red Ribbon Army, and Goku is caught in the explosion!! The Dragon Ball finally falls into Silver’s hands.

After returning to Red Ribbon Army Headquarters, Silver receives his orders from the commander, and sallies forth to once again search for the Dragon Balls. Meanwhile, having been rescued by Kinto'un from the moving base’s explosion, Goku also reopens his search for the Four-Star Ball. Silver realizes that a baby monkey Goku saved on a mountain has a Dragon Ball, and shoots fire at the mountain! The monkeys are pursued by the fire. As Silver aims a rifle at the baby monkey, it is saved by Goku!! However, the Dragon Ball floats down the stream.

Using the Dragon Radar that Bulma made, Goku easily spots the Dragon Ball that drifted down the river. However, Kinto'un is blown away by Captain Silver’s bazooka! After defeating Silver with a single swipe of his tail, Goku heads north in a plane flown by a robot who came out of a capsule. Goku shudders from the extreme cold. The robot is frozen solid as well, and the plane crashes!! Having been frozen solid, Goku is saved by a girl named Sno.

Goku wakes up in Sno’s house, and receives gentle care from her and her mother. Sno is frightened when she hears that Goku is searching for the Dragon Balls. In this village, General White of the Red Ribbon Army has taken the mayor hostage, and is using the townspeople to search for a Dragon Ball! After regaining his health, Goku defeats the soldiers who came in pursuit of him, and heads for General White’s base, Muscle Tower, in order to rescue the mayor! After defeating the soldiers outside, Goku immediately thrusts himself up to the second floor!!

General White’s voice resounds throughout Muscle Tower. He provokes Goku as he ascends to the uppermost floor, where the mayor is. Goku defeats the soldiers on the second floor, and advances on to the third. The third floor was protected by the immortal giant, Sergeant Metallic! Goku has a hard battle against Metallic, who rises up again no matter how many times Goku knocks him down. He won’t stop, even after having his head blown off with a Kamehameha! It turns out he is a robot!! However, Metallic stops just as Goku is in a pinch. His battery had run out.

After infiltrating the pitch black fourth floor, Goku is hit by Master Sergeant Murasaki’s ninja attacks. He has a difficult battle against these relentless attacks! But Goku reads Murasaki’s movement, and his attacks turn the situation around. Goku breaks through Murasaki’s ninjutsu, one after the other. Finally, Murasaki’s sword breaks! Murasaki challenges Goku to an unarmed match, and Goku puts away the Nyoi-Bo. Murasaki takes advantage of this opening to throw a boomerang shuriken. Goku is caught off guard, and is hit directly in the back of the head!! Goku is in grave danger!!

Unable to finish Goku off with the boomerang shuriken, Murasaki uses his final ninjutsu, Bunshin no Jutsu (Split-Image Technique). Having somehow increased to five people, the Murasakis each take out their different weapons! Unable to tell which of them is the real one, Goku has no choice but to run! However, it turns out the Mursakis are merely a set of quintuplets. Now aware that they are all real, Goku uses Zanzouken to defeat four of them in the blink of an eye. With no other card to play, Mursaki calls forth Artificial Human No. 8!!

Artificial Human No. 8, who Murasaki summoned, turns out to have a gentle personality, and doesn’t like conflict. As Murasaki is about to destroy No. 8, who won’t listen to his orders, Goku blows Murasaki away with a single blow! Now Goku’s friend, No. 8 (Ha-chan) leads him to the uppermost level, floor six. Ha-chan tries to persuade White to stop doing bad things. But Goku and Ha-chan fall through a trap door to the fifth floor. Down there is the lair of the monster Buyon!!

Imprisoned on the fifth floor, Buyon is a monster who is completely unaffected by Goku’s techniques! His body can absorb any attack. Goku is in an absolutely desperate pinch!! But Goku destroys the wall, having remembered the time when he was frozen!! Buyon is frozen solid by the frigidly cold air!! After enduring the frigid air by huddling close to Ha-chan, who is immune to the cold, Goku manages to shatter Buyon with a single blow!! Returning to the sixth floor, Goku attacks White.

After being beaten up by Goku, White guides the two of them to the mayor’s room. The second Goku and Ha-chan let their guard down, he takes the mayor hostage! Ha-chan doesn’t know what to do. Goku is downed after being hit with a single shot from the powered gun!! The second shot will finish him off. However, Ha-chan acts as a human shield and protects Goku!! With White in a panic, Ha-chan’s punch explodes!! Having saved Goku and the mayor, Ha-chan destroys Muscle Tower.

It turns out that Ha-chan had the Dragon Ball. He had hidden it, knowing that the villagers would be killed once they found it. The mayor recommends that Ha-chan stay in the village, but Ha-chan says it is dangerous, because of his self-destruct mechanism. In order to get Ha-chan’s self-destruct mechanism removed, they visit his creator, Dr. Flappe. But Murasaki has gone there ahead of them! He steals Goku’s luggage, in an attempt to find the Dragon Balls. However, it only contained Goku’s bento (single-portion meal)?! The self-destruct mechanism is safely removed.

In order to fix his malfunctioning Dragon Radar, Goku heads to West City, where Bulma lives. Kinto'un is also revived, and the trip goes well. However, Goku doesn’t know Bulma’s address! While having trouble with hoodlums, Goku goes around asking for Bulma, but there’s no way for him to find her in such a big city. Goku is taken to Bulma’s house by a policeman. It turns out that Bulma is the sole daughter of Capsule Corporation, a large company famous even in this metropolis!!

Goku finally reunites with Bulma. However, Bulma and Yamcha are right in the middle of an argument! Riding on Kinto'un with Bulma, who has become small using the micro-band, Goku reunites with Yamcha and the others. But Yamcha, unaware of the shrunken Bulma, talks bad about her right to her face!! Goku and the others set off for the floating amusement park, with Bulma in a completely bad mood. Husky is there, an entrepreneur hired by the Red Ribbon Army, and is aiming for Goku’s Dragon Balls.

Drawing closer to Goku and the others as they play in the floating amusement park, Husky tries to seduce Yamcha, who was carrying a Dragon Ball. Figuring out his opponent’s true identity, Yamcha corners her but is taken out by Bulma, who mistakes this for a love scene!! Husky leaves a bomb and runs away. Goku breaks the bomb’s controls just in the nick of time, and retakes the Dragon Balls. But it’s a completely angry Bulma who sets out with Goku to search for the Dragon Balls.