Fanfic / What If Goku Was Female?

"Goku!? Goku fights like a girl. Because he is one now!"

—MasakoX

What If Goku Was Female? is a Dragon Ball What If? fanfic by Lawrence Simpson aka MasakoX of Team Four Star fame as part of his Dragon Ball Discussion series of Youtube videos. This particular topic started on May 8th, 2018, and is the twentieth entry in the series.

As the title suggests, he explores his interpretation of an alternate version of the story where Kakarot was Bardock's daughter instead of his son. As of August 2023, this series has covered all of the original Dragon Ball saga and has gone up to the end of the Buu saga.

You can find the playlist for it here.

See also Masako X - Dragon Ball What-If which explores other possibilities in the Dragon Ball verse.

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What If Goku Was Female? has the following tropes:

• Achilles' Heel: Raditz's inexperience with prolonged engagements against multiple opponents, as well as his inability to sense ki, is what leads to his defeat at the hands of Goku and her friends.
• Action Girl:
  • Goku being a woman doesn't make her any less badass than her canon self.
  • Chi-Chi never gives up training and is much more powerful than her canon self.
  • Future Kuroda, the daughter of Krillin and Goku, is also quite a badass, eventually gaining Full-power Super Saiyan.
  • Cell is now female and named Celline in this version.
• Adapted Out: Gohan doesn't exist, instead he's replaced by a daughter born much later in the timeline.
• Adaptational Backstory Change: Trunks is born, just as the son of Bulma and Yamcha, rather than Bulma and Vegeta, since Vegeta is dead.
• Adaptational Badass:
  • The Z-Fighters, known as "The Breakfast Club of Combat" as a whole are all stronger than in canon due to Goku being more sociable and friendly, and the group being more of a Badass Crew. They also learn Kaio-ken, due to all of them training on King Kai's world. This is especially notable of Chi-Chi, who stopped being a fighter at the end of Dragon Ball, but here is an active fighter. After having Guru unlock her potential, her power goes up to comparable to Zarbon and Dodoria without Kaio-ken. Tien and Yamcha get their potential unlocked, and both can safely attain Kaio-ken x5. By the time of the Android Saga, they can reach Kaio-ken x50, the same multiplier as Super Saiyan, and Chi-Chi can reach Kaio-ken x60. After training as a group for 2 years in the Room of Spirit & Time, they can reach Kaio-ken x100 for brief periods and and are stated to be as strong as Goku was when she first got Super Saiyan at Kaio-ken x50.
  • Krillin is also even stronger, since he's training alongside Goku on their way to Namek, able to reach Kaio-ken x10 and with a base power level of 75,000. He would have been even stronger, but he was wished to Namek with Goku by the rest of the team with a day of travel and training left. Part 8 shows he can reach Kaio-ken x20 safely.
  • This shows come the Android Saga where rather than being curbstomped, the The Breakfast Club of Combat are capable of holding their own.
  • If Future Kuroda is taken as an analogue for Future Trunks, she's stronger, able to reach Full-power Super Saiyan.
  • Kami becomes the dominant personality when fusing with Piccolo, making him much stronger. Fusing also restored his youth.
  • Celline zig-zags this trope, able to fight Goku while she is at Full-Power Super-Saiyan, as well as 4 other fighters that are as strong as a regular Super-Saiyan, also knowing Kaio-ken. Though Celline's regeneration isn't as good as the original Perfect Cell's, since Piccolo is a smaller percentage of her DNA, and having to do a significant amount of regeneration weakens her a lot.
  • Dabura gets a power up from Babidi, making him look more like his form in Dragon Ball Heroes, growing large horns and able to fight evenly with Celline. However, he can't take the power up for too long and ends up exploding after a while.
• Adaptational Curves:
  • This version of Chi-Chi is more muscular than her canon-self, thanks to keeping up her training.
  • Cell (Celline in this version) gets a different version...
• Adaptational Heroism: Celline is notably less malevolent, as the Z-Fighters were far closer and thus their DNA meshed better together. As a result, Freeza Race DNA is suppressed considerably. As a result, she actually doesn't want to destroy Earth and plays considerably more fair. Could also be in part that it wouldn't have been Freeza and King Cold's DNA together, it would only be King Cold's DNA, as Freeza was killed on Namek. She's actually genuinely not evil once she reaches Perfect. Her slaughter in her Imperfect form was largely due to programming and instincts.
• Adaptational Personality Change: Due to Bulma and Goku being closer friends, since Bulma took a shine to Goku and would better explain to Goku about the ways of the world. Goku is also considerably more sociable, and thus the Z-Fighters are much closer than in canon.
• Adaptational Species Change: Again, because Trunks is born as the son of Bulma and Yamcha instead of Vegeta, Trunks is fully human as opposed to being half-Saiyan as in canon.
• Adaptational Villainy:
  • With no Gohan to help start his Heel–Face Turn, Piccolo retains his more villainous persona, he doesn't intervene in the fight against Vegeta until the most opportune moment (leading to the near deaths of some of the others) and makes it very clear he's not Goku's friend and doesn't want to be. The flipside of this is that while he's as strong as his canon counterpart, he is significantly weaker than the The Breakfast Club of Combat.
  • Vegeta, unlike canon, dies on Earth a villain. He dies while engaging in Evil Gloating as well.
• Adaptational Wimp: Piccolo never becomes a Z-fighter and is thus much weaker than the rest of them. Having never gone to Namek, he never fuses with Nail, either. He joins up with them before the Android saga. He ends up fusing with Kami and Kami is the dominant personality.
• Amazon Chaser: Like in the original timeline, Krillin is attracted to strong women, this time to the now female Goku.
• An Arm and a Leg: Celline gets hit by Dabura's stone spit in her hand and rips her arm off to prevent the rest of her turning to stone.
• Ascended Extra: Chi-Chi in this rendition is seen as soon as the second Martial Arts Tournament arc, due to having become inspired to take up fighting from Goku and even follows them to Namek.
  • Due to being Spared by the Adaptation, Yamcha and Tien go along with her to Namek, too, leading to them having much more significance to the plot.
• Asshole Victim: 17 and 18 trick 16 into believing Gero is Goku, and brutally kill him. 17 notes it might have been excessively brutal, but 18 replies that while it might have been, Gero was a monster who had it coming.
• Back Stab: Celline does one to Future Kuroda, shooting a surprise death beam through her chest to wound her, so that Future Kuroda won't participate in her fight with the Breakfast Club. Later, Future Kuroda does one in return to Celline, blasting off the top half of her, much like Goku's Instant Kamehameha did with Cell, though it leaves Celline significantly weakened and crying.
• Badass Crew: The "Breakfast Club of Combat".
  • Goku's change of personality due to the different gender makes her more likely to socialize with her friends. As such, they train far more together and as a whole are much stronger than they canonically were, and fight better as a team. Together they manage to overwhelm Raditz in a hard-fought battle and kill him, and then go train with King Kai which results in all of them learning the Kaio-ken. The Android Saga has them able to reach Kaio-ken x50, with Chi-Chi able to reach Kaio-ken x60 in bursts.
  • The group manage to fight the Ginyu Force head-on as a team due to this.
  • Instead of being immediately curb-stomped by Androids 17 and 18, they are able to hold their own for a bit.
• Beam-O-War: The battle with Raditz ends with a Breakfast Club Group Kamehameha vs Raditz's Full Power Double Sunday. The The Breakfast Club of Combat wins, killing him.
• Big Damn Heroes: Just when Goku is about to be crushed to death by Great Ape Vegeta, she is saved when Krillin suddenly cuts off the prince's tail with the Destructo Disk, and then the rest of the crew all attack Vegeta at once after he reverts back to normal.
• Big "WHAT?!": King Kai when the Breakfast Club reveals that they can reach Kaio-ken x100.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: Celline gets Majinified by Babidi.
• But Now I Must Go: After Babidi is killed and her Majinification is undone, she still has conflicting feelings that it brought up and goes into space on a journey to find herself.
• Can't Catch Up: Piccolo runs into this problem, as Gohan doesn't exist to prompt him to change as a person. As a result, the Breakfast Club of Combat are constantly training with each other while he trains alone, and thus eventually outclass him. This lasts until Kami merges with him, with Kami remaining dominate.
• Combat Pragmatist: The teen from the future, Future Kuroda. She uses what many suggest is the easiest way to kill someone: Solar Flare + Kienzan.
• Combination Attack: How the The Breakfast Club of Combat does battle with and ultimately achieves victory over Raditz. They also demolish Nappa and later Vegeta in the same way.
• Curb-Stomp Battle:
  • Nappa gets completely stomped by the The Breakfast Club of Combat, as most of them are only slightly weaker than him while Goku is much stronger, as well as all of them knowing Kaio-ken.
  • Vegeta returns the favor after ambushing Goku and taking her out of the fight briefly, allowing him to quickly kill Chiaotzu, paralyze Tien, and then force Chi-Chi and Yamcha to mutilate themselves by using Kaio-ken x3. Unfortunately, this only succeeds in making Goku furious, and after Vegeta loses his tail in his Great Ape form, the rest of the team return the favor back at him in his weakened state.
  • Kaioken x10 Chi-Chi post her potential unlock by Guru completely demolishes Zarbon and Dodoria without the two getting a chance to fight back. Zarbon doesn't even get the chance to transform into his monster form.
  • The Kid from the Future kills King Cold even quicker than Trunks did, as rather than playing around, she just blinds him and slices him in half vertically.
  • Goku easily kills Android 19, since she never got the heart virus, due to never visiting Yardrat.
• Cutting the Knot:
  • The entire Ginyu Force fight is avoided as Dende just uses the last wish to force them to go home instead of wishing for Freeza's immortality as they asked. This also has a benefit of fooling Freeza into thinking that he's become immortal.
  • Babidi gets distracted by Goku and Majin Celline's fight and doesn't notice Shin and Kibito sneak in with Yamcha, Chi-Chi and and Krillin. Shin and Kibito teleport away with Buu's pod and Krillin and co. beat Babidi to death. The Buu saga is finished the way Shin intended to finish it.
• Dangerous Forbidden Technique:
  • Chi-Chi and Yamcha find out why overdoing the Kaio-ken is a bad idea, twice in Chi-Chi's case.
  • Goku tries to use Kaio-ken with Super Saiyan and also mangles herself.
• Death by Adaptation:
  • Vegeta doesn't survive his first battle with the Z fighters here.
  • Freeza is killed outright on Namek, as Goku is too furious about the death of her now love interest Krillin to let him power up to 100 percent or offer him mercy, instead vaporizing him.
• Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?: When King Yemma states that only one of the The Breakfast Club of Combat will be able to train with King Kai and they pick Goku, she declines and declares that either all her friends be allowed to come with her or else nobody goes. Yemma is actually somewhat impressed by her courage in standing up to him and grants her request.
• Dies Differently in Adaptation:
  • Instantly of blowing himself up while holding on to Nappa, Chiaotzu is killed by a surprise attack from Vegeta.
  • Future 17, Future 18 and Future Celline are destroyed by Celline.
• Dirty Old Man: Celline implies this with Dr. Gero, saying it was him that made her look female.
• Don't You Dare Pity Me!: Pregnant Goku has this reaction, getting angry at Krillin going easy on her during training.
• Edible Theme Naming: Goku and Krillin's daughter, Kuroda is named for a Japanese black bean patty and is also the name of a type of carrot.
• Gender Flip:
  • If the name didn't give it away, this universe sees Goku without a Y chromosome.
  • Goku's first kid is also a girl, rather than a boy, Kuroda.
  • Cell is also female, and Masako calls her Celline, presumably because Goku is female and Chi-Chi was powerful enough to actually warrant being added into the mix. Celline implies a different reason, however.
• The Gloves Come Off: At first, the Breakfast Club of Combat were evenly matched with Raditz thanks to their frequent use of combo moves, but once they decide to take off their weighted clothing and then utilize the Multi-Form Technique, the battle goes downhill for Goku's brother fast.
• Guile Hero: After Dende is captured by Guldo, Ginyu orders Dende to wish for Freeza's immortality. Dende instead wishes for the Ginyu force to leave, exploiting the fact they don't know Namekian.
• Hates Wearing Dresses: Never actually stated, but during their date, Krillin wears dress clothes, but Goku just wears her favorite gi.
• Heel–Face Turn: Celline.
• Healing Factor: Celline, of course, though it's notably not as strong as the original Cell's, since Piccolo's DNA is a significantly smaller percentage of her, leaving her weakened and crying.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Krillin goes Kaio-ken x20 to try to deflect the death beam Freeza aimed for Yamcha. Unfortunately, even that isn't enough and he's killed. However, Goku goes Super Saiyan because of that.
• Hot-Blooded: Chi-Chi still has her temper and this causes her to overdo the Kaio-ken twice.
• Innocently Insensitive: During the third Martial Art Tournament arc, Goku and Chi-Chi are pitted against each other. Goku wins and goes to congratulate Chi-Chi... as a good warm up. Needless to say, Chi-Chi is offended that she doesn't take her seriously.
• I Surrender, Suckers: Subverted: The Breakfast Club of Friendship expect this when 17 and 18 are completely outmatched and surrender... But they're telling the truth, as being the main timeline versions, they don't actually want to hurt anyone.
• Kid from the Future: As in canon, one comes back in time to warn them of the Androids. However, rather than Future Trunks, as Vegeta is dead, it's heavily implied to be the daughter of Goku and Krillin. Episode 10 confirms that it is Future Kuroda, Krillin and Goku's daughter.
• Killed Off for Real: Vegeta, who is killed on Earth and no one has any desire or reason to ever bring him back.
• Last Breath Bullet: After getting the shit kicked out of him by Goku's friends, Vegeta, knowing that he's going to die from his injuries soon, uses the last of his energy to blast Piccolo and Chi-Chi, injuring them both, and then mocks The Breakfast Club of Combat with his final breath.
• Little Miss Badass: Goku still does all the badass things she did in canon, only as a little girl through the Dragon Ball arcs.
• Mass "Oh, Crap!": King Cold's arrival gets this, as due to Vegeta's demise, no one has any idea who he is.
• Mind over Matter: Celline uses Chaotzu's Psychic Powers to incapacitate Piccolo.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Krillin is sparring with Goku and Goku gets distracted when sensing Freeza coming towards them, and Krillin shoots a blast through her chest accidentally, leading to this. Luckily, Dende is there and is able to heal Goku, who quickly forgives a very apologetic Krillin and it also gives her a nice Zenkai boost.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Yamcha tells Freeza that he's not immortal...after the heroes exploited the fact he believed he was to wear him down and distract him. This instantly resulted in Freeza skipping his Third Form straight to his final form, directly resulting in Krillin's death.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown:
  • Vegeta is the very unfortunate recipient of one after the surviving Breakfast Club of Combat members sans Goku all gang up on him in Kaio-ken x2 once he is forced out of his Great Ape form. They beat him mercilessly until he falls unconscious, and then he dies from his injuries shortly after waking up.
  • Krillin, Chi-Chi and Yamcha beat Babidi to death after Shin and Kibito teleport away with Buu's egg.
• No Ontological Inertia: Babidi's death undoes Celline's Majinification, but it still ended up bringing up conflicting emotions that end up making her leave the Breakfast Club of Combat to find herself.
• Oblivious to Love: The rest of the Breakfast Club of Combat see that Krillin has a huge crush on Goku, but Goku doesn't. Even his initial Anguished Declaration of Love doesn't really get through to her, partially due to his wording. He does explain things better a little bit later on.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Nappa has one in this timeline when his scouter reveals Goku's suppressed power level is identical to his while the others aren't far behind.
  • Then Great Ape Vegeta does the same thing when he realizes that his tail has just been cut off right before he was about to stomp Goku to paste.
  • Krillin experiences this as well when he reaches for the last senzu bean to heal a crippled Goku, only to realize that he left the bag on the lookout in his haste to catch up with her and Vegeta.
  • Jeice, once Yamcha and Tien go Kaio-ken x5 and he sees their power levels are over 100,000, and Goku and Krillin's base power is 90,000 and 75,000, respectively, before they both also go Kaio-ken x5...
  • The Breakfast Club of Combat and King Kai when they are told that the Androids know Kaio-Ken.
• One-Hit Kill: What's implied to be Goku and Krillin's daughter (confirmed in episode 10) from the future uses one on King Cold: a combination of the Solar Flare and Destructo Disc that blinds and bisects the King instantly.
• Pet the Dog: While Piccolo never turns good, due to Gohan not existing to facilitate a Heel–Face Turn, he does have some small moments while training with the others in preparation for the androids:
  • While Krillin and Goku are training, he takes turns with the others watching over baby Kuroda, despite having no knowledge of how to care for a human infant.
  • When Goku is about to go on the ill-fated rescue mission that Gero faked to kill her, he reminds her of future Kuroda's warning. While he doesn't do it in the nicest way, he easily could've ignored it and left her to hopefully remember herself.
• Please Kill Me if It Satisfies You: After Future Kuroda blows off her top half and she regenerates, a tired Celline places Goku's hand on her head and asks Goku to kill her. Naturally, Goku and none of the other Breakfast Club were very keen on that.
• Retcon: A pretty minor one that could even be explained by Masako simply forgetting about her, is that Future Kuroda is in the Room of Spirit & Time in Episode 14, while she wasn't mentioned going in in Episode 13, and only mentioned the main five of the Breakfast Club in that episode.
• Spared by the Adaptation:
  • Yamcha, Piccolo, and Tien survive the Saiyan fight.
  • As Vegeta is killed by the Breakfast Club of Combat on Earth, he's not around to kill Dodoria and Zarbon, so they stick around longer than in canon and instead get killed by Chi-Chi.
  • The Ginyu Force survive, as Dende simply uses the third wish on the dragon to force them to go home.
  • Dende survives the final Freeza battle, as does the Planet Namek, as Goku kills Freeza before he can destroy it.
  • Celline survives the Cell Game.
• Stunned Silence: After Future Kuroda reveals her name, the Breakfast Club of Combat are pretty stunned.
• Taken for Granite: Dabura has his stone spit and uses it on Celline. She has to tear her arm off when she catches it in her palm. Later, Tien foolishly tries to pick up her arm and gets turned to stone.
• Team Spirit: Celline says that Goku and the rest of the Breakfast Club can only defeat her as a team.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: Goku and Bulma have this dynamic.
• Traumatic Superpower Awakening: Goku goes Super Saiyan when Freeza kills Krillin.
• True Companions: The Z-Fighters, "The Breakfast Club of Combat" are this due to Goku's difference in personality. As such they fight Raditz as a Badass Crew and manage to kill him, and then they all go to train with King Kai together at Goku's insistence. Later, when Goku orders them to stay out of her fight with Vegeta, they ignore her and come to her rescue in her time of greatest need, saving her from an untimely death at the prince's hands in doing so.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Future Kuroda is outraged that the Breakfast Club of Combat is willing to not only accept Celline into their group and bring 17 and 18 back. Her distrust of Celline and Celline wanting Androids 17 and 18 resurrected causes Celline to want to know how she could gain Future Kuroda's trust. Future Kuroda wants her to go into the future with her and kill Future 17 and 18. Celline does so and they destroy the Androids and later Future Imperfect Celline.
• Women Are Wiser: This interpretation sees Goku slightly less muscle-brained and able to have more clarity due to Bulma teaching her things during their travels.
• Would Hit a Girl: Since Goku is a girl here, a lot of her male opponents have no qualms about taking her on. Yamcha, who in the original universe ran at the sight of Bulma, is even surprised he was able to fight evenly with a female upon realizing Goku's gender, allowing him to be cured of his fear of girls sooner.