Goku barely knows how to count and for many years didn't know the difference between men and women. Part of that can be blamed on his Raised by Wolves style upbringing by Grandpa Gohan but not knowing how to count just screams of mental disability.
No, he's a terrible person because he's a bandit that attempted to murder children to get over his shyness.
No, she's a terrible person because she attempted to murder a twelve-year old, manipulated him in order to steal his most prized possession, and enslaved a sentient being, all for the sake of obtaining a boyfriend.
And "supposed to be" isn't much of a defense of Vegeta's failings as a human being because everyone in the cast is supposed to be an awful person. It's one of those stories. When Goku met Tien, he was an aspiring assassin who cheated to manipulate the pairings at the Tenkaichi Budokai - a practice the protagonists never stopped doing. When Goku met Piccolo, he was the literal embodiment of evil itself. When Goku met Oolong, he was abducting women from a village. Kame'sennin extorted a 16-year-old girl to sate his perverse sexual lust, Lunch is a wanted criminal, Krillin wanted to learn martial arts to impress women and paid for his tutelage by abducting a random woman for Kame'sennin's benefit - a practice Goku also took part in, albeit more innocently; his failure to understand perversion was so great that he regularly molested people, grabbing their crotches to check their gender - a practice that ultimately got him betrothed to Chi Chi when he did it to her.
That's the kind of series Dragon Ball is. The characters aren't just flawed; most of the main characters are people you would never want to interact with in real life, and nearly all of them have attempted to kill Goku at one point or another. The shallow, over-the-top, self-centered, frequently criminal antics of its protagonists was Dragon Ball's main punchline pretty much from day 1.
edited 23rd Nov '14 5:03:34 PM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Dragon Ball has always been a story in which redemption of formerly evil people was very much a thing.
The only ones that aren't redeemed are the ones who refuse to be redeemed, such as Mercenary Tao, Freeza or the entities who literally have no choice but to be Evil because that's what they are at their most basic level, such as Cell and Majin Buu.
The characters are flawed people who aren't perfect and are very much far from saints. The story never tries to paint them as saints either.
I guess you could argue a case for Goku being treated as a saint by the story... but it actually makes perfect sense when you consider that to the people around him, Goku does look like a saint. So it's just logical that they'd treat him as such.
edited 23rd Nov '14 6:13:04 PM by IAmNotCreativeEnough
himitsu keisatsu seifu chokuzoku kokka hoanbu na no da himitsu keisatsu yami ni magireru supai katsudou torishimariMr. Buu got redeemed. Uub is good because he's a new character with the soul of a formerly evil one. Pure Buu was never redeemed, he was killed and then remade into something completely different against his will; which, according to what we've been told about the afterlife, is the same thing that happened or will happen to the likes of Frieza, Cell, Zarbon, etc. It's just different with Buu because he got to keep his immense power.
And no, Dragon Ball isn't really that much about redemption. There are very few genuine redemption stories in Dragon Ball; formerly villainous characters becoming protagonists is not the same as redemption.
The two biggest examples being Piccolo and Vegeta, neither of which ever made even the slightest effort to atone for their crimes and the people they've harmed. Piccolo ultimately sacrificed his life for Gohan while Vegeta eventually did the same for Bulma, Trunks, and "Even you, Kakarot," but these are not acts of redemption; they are wholly unrelated to the characters' offenses unless you consider their only crimes to be "incapable of love".
Piccolo and Vegeta are both redeemed in the Charlie B. Barkin sense: the message of their actions is not that they stopped being rotten bastards, but that even rotten bastards are capable of doing something noble for someone they love. Until he fuses with God, Piccolo is still the embodiment of evil whose sole heroic motivation is that he wants to protect his surrogate son, while Vegeta remained a selfish, rotten bastard to the end; the best that can be said about him is that he learned to value his family, and also that he stopped killing people wantonly.
Neither pre-merger Piccolo nor Vegeta ever atoned for their actions. They never sought redemption. Their circumstances changed and they grew to accommodate those changes, but neither ever expressed even the slightest remorse over their victims, especially Vegeta.
Tien, on the other hand, had a genuine redemption story to him. Tien atoned for his efforts to become a master assassin like Tao Pai Pai. Unlike Piccolo and Vegeta, Tien accepted that his actions were wrong, and made a sincere effort to make amends for them - making Chiaotzu stop cheating on his behalf in his fight with Goku, openly renouncing the lifestyle that brought him to this point, and eventually facing and overcoming Tao Pai Pai himself in the Tenkaichi Budokai ring. Atonement for his actions was a choice Tien made for himself, while Piccolo and Vegeta merely rolled with their evolving circumstances.
As for Yamcha, when we meet him, he's a remorseless desert bandit who attempts to murder children in order to overcome his shyness, who sticks with the group because he wants to steal the Dragon Balls from them, and who only stopped being a remorseless desert bandit because he got together with Bulma and her immense wealth; whereupon he took to cheating on her because he is still the kind of sublimely selfish individual who would become a remorseless desert bandit. His major lifestyle change was that he traded stealing hearts for stealing capsules.
The trend goes on. Out of all the protagonists, Tien is the only one who ever atones. The rest of the cast - Goku included - goes on making selfish choices, needlessly endangering or even deliberately murdering the muggles of their world, and being perfectly content with who they are and what they do. What began as Hilariously Selfish vs. Ineffectual Evil gets hit by Cerebus Syndrome when Piccolo Daimao shows up, and transitions into Hilariously Selfish vs. Actual Evil, but never becomes a straightforward case of Good vs. Evil. Tien excepted, Dragon Ball is more a series about Karma Houdini than it is about redemption.
edited 24th Nov '14 7:25:11 AM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.No, it'd only be poorly written if being assholes was somehow inconsistent with the characters' roles in the series. That's like calling Eight Bit Theater poorly written for having a cast of murderous psychopaths behaving psychopathically murderous; that's not poor writing at all, that is totally consistent with the entire point of the story.
There is a HUGE difference between a Good Person and a Good Character. Dragon Ball's characters are not good people. They are, however, internally-consistent, three-dimensional characters with clear story arcs, whose personalities rarely if ever conflict with the roles the story expects them to fulfill.
![]()
edited 24th Nov '14 8:46:31 AM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.![]()
I don't see any consistency between Dragonball Goku and DBZ Goku. One had his friend killed and immediately set out to kill the one responsible. He destroyed the entire Red Ribbon Army for a friend too.
As an adult? "Nah, you can go Vegeta. Killing all my friends is no biggie. Fighting you again is more important."
And I'd argue that your point that Piccolo and Vegeta never made any sort of atonement for their crimes shows that they are shitty and unlikable. People already balk at stuff like Obito in Naruto turning good, or Nagato as well. They both expressed more remorse for what they did than Vegeta or Piccol O. But nobody is bitching about Piccolo and Vegeta constnatly even though the latter has no justification for anything he ever did, nor apologies for it.
Dragonball is never held to the same standards as modern series. Toriyama gets away with things that people on this forum would crucify Kishimoto or Toriyama for. It really annoys me.
In the Red Ribbon arc, Goku killed the person responsible for his friend's death in the heat of combat, knocking Tao Pai Pai's grenade back into his face - he did survive, but by no deliberate act on Goku's part. The rest of his conflict with the Red Ribbon Army was motivated by his desire to resurrect Bora; The RRA stood between him and the rest of the Dragon Balls, and so he demolished them to get to said Dragon Balls. Goku would have been perfectly content to just take the Balls and go; he only ever fought them because they were in his way.
When Goku killed Piccolo Daimao, he had few options available to him then either; he put everything he had into stopping Piccolo at a point in which Goku didn't have a lot of options open to him. Three of his limbs were broken and Piccolo was about to kill him. He couldn't afford to hold anything back, and shut down Piccolo with everything he had.
When their positions were reversed at the 23rd Tenkaichi Budokai, Goku actually stopped God from killing a defeated Piccolo. Here, he had a choice rather than necessarily having to do what it takes to win, and he chose to let Piccolo live so that he could fight him again some day: the same decision he made with Vegeta. It's all a matter of circumstance. Killing someone takes less effort than non-lethally neutralizing them. If Goku's back is against the wall and his only options are kill or die, he'll kill, but he'd much rather let unrepentant mass-murderers live so that he can have a rematch down the road, because that's the kind of guy Goku is. Saving the world and avenging his friends are secondary goals that are frequently overshadowed by his desire for challenging enemies to fight.
Heroic? No. Consistent? Absolutely.
EDIT: Also, having never seen Naruto, let me just say that I do not give two shits about what "slack" people cut that series, because it has absolutely no bearing on the quality or lack thereof of Dragon Ball. This is not Naruto, this will never be Naruto, this is in no way connected to Naruto, Naruto could die in a fire or win a gold medal and Dragon Ball would be completely unaffected by it. I don't care what people say about Naruto because this is not the Naruto thread and Naruto is not being discussed here.
When you complain that people are more judgmental of Naruto than of Dragon Ball, that doesn't come off sounding like a legitimate criticism of the series. It sounds like fandom jealousy.
edited 24th Nov '14 10:02:15 AM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub....you missed the entire point of my post. Or both my posts.
Vegeta's lack of repentance makes him shitty and unlikable. You cannot say "he killed a ton of people and never expressed any remorse for it" and then say "but he's a great character anyway!" Because you are contradicting yourself.
Give me one good reason I should care about Vegeta, this person who you said never expressed any remorse for the many crimes he perpetrated in a selfish quest for power. If anything, i should hate him more than I even hate the actual villains like Cell or Buu.
Vegeta and Piccolo are clearly protagonists and thus people we are supposed to root for or at least understand. But I can't fathom massacring tons of people and never giving a shit about it, or supporting anyone who did. (especially if they only did it because they want immortality/to rule the world)
edited 24th Nov '14 10:15:26 AM by Nikkolas
Great character =/= good person.
PSN ID: FateSeraph | Switch friendcode: SW-0145-8835-0610 Congratulations! She/TheyUndoubtedly.
There are many great villains.
But Vegeta is not meant to be seen as a villain later on. He's supposed to be this guy who learned to love his family and shit. He became so soft that he needed an evil wizard to awaken the evil in him.
But, as Tobias pointed out, he never expressed any remorse for anything he has done. He's killed God knows how many people and he came damn near close to killing the woman he would call wife. And he doesn't appear to care.
This is not a simple case of liking a villain or disliking a hero. This is a weird case of a Heel–Face Turn that, when you think about it, falls very flat and makes Vegeta unlikable. Y Ou could appreciate him as a villain for his evilness or his cunning, but what is to appreciate about him on the heroes' side when we saw nothing of him actually changing? He was just bad and then he's good. I would say that's bad storytelling.
The point Tobias was making was that these are evil, evil people and they never were redeemed. So when the narrative just tries to suddenly treat them like they're on the good guys' side, it's jarring and kinda stupid.
edited 24th Nov '14 10:27:46 AM by Nikkolas
But you said you wanted to know why you should care about Vegeta. Isn't entertainment value a good enough reason?
Also, this particular scene is pretty hardcore, so yeah.
Hey, I was right there with all the other kids my age who thought Vegeta was the coolest shit ever. He wasn't like that pussy goody two-shoes Goku. I sincerely hoped he would get the Dragonballs and Immortality.
Speaking of which why didn't he try for that after Namek once he was living on Earth....?
Anyway, I was a huge Vegeta fanboy growing up so I definitely see the appeal of him. I can see the appeal for DBZ in general. But as I've grown older and begun to actually look more closely at the writing behind the things I watch/read, DBZ and Vegeta have both fallen short for me.
edited 24th Nov '14 10:34:55 AM by Nikkolas
Exactly what ![]()
![]()
![]()
said.
Dragon Ball has never been a series about rooting for its protagonists as champions of justice. And more often than not, you're not supposed to root for Vegeta. On Namek, Vegeta is as much an obstacle as he is a tentative Enemy Mine just as dangerous to the protagonists as Frieza. He'll kill Gohan and Krillin as soon as he gets his immortality and everyone knows it.
Come the Android Saga and Vegeta is still not the guy you're meant to root for; his pig-headed stubbornness causes more problems than it solves, and on those rare occasions when Vegeta is not actively making a bad situation worse, his role in the arc devolves into hilarious Humiliation Conga as one villain after another hands him his ass on a plate.
Then Buu comes around and Vegeta actually becomes a villain again. Piccolo explicitly spells out for Vegeta that he has not been redeemed immediately before his Heroic Sacrifice, his contribution to Vegito is more as a tool than a character - and even then, Goku has to literally beg him to do it - and while he does come up with the plan that ends Pure Buu, he has to be replaced immediately as the voice of the group because he is such an unlikable shithead that not a single person was willing to lend their energy to the Genki-Dama.
So to answer your question about why you should be rooting for Vegeta, my answer is, "At what point do you think you're supposed to be rooting for Vegeta?"
Being on the side of the protagonists doesn't mean much when the protagonists are, themselves, selfish people. And despite everyone else being pretty selfish, Vegeta still manages to stand out as the Token Evil Teammate. In what way is that inconsistent with his villainous origins or lack of redemption story?
edited 24th Nov '14 10:35:59 AM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.

All the rock did was make him lose his violent nature, everything else can be contributed to him basically being a country bumpkin and having his only form of human contact before Bulma being an old man who's been dead for Kami knows how long before the series start.
Let's see if you can get past my Beelzemon. Mephiles, WARP SHINKA!