Hell, at that point in the series, almost every arc villain had either Defeat Means Friendship or The Bus Came Back. Even the last remnants of the Red Ribbon Army had both. And yet the protagonist's brother was the only person to not have either.
He wanted the opposite of an iron fist. Piccolo Daimao stated his intentions when he took over the capitol. He wanted to plunge the world into chaos and anarchy, have people going The Purge on each other for about three decades, and every year he would hold a lottery to determine whose city would be destroyed - until the point they are all destroyed and everyone is dead.
His end goal is the complete extermination of humanity. He was just going to have more fun with it than the PTO does. He didn't actually want to rule, not even with an iron fist, over anything but a graveyard.
He was less one-dimensionally For the Evulz after his reincarnation, something that Goku later points out, and one of the ways he demonstrates that is his sincere desire for world domination, rather than using it as a tool for genocide. We never learn much of his plans, but after his reincarnation, he opposes the Saiyans' extermination goal because he doesn't want to rule a graveyard.
edited 11th Dec '16 12:24:11 PM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.![]()
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Ok. Good point. I sometimes let the relentless jokes people tell colour my judgement just a little.
One Strip! One Strip!Yeah, but this is fiction, and it seems weird to drop a bombshell like that if you don't really want to do anything with it.
Of course, some fiction does intentionally not do anything with it for a sort of "blood ties don't matter" or at least aren't the most important thing when considering family, and that's cool. It's debatable if that was the point here, though, or if Toriyama just didn't want to bother with him anymore.
Like, how true is it that Vegeta was originally intended to die and only stuck around because he was super popular with fans? Because if that's true it might mean the whole Saiyan thing was never supposed to be nearly as important as it actually became.
Hard to tell with him.
I suppose the advantage of writing on the fly is you can adapt for stuff like this.
One Strip! One Strip!![]()
IIRC, he was intended to be the villain on Namek, but he was really popular so Toriyama invented Frieza to take his place. This is the reason for the discrepancy over who, precisely, is destroying planets; it's first said that it's the Saiyans who wipe out worlds and sell them for profit, but later revealed that it's actually Frieza and his organization who does it.Hey!
So Vegeta became the Villain Protagonist of the Namek arc against the much uglier villain Frieza. Then Toriyama killed him off for five minutes in the Frieza fight - again, because he was popular. He wanted to troll the character's fans.
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Plus there's that level of contrived-ness to this. So of a disaster that killed all but 4 to 7 members of the Saiyan race (Depending on who you consider canon), one of them happens to be Goku's brother. You'd expect that to play into the narrative when the author goes out of his way to set up those coincidence.
edited 11th Dec '16 1:05:02 PM by Ghilz
Raditz being Goku's brother is one of those details that I can't help but feel would probably get excised if Toriyama did multiple drafts and planned things out in advance. Like, it's an intriguing plot hook if the story revolved more about Raditz wanting to reunite with his family and bring them together into the career of planet-killing.
Which is sort of his motivation. He's come to Earth to retrieve Kakarot. But the story focuses on him wanting to pick up Kakarot because they need another Saiyan for the planet they're hitting next, instead of anything to do with his relationship with his brother. So it just winds up being an unnecessary character detail; if he was just some Saiyan trying to pick up Kakarot because Vegeta needs a fourth, nothing would change.
And it ultimately says a lot about how important Raditz is as a character that the single most memorable thing about his entire character is a pointless detail that never contributes a single thing to the story.
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Yes. This. Totally this.
I get the feeling there are a lot of things that would either be altered or excised if Toriyama didn't just make it all up as he went along.
One Strip! One Strip!I think the ultimate example of Raditz's pointlessness is whenever the franchise revisited Goku's family, Raditz doesn't even come up. He's not in History Of Bardock, he's barely in Dragon Ball Minus and that's more by Virtue of Vegeta being in it.
Even WHEN the topic is "Goku's saiyan family", Raditz doesn't matter!
edited 11th Dec '16 1:23:56 PM by Ghilz

As for Raditz, I go back and forth on whether he was a missed opportunity or used as a good lesson on Goku's character.
edited 11th Dec '16 12:18:24 PM by LSBK