I’ve been reading a book about trees lately, and I haven’t been keeping up with it like I otherwise could have. I have to turn it in this week, and I doubt I’ll be able to finish it. It is interesting, but I’m starting to wonder if part of my continued sluggishness is lack of enjoyment. I just read the chapter on conifers – yeah, just one chapter on all conifers – and the author didn’t explain in any meaningful detail how conifers function, broadly, as a group. What exactly are cones, and in what varieties do they come in? Apparently, juniper “berries” are their cones, so how does that work? I’m a layperson who doesn’t get how cones can be fleshy, because I mostly know pinecones. Why are their leaves needly, or generally narrower? It’s a lot of Latin names and information about distribution, but relatively little biology, at least in that one. The first part of the book, talking about what trees are and what wood is and all that was more interesting; I’d have loved to get into more detail about the chemistry and microarchitecture of wood. This conifer chapter has me wondering how broad an overview these next five chapters on flowering trees will be.
This week in Dragon Ball Super, we got a bridging chapter between the filler arc that is Cell Max and Goku coming over to see how he and Gohan stack up, which will presumably be important moving forward. Decent humor, but as with the rest of the Super Hero material, fluff. So I decided to talk about why I think Vegeta joining the main cast of Dragon Ball was ultimately not the best choice. I don’t say that lightly; Vegeta is a great character, and many of the great moments of the series are Vegeta moments. And if he’s not around, then there’s no Trunks, and I have spent so much time thinking about Future Trunks fanfiction because I love him so much. I’m on board with Vegeta in many respects. The issue with his inclusion isn’t about his character, nor am I purely going, “But I like this other guy more!” This is a conclusion I came to while thinking about what I see as a core issue in the series: The supremacy of Saiyans.
All throughout the series, Goku has remained the best fighter around because he always works hard to be better than he was yesterday. He takes all the opportunities available to him to improve. I’ve talked about this before. During the early part of the series, this was the larger ethos of martial artists everywhere, and you can see moments where Yamcha, Krillin, Tien, and even Piccolo respond to Goku’s dedication and mindset to make new leaps in their ability and strength. As soon as it was revealed that Goku was a Saiyan, however, Krillin decides that Goku being a Saiyan is the reason he’s so much better. Tien keeps the spirit alive, until he sees Super Saiyan in person and decides he can’t possibly keep up. Piccolo loses confidence in his own progress after seeing the Saiyans’ growth in the lead-up to the Cell Games. Goku never rests on his laurels, he never says he’s the best because he’s a Saiyan or assumes that Saiyans are better fighters than anyone else. But precisely because of that, the ethos of what it meant to be a martial artists in the early days became the ethos of Saiyanhood. Despite the fact that they are constantly coming face to face with more powerful and more skilled enemies, there’s a pervasive assumption that Saiyans are inherently better that’s shared by a surprisingly large number of characters. A lot of the narrative is devoted to figuring out what it means to be a Saiyan, storylines that in reality are about being a martial artist yet are not framed that way. This Saiyan supremacy has been adopted much more wholeheartedly by the fandom at large, and is a core component of much media adaptation.
The series has arguably suffered from this quite a bit. In the Dragon Ball Super era, every story focuses on Goku and Vegeta out of necessity, rather than desire. After all, only they are good and strong enough to hang with the gods, at least at the beginning. Once you start on that path, there’s little, if any, room to develop other characters to jump in later. It’s an issue of unrealized possibilities and the dropping of threads, so it’s hard to really quantify. After all, DBS has been pretty great, and it’s not like I hate everything after the 23rd World Martial Arts Tournament. But up to that point, we saw Krillin, Yamcha, and Tien all striving to be better, and their development as characters was important and significant. Piccolo lasted longer, but his whole development has been built around training Saiyans. There’s so much that the rest of the cast has to offer and that they could have done up until now that we don’t get to experience. That’s why we can only focus on the two strong Saiyan guys now. We had to do a whole filler arc where Gohan and Piccolo get new transformations as the only way to make them serious contenders, rather than getting a payoff to all their work and determination up until now fruiting into some new narrative path. Cell Max is a boring villain, and spending several chapters on, “How do we eventually get bigger muscles?” is boring, especially after getting so many chapters watching Goku and Vegeta give up that ambition to focus on their technique and skills. Like, obviously what Piccolo and Gohan did with “Potential Unleashed Pro,” or whatever the generic name will be, is literally different than Super Saiyan, but it’s the same basic storyline, and it follows a whole series explaining that that storyline isn’t what the heroes need. Hopefully, that’s addressed in the next chapter.
And briefly, we need to discuss how Goku and Vegeta being the special Saiyan heroes has led to the glorification of all Saiyans. I mean, everything we know about the Saiyans indicates that they were a warring people who happily committed genocide for profit under Frieza, and likely would have done the same without him. Literally every Saiyan we know in the series from Universe 7, except for Goku, did that job with a smile on their face. Bardock isn’t secretly heroic; he’s a hypocrite who only turned on Frieza when he realized the thing he’d been doing to everyone else was about to be done to his own people, and he barely developed sympathy after his children were born. Being a Saiyan, historically, isn’t a badge of honor in this world, what with the racist assumption that entire peoples have the same character that underlies how all species are depicted in the series. While that’s not how the Saiyans or anyone else should have been depicted, it’s still the case that Goku doesn’t ever have to grapple with the family business. Vegeta is there to take it all on himself, so Goku can just be the cool, sparkly Super Saiyan.
I have to imagine that if the series wasn’t so tied up with Saiyan supremacy, we would have Piccolo, Krillin, Tien, and Yamcha developing their own cool stuff alongside Goku’s Super Saiyan and forcing things to stay fresh. Like, remember when Tien started training with King Kai and thought, “I’m going to master Kaio-ken and make a better version and beat Goku?” What happened to that? Well, because the story’s about Saiyans, no one else can learn the one technique that can compete with Super Saiyan, even though most of the characters had the opportunity to learn it and definitely should know it right now. Keeping the rest of the cast in play would also have opened up other opportunities, like a way for Videl to become a mainline fighter, so there’d finally be a woman in the cast. She was introduced as being an equally ambitious martial artist as any of the guys, and it really sucks that she was turned into backseat character via motherhood. Even Buu, who’s gotten some cool moments recently, could have become a serious, if still silly, martial artist. What about 17 and 18? Marron could have grown up doing martial arts, and that could be neat, since the kids generally outdo their parents. You get the idea. Missed opportunities, but not simply a fan’s wish list: The stuff that the series should have been about, the fruits of the themes that were overtaken by the idea of Saiyans.
All of which brings me back to Vegeta. When I look back at this series to figure out how and why things ended up this way, I find the moment Vegeta joined the gang. The series can’t be all about Saiyans if Goku is the only one, right? You need Trunks showing up and Vegeta vowing to attain Super Saiyan for things to snowball the way they have. And why have Vegeta join in the first place? Partly because he’s a cool and likeable character, clearly. More than that, it’s so Goku can have a Saiyan rival. Goku being a Saiyan doesn’t have to be his most important or defining characteristic, the reason he’s a special master martial artist. In fact, as I’ve argued above, it’s not what makes him great. However, that’s the direction things turned in, and in order to best utilize that “specialness” of his, he needs a rival who can compete with him on the same grounds. If you look at the role Vegeta plays in the story, it’s Piccolo’s role. The arch enemy turned steadfast ally and rival who has a serious and more ruthless attitude to contrast with Goku’s well-meaning naivete? That’s Piccolo. If Vegeta hadn’t stuck around, Vegeta fans would be Piccolo fans. Which is to say, we didn’t need Vegeta coming on board to fill a narrative void, unless that void is “another Saiyan, because Saiyans are uniquely special and amazing and no one can compete with them.” Which means Vegeta being around in the story at all is a symptom of the larger problem, and if you were to correct for that problem, then in all likelihood Vegeta wouldn’t stick around.
Of course, I have thought about what this would look like. There are two main points in the story where Vegeta could be removed completely. The first is during the battle with Frieza on Namek. The story can remain the same until they get back to Earth and Vegeta isn’t one of those revived by the Dragon Balls. At that point, we’d have to see someone else show up in Future Trunks’s place, and things can move on from there. I think that’s the coward’s way out.
The second point where you can remove Vegeta completely is after his fight with Goku. Either the Spirit Bomb kills him, and Goku laments how he killed one of his own and a great fighter and all that, or Krillin ignores Goku and kills him anyway with Yajirobe’s sword. There are strengths to both options, but personally I like the second. In the upcoming storyline, without Vegeta to do all the dirty work, Krillin and Gohan would have to fight and kill Cui, Dodoria, Zarbon, and the Ginyu Force. If I were writing a story where Krillin continues to be a serious martial artist, then he needs a moment of contrast with Goku, where he sticks to his guns and the two of them can have a genuine disagreement. Plus, it sets up his position. Rather than giving up because Saiyans are inherently better and Goku will always save him, he sees Goku nearly dead and knows that Vegeta was working for someone and decides that he has to get as good as he can so that next time, even if he doesn’t win, he won’t be summarily killed like a bug. He’s the craftiest and most inventive of the group; he should be looking for ways to compete, even if he doesn’t have the confidence to match them in raw power at the outset. I think that gives him a lot to work with and would be exactly what the story needs at that moment, without Vegeta to take most of his narrative load.
As the story moves forward, we would see Krillin trying to make the most of his unlocked potential while Goku’s Super Saiyan form gives him a huge advantage and King Kai’s other students make the most of Kaio-ken. I’d like to say Videl is the one to come from the future, but I’m not sure if that would have made sense at the time; I doubt Toriyama had already conceived of her, or would have considered a character like her in the absence of Gohan’s teen adventures. But that speculation aside, and barring an original character like Trunks but with Yamcha as the father, she’s the obvious choice for a fan looking back like this. Yajirobe isn’t making a comeback. She’d be well set-up once Gohan meets her later on. I don’t have a full draft at the ready, but the overall details are apparent. Piccolo, as Goku’s main rival, would be trained by Whis alongside him; instead of Blue, Piccolo would get a godly aura like Toppo, before eventually getting Ultra Ego (perfect for the Demon King). That, of course, being dependent on if this version of the story has Goku stick around, rather than Gohan taking the lead role. Some or all of the humans would have their potential unlocked in some fashion (isn’t it weird that no one else ever drinks the Ultra Divine Water), so that they can eventually get “Beast” type forms. Or maybe they get their own Ultra techniques training with Roshi. Even now, there’s nothing stopping them from doing that, since they’re all skilled enough to pull it off. Maybe more people would be fusing. There could easily be unseen things developed uniquely for different characters, as well, like a weird third eye thing for Tien. All kinds of cool stuff would be possible, depending on who the major players become in the story and what path they eventually choose, which sounds a lot more interesting to me than a constant parade of Super Saiyans.
Of course, it’s also possible to have Vegeta stick around in the series and remain a villain. I mean, we never see how he and Bulma end up together, and it’s inexplicable in the absence of evidence; he was made into the father of her child so that Trunks could turn him into a good guy, and that’s pretty messy. If he stayed a villain, we could still get good moments with him and see him show up as a persistent wrinkle in the plans of heroes and villains alike. The series, until Frieza in Super, hasn’t had a recurring antagonist, so it could be cool. I’m less fond of this because Vegeta would be positioned as the ultimate adversary, the one who always fights to a draw and comes back better, and that would be a track towards Saiyan supremacy, as well. Same thing if you try to keep him as a hero but somehow expand the plot so that there’s more room for the other characters. Vegeta is destined to be number two to Goku, either as a rival or as a villain that has to be able to beat Piccolo or another number two hero so that he can face off with Goku. Even the other radical change I could consider of not having Super Saiyan transformations wouldn’t be a solution, because the idea of Saiyan supremacy starts before they transform and would still be in play.
At the end of the day, the only way I can envision a version of the series that doesn’t revolve entirely around Saiyans is to remove Vegeta from the story. He likely wouldn’t be around if it were made with a different mindset, and his removal is the most effective way of forcing that change in mindset. There could still be a whole thing about what it means that Goku’s a Saiyan, what this seemingly pure evil bloodline means for him as a hero and what this anger-based power says about him as a person, but it wouldn’t be the sole or main reason he’s so great. He might even be framed as great in spite of his Saiyan heritage. He’d be an Earthling who has to use his martial arts training to properly channel his Saiyan power, and he’d have a whole slew of friends pushing him forward and foiling effectively with his journey (the Demon King Piccolo, the former wannabe-assassin Tien, the gentle and cautious Krillin, etc.). The series up to this point has been a wonderful ride, and Vegeta a big part of it, yet I think it would have been even better had Vegeta not stuck around as the nexus point for the assumption of Saiyan supremacy.
Weekly Thoughts 1/20/24
Life in the Gutters 