In the universe of Dragon Ball Z,
a man’s value is not determined by how hard he can punch or how loudly he can
yell, but instead by how loudly he can yell as he punches really hard. By the
end of the original Dragon Ball series, protagonist Goku has yell-punched his
way to the top of the Tenkaichi Budokai (roughly translated as “The Yellingist
Puncher”) tournament ladder and has been formally recognized as the world’s
foremost expert in yelling and punching, both separately and in conjunction.
When your protagonist has been
officially recognized as the strongest person on the planet and your series is
based on him fighting progressively more powerful foes, there’s really not much
to do but bring in some space aliens. In steps Vegeta, the proud prince of a powerful
galaxy conquering warrior race with his sights set on Earth. In his first
appearance Vegeta handily wipes the floor with every character that isn’t Goku
and even then only loses that fight
due to bad luck and some assistance from Goku’s pussy friends. When the dust
settles both men are battered and almost unable to move and Vegeta lies
helpless, his fate in the hands of Krillin, perennial bitch of the Dragon Ball
universe. Always one to recognize a pattern, Goku begs Krillin to allow Vegeta
to live on the merit that given the nature of the series, they’d probably all
end up friends anyway, something Krillin is incapable of forming an argument against. Vegeta gets into his spaceship, flies off swearing
vengeance on Goku and the audience collectively goes, “Oh, shit, this buster is
gonna be trouble.”
I could write an entire entry on the characters in the Dragon Ball franchise who didn’t live up to their
potential, but no one got it quite as bad as Vegeta. In the storyline
immediately following the one in which he was the major threat to the heroes, he is surpassed in Punch-Yelling
capacity by Goku and spends the rest of the series playing catch up. When he
isn’t getting his face smashed into the geographically vague desert environment
as an example of the power of whatever freaky-deaky space alien is lobbing
fireballs at the earth this week, he’s relegated to the growing group of gaping
losers that follow Goku around and offer insightful commentary like, “I’ve
never felt this type of power!” Even his little victories are snatched away
immediately, either by bad luck or his own hubris. When he appears to be able
to go toe-to-toe with Frieza, Frieza simply transforms and bats him away like a
fly while the ten-year old Gohan takes his place in the fight. Despite this bad
history with transformation, in his battle against Cell where he clearly has
the upper hand, Vegeta allows the monster to absorb the android it needs to
complete its transformation and once again receives an all you can eat buffet
of fireballs and fists.
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| The Prince of all Saiyans |
Vegeta receives arguably the most
character development of anyone in the entire series, growing from brutal
would-be world conqueror to over-bearing Tiger Mother. There is a case to be
made that DBZ is more about him and
his journey than that of its actual protagonist and for the entire run of the
show he’s consistently one of the top three most powerful characters. Despite
this, his crowning achievement after his first appearance is admitting that he
is inferior to Goku and distracting the last bad guy by presenting his ass for
a whooping long enough for Goku to save the day.
-The Management
