Vegeta Sucks

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. 

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