When fans think of Dragon Ball, the last thing that typically comes to mind is a thought-provoking story with deep, socially relevant themes. Yet beneath its tough, battle-hardened exterior, Dragon Ball has a nuanced emotional core. Dragon Ball is really a coming-of-age story that follows a naive young boy’s journey to become a mature & experienced grandfather, and the lessons Goku and his friends learn along the way have genuine substance.
For every Super Saiyan transformation in Dragon Ball, there’s a psychological transformation for the characters, and for every ridiculous Master Roshi gag, there’s a moment of wisdom applicable to real life. Dragon Ball fans come to the series for its intense martial arts battles, but they stay for the deeper aspects of Akira Toriyama’s impressively well-written storylines. Toriyama didn’t always get everything right while writing Dragon Ball, but his unorthodox writing style led to some of manga’s most powerful story arcs.
10 Vegeta’s Majin Mid-Life Crisis Was Vital to His Evolution
As Seen During The Buu Saga
Akira Toriyama may be a questionable writer when it comes to inconsistencies in his manga, but one aspect of Dragon Ball that truly proves hjs manga a masterpiece is the characters. Toriyama wrote some of the best characters in manga history with Dragon Ball’s original run. Aside from Goku; Krillin, Piccolo, Gohan and Bulma are all iconic for good reason, but arguably the absolute best-written character in the entire manga is actually Vegeta. Vegeta was far from the first villain-to-hero redemption story in Dragon Ball, but it was easily the most engaging.
Vegeta’s rise, fall, and rise again rollercoaster ride of villainy was easily one of Akira Toriyama’s greatest masterpieces in the manga. In fact, the most nuanced aspect of Vegeta’s arc is actually his final return to evil as Majin Vegeta during the Buu Saga. Vegeta’s struggle with overcoming his past and swallowing his pride was already impressively constructed, but it was Vegeta’s final fall from grace that truly rooted him in realism. Even after allowing Vegeta to have a family and embrace his life as an Earthling, Toriyama had the wisdom to understand that even the smallest inkling of doubt within a person can lead to a complete breakdown, which is exactly what Majin Vegeta was.
9 Goku’s Heart Virus Was More Than Just a Convenient Plot Thread
As Seen During The Android Saga
Goku went through something of an identity crisis following the Saiyan Saga, even if it wasn’t as overt as other characters’ emotional struggles – like those of Piccolo or Vegeta. Goku had only just discovered he was an alien of the Saiyan race during the fight with Raditz, and later only put two and two together that he was actually the one at fault for his grandfather’s death after facing Vegeta’s Oozaru transformation. As he became more powerful as a Saiyan, though, Goku seemed to completely leave humanity behind. Apparently, Toriyama wasn’t satisfied with that fate for Goku. Goku could’ve easily become an all-powerful Saiyan warrior with very little in common with the human beings he protected as DBZ went on.
Instead, Toriyama gave Goku the most human of all possible ailments, an incurable disease, to remind the reader that no matter how foreign and alien his power level seemed to become, he was still – in a sense – human. Goku’s heart virus brought Dragon Ball’s greatest hero back down to Earth, showing that even the strongest people can succumb to things beyond their control. This is profound insight which could’ve easily been lost had Goku just remained an unbeatable supernatural warrior. Not only did the heart virus take Goku out of the picture to give the other characters room to grow and shine during the Android Saga, it helped humanize the recently reborn Super Saiyan.
8 Gohan Was The Only One Who Could’ve Changed Piccolo
As Seen During The Saiyan Saga
Piccolo is one of Dragon Ball’s most well-written characters. His villain-to-hero arc is compelling, and his subsequent reconnection to his godly other half, Kami, was a beautiful full-circle moment for him. By far, Piccolo’s most memorable moment in DBZ is his heroic sacrifice to save Gohan. This was already a beautifully written and drawn moment in the surface level, but it’s far better when looking deeper.
Akira Toriyama displayed a profound understanding of what it truly would take to change someone as deeply steeped in a life of evil like Piccolo. In hindsight, Piccolo never would’ve changed due to just facing a more powerful opponent – it was only someone weaker than him who could really have that impact. Piccolo’s strongly held personal belief was that power was the only thing that mattered in the world. That’s exactly why he chose to train Gohan to begin with, because he recognized Gohan’s innate potential.
Ultimately, though, it was being forced to nurture someone weaker than him that actually made Piccolo see the light. For all intents and purposes, Piccolo becoming a stand-in-father for Gohan was what changed his life, as fatherhood often does for new parents. Piccolo came to admire and appreciate things about Gohan other than just his strength. This showed Piccolo there was more to life than just the pure pursuit of power, and that’s something only Gohan could’ve possibly taught him.
7 Future Trunks Yearning For His Father’s Attention Was His Most Tragic Quality
As Seen During The Cell Saga
Future Trunks is one of Akira Toriyama’s best-written characters from a variety of fronts. His entire time travel storyline is handled in a way that at least doesn’t ruin the suspension of disbelief, which is more than can be said or many such attempts at this common sci-fi trope. Additionally, his Super Saiyan transformation completely changed the face of the manga from that point on, but the most interesting aspect of Future Trunks’ storyline by far is how he interacts with the people who were important to him in his own time period – his father, Vegeta, being the most shockingly powerful.
A major theme of Future Trunks’ arc in Dragon Ball Z is his attempt at gaining the approval of his father, who he never got a chance to meet in his own timeline. Even as he sees the propensity for evil within his dad, Trunks still looks at him through rose-colored glasses. Trunks even holds back his own strength just to protect his father’s ego, despite the fact that he never actually got to know his dad all that well. Put simply, Trunks had genuine daddy issues, which was a subtle and nuanced aspect of his character that could’ve easily been ignored by Toriyama. Instead, it became a major part of what drove Trunks forward, and also what simultaneously held him back in ways.
6 Goku’s Biggest DBZ Mistakes Actually Came From a Wise Foresight
As Seen During The Cell and Buu Sagas
Goku is a lot of things in Seagon Ball, but “wise” is usually not the first thing fans will call him. As he matured into Dragon Ball Z, however, Goku showed an uncommon degree of wisdom which he enacted in various ways. Unfortunately, because he was still growing and learning as a person, the ways he expressed that profound level of wisdom were often unsuccessful and even led to some of his greatest gaffs in the manga. That only further serves to show the deeper wisdom that Toriyama himself imparted into his story.
Ultimately, the wisest insight Goku had early into DBZ was that he would eventually need to leave the world to the next generation: his son, Gohan. This came about as an understanding of his own mortality after his literal death during the fight with Raditz. At that point, the world was completely left in Gohan’s hands, and many of Goku’s friends died. Toriyama didn’t provide any introspective moment for Goku where he literally thought about this (there wasn’t much time to self-reflect between major threats to the Universe), but Goku’s actions clearly demonstrated how he had learned his lesson.
Goku may be an alien with supernatural abilities, but he’s not immortal. That’s why he gave Cell the Senzu Bean, and that’s why he allowed Majin Buu to live to fight Gotenks. Goku wanted the next generation to learn to protect themselves in his absence, and the later arcs of DBZ clearly demonstrate that desire in Goku. Even in the final arc of Dragon Ball, Goku told Uub he would one day be the protector of the Earth in Goku’s absence one day. Goku was doing everything he could to prepare his friends and family for the day when he would no longer be around to save them, which shows greater maturity than Goku often gets credit for.
5 Goku’s Entire Life is a Battle of Nature vs Nurture
As Seen During The Saiyan and Frieza Sagas
Almost all Dragon Ball’s villains have a common quality: they believe that real strength is something a person is born with. They are given unbelievable strength genetically, and believe that no amount of hard work could overcome that. Nowadays, the idea of hard work overcoming anything else is a popular trope in shonen manga that many modern anime actively work to subvert, but Akira Toriyama’s Dragon Ball was arguably the greatest purveyor of this idea into the collective manga consciousness. In hindsight, the entire unifying thread of Goku’s life is a battle of nature vs nurture.
Goku’s Saiyan nature gives way to his upbringing as a human being, and his nurturing of his own skill makes him stronger than those who were gifted with natural power. That’s why villains like Frieza and Vegeta worked so well in DBZ, because they completely embodied this theme of natural talent competing against personal effort. Villains like Vegeta wholeheartedly believed strength was something given not gained, and Goku’s entire life story was a battle against that ideology (even if Goku himself could never spell the word “ideology” no matter how hard he tried). While the hard work trope is simple in its delivery, the philosophical underpinnings are far deeper than they appear, and Toriyama made them a cornerstone of Goku’s entire life story.
4 Anyone is Redeemable in Dragon Ball Given the Right Catalyst
As Seen During The Saiyan Saga
There were certain themes Akira Toriyama repeatedly returned to in his manga, but one of the most common was the idea that almost any villain could be redeemed. While Goku’s insistence on constantly showing the most deplorable villains mercy often came off as a foolish character flaw, it more often than not yielded real results in the long run. Almost all Goku’s closest friends in Dragon Ball were his mortal enemies at one point, from Yamcha to Tien, Vegeta to Piccolo – the list is nearly endless. Although it would be easy to just claim Toriyama doesn’t like to get rid of cool character designs, the reality is that even if that were the case, it leads to the profound insight that no person is expendable, and no villain too far gone.
This shows Toriyama didn’t care about ideals like pure good and evil, he cared more about individuals and the circumstances surrounding their lives that caused them to act in the ways they did. To him, even the most deplorable villain could have a sense of humanity if they had the right experiences to allow them to empathize with others. Toriyama masterfully crafted innumerable villain redemption arcs throughout Dragon Ball, and the fact they rarely (if ever) felt contrived or predictable goes to show that they came from a deeply held belief in people’s potential to change.
3 The Androids Were Fundamentally Different From Cell For a Deep Reason
As Seen During The Cell Saga
Unlike other Androids, who were created from purely human DNA, Cell was an artificial being crafted from an amalgamation of other entities. This manufactured a fundamental difference between the Androids and Cell which the Cell Saga highlights in surprisingly deep ways. The biggest differences between the “pure” Android of cell, and the human mixture of the other Androids was that the others had a distinct capacity for love and empathy which Cell didn’t have.
Cell’s true goal was to become more powerful, and he only wanted to test his strength against strong opponents due to the trace amounts of genetics he shared with Goku and Vegeta. On the other hand, there was a much more existential element to the Androids, as they sought to uncover their own purposes and reasons for life in the absence of their creator. Unlike Cell, who was biologically predisposed to simply achieve the single-minded goal he was created to accomplish, the other Androids openly questioned what the purpose of their lives would be, and eventually sought to uncover their own meanings for their existence.
This highlighted the difference between a being that was completely bioengineered like Cell, from a person who was biologically altered like Androids 16, 17 and 18. Despite the robotic parts of them, the Androids were still ultimately human, and Toriyama seemed to understand that a key part of being human is having the capacity to choose who one wants to become. No matter what Dr. Gero wanted from the Androids, he could never really control them because they were all-too-human.
2 Goku Had to Accept His Heritage To Become a Super Saiyan
As Seen During The Frieza Saga
One of the best things Akira Toriyama did as the series switched from OG Dragon Ball to DBZ was start to take his characters – especially Goku – more seriously. In early Dragon Ball, it would’ve been completely fine if Toriyama never explained why Goku had a monkey tail, or why he was so abnormally strong. They were just facts about his character that made him interesting, but from the start of Dragon Ball Z, that all changed. Goku had become a living, breathing person who had (both physically and psychologically) grown throughout Dragon Ball’s early arcs, so Goku initially thought of himself as an Earthling first and foremost.
It was actually Vegeta who inspired Goku to truly embrace who he was as a Saiyan warrior. Goku’s Super Saiyan transformation may just seem like a cool power-up that helps make the fights more exciting, but it runs deeper than that considering how Toriyama built up the legendary Super Saiyan mythos throughout the Saiyan Saga and into Namek. Sure, being an Earthling and embracing the support of his friends is what helped him defeat Vegeta, but Goku still had to embrace the harsh truth of his familial heritage if he was going to become a truly well-rounded person and unlock his greatest potential as an individual.
1 Master Roshi’s Lesson Continues to Drive Goku's Character
As Seen During The World Tournament Saga
Goku first met Master Roshi very early in Dragon Ball, when he was still only just a child. At that time, Goku had a real desire to grow as a fighter and learn from the best of the best, but he was still wet behind the ears and immature. Roshi was the person who really took Goku to the next level as a martial artist. Beyond just being Goku’s first formal teacher following the loss of his grandfather, Roshi actually left Goku with substantial life lessons that he (and Toriyama) never forgot throughout the entirety of the manga.
Roshi’s lessons quite literally molded who Goku became, almost as though Toriyama himself internalized their meaning. By far, the greatest lesson Roshi went through great pains (at some points, literal pains when he had to fight his students in the World Tournament) to teach Goku was that a great martial artist can never become complacent, because there’s always someone stronger out there. This became a vital part of who Goku is that differentiated him from almost every single opponent he faced throughout the latter part of Toriyama’s manga.
The fatal flaw of villains like Vegeta and Frieza was that they believed all strength was innate, and therefore didn’t bother training to the degree that Goku did. It was ultimately Roshi’s lesson to never stop pushing himself to grow that actually made Goku the strongest. It was that same lesson that Vegeta had to learn from Goku at the very end of the manga, acknowledging Goku as the “best” because of that same relentless pursuit of personal growth. Even in the most simplistic progression of the story’s power scaling, there’s a hidden depth to Toriyama’s manga that is very often overlooked.
Dragon Ball
Dragon Ball tells the tale of a young warrior by the name of Son Goku, a young peculiar boy with a tail who embarks on a quest to become stronger and learns of the Dragon Balls, when, once all 7 are gathered, grant any wish of choice.
