Prepare for MORE nerd rage!
Not too long ago I wrote an article about the Ten Biggest Plot Holes in Dragonball Z. I tried to sleep the night afterward but I couldn’t. My mind kept racing to inform me of plot holes I missed. So after a week of restless nights I composed myself and plunked out another ten plot holes worth noting. I already covered the top ten, so here are Ten More Big Plot Holes in DBZ. And while you’re at it, you might as well be caught up with the series, so check out my favorite season, Season 6.
Some Animals Talk, Just Not All of Them:
Facist pigs. They're all the same.
There are talking animals in the world of Dragonball Z. There just are. I can’t explain that, nor do I feel like defending it. It’s just silly, so it works. You’ve got a shape-shifting pig, a dog that’s president of the world, and all manner of creatures that speak and walk around like it’s totally normal. But then there are other animals that, for some reason, don’t speak or act like humans at all. Some cats talk, other don’t. Some pterodactyls are mindless, others are martial arts champions. What’s the distinction? Meh, whenever the plot feels better one way or another. There’s just no getting around this one without saying, “Yeah, the show is goofy. Deal with it.”
I Don’t Need Air, Do I?:
"I don't need to breath while on this asteroid, right?"
Somehow the heroes of the show have found themselves fighting a number of enemies that can breath in space. That’s right, they can BREATH in SPACE. You know, that place with no air and absolutely nothing at all? They can breath there. Okay, they’re special creatures, but then we come to Goku and Vegeta and suddenly we blur the line of who can and can’t breath what. Within a few episodes of introducing Vegeta, he is seen blowing up a planet just because he feels like it. How does he blow the planet up? He opens his space pod and stands above the planet as he fires a beam. Don’t give me any explanation that “He was still within the planet’s atmosphere” or something because when that planet exploded, an action that was instant, it was obliterated. No way Vegeta’d survive that one. So can Vegeta just breath in space? No, he needs air, as we learn since Frieza nearly drowns him and strangles him, and later Kid Buu does the same. He needs air to live. Oops. The same goes with Goku on his trip to Namek. He gets his foot glued to the outside of his spaceship during flight, yet somehow gets back inside his ship after leaving the boot glued in place. That’s impossible due to the vacuum of space. He’d be dead, I don’t care what you say. “He held his breath” can only go so far.
Garlic Jr. and His Place In The Series:
"Huh? Oh, didn't expect to see you there. Yeah, I just came for the punch."
In between the Frieza Saga and the Trunks Saga, the anime decided to add a little filler saga called the Garlic Junior Saga in which the character of Garlic Junior returns from somewhere called the Dead Zone, takes over Kami’s Lookout, and vows revenge against Goku for pushing him into the Dead Zone in the first place. Some of you might not know but the first DBZ movie is called The Dead Zone and stars Garlic Junior as the villain who kidnaps Gohan and forces Goku and Piccolo to fight. This movie is one of the few cannon movies of the series. It has to be, otherwise Garlic Junior couldn’t show back up and allow it to make sense. But in The Dead Zone, Goku, Piccolo, and Krillin all see Gohan go ballistic and mess up Garlic Junior with some crazy power he’s just got hidden. Problem with this is that the beginning of the series proper has Goku introducing Gohan to Krillin and the others, to which they’re surprised to learn that Goku is a dad. Krillin already knew who Gohan was in The Dead Zone, and Goku and Piccolo already knew that Gohan was capable of ridiculous power when pushed even before Raditz took him and pushed him too far, so how does this all fit? It’s another one of those, “Yeah, we know we said one thing already, but could you just please forget that we did and believe the new story now? Thanks.” That doesn’t mean I’m happy with it, though.
Goku’s Ship Destroyed But Still Useable:
"Behold my Plot Hole Beam!"
Here’s an interesting one to deal with, and the problem comes from the original Japanese anime creating filler, not the US dubbing the show improperly. In the timeline, Goku comes to Earth as a baby in a Saiyan space pod, Raditz comes to Earth in a Saiyan space pod, Gohan destroys Raditz’s pod, Piccolo destroys Goku’s pod, Nappa and Vegeta arrive on Earth in their pods, Vegeta escapes in his, and Nappa’s is accidentally self-destructed. That’s the whole reason Bulma, Krillin, and Gohan had to use Kami’s old Namekian space ship to travel to Namek: Because the Saiyan space pods were all gone or destroyed. Yet when Goku goes to Namek he does so in a ship that Dr. Briefs makes from Goku’s Saiyan space pod. You know, the one that Piccolo obliterated with a Special Beam Cannon because it was projecting a hologram of the moon and causing Gohan to transform into a giant ape. There is no way to explain this one away other than “Big ol’ oops” since the plotline of Goku’s space pod creating a hologram was added as filler by the anime to allow the manga time to catch up, something that was common practice. Somehow they just never found a better way to resolve that little snafu, so they just said, “Ah heck with it, we already told them Garlic Junior somehow fits in the story, so why not this?” And then they blew Goku up on Namek and retconned that a few episodes later because they needed to lie to us just a little more. What next? Giant holes in the body aren’t fatal anymore?
Holes In The Body Ain’t Nothing Till They Are:
That's gonna be tender in the morning...maybe.
Oops. One of the most dramatic scenes from early in the series is when Piccolo launches the Special Beam Cannon and drills through Goku and Raditz, leaving both with a gaping hole in their chest and a definite “You’re dead sucka” on their foreheads (this is also the last time the special Beam Cannon is effective, save for blowing up Goku’s Saiyan space pod, thus actually making the attack so powerful it can rip through whole plots in a few seconds). Later on Namek people start getting treated as pincushions just because they can be. Krillin gets a horn through the stomach and lives. Vegeta gets Krillin to blow clean through his torso with an energy blast, but is healed by Dende a little bit later. Yamhca proves he’s useless by getting a hand through the stomach as well, but also doesn’t die because someone gives him a Senzu Bean. Sure the villains start getting holes in them, but they just regenerate, so there’s no problem there. However, along comes Future Trunks to take a blast to the chest from Cell, instantly killing him. Say wha? Trunks, this super powerful guy from the future, can be killed by a blast through the stomach? Was it because they didn’t get him medical help soon enough? Or just because it was more dramatic that way? I’m going with option B, because the show never seems to deal with how fatal having your spinal cord ELIMINATED actually is unless it makes for a good plot point.
Trunks and His Wacky Time Adventures:
"I wish I were Marty McFly. He would have known what to do."
Oh hey, speaking of Trunks, where is he from anyway? Well, there’s the Trunks of the present time that’s Bulma and Vegeta’s son, and then there’s the Trunks from the future timeline where the androids have killed everyone and everything with a big killing machine called “Their Fists.” So Trunks comes to our timeline (technically in a separate timeline since whatever he does in the present doesn’t effect his future), and saves Goku from dying from a heart virus. He also decides to stay a while and train with Vegeta to become way more powerful than he ever was so that when he returns to his own timeline he’ll be strong enough to destroy the androids that live there, which he does. As confusing as it is thinking about Cell and his role in the time travel, we have to try. Trunks comes here and helps us, but Cell comes to our timeline as well but from a future where he’s killed Trunks, which means Cell must be from a third timeline somewhere or something. I don’t know; it makes my head hurt a bit too much. But all of this is confounded by the knowledge that seven years after the whole debacle with Cell, Majin Buu shows up to muck with the world. So where was he in Trunk’s timeline? He should have popped up sometime around Trunks’ eighth birthday, but in The History of Trunks we know that Trunks is happily failing to be relevant yet until he’s roughly thirteen or something. Majin Buu would have annihilated Trunks’ world, even worse than the androids, with no hope of anyone stopping him as Trunks wasn’t stronger than Goku or Vegeta and both of them lost to Majin Buu a handful of times. Assuming the timeline really did get shifted due to the time travel (as Trunks speculates), the world would still be doomed as soon as Majin Buu showed up. Bleak world to think about. Just don’t get me started on how Trunks actually got that sword.
Anatomy Is Not Their Strong Point:
"Uh...you realize babies shouldn't have those, right?"
When Goku was a boy he had a tail. This was because Saiyans as a race had tails from birth that allowed them to transform into giant apes at the sight of a full moon. In Dragonball, Goku does just that, so his tail keeps getting removed in order to prevent the problem from reoccurring (since when he turned into a giant ape he went nuts and destroyed everything). Dragonball Z comes along and so does Gohan, tail and everything. He’s able to transform after seeing the moon or even a hologram of the moon, so Piccolo removes Gohan’s tail twice with Vegeta removing it a third time during their big fight at the end of the Saiyan Saga. After that, Gohan never grows his tail back. And that never seems strange to anyone, even after he grew it back a total of three times in a single year. Vegeta loses his tail as well but it doesn’t grow back. In fact, they seem to completely forgo the whole “Saiyans Have Tails” thing after the Saiyan Saga since neither Goten nor Trunks have tails at birth. No one questions this since, you know, it’d be pretty startling to discover that the Saiyans as a species are losing one of their more valuable features. Goku’s tail was permanently removed because of a deal he made with Kami, but the others? “Just c’mon, stop asking questions when we’ve got stories to tell, alright?” Fine fine.
Geography Is Not Their Strong Point Either:
So this is the world...no wonder they're confused about distance.
Question for DBZ fanboys: How long is Snake Way? Don’t remember? It’s 10,000 miles. That sure does sound like an impressive number, no? Okay then, geography fanboys: What is the circumference of the Earth, in miles? Give up? That number is roughly 24,901 miles and some change. Suddenly Snake Way doesn’t seem as bad, but it’s still ridiculously long, right? RIGHT? Well yeah, but it makes no sense the amount of importance they give to said way of snake. The bigger problem at stake here is that Goku has traversed the world multiple times without much difficulty, even swimming half way around the world in a day when he was 17. Suddenly, this journey doesn’t sound so bad. This is another one of those problems that came up in the anime but was correct in the manga, where Snake Way is 1 million kilometers (621,371 miles), a slightly more intimidating pathway. Still, the US dub never corrects this, even after all the “definitive remastered editions” keep supposedly “fixing” said problems. I call shenanigans on you Funimation! Anyway, this 10,000 mile mark causes the next statement to make no sense: Only Goku and King Yemma have ever made it to the end. Ah…huh. Either there’s a lot more to Snake Way than they show, or everyone else really sucks when they die. Assuming there is nothing better to do when you die, why haven’t more people made the trip? They’ve got nowhere else to go. It’s like Goku’s the only important character in the history of ever. Oh wait, maybe because…
Goku Is The Only Important Character of The Series:
One of these people is important. Can you guess which one?
Goku is master of all the best attacks and techniques on the show. He knows the Kamehameha, the Spirit Bomb, Instant Transmission, the Kaio-Ken, the Solar Flare, and Super Saiyan 1-3. The Solar Flare was a technique he picked up from Tien, while the Kamehameha came from Master Roshi. The Super Saiyan thing was simple genetics. But even though Instant Transmission was arguably one of the most useful techniques in the show, he never bothered to teach anyone how to do it, even when he had three years to do it before the androids showed up. And the Kaio-Ken, a technique that he learned from King Kai along with the Spirit Bomb, did anyone get to learn those? It was a move that only King Kai was supposed to be able to teach, so that’d mean a character would need to train with King Kai for a long time such as when…Yamcha, Tien, and Chiaotzu lived with King Kai and learned nothing. Ouch. It makes no sense, either, as they’re clearly strong enough to learn these abilities since they’re stronger than Vegeta was against the Ginyu Force. Say what?
Now can you figure out who's more important?
Okay, so Goku dies with a power level of roughly 400 when he travels Snake Way, trains with King Kai, and returns to Earth with the new skills and a power level over 9,000. The three in question die with power levels over 1,000 and reach King Kai, staying for a lot longer than Goku was able to as Goku had two months and these guys had four months and eight months (Tien and Chiaotzu had the latter). Goku fights the Ginyu Force on Namek with a power level at 180,000, though Vegeta couldn’t beat them with whatever power level he had. The Ginyu Force go to King Kai’s planet after they die since King Kai invited them and they all lose to Yamcha, Tien, and Chiaotzu, meaning those guys have a power level well above Goku’s when he learned the Spirit Bomb and the Kaio Ken. So does King Kai teach them? Nope. Would they have wanted to learn? Tien was seriously into surpassing Goku someday, so you bet your sweet hinnie he’d want to know that. So why no love to the also rans? And beyond that, Krillin has the single deadliest move in the series with the Destructo Disk, a disk of energy that can slice through ANYTHING. It’s a one-hit-KO every time as long as it hits the person in the right place. Give this to someone with some real power and suddenly it’s hyper-deadly. But no, Krillin wasn’t important enough to bother with teaching this vital move. It’s not like these guys are martial arts masters or anything. Oh wait…
Epic Fights? Never Seen Those Before:
"This is SO going to be all over YouTube tomorrow!"
I don’t know how I missed this blaring plot hole in my last article since it rips the believability of the Dragonball world to shreds. In Dragonball, when Goku is a kid, he fights against Master Roshi, Tien, and Piccolo in three separate Tenkaichi Budokais (Strongest Under the Heavens Martial Arts Tournaments), each in increasingly epic battles that involve flight, explosions, hyper speed, and all manner of crazy things. But by Dragonball Z the whole world has forgotten that these guys exist and so they don’t bother to remember that it isn’t all that ridiculous to see people capable of these things when they show up again. The worst thing that happens is some guy named Hercule (originally Mr. Satan in the Japanese and uncut versions) convinces the world that everything that happens in the Cell Saga is all just an elaborate set of tricks since people aren’t capable of flight, super speed, or energy blasts. Even though the whole world has seen this happen on multiple occasions. Somehow they just believe, “Oh, yeah, that’s all just some explosives and jet packs and such.” To make matters worse, the military decides that every time a new threat shows up they should send in entire fleets to dispatch said threat. When Nappa and Vegeta show up, Nappa single-handedly wipes out all of Earth’s army, half the time just flying through the fighter jets and aircraft carriers. So when Cell shows up and manages to do the same thing, why does Earth’s military decide, “Hey yeah, I think we should go into certain death. That sounds like a good plan.” Naturally, Cell blows them all to HFIL and goes back to waiting for the important characters of the show (Goku) to come challenge him properly. Even if Hercule can convince everyone that Cell is just really good with tricks, that STILL makes him an unbelievable threat. Which would you be more afraid of? A guy that can fly around and shoot energy beams from his hands, or a guy with enough explosives to level entire cities and wipe out whole military factions? One of those is ridiculous, but the other? That’s Real World terrifying. We have people fighting a war right now because we THOUGHT that some guy had the means to pull off Cell-style tricks with explosives. After the first Tenkaichi Budokai when Goku and Master Roshi are exchanging Kamehamehas, everyone on the face of the planet would have rushed out to learn how to do this, especially the military. I guess it makes sense though. I mean, it’s not like everyone in the world is as important as Goku, right? Right.
So there you have it, another ten reasons why I have too much time on my hands. Am I still leaving some vital plot hole out? Or am I just looking for problems where there really isn’t any? Have you got an explanation for my gripes or a continuation of a gripe here? Comment time! Leave some comments and I’ll return the love. Even if you aren’t Goku.
You may also enjoy these other DBZ related articles:
-Ten Worst Instances of Filler in DBZ
-Ten Most Awesome Moments of DBZ
I am not sure if this was mentioned in the Dragon Ball manga (the last time I read it all was a couple of years ago) but when Krillin died someone mentioned (don’t remember who exactly but I think it was Master Roshi) that the bodies had to be kept in tact for Shenron to bring them back. That’s why the bodies were preserved in those coffin refrigerators. Now they also mentioned that you would be brought back to life in the shape you were in too I think i.e. if you lost an arm you would be brought back that way.
Why is it then that Tien who lost an arm magically grew his arm again when he was revived back again (this can be said for Trunk’s who had a hole in his chest and others).
Furthermore, when Shenron was summoned after the Cell games were over to revive Trunks etc. they showed Mr. Satan having a parade, and it was light out (yes this is an anime filler and being extremely picky) when Shenron had been summoned. Isn’t the whole sky around the world supposed to be dark when he is summoned.
I have to agree 100% with you about saying that Goku was always so IMPORTANT! I am a fan of Vegeta and hated Goku in the later part of DBZ (I love him Dragon Ball and probably up until the end of the Frieza saga). He made Vegeta seem useless and it drove me nuts which is probably why I don’t like the Buu Saga much.
It gets mangled pretty badly in some English dubs, but the importance of keeping bodies intact is stated constantly in the Japanese dubs and the manga, specifically when dealing with Krillin’s death on Namek. The US dub states the problem with wishing him back is that he died on Namek so wishing him back would just place him in the empty void of space where Namek once was, but in the original dialogue they explain the problem as his body being exploded into pieces, hence the extra wish to find all those pieces and then wish him back. None of that seemed to matter when they really just needed bodies wished back though, for instance when Buu kills everyone by eating them or exploding the planet. Wishing everyone back didn’t even need the body explanation required since they were way past bothering with that little note. The same deal happened when Goku was blown up by Cell. His body would definitely be in pieces, but they had stopped worrying about that technicality last saga.
Maybe this doesn’t count since it came from the Dragon Ball Z movie “The World’s Strongest”. But anyway… so Oolong and Gohan are searching for the Dragon Balls so Oolong can wish for something. Gohan asks Oolong what he wants to wish for and we see the image of women’s underwear. The exact same underwear Oolong wished for in Dragon Ball to stop Emperor Pilaf from making his wish (I don’t remember what it was). So if we know that the Earth dragon can’t grant the same wish twice, wouldn’t that mean that Oolong wouldn’t be able to wish for underwear again? Maybe Oolong didn’t know. But he should’ve. Just something for everyone to think about.
Yeah, that’d definitely be a problem with character consistency, which is more damaging to a story than big plotholes a lot of the time. We see that again and again in various places in both the movies and the series itself, such as Vegeta becoming a coward only when it serves the plot (against Frieza as well as Broly), or Tien not really doing anything after a certain point.
Hit the nail right on the head for all of them except the Majin Buu – Future Trunks timeline thing. I see a lot of people make these statements, but somehow everyone forgets that Buu never “arrived” anywhere. He was on Earth way back from before the show even started, but in his cocoon. The cocoon that required not only all the energy from Gohan in his SS2 form but the energy from all those battles in Babidi’s ship. Considering the only person left in the future with any energy is Trunks, this definitely wouldn’t be enough to revive Majin Buu, even assuming Babidi wasn’t killed or Buu’s egg destroyed during the Android’s rampage.
yea..they rock, nappa is complete jokes lol on the bug planet where he rips on the weakness of raditz… “He must have been made of something weak like paper mache, or Radtz”… lol
o and who watches tfs abridged? If you don’t you should its an amazing parody of DBZ : http://www.teamfourstar.com/
and im not just advertising, this stuff is actually hilarious, Mr Popo FTW!!!! speaking of Mr. Popo, (although this was filler episodes not from manga) he fights Goku during Goku’s training on the lookout and blocks everything easily, meaning he was probably stronger than King Piccolo… and this happens again with Goten and Trunks which means he was at least Ginyu Force level, maybe Freiza level (although in that 1 episode thing from a couple years ago with Vegeta’s brother, Tarble, the guy is supposed to be Freiza level and Goten and Trunks Have trouble with him, but i think he goes through some kind of tranformation as wel…). O ya Tarble lol but that doesn’t count does it?
I am definitely well aware of Team Fourstar. They nail the jokes perfectly. I think my favorite may be the energy blast struggle between Goku and Vegeta. “Kyle Ken…” “Noooo…” “Times…” “No no no no….” Priceless.
LOLZ!!! btw Buu probably couldn’t be resurrected because Babidi would need people to get energy from and everyone was pretty much dead, except like Trunks (Bulma doesn’t have enough energy by herself to get Buu back anyway). Also maybe Babidi was killed by the androids and then Buu is lost forever. I think Babidi being killed by the androids would probably be very likely.
p.s. thanks for the great lists lol.
This might have already been said but I think the reason why they didn’t have goku fight Frieza again is because they wanted to show how powerful trunks really was. The fact that he defeated frieza in two seconds showed that he was super powerful, even for a super saiyan
Just remember that anything happening in any of the movies or the TV specials is not official, and not related to the manga. The TV specials could be upheld, at best, as the untold stories, but if they conflict with the facts of the manga, then those aspects of them *have* to be ignored for the sake of continuity and common sense. Also, the Ginyu force never went to Kaio-sama’s place, that is completely filler.
I assume that no matter how much training they got, Yamcha, Krilin and Tenshinhan, being human, reached their limit eventually. I also don’t believe that once you discard the filler Ginyu thing, they were ever anywhere near as strong as Vejiita on Namek. Krilin seems to have slightly more potential than the others, but even so, he is a human and has a limit. Nonetheless, give credit where credit is due. Compared to most tournament participants, especially the tournament in the Majin Buu arc, these humans are still more powerful than most other martial artists by a long shot.
Actually, these plot holes are not really large. There are much bigger plot holes in the series than this. Firstly, dealing with this, many of your plot holes deal with the issue of filler vs canon. The filler was inserted in order to keep the anime from going ahead of the manga, since, well it hadn’t been drawn yet and they were developed in unison. So, I think we should discard the plot holes that come up as a result of the filler since it was really rushed material and not part of the actual plot. So, that gets rid of the goku’s spaceship plot hole, since that whole hologram thing was filler.
The body hole thing also isn’t much of a plot hole. Firstly, Raditz and goku. Well, people who have been split in half have lived for a minute or so after the incident before passing out from blood loss and dying. So that’s our bench mark. Raditz and Goku lived for only a couple mins which is to be expected. The hole from frieza to krillin isn’t suspicious because frieza’s horn only pierced his side…not an immediately life threatening wound. The trunks wound also is not suspicious, cell’s blast was right through his heart, an almost instantly fatal wound.
Here’s a really big plot hole: the power levels frieza/vegeta etc. others give are way off. For example, Jeice remarks that vegetas power level rises to about 30,000 when he starts to fight nappa. Ok, fair enough. Vegeta gets the snot kicked out of him, senzu beaned and zenkaied to a new power plateau. Fair enough. Ok, when freeza battles nail he reveals his power level is 530,000…so how did vegeta’s power level jump from 30000 to aroung 500,000? Because he was only beaten by someone who’s power level was only around 40,000 so his zenkai shouldn’t have resulted in such a jump. Especially considering he got way more damage on earth and his power barely increased a couple thousand when kui read it first on namek. How did his power increase so much? That’s a major plot hole.
Another power level related plot hole. Frieza says he’s using 1% of his power. Ok, cool. so he charges up to 50% of his power. Ok. Goku and Frieza were about even at Frieza’s 1% power. But goku uses a kaiouken x20 and is nearly equal to frieza in power. As we all know a x20 kaiouken would only give a 21x increase in power; Frieza recieved a 50x increase in power (50% = 50×1%) So how is it possible that Goku could even touch Frieza let alone get a solid punch in and even cause Frieza to admit he was hurt by the Kamehameha?
Regarding the Capsule Corp. spaceship made for Goku’s trip to Namek, I would just rationalize it as meaning Dr. Briefs only loosely meant he used Goku’s space pod, and that he actually reversed engineered the technology from the remaining pieces of Goku and Raditz’s space pods. Obviously the ship couldn’t have just been a repaired space pod since it was much larger, so I would just assume Dr. Briefs figured out the major systems like propulsion. I’d find this explanation believable because of Dr. Briefs invention of the gravity machine. It seems clear Capsule Corp. can make some high-tech stuff, since no other space faring races seen seems to have made their own gravity rooms for training, so reverse engineering from the debris of the space pods isn’t that far fetched.
About Trunk’s Timeline not having to face Babidi and Majin Buu, I would just say that Trunk’s and Cell’s intrusion into the main timeline from their own alternative timelines created distortions that affected the entire universe. Not big changes, but just small changes everywhere. So perhaps a different decision Babidi makes allows him to come to Earth sooner in the main timeline. In the show it’s said they checked out Earth a few hundred years earlier already and they seem to think that’s a relatively short amount of time. So a decade or two difference is not a big deal, whatever delayed them for all those years from hatching Buu may have delayed them for longer in Trunk’s timeline.
As for tails growing back, that could be explained by lack of blutz rays, and puberty. Tails can grow back as long as there are blutz rays and the Saiyan isn’t an adult. That would fit for Gohan, his tail grew back because of the hologram, and then again with Vegeta’s powerball. Without the moon, he then couldn’t regrow his tail. Vegeta was already an adult, so his tail wouldn’t grow back, or else I would assume he would use a powerball to regrow his tail if it was possible (of course GT would screw up my puberty restriction). For Trunks and Goten, it was just genetic chance that they didn’t receive the genes for a tail. I can’t see either having to cut their tails off if their was no danger of a full moon.
I agree that it’s ridiculous that so many of Goku’s moves aren’t taught to others. Gohan especially should’ve learnt them, if not during the three years of training for the androids, then inside the Hyperbolic Time Chamber. I can’t see how Gohan learns the kamehameha but not anything else.
The rest of the world’s acceptance that all these powers are tricks can be explained simply by denial. It’s easier to believe they are tricks than to accept the truth and live in fear with the thought that people and aliens possess the power to wipe them out in a single shot. Ignorance is bliss, and everyone just believes what they want to believe.
First of this is a interesting article i did enjoy reading it but i will help answer some of your plot holes , first off never compare the movies 2 series they are never linked , what happens in movies totally causes conflict with the series so much could be asked how come there were more androids the garlic junior thing , the way the dbz universe works is the movies are like u can say happening in like alternate universe u can say there never linked 2 the series so what ever they say in a film wont matter if they say something else in the series there not linked
And also bout the trunks adventures u have not considered many points in trunks time the androids are destroyed most of that world trunks is the only z fighter left , whos pure energy was babidi gonna use 2 open majin bu out of that ball he was in , maybe trunks got stronger we dnt know , and he destroyed babidi and dabura before they could do anything , we will never know but trunks never came back so i guess he dealt with whatever happened fine , and all the time travel he did might have changed his time , also say if majin buu was unleashed maybe he destroyed that world before trunks could go back into time we dont know , but there are many possibilities
and also when you talk bout the ginyu force coming 2 king kais and the powers u got it wrong again , u fail to understand dat gokus power level was 2 much for all the ginyu force members that died goku made it look easy vegeta was not as strong but after eating the sensu bean his powers dramatically increased , and he was stronger, tien yamcha all them equal powers with the ginyu force and they lost the first fight but there dead they got plenty of time to get it right there in a place with 10 times gravity and were able 2 get stronger not 180,000 but gokus power level was way higher then any ginyu member , ginyu force and the z fighters at king kais were even but the ginyu force got beat mentally the second time around i guess after the first round tien and all of them learned from there mistakes , and when u talk bout goku knows all the moves , why did tien and all them wanted 2 learn them moves , because it didnt matter , they were not gonna make a difference in the namek battle and were not gonna get wished back anytime soon , goku was sent to train at king kais for the sayains that were coming to earth , he had to learn them moves he was preparing , tien yamcha and all of them was more of a goof off type sessions instead there story at that time was used to create comedy especially when piccolo catches bubbles dat was funny there scenes were used for humour not
seriousness, to mellow the frieza saga that was so intense and serious , and also goku is the main character all the other characters hide behind goku apart from piccolo and vegeta , the main character will always be the focul point of a manga and as time goes by the fact is humans have limits they cant get stronger and stronger , like sayains who have various transformations , its as simple as they became less important and even nameks have limits and sayains become most of the focul point from cell saga to the end , and look goku is the most powerful good guy its only fair they give the best moves , and krillins disc was great weopan until frieza saga where it couldnt penetrate through friezas skin no matter how it hits and even cell who lets his disk hit is neck it becomes a weak attack , and also the tails of the sayians had to go because it would have been a hassle i mean every moon what would each sayain have to transform and besides they never show it but we can always assume there keeping there tails cut themselves ,and also once removed it wont come back unless it pulled out , so i mean dats not really a big deal being an ape doesnt change anything the greatest sayain move was used 2 destroy planets it is a strong move , but it was a evil move there was no need for it until gt where the ss4 transformation needs 2 go ozuru before super sayain4 ,
And here comes my rebuttal:
I mention the movies very sparingly, to my knowledge only twice. I am aware that Cooler is not technically canon within the series, but Garlic Junior is due to the addition of him and his backstory from The Dead Zone being inserted into the actual series. Both Bardock and The History of Trunks are part of the series rather than movies since they are referenced directly in the series.
With Trunks, yes, there is a lot of room to futz about with the timeline. He mentioned himself that the main series’ timeline was slightly skewed compared to his own, but there were no major differences. Goku still caught a heart virus, the Androids appeared in the form that Trunks remembered eventually, and Cell shows up when his stasis period ends. You’re right that Babidi would probably not have had the chance to find one big fighter to gather pure energy from except for Trunks, but if he showed up, an event that would happen eventually, I don’t see why he wouldn’t at least try to suck up every little bit he could find. Trunks wouldn’t have been able to defeat Dabura, actually no one would, assuming Dabura was as strong as he was in the main timeline. I do realize this plothole comes as a result of Akira Toriyama being forced to extend the series yet again, but it’s still a plothole as far as I’m concerned.
Okay, the whole business with the Ginyu Force on King Kai’s planet is getting fuzzy now and I realize it’s entirely because it was one of those side plots meant for filler, i.e. no real thought was put into how it relates to anything else. The simple fact of the matter is that Yamcha, Tien, and Chiaotzu straight up beat the Ginyu Force after only a simple warm-up round. Didn’t just win, beat them up and fired them from the planet. This means that they would need to be stronger than Vegeta was while fighting before he ate that Senzu Bean, and while I can’t judge that power directly, I know that it’s greater than 26,000 and less than 180,000. Apparently, King Kai could train Goku to use his ultimate moves because Goku was strong enough when he arrived at King Kai’s planet, a requirement to just reach the needed qualifications.
Saying that their time on King Kai’s planet was “goof time” is entirely inaccurate. Tien is the character that proves the rule that Goku is more important than anyone. Tien spends the entire series training himself for…who knows? His goal during the Android Saga is to be useful in some way and he does actually succeed in that by stalling Cell for a time, but then he continues training for…who knows? The point is, he is actively trying to get stronger, presumably to be a match for Goku at some point in time (this is his original motivation in the series altogether). Tien even tells Yamcha to be wished back first since he’d rather train some more with King Kai. King Kai is THE martial arts master of the North Quadrant, so just getting the chance to train with him isn’t something that gets handed out like candy at Christmas. It means something.
Furthermore, it would be unreasonable for the other characters, especially Tien, to believe Goku and the Saiyans’ powers to be unattainable before they had seen a Super Saiyan. Part of the reason Goku was able to fight both the Ginyu Force and Frieza for so long was due to the use of the Kaioken. His 180,000 reading was actually from a Kaioken by the way, something that gets brushed under the rug in the US dubs. It’s the whole reason Ginyu couldn’t tap into Goku’s full strength. Tien would have realized the importance of the Kaioken and really wanted to learn it, assuming his character motivation was consistent. If it isn’t, then my beef isn’t with the plothole of no one being treated like Goku, it’s the plothole of no one sticking with their character motivations.
Lastly, Krillin’s Destructo Disc does have it’s limits, yes, but only in relation to the power of the enemies. It could slice Nappa’s face, it DID slice Frieza’s tail off, and the only reason it couldn’t harm Cell was because Cell was way above Krillin’s league. Hand that attack to Goku and you’d see a lot faster K.O.s in the series. Just think of all the times the Kamehameha failed to explode someone even when used at full power. Now imagine that was a Destructo Disc. End of story, characters would have wanted to use that.
Oh, and Saiyan tails: Goku’s tail is cut in Dragonball yet grows back, then removed by Kami. Gohan’s tail is plucked twice and cut once. Vegeta’s tail is cut once. The concept of cutting the tail to permanently remove it works if you disregard Dragonball, but I don’t see that as being an option.
That’s kind of weird, Goku’s space ship was totally destroyed by Picollo before the Saiyans even came, and when Gohan broke through the ship there were many parts still there, check it out, it’s at about the 18:50 mark.
http://www.dbzremastered.com/Dragonballz036.php
I do suppose it’s possible that Dr. Briefs used the parts from Raditz’s spaceship to build a new ship for Goku to use, though there’s still the problem of Goku saying in the US dub that the ship was built from the Saiyan space pod he came to Earth in as a baby, which Piccolo blew up during the year of training before the Saiyans arrived.
You can check out episode 46 at roughly the 8:00 mark where Goku says, “So, I remembered the ship I came here in as a baby was never destroyed. At worst it could be just a little rusty from sitting out there all these years.” Problem is, we know this isn’t true. Episode 18 shows Piccolo destroying what is definitely Goku’s Saiyan space pod (It keeps saying “Wake up Kakarot. Destroy all lifeforms.”). The money shot is at the 12:22 mark.
Raditz: I don’t know if it was in this article or the other, but you asked something like how did they make a spaceship to go to Namek with the help of the saiyan space ship if Vegeta took his away and Nappa’s self destructed. Remember Gohan only broke through Raditz spaceship, he didn’t destroy it, so I’m guessing that’s where they got it from.
No they definitely totaled Raditz’s ship. Goku even mentions this when he’s explaining how the new ship was made from Goku’s Saiyan space pod. The inclusion of explaining away Raditz’s ship could have just been English dubbing though.
Okay… about Goku’s Saiyan ship: in the episode (not sure which number) where Goku gets out of the hospital (right before going to Namek), Goku meets with Dr. Breif before blasting off. At this time, Dr. Brief explains “You’re old ship was practically demolished. I was able to salvage a few key parts, but otherwise, I had to build this from scratch.” Which makes sense. After all, in the show, it appears that Piccolo actually only hit one side of the space ship, not necessarily damaging the whole thing, or, especially, the engine, which would most likely be in the center… not to get too indepth of where an engine is in a saiyan space pod or anything… lol
Your a retard. DBZ is a REALLY long series. It’s going to have plot holes. And most of the stuff your mentioning was kept just to make the show more full of action. Stop ripping on a great show.
Oh good lord…
Look, if you’re going to take a shot at me, do two things:
First, take a look at my article about the Top 10 Most Awesome Moments from DBZ. You’ll see that I do in fact love the show and anything I say regarding plotholes is done so because of that fact, not because I’m just looking for things to rip on.
Secondly, if you’re going to attack me, you had damn well better make sure you know the difference between “your” (possessive) and “you’re” (you are), otherwise you come off sounding like a combative moron. So congrats you combative moron, you’ve proven why anonymity on the Internet is still a bad thing.
I think that GT was kind of decent, it was a mixture between Dragonball and Z. If the fights had been stretched, Goku not being a child for so long, and Vegeta always makes series more awesome.
I think the series of Buu and Freiza should have been reversed. I would have loved for Freiza to be the last villian in Z, he should have been since he was the one who destroyed most of their race.
I could just never get into GT for the reasons you mentioned. I didn’t mind it mixing Dragonball and Dragonball Z together, but the fights felt lacking, the character designs weren’t as interesting, and Goku as a kid was just a step back I didn’t care for.
Yeah and why didn’t he use instant transmission to get to Earth, it’s weird. One more question, Vegeta’s hair, in Z and GT it’s very different, I thought a pure blood saiyans hair stays the same always.
It does but Vegeta cuts his hair in GT for some reason. I never quite understood why they’d be foolish enough to change an iconic character’s image like that, but whatever, they did it with goku so they must have felt the need to do it with Vegeta as well. It’s no wonder people didn’t like GT.
Good argument, there’s nothing I can say lol. But I can mention some other plot holes, I always found it so weird how Trunks could defeat Freiza so easily and it took Goku forever to defeat him. When Goku showed up on Earth both he and trunks seemed to be the same strength. Also, why didn’t King Cold transform, maybe he just doesn’t have any transformations.
I know this has nothing to do with the plot holes but I just thought it was briliiant how they made the same similarities between Trunks future and present Earth!
I can see how Trunks could take down Frieza without much trouble since Trunks was a lot stronger than anyone else in the series yet. Goku showed up after I think a year of training in space and where ever, so that could account for his massive jump in power. I’d still really like to see how Goku would have fought Frieza again though. Kind of got cheated out of that fight.
Also why is Bardock able to breathe in space and not Goku.
“Goku fights the Ginyu Force on Namek with a power level at 180,000, though Vegeta couldn’t beat them with whatever power level he had. The Ginyu Force go to King Kai’s planet after they die since King Kai invited them and they all lose to Yamcha, Tien, and Chiaotzu, meaning those guys have a power level well above Goku’s when he learned the Spirit Bomb and the Kaio Ken.”
When the Ginyu force came to the Kai planet, the climate affected their mobility to fight. Even King Kai said they had limited powers. I’m sure the climate and change in gravity also affected Goku on his way to King Kai’s on Snake Way.
Bulma was asked why Trunks didn’t have a tail during android saga, although she didn’t any anything, the expression on her face was enough to tell that she cut it off, probably the same with Chi Chi. Vegeta who now had a family probably decided to snatch his own tail off every time it grew just to keep his family safe.
Trunks: Dragonball Z was supposed to be ended after Cell was defeated, that being said Buu didn’t even exist during that time period that he came to the present Earth to warn the others.
Energy Blasts: I think it depends on where the person is hit.
Hope this helps.
I could argue a bit there, especially with the Ginyu Force on King Kai’s planet. The planet only had 10 times Earth’s normal gravity, an amount that was roughly insignificant at that point in the series. Plus, we’re told that Planet Vegeta has the same sort of gravity, so this means that there are certainly other planets in the universe with more gravity than Earth’s and Namek’s. The Ginyu Force have traveled everyone, so they’re used to these fluctuations. They even make sure to test their powers in King Kai’s planet and confirm that their powers are working just fine.
I had never caught the little references of Bulma possibly cutting Trunks’ tail off from time to time, though I don’t doubt that could be there. However, I doubt Vegeta would cut his own tail off since it poses no threat to his family. Actually, no Saiyan tails pose a threat anymore as the moon is gone and the only way Vegeta transformed on Earth anyway was due to the technique he used to simulate the moon’s energies. Besides that, Vegeta could fully control his Oozaru form, making the need for him to cut his own tail off a moot point. It is possible that Super Saiyans can only come from Saiyans lacking a tail though, or at least that’s what the characters theorize.
It seems that the series was meant to end quite a lot but never did. I can understand the problem of no Buu in Future Trunks’ timeline due to that little bit, same as Goku’s two ends on Namek was a result of the series not ending after Frieza.
You are probably right about energy blasts though, however it becomes tough to think about when a Special Beam Cannon through the chest definitely kills, but Krillin’s gory blast through Vegeta’s chest doesn’t. Trunks gets hit in the same spot by Cell and spazzes until death. Sure, I’m getting picky, but it’s just what I see.
Something else worth mentioning: have any of you guys ever noticed when the Zfighters fly around the world to one place to another their seems to be no timezones? Unless they are only flyinng latitude wise (north and south) there is no reason why there seems to be time zone changes in the DB/DBZ verse. That’s just another thing that makes the DB verse seem even less realistic lol.
That is also very true. They can fly from one part of the world to the other and it’ll still be daytime. Come to think of it, I don’t remember a single battle occurring at night. Even Goku and Master Roshi’s final match in the Tenkaichi Budokai in Dragonball didn’t go to a full nighttime scene, despite the moon coming out. No wonder they just decided to give Namek three suns.
good article.dbz is still the best show ever.
I was searching google for an explanation about why Goku was fighting to stay up with 60 times gravity and Yamcha could still walk under 300 times gravity.
But after reading your article I think I kinda underestimated the plot hole beam. :S
It does tend to be a very powerful attack when used correctly.