7 Things In Dragon Ball That Make Absolutely No Sense

Akira Toriyama’s Dragon Ball is rightly looked at as the godfather of modern anime, as well as the biggest ambassador for the genre. The saga of Goku began (in anime form) back in 1986 and is still going strong today. However, during its run, Dragon Ball has confused the heck out of even the most diehard fans by featuring errors in lore and/or canon that leave everyone scratching their heads.

If you’ve watched Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z, or Dragon Ball Super, then you likely already have a couple of “WTF?” questions of your own. For this list, we went ahead and pulled the 7 biggest things in Dragon Ball continuity that don’t make sense – and they’re lucky we stopped there. If we started counting everything that occurs in non-canon series (Dragon Ball GT, Dragon Ball Heroes) and all those non-canon movies, the list could stretch to 100.

7) The Super Saiyan God Process

When Dragon Ball Super introduced the legend of the Super Saiyan God, it seemed like an epic evolution of the Super Saiyan concept. Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods presented the Super Saiyan God transformation as an intricate process that requires five “righteous” Saiyans to transform into Super Saiyans and transfer their ki (or “pour their heart” ) into a sixth Super Saiyan who acts as a vessel. That combination of light and energy boosts the vessel’s power to godly levels and is marked by red hair and red eyes – a stark contrast to the golden hue of Super Saiyan.

When SSG was introduced, it seemed like a very deep and intricate process, tied to the ancient history and legends of the Saiyan race. And yet, after the Battle of the Gods, Super Saiyan God somehow just became another color-coded transformation. Vegeta achieved the transformation without the ritual, completely invalidating its original significance and the deeper thematic meaning behind it. To this day, the exact history of the Super Saiyan God is murky; the change in lore about the transformation process also started an unfortunate trend, wherein Dragon Ball Super relied on color-coded transformations built on flimsy lore.

6) Golden Frieza

Following closely behind the mess of Super Saiyan God is Golden Frieza. The evil overlord unlocked the form in the “Resurrection F” movie/anime storyline that followed Dragon Ball Super‘s “Battle of the Gods” arc. What makes Golden Freiza such an issue for so many fans is the origin of the transformation: according to Frieza himself, he achieves golden form and power by training for the first time in his life.

After taking so decisive losses at Goku’s hands, Frieza humbled his own maniacal ego just enough to actually admit that Goku was the stronger fighter. But admitting it only drove Frieza to an even more maniacal drive to once again surpass Goku in power. However, it makes no sense that Frieza wouldn’t train, ever. Even though he is noted as being a “naturally gifted” at combat, Frieza’s quest to conquer worlds and kill worthy opponents woudl’ve been a natural form of both training and experience that made him familiar with power leveling. We get the characterization that Frieza is so powerful and arrogant he never met an opponent that made him work for the win until Goku; however, Golden Frieza’s power-up is really just an excuse for keeping Dragon Ball Super‘s power dynamics on par with DBZ.

5) Potara Fusion Rules

The Potara earrings of the Supreme Kais are presented in Dragon Ball Z as being a high form of fusion between two beings. However, unlike the alien “Fusion Dance” that Goku and Vegeta master to become the fused being Gogeta, the Potara fusions come with a major catch: the bonding is permanent for the Supreme Kais, but for everyone else, the fusion only lasts for an hour.

A major part of Dragon Ball Z’s “Majin Buu Saga” arc was the introduction of the Potara earrings and the unlocking of the “Vegito” fusion. During the earrings’ introduction, Supreme Kai Shin and his assistant Kibito accidentall made a permanent fusion into the being “Kibito Kai.” This was a permanent fusion… until it wasn’t. It slipped through the cracks of manga-anime adaptation for many fans, but Shin and Kibito eventually gather the Namekian Dragon Balls and use them to defuse. But if the Namekian Dragon Balls are all it takes to reverse a Potara fusion, what was the point of even introducing the threat of permanent fusion in the first place? Dragon Ball knows this is flimsy lore, because Dragon Ball Super‘s manga has since itroduced “Spirit Fission” as a technique of undo any fusion. Problem solved.

4) The Saga of Bardock

This could really be its own article. Bardock is the father of Goku, who first appeared in one of Toei Animation’s non-canon Dragon Ball Z TV moives, Bardock: The Father of Goku, in 1990. Since that time, the character has been incorporated into the canon through the manga, anime, and the more recent Dragon Ball Super movie Broly, as well as a major DBS manga story arc, “Granolah the Survivor”.

With Bardock come multiple versions of his own backstory, complete with several major retcons to the canon. Originally, Bardock was a hardline soldier in Frieza’s army, until he discovered the evil overlord’s plan to annihilate the Saiyan homeword, and died fighting to save his world. He didn’t have any connection to Goku to speak of, other than sending his youngest son offworld to annihilate life on Earth. However, Dragon Ball Super has retconned much of this original lore, and in the canonized version, Bardock is much more of an antihero. Dragon Ball Super: Broly establishd him as a loving family man, who planend with his wife Gine to send Goku to Earth for safekeeping, as Earth’s inhibtants wouldn’t be a threat to their son, while the Bardock investigated Frieza’s plot.

The Dragon Ball Super magnga further revealed that Bardock had history fighting other villains (the Heeters), saving a Namekian, and learning early on about the Dragon Balls, using them to bless his sons’ lives (although Raditz went out bad and even Goku has died a couple of times). At this point, Bardock needs his own arc or series to straighten this all out.

3) Dragon Balls Cooldown

The titular Dragon Balls of Earth used to be a major quest MacGuffin. They had to be found all over the world (often in hard-to-reach places), and once a user made a wish, the balls would scatter again, and couldn’t be used for another year. Early on, Dragon Ball stuck to that formula, and used it to create nice dramatic tension around what restorative measures could be achieved.

If you haven’t been able to tell: Dragon Ball has all but abandoned its original rules about cooldown times. Both DBZ and DBS have shortened the turnaround time to months (if not weeks); those series and others like GT and Daima have all introduced new sets of Dragon Balls that all have different sets of rules, power levels and usage restrictions.

2) Saiyans In Space

One of the biggest mismatches between the Dragon Ball lore established by Akira Toriyama and the larger anime and merchandisng empire run by Toei, is the inconsistent lore about Saiyans breathing in space. Officially, Goku, Vegeta, and co. can’t breathe in space (see image above); however, Toei’s Dragon Ball Z anime had filler scenes where characters like Vegeta and Nappa hang out and talk in space; the Bardock – Father of Goku showed Goku’s dad and an army of Saiyans battling Frieza in space, without spacesuits.

Dragon Ball Super: Broly adjusted Bardock’s death to be more like an upper-orbit battle, so that’s fixed, but those Dragon Ball Z scenes stick out like sore thumbs now.

1) Dragon Ball Offensives

Virtually every Dragon Ball fan has, at one point or another, screamed this question to the sky: Why not use the Dragon Balls to end some of these threats? There are rules to using Earth’s Dragon Balls, sure, but with a little creativity the Z-Fighters could get around most threats to Earth with a little dragon magic. Vegeta and Nappa could’ve gotten marooned on a different planet; robotics could’ve been set back indefinitely before Cell and the androids ever existed; Frieza could’ve been miniaturized – there are so many different angles to play.

The situation has only gotten harder to justify as newer forms of Dragon Balls have been introduced to the lore. It’s crazy that these intensely powerful magical artifacts are only used in a reactionary fashion by our heroes, while the villains never tseem to have a problem understanding the offensive capabilties.

Dragon Ball content is streaming on Crunchyrool and other streaming services. What other inconsistensies with the series bother you? Let us know on the ComicBook Forum!