Are Dragon Ball's Senzu Beans No Longer Required?

Recently, we dove into the idea of the Dragon Balls themselves being removed from Akira Toriyama's insanely popular anime series, but there's another "deus ex machina" that peeks its head up now and again in the adventures of Goku, Vegeta, and the rest of the Z Fighters in the Senzu Beans that might need to be removed! The Senzu are grown by Karin, the talking cat who lives on Kami's lookout and is able to make the beans that are able to cure any injury and fix any broken bone once they are eaten by a warrior.

Much like the Dragon Balls themselves, the Senzu Beans were implemented as a safety net for fighters, being able to cure any life threatening injury throughout the many fights of the Shonen series. Aside from offering characters a "get out of jail free" card, as the Dragon Balls do when they bring people back to life, the Senzu are now used so infrequently that they don't even factor into the story. This might partially be thanks in part to how infrequently Karin is able to create them, but they worked far more in Dragon Ball Z and it seems as if their time has passed.

Another big advantage of using the Senzu Beans was in healing a near death Saiyan, giving them a power boost that would see their power level rise astronomically. With characters such as Dende, other Namekians, and potentially even Vegeta following his training on the Planet Yardrat, it seems that there are going to be multiple paths for fighters to get healed nearly instantaneously.

Ultimately, the idea of healing characters instantly is one that takes some of the drama from the series, similar to resurrections, and the more that these elements are taken from Dragon Ball, the more interesting the series can be as a result. Though the likes of Moro is unique in the fact that his power to absorb energy makes using a Senzu Bean unable to work as a cure all, we're still looking for ways for the long running Shonen series to improve as the latest adventures of Goku, Vegeta, and the warriors of Earth continue!

Do you think that Senzu Beans should be stricken from the Dragon Ball series? Feel free to let us know in the comments or hit me up directly on Twitter @EVComedy to talk all things comics, anime, and the world of Dragon Ball!