Dragon Ball Artwork Imagines Bardock’s Super Saiyan 3 Form

Thanks to the recent Dragon Ball Super: Broly movie, Goku’s father Bardock has once again been thrust into the limelight, and the fandom has been loving it. Bardock got a fully retconned backstory in Broly that better syncs with the current continuity of the Dragon Ball Super, and made the Saiyan warrior look especially heroic in the process. Sure, Bardock ultimately died defending Planet Vegeta for Freeza’s extinction-level attack, but his death hasn’t stopped fans from imagining where Bardock could show up, elsewhere in the franchise. Today we have a piece of Dragon Ball artwork to share – one that imagines what would have happened if Bardock had been around to see the Super Saiyan legend come to fruition.

Here’s what Dragon Ball‘s Super Saiyan 3 Bardock would look like:

This piece was a commissioned work drawn by artist Kagari-Ashua, who has gained a fair amount of acclaim within the Dragon Ball fandom for her impressive fan-art works. More than just fan art, Ashua traffics in fan-service pieces, which is clearly what a picture of Super Saiyan 3 Bardock is meant to be. In actual Dragon Ball continuity Bardock never lived to see the day when his son would break the Super Saiyan barrier – let alone reach the heights of Super Saiyan 3 (and beyond). At the same time though, Broly made it clear that Bardock was one of the few to actually believe in the Super Saiyan legend – or at least believe that it was real enough to inspire Freeza to try and wipe out all the Saiyans. If there was ever a chance that Bardock could be revived or survived in a different timeline… Well, Goku’s massive potential had to come from somewhere, right?

These days, the Dragon Ball franchise has given us plenty of room and opportunity to have an event like Bardock’s return happen. The multiverse is wide open, and organizations like the Time Patrol (from Dragon Ball‘s non-canon extended universe) have already introduced alternate timeline versions of key characters like Goku, Vegeta, and Bardock. In fact, the Dragon Ball Heroes series already introduced a Super Saiyan 3 version of Bardock, which is very likely the obscure reference that this Dragon Ball fans wanted to preserve in picture form.

Dragon Ball Super currently airs its English dub on Adult Swim during the Toonami programming block on Saturday evenings, and is also available to stream on Funimation and Amazon Video. The Japanese-language release of the series is complete, and available to stream on FunimationNOW and Crunchyroll. The manga has chapters that can currently be read for free thanks to Viz Media, and Dragon Ball Super’s big movie, Dragon Ball Super: Broly, is now available on Blu-ray and DVD.