Dragon Ball Super Continues A Major Retcon About Goku’s Father Bardock

Dragon Ball Super is doing some pretty drastic retconning when it comes to Goku’s father, Bardock. The new Dragon Ball Super arc “Granolah The Survivor” has pitted Goku and Vegeta against a new warrior race: the Cerealians. The titular Granolah is the last surviving member of the Cerealians after Freeza used his Saiyan Great Ape soldiers to wipe the Cerealians off the face of the planet, years ago. The only reason that Granolah survived was thanks to the intervention of one Freeza Force Saiyan: Bardock, the Father of Goku. In doing so, Dragon Ball Super continues a major retcon about everything we know about Bardock. 

Warning: Dragon Ball Super Chapter 77 SPOILERS Follow! 

In “Bardock, Father of Goku” we see the horrific flashback to the Cerealian Massacre. We witness countless Cerealians (and a small community of Namekians) all get brutally slaughtered by Saiyan Great Apes – and how Granolah and his mother Muezli were desparately hiding themselves to avoid a horrible death. Well, Granolah and his mom are indeed found, but luckily for them, it is Bardock who discovers them. 

When Bardock sees Muezli defiantly standing between her son and Freeza’s butchers, we get a flashback-in-a-flashback, which shows the first time Bardock met Goku, and how angry his wife Gine was at Bardock missing Goku’s birth. It’s that connection that makes Bardock not only save Granolah, Muezli, and the surviving Namekian Monaito, but also stand up and put his life on the line to fight for them against Dragon Ball’s nefarious new villains, The Heeters. We still have yet to see how Bardock won a final duel with the Heeters’ secret weapon, their little brother Gas. Yet, this new chapter of Dragon Ball Super makes Bardock’s heroism clearer than ever – as well as why that heroic spirit was his true legacy to Goku. 

Dragon Ball Super has been putting serious effort into retconninc Bardock’s character into more of a clear anti-hero type, rather than the murky picture that Dragon Ball Z left us with. The original movie Dragon Ball Z: Bardock, Father of Goku, depicted Bardock as much more of a hardcore sodier in Freeza’s army, who only has a late change of heart because of visions projected into his mind that reveal Freeza’s destruction of the Saiyan homeworld. It never really felt like Bardock was a “hero” per se – just that Goku’s eventual defeat of Freeza was all part of some larger Karmic cycle of family legacy (a big theme in Japanese storytelling, no doubt). 

Dragon Ball Super: Broly retconned the origins of Goku, Vegeta, and Broly to show how Bardock was in fact more sensitive of a Saiyan who never trusted Freeza and wanted to fight for his homeworld and family. Now DBS has added a chapter that clearly marks Bardock as a uniquely heroic Saiyan, even when his own personal interests aren’t at stake. A lot of fans love how that kind of change actually makes Goku and Bardock feel more logically and thematically connected. It also paves the way for Dragon Ball to tell more stories about Bardock that fit in line with a typical Dragon Ball protagonist. 

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