Dragon Ball Super: Will Redeeming Bardock Ruin The Character?
The latest chapter of Dragon Ball Super's manga didn't just give us a closer look at Vegeta's Ultra Ego transformation, it dropped a megaton when it came to the backstory of Granolah, the current antagonist who is seeking revenge against the Saiyan race, with Goku and Vegeta in his sights. With the Namekian Monaito responsible for the creation of the planet Cereal's Dragon Balls, which made Granolah the strongest mortal in the universe, the alien from the planet Namek drops the information that Granolah was saved by none other than Bardock, the father of Goku.
With this information being revealed in the Shonen sequel series, does it also ruin Bardock's character? While Bardock stood up to Freeza when he was getting ready to eradicate the planet Vegeta, he was doing so to save his race but was still something of a monster when all was said and done. The father of Goku had no problem eradicating entire races, working under the employ of Freeza to sell the resources of planets to the highest bidder. While Bardock begged for his son to one day eliminate Freeza, he did so with a sense of vengeance rather than protecting lives and/or delivering justice to the universe.
Bardock himself received an unlikely sequel story via the special episode, Dragon Ball: Episode of Bardock, which saw Goku's father not dying in Freeza's attack but rather being jettisoned to the past. Arriving on a Planet Vegeta before the Saiyans inhabited it, he battled against the great, great grandfather of Freeza while also learning to become a Super Saiyan. While Bardock hasn't appeared in Dragon Ball Z or Dragon Ball Super, he has made several appearances in the outside of continuity series known as Dragon Ball Heroes.
The father of Goku was not an altruistic man, with this information about the Saiyan warrior saving an innocent mother and son being a giant curveball to both the Z Fighters and readers alike. While this could have been a misunderstanding on the part of Monaito, it definitely seems as if Bardock had saved Granolah from his fellow Saiyans, leaving us to wonder if there was more to Bardock than we knew.
Giving Bardock a "good streak" when it came to the destruction of the Cerealians might not destroy the character, but it gives fans of Dragon Ball a lot of questions and has us wondering if Goku's father might have also hit his head against a rock as his son had when he first arrived on Earth.
Bardock's most recent appearance in the anime was Dragon Ball Super: Broly, wherein viewers were able to see Goku's father operating on the Planet Vegeta before it was destroyed and while it was clear he cared for his family, he definitely was a Saiyan through and through. With the movie introducing us to Goku's mother Gine for the first time, perhaps Bardock's time as a family man had made him more of a softie when it came to his duties as an employee of Freeza.
Why do you think Bardock saved Granolah and his mother? 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.