Vegeta Tops Anime Poll Of Fan-Favorite Rivals

When you think of the best rivalries in anime, which characters do you think of first? There have been many strong rivalries written for the medium throughout the years, so Japan decided to find out which ones fans liked the most.

Japan recently celebrated the “Day That Rivals Join Hands,” a day that celebrates Sakamoto Ryoma’s peace negotiations between the Choshu Domain and the Satsuma Domain at the end of the Edo period. To commemorate this, Anime Anime! ran an open ended survey from January 18-20, and the results certainly are interesting.

With a total of 154 responses comprised of 48% males and about 52% females. 56% of respondents were age 19 or younger, and about 23% were in their 20s. the top ten results are below:

1. Vegeta (Dragon Ball Z)
2. Sasuke Uchiha (Naruto)
3. Shigeru Okido/Gary (Pokemon)
4. Katsuki Bakugo (My Hero Academia)
5. Char Aznable (Mobile Suit Gundam)
6. Toshiro Hijikata (Gintama)
7. Ryunosuke Akutagawa (Bungo Stray Dogs) / Kaito Kid (Detective Conan) / Baikin-man (Soreike! Anpanman)
8. Heiji Hattori (Detective Conan) / Kojiro Hyuga (Captain Tsubasa)

Naturally, Vegeta topped the list of greatest anime rivals (especially with how popular Dragon Ball Super is right now) with Naruto‘s Sasuka Uchiha, and Pokemon‘s Gary rounding out the top three.

Though fans usually disagree about things like this, it’s hard to deny how strong of choices the top three rivals here are.

Dragon Ball Super airs on Crunchyroll Saturday evenings at 7:15 p.m. CST. Adult Swim airs the English dub during its Toonami block Saturday evenings at 9:30 p.m, and is now available to stream on FunimationNOW and Amazon Video.

If you want to catch up with the English dub, the first 39 episodes of Dragon Ball Super are now available to stream on FunimationNOW, Crunchyroll’s VRV service, and available to purchase on Amazon Video. The 39 episodes span the full range of what has aired in the North America and covers the “Battle of Gods” arc, “Revival of F” arc, and the most recently ended “Universe 6” arc.

Funimation has previously announced the rest of the series will soon be available on the service as well. Releasing in 13 episode batches two weeks after the last episode airs on Cartoon Network, fans of Dragon Ball Super‘s English dub without a cable connection will soon have a way to experience the series.

There is currently a new Dragon Ball film in the works for 2018. The film will focus on the Saiyans, the “origins of Goku‘s power,” and potentially the story of the very first Super Saiyan God. Not only does it aim to be the best film in the series, original creator Akira Toriyama will be contributing to the film’s script and new character designs.