Dragon Ball Retrospective: The Villains

Dragon Ball Villains are Aliens, Androids, and Abominations

Dragon Ball is a fighting franchise above all else. Fans tune in to see how strong the characters become and watch incredible battles. Rivalries are fun, but the heroes need true threats to push them further.

Dragon Ball Villains are some of the strongest in anime. Most of them can destroy a planet by themselves. The strongest endanger the multiverse. So who are these Dragon Ball Villains? Let’s find out.

Glossary

Dragon Balls: Seven orange crystal balls with stars. Collecting all seven summons the Eternal Dragon Shenron, who will grant a wish. Dragon Balls have a one year cooling off period. Wishes can’t resurrect someone multiple times, though there are loopholes like blanket resurrections. (Bring everyone killed by [X] back to life!)

Ki: An internal energy source that gives martial artists superpowers. They gain the usual super boosts, and can also fire ki blasts, fly, and sense another’s ki.

The Red Ribbon Army

Name Pun: Colors (most members), Vomit (Dr. Gero)

Dragon Ball villains were weak at first. They ran the gamut from random animals, crooks with gimmicks, to laughably incompetent Emperor Pilaf. That changed when the series became more action-focused and a deadly army marched onto the battlefield.

The Red Ribbon Army was a Nazi-esque terrorist organization hunting the Dragon Balls. They killed everyone in their way, razing villages to the ground. Series hero Goku first encountered them while traveling the world and began fighting them to protect others.

Goku struggled against higher-ranking members, including flamboyant psychic General Blue, ruthless General White, and assassin Tao Pai Pai. He launched a solo assault on their fortress and killed most of their forces. Supreme Commander Red was assassinated after his second in command learned that Red only wanted the Dragon Balls to become taller. Goku’s murder of Staff Officer Black ended the Red Ribbon Army’s reign of terror, but their legacy endured.

A survivor named Dr. Gero lost his son to Goku’s attack and dedicated his life to revenge. Gero created several androids, even converting himself into a cyborg to fight. Grandson Hedo followed in Gero’s footsteps decades later with a pair of android superheroes misled into thinking that Goku was evil.

King Piccolo

Voiced By: Chris Sabat, Takeshi Aono, James Marsters 
Name Pun: the woodwind instrument

The Red Ribbon Army was a good start, but Dragon Ball villains are usually an overpowered monster instead of entire mook armies. This one is the blueprint that all future Dragon Ball villains are based on.

Centuries ago, an alien landed on Earth. The nameless being used a technique to split the good and evil parts of his soul into two bodies. The good became Kami, the Guardian of Earth. The evil became King Piccolo, a self-proclaimed demon king. Piccolo rampaged until an army of martial artists magically sealed him into a rice cooker.

King Piccolo was freed in the modern day. He asexually gave birth to several demons that gathered the Dragon Balls and killed martial artists so that they couldn’t imprison him again. Piccolo made a wish to restore his youth and murdered the Eternal Dragon so that the Dragon Balls couldn’t be used against him.

Piccolo nearly killed Goku with a mix of martial arts and ki blasts. He conquered the world, legalizing crime and recruiting an army of criminals. Goku healed and fought a rematch, impaling Piccolo with his entire body. The demon king survived long enough to birth a clone and send it to safety. That child, also named Piccolo, has a long history covered in our Dragon Ball Heroes Retrospective.

Dragon Ball Villain: Frieza

Voice Actors: Chris Ayres, Ryusei Nakao, Martin Billany 
Name Pun: Freezer

Dragon Ball had good villains, but Dragon Ball Z is where they got kicked up to 11. This villain is the undisputed Big Bad of the franchise.

Frieza is a self-proclaimed Emperor of the Universe who rules over 70% of the galaxy. He spends his days slaughtering indigenous aliens so that he can sell their planets to the rich and powerful. He learned about the Dragon Balls and traveled to their homeworld, Namek, in search of immortality. 

Frieza remained hands off, letting his minions search for the Dragon Balls. That backfired as they were killed and left him fighting the heroes alone. Frieza was winning until Goku became the first Super Saiyan, nearly killing the galactic tyrant. Frieza attacked Earth and was murdered by another Super Saiyan named Trunks.

Decades passed until Frieza’s army could gather the Dragon Balls to resurrect him. He trained for the first time in his life to take revenge on the Saiyans. Frieza died again, but was brought back to life by Goku in exchange for his help in a multiversal war. Frieza now prepares for his final revenge against the Saiyans.

His techniques are simple. Frieza executes underlings with the Death Beam and uses Death Ball to blow up planets if he’s losing. What does he care? He can survive in space. Transformation is Frieza’s most iconic gimmick, shifting through various weaker forms that limit his power before returning to his true form. Every subsequent villain borrowed that trick. Frieza later developed transformations that amplify his power, Golden Frieza and Frieza Black.

Fun Fact: Frieza’s job selling razed planets and faux-polite sadism were based on real estate speculators, which series author Akira Toriyama described as “the worst type of people” while discussing the villain’s creation.

Cell

Voice Actors: Dameon Clarke Norio Wakamoto, Curtis Arnott
Name pun: Cells

Dragon Ball villains are often stronger than the heroes when they’re introduced. One of our picks for the Top 5 AI Villains started out weaker and earned his power.

Dr. Gero spent a decade gathering DNA from the galaxy’s strongest fighters. He combined that with cybernetic research to create a Bio-Android called Cell. Androids 17 and 18 killed him before Cell could mature. Trunks killed the androids, ruining Cell’s plan to reach his Perfect Form by absorbing them.

Cell murdered that timeline’s Trunks, stole a time machine, and traveled to the past. He rampaged through small towns, using his stinger to kill people and absorb their ki. Cell ambushed 17 to reach his Semi-Perfect form, then manipulated the heroes until he could overpower 18.

Perfect Cell had fulfilled his function, but was driven by his Saiyan and Frieza cells to prove himself superior to everyone. He hosted a tournament to kill Earth’s greatest heroes, ultimately killing Goku with a kamikaze attack. Goku’s son Gohan avenged his father, incinerating every trace of Cell’s namesake.

This insect-like amalgamation of DNA has all of the powers and techniques from the fighters used to create him. Cell can regenerate as long as his nucleus is intact thanks to Piccolo. Frieza cells boost his survivability and Saiyans gave him Zenkai, which causes a major power boost whenever he survives a mortal wound. Combine those traits and Cell is almost invincible.

Fun Fact: Cell is the end result of editor Kazuhiko Torishima pushing Toriyama to swap out villains. He thought that Dr. Gero looked ridiculous, Androids 17 and 18 were brats, and that Cell’s first two forms looked ugly. Good writing carried the day, resulting in an arc that kept fans guessing.

Dragon Ball Villains: Majin Buu

Voice Actors: Josh Martin, Kozo Shioya, Simon Robertson, Scott Frerichs
Name Pun: The Fairy Godmother’s incantation.

Evil isn’t a villain’s only motivation. Rage, lust, greed, and other sins can fuel their hunger for destruction. This Dragon Ball villain asks what would happen if a god had a child’s mind?

A witch named Marba was hired to create a champion for the wizard Bibidi. She created a magical monster called Majin Buu who slaughtered several gods and stole their powers by absorbing them. Majin Buu became childlike from absorbing their good nature and was sealed away. Bibidi was murdered, leaving behind a clone named Babidi to one day free Majin Buu. Put them together and what do you get? Trouble.

Babidi freed Majin Buu millennia later, but didn’t have the patience to control him and died bossing him around. Majin Buu rampaged across Earth, turning victims into candy. He was too strong for the heroes opposing him until comic relief Mr. Satan tried an out of the box tactic: befriending Majin Buu and teaching him right from wrong. It worked and the threat was over… until a madman shot Buu’s pet dog.

Majin Buu’s rage expelled all of his evil, which manifested a body and absorbed him to become Super Buu. The now malicious monster hunted the heroes in search of more power. They freed Majin Buu from Super Buu, reverting him to original form Kid Buu. Goku killed Kid Buu and made a wish for him to be reborn as a good person. That human reincarnation, Uub, became his protégé.

Majin Buu’s magic is strange. His favorite spell transmutes victims into food, regeneration prevents him from being destroyed if any part of him survives, and his body is elastic. Super Buu steals techniques from absorbed victims like a bubblegum-flavored Cell. Kid Buu is the weakest form, but feral and unpredictable.

Zamasu and Goku Black

Voice Actors: James Marsters, Shin-Ichiro Miki, Lawrence Simpson
Name Pun: An archaic Japanese word for “to be.”

Modern Dragon Ball villains are at a disadvantage. The heroes have become nearly invincible gods with decades of combat experience. Many villains require plot armor to keep up. These two blatantly cheat.

Zamasu was a god in training unhappy with mortals hurting each other. After sparring with Goku, he realized that there were mortals who could defeat the gods and swore to eradicate all of them. Zamasu used time travel to recruit a future version of himself and both made wishes on the Dragon Balls. Future Zamasu wished for complete immortality. Present Zamasu swapped his soul into Goku’s body and killed him to become Goku Black.

Goku Black rampaged through the future timeline while Zamasu kept the other gods from finding out. He joined Black after the heroes gained the upper hand, using his immortality as a shield while Goku Black acted as the sword. The heroes almost sealed him like they had King Piccolo, pushing Zamasu to use a divine technique and fuse with Black.

Fused Zamasu was stronger than his components, but flawed because he was simultaneously mortal and immortal. He was killed and merged with the universe through sheer spite, becoming Infinite Zamasu. The heroes had to summon their strongest god, Zeno, and sacrifice the future timeline to stop Zamasu from spreading through the multiverse.

Zamasu’s technique names are as self-aggrandizing as his endless speeches. A ki lightsaber called Violent Fierce God Slicer? Heat vision dubbed Flames of Retribution? Calling upon the Light of Divine Justice to empower himself? It’s a relief when he joins our list of Lovecraftian monsters as Infinite Zamasu and finally shuts the hell up.

Didya Get All That?

An ever-strengthening army of monsters and madmen.

Jared Bounacos

Jared Bounacos has written for Movie Rewind since 2016.