Why Gohan is an objectively horrible character.

    Now that I'm done bashing Goku, who better to bash next than his son Gohan?

    Of course, I'll have to start by bashing Chichi, Goku's wife and Gohan's mother. She is a horrible character. She was deliberately intended to be nothing more than a stereotypical representation of a young girl in her debut; a total brat who believes her only purpose in life is to become a man's wife and bear his children. She literally falls in love with Goku for no reason other than "he touched my vagina, so that means I must marry him!" Stupid as fuck. She asks Goku for marriage, and he dumbly agrees, thinking she just meant food. They're both just 12 years old at this point. Then, Goku leaves Fire Mountain and they literally never see each other again until the Piccolo Jr arc, when they're 19, seven years later. Chichi had last appeared in chapter 14, and she doesn't reappear until chapter 167. That's 153 chapters of her not showing up in the story. Four chapters later, in 171, they agree to marry each other. 

    I shouldn't even have to explain why this is awful writing. There's absolutely nothing to her character; literally her only purpose was to marry Goku and have his babies, because she is utilized for nothing else and nothing else at all. The author wrote her off for 153 chapters straight before randomly bringing her back. As soon as she reappears, she marries Goku. There's no build-up to it; they basically marry as soon as they reunite after 7 years of not seeing each other in-universe and 153 chapters in the story. Just because they met once as kids and Goku agreed to marry her all the way back then without actually knowing what the hell she meant, they must marry as adults? It's completely stupid and ridiculous. People grow up and change; the fact Chichi is dumbfounded that Goku didn't recognize her after so long is also dumb, because it had been 7 years and they both grew up. She expects him to know who she is without even telling him her name ... just because of one brief meeting they had as kids. 

    She's a fucking idiot. A bitch. Of course, that's the point. She's intended to be a bratty bitch with a laughably shallow perception of people and the world in general, because she's just a stereotypical and satirical representation of women in general. Even Toriyama himself admitted to disliking her, and the only reason he brought her back to marry Gocow was to punish himself. Chichi is just meant to be an insufferable bitch for nothing more than cheap laughs, because that's Toriyama's unfunny idea of funny. Making women out to be annoying, dumb bitches. The women in his works are deliberately intended to be nothing more than stereotypes; they're really nothing more than housewives, baby makers or sex pots, and regardless of these roles they get, they're always annoying bitches.  The thing is, it's not funny at all; it's just sexist, misogynist and perverted. Of course, this is the same guy who drew and wrote a story about a woman turning to prostitution after repeatedly getting raped. And the same guy who admitted to wanting to spy on his own daughter bathing. So, it's no surprise that he'll write women so terribly in Dragon Ball. He's a degenerate loser.

    Chichi is a garbage character, all around. It's a bit of a shame, because we did see very, very small glimpses of the better character she could have been at the 23rd Budokai, where she was a martial artist and finalist in the tournament; had she been a serious and strong fighter, then she might have been interesting. But sadly, this is Shonen, and you can't have women as strong fighters. And Chichi was never intended as such, not even when she reappeared; the only reason she even took up martial arts was to meet Goku again, because she wanted to marry him and have his babies. There was absolutely zero progression or build-up to their relationship; they met once as a kids, didn't see each other again for 7 years in-universe and 153 chapters in the story, and as soon as they reunite, they agree to marry. It's as lazy as can be. A properly written romance would show two characters gradually falling for each other over the course of the story, so their eventual coming together would feel organic. 

 

    They would have plenty of interactions over the course of the story, and they would eventually fall in love; that way, them marrying wouldn't feel one bit forced, random or lazy. When they only meet once as kids and never see each again for 7 years and 153 chapters, on the other hand? It's fucking garbage writing, plain and simple. Of course, the apologists would defend this with, "But Toriyama doesn't like writing romance!" but that's bullshit because if he doesn't like it, then he shouldn't have bothered with it at all. There should have been no romantic pairings or couples if they were never gonna be any focus in the story, because then they're just completely hollow and shallow. You don't write something just to half-ass it. Either you do it well or you don't do it at all. Dragon Ball isn't meant to be about romance? Right, and so it shouldn't have bothered with anything even remotely resembling it to begin with. Period. 

    Goku should have just never become a husband or father. The character isn't one bit suited for those roles at all, as the author admits, and the only reason he's given them is for cheap laughs. "Oh, look at how much of a shitty husband and father this macho manchild is. LOL" Too bad it's not fucking funny. It's just stupid. All there really is to Goku's character is that he likes fighting. He's willing to sacrifice the lives of his own family and the rest of the Earth for a good fight, because he's just that much of an awful person. A piece of shit like him shouldn't have his own family. He should really just keep to himself and do what he loves, which is fighting, because he isn't suited for anything else. It would have been one thing if Toriyama tried to develop him into a proper husband and father over the course of the story, but he didn't. Goku remains the same dumbass manchild all around. The apologists would argue "That's what makes him endearing!" but no, it really doesn't. Goku is a fucking awful character, as explained here. He should have never married or had kids.

    And thus, Gohan should have never existed. Goku should have never gotten married or had kids, so by extension, his son should have never existed. But even ignoring this, just looking at Gohan's own character, he's still trash. When we're first introduced to him in chapter 196, he's four years old and his dream is to be ... a scholar! Huh? Goku isn't a scholar. He's a martial artist, so you would think he would raise his son to be one like him. Whose idea is it for Gohan to become a scholar? Right, that bitch Chichi. She bans Gohan from practicing martial arts, supposedly because .... "the world is at peace". Apparently, if the world is at peace, there's no reason for someone to practice martial arts. This really just makes her a fucking hypocrite, because when she took up martial arts to meet Goku again at the 23rd Budokai, she was under the impression that the world was at peace as Piccolo Daimao was defeated and she had no idea that a clone of Piccolo was still out there, plotting to throw world in shambles again. 

 

    Making matters worse, now she knows for sure that this clone of Piccolo is still out there, plotting to kill her and her husband; she already saw Goku feed the evil fucker a Senzu and let him go five years earlier, so she has no reason to think Earth is going to stay peaceful. The threat of Piccolo looms over her, her whole family and the rest of Earth. So, according to this dumb fucking bitch, practicing martial arts during peacetime is bad ... unless you want to fuck Goku and have his babies. You should never practice martial arts in peacetime for any other reason, not even when you know a crazy maniac is planning to kill you and everyone you love. Wanting to marry someone is the only thing that makes practicing martial arts acceptable. Garbage ass character all around.

    "B-but she just wants Gohan to be a successful, productive person in society! She doesn't want him to be a dumbass like Goku!" As if they couldn't just find a way for Gohan to strike a balance between studying and training. Wake up in the morning to study the normal 8 hours, then train with his father in the afternoon. Furthermore, Gohan could easily just become a highly successful athlete; he'd make a shit ton of money by winning martial arts tournaments like the Tenkaichi Budokai. It's just stupid to think practicing martial arts = becoming a bum like Goku as if there's any correlation when there's none. And there are some particularly delusional apologists who think Chichi was just scarred from seeing Goku almost die against Piccolo when they fought at the tournament, but this is nothing but stupid head canon. That's never once even insinuated to be why she bans Gohan from martial arts; it's just said to be because she thinks martial arts are worthless during the peacetime. 

 

    Not wanting Gohan to participate in dangerous life-or-death battles is one thing, but he doesn't have to participate in those just to practice martial arts. And with Piccolo plotting to kill Goku and his whole family, it's stupid to think that Gohan won't ever run into trouble during his lifetime; that's just something that comes with being related to Goku, and she knew what the hell she was getting herself into when she married him right after he let a genocidal maniac off scot-free in front of her. There's no stopping it, so it'd be for the best that Gohan at least know how to defend himself; learning martial arts is only for his own good. Chichi is just nothing more than a half-assed, stereotypical depiction of a tiger mom; she's a garbage ass fucking character through and through. Fuck this bitch. Goddamn. This is what she deserves. Good riddance.

 

    What the fuck does Gohan even want to be a scholar of, anyway? The first time we even got a hint would be in Dragon Ball Online, some random shitty MMORPG that was released in 2010 (15 years after the original manga ended) in just South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong before being shut down in 2013. He publishes a detailed book teaching the world how to use Ki; how to fly, how to shoot laser beams, how to power up, etc. But in the Superhero movie, released in 2022, he apparently just studies ... uh, insects so that makes him an entomologist. So, what the fuck is it? It's not even clear how canon Dragon Ball Online is to the original manga; shit like Towa, Mira, the Supreme Kai of Time, Time Patrol Trunks, Time Breaker Bardock, etc have only appeared in non-canon bullshit like Heroes and Xenoverse since Online got shut down. 

 

    We're gonna have to assume Gohan is only an entomologist going by the Superhero movie. However, none of this even matters in the first place. It's been literally 27 years since the original manga ended in 1995 and 34 years since Gohan debuted in 1988; it's way too late to reveal what he studies now. Again, it was literally never a point of focus in either the anime or manga; revealing what he studies after all this time doesn't actually give it substance or importance (it's not even important in the Superhero movie, because it's just a throwaway line that has nothing to do with the actual plot of the movie). Gohan being a scholar was never anything that mattered in the series' original run, and that's all there is to it. The fact is, it was just a very half-assed, forced way to set Gohan apart from Goku; instead of wanting to be a fighter like his father, Gohan just wants to be a scholar ... of absolutely nothing that matters in the story!

    And that's really Gohan's biggest downfall as a character. This is a fighting series, for fuck's sake. The only thing in Dragon Ball that actually matters is the fighting, because that's the only thing the author bothers fleshing out. You can't expect people to give two fucks about Gohan about wanting to be a scholar, or anything else for that matter, when the plot never focuses on that. This isn't a series about studying; it's just a series about fighting. The fighting is all that really matters. Toriyama apologists argue all the time, "Gohan isn't supposed to be a fighter! He's supposed to be a scholar!" Too bad the plot never focuses on that, because it's worthless. Fuck Gohan being a scholar altogether. Not that he's a decent character as a fighter, though. LOL, he fucking sucks; Goku was already a cheaply written Gary Stu to begin with, and Gohan turns up that quality to 11. 

 

    With absolutely no training whatsoever, Gohan is basically born the strongest person on Earth, far outclassing Goku, Piccolo and even Raditz just by getting angry; his power level is only 1 normally, but it jumps to 710 (far greater than unweighted Goku and Piccolo, who were 416 and 408 respectively) when he gets angry the first time and 1,307 when he attacks Raditz (who is said to only be 1,200 in the manga). And that was only a headbutt; the Ki blast he fired to destroy a boulder was even greater, as noted by Piccolo. What even is the reason for Gohan being so damn powerful when he's only 4 years old? Oh, right, because half Saiyan, half human hybrids are born with a ton of potential. That's it. If you're half Saiyan and half human, you'll just be born with a lot of potential. Yeah. But one question ... why? Why exactly do half Saiyan, half human hybrids have a lot of potential? How does a Saiyan breeding with a human produce a powerful offspring? "Uh ... because that's just how it is!" Absolutely no reason whatsoever. The plot just decided that they'll produce powerful offsprings with no actual logic behind it. It's completely arbitrary and random. His rage boosts are nonsensical and only work as well as the plot wants them to. Garbage writing.

    So, anyway, Piccolo abducts Gohan and forces him to live in the wilderness with bloodthirsty animals for approximately one year. He also leaves Gohan alone with those bloodthirsty animals such as this dinosaur for the first 6 months. Only for the remaining 6 months do they actually bond, and the series tries to pass it off as something touching. Even though Piccolo literally abducted Gohan when he was only 4 years old and forced him to live in the wilderness with fucking dinosaurs for a year. What spells out a touching, heartfelt bond better than almost drowning a child, threatening to break their neck straight to their face and throwing them at a boulder right after you just killed their father? "Piccolo knew he'd be fine" The look on his face here says otherwise. For fuck's sake, their relationship is literally glorified Stockholm-Lima syndrome. "Piccolo didn't have a choice because it was to protect Earth from the Saiyans", you say?

 

    That's straight fucking cap, because he could have just 1) Used the Dragon Balls to destroy their spaceships when they were coming to Earth. 2) Used the Mafuba  alongside Kami or Tenshinhan to seal them both away (and Yamcha and Krillin could have learned the Mafuba as well). 3) Assimilated Kami and drank Karin's magic Aquafina to unlock his hidden potential so he'd be strong enough to beat the Saiyans himself; even if he can't beat Vegeeta in a fight, he'd at least defeat Nappa with ease and he can just Mafuba Vegeeta away. Then, he can just take Kami's spaceship, Vegeeta's spaceship, Nappa's spaceship or Goku's spaceship to Namek and bond with his own kind there, so he can bring one of them back home to Earth so they can make Dragon Balls for him; he can also fuse with some of his people over there to get stronger. There was never any reason to rely on a little kid, and Piccolo hating Kami is no reason not to fuse with him. Piccolo is a piece of shit child abuser and there's nothing touching about his bond with Gohan.

    Anyway, so the Saiyans arrive and Gohan finds himself regressing to a crybaby who is too scared to fight even though he was already supposed to have toughened up when he was training in the wilderness. We already saw him get over his fear of the dinosaur that was trying to kill him as he kicked its ass, so there's no reason why he should be so afraid of the Saiyans that he can't even fight them. "The Saiyans are stronger than the dinosaur" And the Saiyans were literally stronger than anything everyone had faced up to that point, but nobody else was backing down (sans Yajirobe, but Yajirobe is just a bitch by nature). "They've already fought plenty battles before; this was Gohan's first fight" LOL, Gohan had a number of run-ins with that fucking dinosaur! To a small child, a dinosaur is gonna be scarier than any of the human martial artists Kucklin, Tenshinhan, Yamcha and Chiaotz had fought and no less scarier than Piccolo Daimao's humanoid demons. Gohan even trained rigorously under Piccolo, the evil fucker who abducted him and threw him into a rock. There's no reason why Gohan should be too scared to fight against the Saiyans, and the regression is totally pointless when he eventually mans up to fight them in the end.

    But Gohan is pretty damn useless for most of the fight, despite how hyped up his potential was. All he does is land one kick on Nappa and is back to being helpless when Nappa fires his blast at him, prompting Piccolo to sacrifice himself. Oh, how sad, Piccolo tearfully died protecting Gohan; nah, man, fuck this child abusing piece of shit. Then, Gohan fires a lazer at Nappa that doesn't do shit and is about to be stomped to death when Goku saves him. Goku beats Nappa, who is then killed by Vegeeta, and Gohan is sent away with Kucklin so Superman can fight General Zod alone, but comes back when Clark loses. He can't do anything when Donkey Kong is about to kill Mario, and after Zod turns back to normal, Jobhan can only stall him while Kucklin prepares to shoot the volleyball that Jobku gave him. Yeah, Jobhan bounces it back after Zod dodges it, but it would have hit right away had fat boy not been a dumb fuck; how useful is Jobhan really when he can only do stuff as a result of other people being idiots? Furthermore, we're pretty much at the end of the fight, which is also when Jobhan's tail conveniently grows back the instant Zod is about to kill him so he can turn into King Kong. Basically, Jobhan is useless for the whole fight until the end, which is when he just gets a bullshit deus ex machina in his tail growing back.

    Anyway, Jobhan goes to Slug World so he can revive his abuser. He doesn't do much in this arc, either; sure, he jumps to saves Mini Pickles from being killed by the pink fat man, but ultimately it comes down to Kucklin to save them by blinding fatty with the Sun. Jobhan gets his potential unlocked by some fat old fuck, but he and Kucklin job to some ugly green midget and need to be saved by Jobgeta. Jobhan saves Jobgeta from ginger Dolph Lundgren in return, but then he gets his neck broken and needs to be saved by daddy again. Jobhan then fights a bad guy who stole his daddy's body, but fails to put him down even with Kucklin's help and Jobgeta takes the lead. Then, Gocow is the one who stops the purple Power Ranger from stealing Vegeeta's body by throwing a frog. Then, Jobhan fights Freezit and while he lands some hits on his second form, he ends up jobbing and needing to be saved again by Kucklin, who was healed by Mini Pickles; Jobhan is healed by Mini Pickles as well. Then, Jobhan saves Pickles from Freezit's third form and while he almost hits him with his blast, Freezit bounces it back and Pickles has to save him. Then, Jobhan fights Freezit's final form and needs to be saved by Jobgeta when he's about to be shot to death. Then, Jobhan can't do shit when Freezit reappears after surviving the Spirit Ballsack, knocking out Pickles and killing Kucklin; Gocow has to save the day by turning Aryan.

    The reason I'm bringing all of this up is to show that Gohan really wasn't all that much of a significant character for the first two arcs he appeared in. He was mostly just another useless side character, and another cheerleader for his father Goku. And for most of the Android/Cell arc, he wasn't that important, either; all he really does in the earlier portions of the arc is save Piccolo from being drained by Gero. He never actually fights at all; not against Nineteen, not against Gero, not against Seventeen, not against Eighteen, not against Sixteen and not against either of Cell's first two forms. He really just spends most of the arc just staying behind while other people fight; the fact is, he wasn't a major focus at all. And that's why it feels forced and random when the plot does start to focus on him later; it's only when he and Goku go in the Time Chamber and Goku says that he'll make Gohan the strongest does any build-up to him taking over start. Anyone claiming that Gohan was set up to take over from his debut in the series is full of shit, because Toriyama himself admitted that he had absolutely no intention of making him the protagonist at first. It was basically just midway through the Android/Cell arc that the idea entered his head, because he felt Goku was getting old. He decided to have Gohan take over simply because he thought it was cool, and nothing more.

    Something isn't actually built up when the build-up only starts right before it actually happens, no. The decision to make Gohan the protagonist was just random and forced. Anyway, so Gocow loses to Bug Boy and Jobhan must now fight in his father's place. Oh, but then it suddenly turns out Gohan doesn't want to fight because he doesn't like it. This pacifism comes right out of nowhere, because nothing about Gohan disliking fighting was even alluded to before. You never saw Gohan backing down from a fight once he manned up against Vegeeta to protect his father; he didn't back down against Dodoria (not willingly, anyway; he only ran off because Kucklin told him, too), he didn't back down against Gurd, he didn't back down against Reacoom, he didn't back down against Ginyu and he didn't back down against Freeza. For all this time, he was proactive and courageous against enemies, even if he never accomplished much. So, where does this "violence is not the answer" bullshit come from?

 

     "Gohan was just a little kid doing what he was told before; now that he's older, he's started to think for himself and he no longer wants to fight" That'd be totally fine if not for the fact that it still comes out of nowhere. We already saw him training hard in the Time Chamber to get the hang of being a Super Saiyan, and when Goku tells him that they'll start training to make Super Saiyan like their regular forms, he's excited. After coming out of the Time Chamber, he only wants to keep training for the Cell Games and isn't interested in doing anything else. You'd think that if he was beginning to realize that he dislikes fighting, he would have mentioned it after training in the Time Chamber for about a year, in the days leading up to the Cell Games. But there's absolutely no mention of it at all, so it comes out of nowhere.

    Gohan was expecting to fight the whole time, which is why he trained so hard in the first place, and the entire reason he wants to fight is to protect Earth. There was literally nothing suggesting that he didn't want to fight, and that's why it's stupid for him to suddenly become a pacifist as soon as it's his turn. It's also completely stupid that he thought an evil monster like Cell, who he already knew had slaughtered tons and tons of innocent people, would ever listen to reason. "He knew Cell had DNA from his father, Vegeeta and Piccolo, so he thought maybe he'd listen" That's more stupid head canon, and him possessing DNA from an evil fuck like Vegeeta (the genocidal mass murderer who let Cell become Perfect) shouldn't be reassuring, especially when he also possesses DNA from Freeza and Cold, who are even bigger evil fucks than Vegeeta is. Really, there's no way around it; Gohan's pacifism was just written for the sake of implementing more artificial tension in an arc that was entirely contrived to begin with. 

 

    Basically, Toriyama wanted Gohan to be the one who beats Cell by unleashing his hidden power, but it wouldn't be exciting if Gohan unleashed it right away, so he made him reluctant to fight and unable to get stronger from getting angry on his own. The fact we saw Gohan immediately become angry enough for a rage boost (so much that he nearly went Super Saiyan) just from visualizing his loved ones getting killed, however, makes this fall completely flat. It's not that Gohan should have immediately turned Super Saiyan 2 right off the bat, but he should have been fully motivated to fight right away so he could protect Earth and he should have been able to access at least some of his hidden power just by getting angry from imagining his loved ones being killed. There's literally no reason why he should be against fighting or unable to quickly get angry enough for a rage boost. This writing is just ass.

    Anyway, so Gohan turns Super Saiyan 2 and kicks Cell's ass. He receives a lot of flak in the fandom for choosing to torture Cell instead of killing him right away because he wants him to suffer as revenge for destroying Sixteen, which leads to Cell attempting to blow up Earth by self-destructing while Gohan can only helplessly despair and Goku has to step in, but really, it's not any worse than Goku choosing to let Freeza power up to his max just because he wants to fight him and make him suffer as revenge for killing Krillin. Gohan simply didn't have as much plot armor as his father and he's only a kid, anyway; what a shocker that a little boy would let his power go to his head, not. Goku's worse because he's a grown ass man! There's no reason to blame a little boy for screwing up when he has the burden of an entire planet on his shoulder; you should just blame his dumbass father for choosing to rely on him in the first place. And it was Goku's fault Gero even created the androids and Cell to begin with, so he should be blamed for this entire arc happening. And he never even had to sacrifice his life to stop Cell; he literally had an entire minute to teleport Cell away to Kaio's planet and teleport back to Earth with Kaio and Bubbles (and Gregory, in the anime); Gohan shouldn't be blamed for his dad dying when his dad brought it on himself. The entire scene was just more artificial, fake ass tension. Anyway, Cell comes back and Gohan kills him in the end. With Goku dead, Gohan is now the main character and we get into the Boo arc.

    What's the first thing that happens with Gohan as the main character? Well, we jump 7 years later when he's a teenager in high school. Instead of immediately jumping into the important plot stuff, we instead get a couple of  boring "slice of life" chapters focusing on him going to school and fighting crime as the Great Saiyaman, a half-assed Kamen Rider parody. Seeing Gohan do these goofy poses in a ridiculous costume is just cringe; he thought the Ginyu Force's poses were stupid as a kid, so why is he doing the same thing as them when he's a teenager? Because "hehe it's funny man" Too bad it's not; just forcing another dumb gag at the expense of logic. There's no reason why Gohan should even bother with such a dumb persona when he could have just kept fighting crime as a Super Saiyan and used a special watch made by Bulma that would change his outfit into a regular gi or Saiyan suit when he fights crime to conceal his identity; hell, he didn't even need a disguise when he could have just fought at high speed without anyone seeing him, like Kale does in DBS. 

 

    Great Saiyaman fucking sucked all around and there was zero reason for it. These chapters were a total waste of time. Toriyama was just burnt out from the Cell arc and didn't actually know where to take the story next, so he winged these lazy, uneventful chapters to pass the time until he realized what he wanted the arc to actually be about. In the meantime, and as a result of his lack of creativity, he turned Gohan into a laughing stock, which was especially jarring after people saw him as a super strong badass in the Cell arc. "B-but Gohan wasn't supposed to be badass" He sure wasn't supposed to be a clown with no self-awareness, but the Boo arc randomly turns him into one for no reason. "Gohan has arrested development as a result of his traumatic upbringing!" This is more worthless head canon that isn't insinuated once in the series; Gohan's mental state is totally fine.

    But the biggest issue with Gohan in the Boo arc is that he's become a total slacker who doesn't keep up his training. Guy literally has no problem letting himself become weaker instead of keeping up his training to be prepared for any future threats Earth may face, which endangers everyone including his family. The arguments apologists pull out of their asses to defend this are awful. "He had no reason to think Earth will be in danger after defeating Cell"? What reason did he have to think Earth wouldn't be in danger again when he had absolutely no idea what sort of things might be lurking out there in the vast, vast universe? It doesn't matter how peaceful things may seem to be on Earth; there's no telling what sort of things may exist elsewhere. "He didn't have any reason to think there was anything dangerous out there when he knew Freeza and his father were dead!" 

 

    What reason does he have to think there was no one stronger than Freeza in the universe? Because someone like Vegeeta told him? Hearsay. There's no reason for him to assume there couldn't be anyone stronger than Freeza on a distant planet somewhere, and even if there's no one stronger in the present, there's no telling what the future may bring. For all he knows, there could be people from Freeza's family or army out there, training to kill everyone. They don't even need to necessarily be "strong" to be dangerous as they could be formidable threats through other abilities. Hell, there could be something dangerous on Earth, too; everyone assumed that the Red Ribbon army was destroyed after Goku beat them years ago, but that didn't stop Dr. Gero from taking everyone by surprise by creating the androids and Cell. How does he know nobody else related to the Red Ribbon army is out there, plotting to kill everyone?

    Anyone and their grandma would be smart enough to realize that Earth is guaranteed to continue running into danger just by looking at its track record. Just three years after Piccolo Daimao terrorized Earth, the second Piccolo terrorized it. Just five years after the second Piccolo terrorized it, the Saiyans terrorized it. Just one year after the Saiyans terrorized it, Freeza and his father terrorized it. Just three years after Freeza and his father terrorized it, the androids and Cell terrorized it. These threats keep showing up in relatively rapid succession, with each of them being progressively stronger than the last. There's absolutely no reason for Gohan to just assume Earth will never be in danger again. If he didn't know what sort of dangers could be out there on Earth or the rest of the universe, then he should actually make an effort to find out himself. He literally could ask Shenlong to find out about the many potential dangers lurking in the universe. But instead he makes zero effort whatsoever to find out and just lazes around to study pointless shit because he's a dumb fuck. He doesn't even know much about the universe's long history or the many threats that it faced before he was even born; you'd think he want to learn about it if he's all about being a scholar and acquiring knowledge, but no, he's more interested in just studying pointless shit.

    Unsurprisingly, as the story continues, it turns out there are a lot of dangerous threats that Gohan doesn't know about, even though he could have easily found out for himself before they actually showed up. Had he just asked Shenlong a few questions ("Is there anyone as strong or stronger than Cell? Was there anyone as strong or stronger than Cell? Are there any other scientists related to the Red Ribbon army? Does Gero have any living relatives? Are there any other living Saiyans? What are the planets that the Saiyans attacked? Are there any living members of Freeza's race? What's Freeza's army doing? How is law and order managed elsewhere in the universe, or galaxy? Who is the highest of all Gods? Are there other Dragon Balls? Is there another universe?" etc. And asking doesn't even take up wishes. He can also ask the two Kaioshin about all the monsters they've fought), he could have found out about Boo's shell that was literally on the very same planet he lives on. He could have found out there was a warlock literally trying to revive Boo, the monster that had terrorized the universe and slaughtered the gods eons ago. 

 

    He could have found out about the Demon Realm, and that its king was serving Bobbidi, the one trying to revive Boo, with power on par with or greater than Cell. He could have found out about the sleeping God of Destruction who goes around destroying planets and will eventually wake up in his lifetime. He could have found out about the many criminals that are held captive in the Galactic Prison, like the warlock Moro. He could have found out there was another set of Dragon Balls on the home planet of someone with a grudge towards the Saiyans. He could have found out about the multiverse, that there are literally 12 other universes and it's possible for a monster from one of those universes to show up in his. He could have found out about Zeno, the childish King of Everything who could always erase the entire multiverse on a whim. He could have found out all sorts of things, but he doesn't because that would be too smart of him and everyone else in the story for that matter; they all have to be kept one-dimensional dumbasses who let shit hit the fan because Toriyama doesn't know how to write a story that isn't contrived to save his miserable life.

    "There's no way Gohan could have found all of this out when they didn't even exist in the story yet!" In-universe, Gohan could have definitely found these things out but he doesn't because he's an idiot. Out of universe, the reason he doesn't is because that would be too complicated for the author to write, which isn't an excuse for his stupidity in-universe. He'd also be able to find out the many ways he can get stronger, and the other transformations he can unlock like Super Saiyan 3, a souped up Super Saiyan 2 equal to or beyond Super Saiyan 3, Super Saiyan God, Super Saiyan Blue, Mystic, Beast, Ultra Instinct, Ultra Ego, etc. "But those weren't thought up yet either!" No excuse; every single one of these ideas that Toriyama pulls out of his ass as the story goes along only makes Gohan look even stupider, because in-universe, it was possible for him to discover all of them before. The fact is, Gohan is only kept a slacking idiot because it would be too difficult for Toriyama to actually a write a story where he's smart and proactive. A talentless, hack ass writer who can only rely on fake, artificial tension.

    "There's no reason for Gohan to train when he can just rely on other people to protect Earth!" Who was there to rely on after Goku died? The humans like Yamcha, Tenshinhan and Krillin are worthless fodder. Vegeeta is literally an evil mass murderer who was literally trying to destroy Earth and slaughtered an entire Namekian village just a few years ago. "But Vegeeta is a changed man!" A few years of good behavior doesn't suddenly turn him into a good person, and it was literally his fault Cell became Perfect which nearly led to Earth being destroyed. Gohan should be training in case Vegeeta were to ever do something evil again, and unsurprisingly, that's exactly what happens in the Boo arc; Vegeeta lets himself be enchanted by Bobbidi just so he can rival and fight Goku, which leads to Boo coming out and eventually destroying Earth. We even see Vegeeta going on a killing spree at the Budokai, killing hundreds of people to bait Goku into fighting him. Look, a mass murderer who's already killed tons of people in his life ... has gone back to killing tons of people! What a surprise! Not. And there's no reason Gohan should even be relying on him or Piccolo when his potential far exceeds theirs; case in point, neither of them could measure up to Cell, who Gohan surpassed and defeated.

 

    It wouldn't even matter if Goku was still alive; Goku's a dumbass fucking manchild who literally spares villains just so he can fight him, like he did when he spared Piccolo and Vegeeta when they tried to kill him and everyone he cared about. The entire Android/Cell arc is Goku's fault for letting Gero make the androids, for crying out loud. And it's also largely Goku's fault that Boo comes out as he chose to fight Vegeeta as a Super Saiyan 2 instead of just stomping him with SS3, even when he knew right away that Vegeeta was his equal in SS2; this leads to Vegeeta beating him up and his energy is used to revive Boo. And then there's Goku sparing Boo as a Super Saiyan 3 just because he wants little kids to clean up his own mess, a plan that fails utterly as Boo ends up destroying Earth and killing everyone. Gohan absolutely should not be relying on dumbass, fight-horny manbabies like Goku and Vegeeta to keep anything safe; he should rely on himself and nobody else. "B-but if Gohan kept up his training, then he would just become Goku 2.0!" Another dumbass argument, because simply training doesn't make someone a Goku clone. Goku's defining character trait is that he's a fighting enthusiast who fights mainly for the thrill of it, not to protect others; Gohan would be fighting only for the sake of protecting his loved ones, and that would be enough to set him apart from Goku. Just look at Future Trunks; he keeps up his training mainly to stay in shape for any threats his timeline may face, not because he enjoys fighting, and his personality is very different to Goku's. If anything, Gohan would be more like Trunks, not Goku.

    "B-but he wants to be successful in society!" He could easily just wish for a lot of money with the Dragon Balls. "He wants to work for it!" So he can just become a professional athlete or martial artist to make a lot of money. "He doesn't want the exposure" Boo hoo. He should suck it up and make sacrifices, because the safety of his loved ones is on the line here. He shouldn't deliberately hold himself back by looking for bullshit excuses not to train. And we even see that his job as a grown man in Dragon Ball Super doesn't pay much, so this isn't even a matter of money here; hell, he even marries into the riches by making Videl, daughter of Mr. Satan, his wife. That shoots the whole argument that he wants to work to become successful dead, point-blank in the ass; he just mooches off his wife! 

    All of the arguments apologists pull out their asses to defend Gohan slacking off from training are nonsense. "He wants to work to become successful on Earth" He literally mooches off his wife's money, so that can't be it. "He wants to spend time with his family!" He's literally so engrossed in his stupid insect studies that he can't even pick up his daughter from school in the Superhero movie, so that can't be it, either. "He doesn't see a reason to train when there isn't an active threat!" He continues to slack off in Dragon Ball Super even after Freeza (the same piece of shit who literally kills Gohan's wife, daughter, mother, brother and grandfather) is resurrected, knowing full well that he's plotting to destroy him and everyone he loves, so that's also bullshit. "He can just rely on Goku and Vegeeta!" Goku and Vegeeta are unreliable manbabies who cause innocent people to die with their stupidity all the time. "He has no reason to think anything could be out there!" Except he did and he could have easily found out if he didn't know. Instead he doesn't bother making an effort to find out because he's a dumb fuck. Gohan slacking off from his training after defeating Cell is pretty much the equivalent of a country abolishing its military after winning a war, stupidly assuming that things will never go bad again just because they've achieved peace for the time being. Completely and utterly moronic.

    With great power comes great responsibility. When you're literally the strongest person in the universe, when you have the power to destroy the universe, when you have the potential to become even stronger than that, etc you have the responsibility of protecting the universe. At the very least, if you have a family like Gohan does, it's most definitely your responsibility to train to protect them. It doesn't matter if you don't personally enjoy fighting; it's your responsibility to keep other people safe, so you're supposed to suck it up and fight anyway. Especially if your world and universe have a lengthy track record of being threatened by supervillains. There are tons of characters who don't personally enjoy conflict like Superman, Spiderman and Megaman X, but they suck it up and fight anyway, because they realize they have a moral obligation to protect people. Gohan has zero excuse to slack off; he just does it because he's a selfish bastard who only cares about pleasing himself. He just wants to study, because that's what he personally enjoys doing, even if it means endangering his family by becoming weaker and unprepared for when another supervillain does appear. He's a piece of shit and that's all there to this.

    "But what the fuck about you? What do you do to protect other people" A weak ass strawman made by apologists, resorting to ad hominem instead of actually trying to debunk what's being argued. It could be said we all have to play our parts in making the world a better place, yes, and we can do so by becoming doctors, scientists, philanthropists who donate to the poor, firefighters, soldiers who fight against terrorism overseas, etc but no regular person can even come close to what Gohan can do with his power. Furthermore, we don't live in a world that's constantly being endangered by supervillains. Because Gohan does live in that sort of crazy universe, and is capable of things far greater than any of us are, he needs to go to far greater lengths to keep his family safe. As far as protecting our families goes, living in safe communities, getting home security to be protected from intruders, keeping them healthy by feeding them proper meals and getting them to exercise, etc is enough to cut it. Those are just basic tasks and common courtesy, which isn't going to cut in Dragon World. In a world that constantly faces extermination by supervillains, the only thing that's going to cut it is becoming powerful enough to defeat said supervillains and nothing else. Gohan is just an awful person and a shitty character for choosing to repeatedly endanger his family by slacking off.

    Anyway, Gohan goes through the Boo arc as a bitch. He's too weak to break out of Kaioshin's paralysis, which results in his energy being stolen. He fails to beat Dabra and turn his master Piccolo back to normal from stone, which pisses Vegeeta off and gives Dabra the idea to have Bobbidi brainwash Vegeeta. This results in Boo coming out; Gohan gets his ass rekt. He then pulls out a sword and breaks it, which results in Old Kaioshin unlocking his hidden potential; Gohan just sits on his ass while Old Kaioshin does it. He fights Boo, but fucks around to talk shit, which results in Boo absorbing Gotenks and Piccolo. Gohan then jobs one last time before being absorbed and now he's no longer the main character. Oh, yeah, and he also couldn't even catch a fucking earring. Goku is back and Gohan is now a worthless side character again. While it's certainly bad, inconsistent writing to suddenly backpedal on Gohan being the main character after all this time, the fact is he should have never taken the reins in the first place. 

 

    The decision for him to replace Goku in the Cell arc came out of nowhere to begin with, and Goku is just too iconic to replace. There was no reason for Gohan to replace his father just because he became a bit more popular than him in the Cell arc, because ultimately, Goku was always going to be the face of the series. While their personalities are different enough, Gohan always lives in the shadow of his father; he only ever amounts to an inferior substitution for Goku when he's put in the role of protagonist, because he's not the face of the series. It's the same reason why someone other than Bruce Wayne becoming Batman, someone other than Peter Parker becoming Spiderman, someone other than Clark Kent becoming Superman, etc never works out in the long run. The successors simply aren't iconic enough to keep the mantle. It doesn't matter what personality Gohan has; he could be a fighting enthusiast like Goku, or he can be a pacifist superhero, but it doesn't matter either way, because he's just not iconic enough for the role of main character. You just can't have Dragon Ball without Goku.

    So, then, the original manga ends and we get to Dragon Ball GT. Gohan's a fucking jobber bitch who apparently kept up his training as implied by Vegeeta in episode 2 (outright said in the Blue Water dub), which is why Goten and Trunks are going with Goku to space instead of him as they were the only ones who slacked off ... but for some reason, Gohan is no longer in his Mystic form. He also doesn't do jack shit in the story other than get his body stolen, get his ass beaten or just be a cheerleader for his daddy. GT ends and then DBS comes out 18 years later. Gohan pretty much sucks just as badly as he did in GT for the first four story arcs, reaching an all-time low in the Golden Freeza arc. Just one year after Battle of Gods, when he was supposed to be at his peak strength, he's become a twig who can barely become a Super Saiyan. He beats some worthless fodder before getting one-shotted by Freeza Form 1. Then, his family gets killed when Freeza blows up Earth and what does he do? Continue slacking off. What a piece of shit. "He has Whis to fix everything in case everything goes wrong!" Except Beerus and Whis make it clear to the Dragon Team that they're not always gonna help out when things go bad, so that's bullshit. Just what do these delusional apologists think will happen when a bad guy attacks Earth and Goku, Vegeeta, Beerus, and Whis aren't there, and Bulma can't reach them?

    Gohan does go back to fighting and training in the Jiren and Moro arcs, but he does nothing of actual relevance, beating no one important. By the Superhero movie/arc, Gohan's back to slacking and getting weaker like a dumbass. Trash writing. He's so engrossed in his worthless insect studies that he doesn't even pick up his daughter from school (so much for wanting to spend time with his family, right?). Of course, he gets back into gears when his daughter gets kidnapped, and even gets a new recolor transformation called Gohan Blanco at the end of the movie. Piccolo scolds Gohan for slacking off from his training, and it seems like Gohan has finally learned his lesson. Right? Right? Frankly, it doesn't matter at this point. The original manga ended in 1995. 27 years later, it's too late to try making Gohan "cool" again. Not like he ever was cool, though; he was always a terrible character.

 

Why Goku is an objectively horrible character.

    Let's not beat around the bush. Goku is a horrible fucking character. Apparently he's some icon for training hard and self-improvement, but he represents neither of those things. He's just another Gary Stu, or if you fuss over the definition of being a Stu, he's just a cheaply written character by an untalented, hack ass author. A lazy ripoff of Sun Wukong and Superman with some Bruce Lee spliced in. He doesn't truly earn any of his accomplishments or power-ups; he basically gets everything handed to him and the plot just pretends he worked hard for it. His personality is insufferable as well; apparently he's intended to represent innocence and purity, but that's bullshit. He doesn't represent hard work, self-improvement, innocence or purity. He just represents shit writing. Let's dive right into it.

    So, when we're introduced to Gocow, he's a 14 year old boy (later retconned to being 12) with superhuman strength. In-universe, he was that strong because he trained hard with his grandfather, but as all of that supposedly hard training took place before the story even began and we never see it, it's of no real relevance. As soon as we see Goku, he's basically Samson Jr. He can throw giant logs of wood into the air and break them into several pieces by kicking them. He can defeat giant fishes and animals with a single hit. He can lift over cars. He can tank bullets and axe slashes. He can break multiple tiles with a single finger. He can move boulders. You don't feel any of the effort he supposedly put into becoming this strong, because we didn't see him train for it; that makes any training he was said to have done at this point completely hollow in the story. For a story supposedly about becoming stronger, it's particularly an issue for the protagonist to start off strong, because what really is the point of seeing someone who is already strong only become even stronger? If he were weak at the start of the story and only became strong by training over the course of it, and we actually saw him train, then we'd actually be able to feel the effort he was putting in. We'd get a real sense of growth from him. We'd be able to feel his struggle to become strong. When it's all swiped off-screen, or before the story even started? You don't feel jack shit, LOL. It takes no effort to write someone as being strong as soon as the story begins; the real effort comes from actually showing them become strong, because only then does the plot actually focus on it.

    Therefore Goku's not actually meant to be some hard working underdog; he's just meant to be some freakish superhuman prodigy for little boys to self-insert as. There's nothing deep or complex about it; what you see is exactly what you get, because it's completely superficial as the plot fails to flesh it out. Goku even instantly learns how to shoot lazerz just from seeing someone else do it once. That's not hard work; that's just being a freakishly talented prodigy. You don't get any sense of struggle or gain when someone is so talented that they're easily picking up what they're trying to learn; you're not working hard for something when it comes easy for you.  And then there's Goku turning into a giant monkey to become several times stronger just from looking at a full moon. Really just a deus ex machina to free himself and his friends from Pilaf's trap, because there was no indication or foreshadowing to Goku having such a transformation before he actually transformed. It's completely random and out of nowhere; nothing more than a bullshit power-up. Not hard work. Anyway, the Pilaf arc ends and Goku goes over to Roshi's to train. What does his training regimen consist of? Run several miles to deliver milk while wearing weights, plow whole fields with his bare hands while wearing weights, do construction work while wearing weights, dodge a whole swarm of bees while tied to a tree and swim from sharks for 8 months. 

    While it's completely over the top and stupid, it does qualify as a strict, hard training regimen ... in theory. What makes it hollow and insignificant in the story, however, is that 1) It all unfolds in the span of less than 3 chapters 2) Goku winds up stronger than almost everyone on Earth when it's done, even rivaling his own master as soon as his tail grows back. Because we only see less than three chapters of Goku training as the majority of it is off-screened, there isn't much to be felt from it at all. Nothing, really.  No, it's not that we literally needed to see every moment of him training for 8 months. He was doing the same thing every single day, so that would have been pointless; showing what he was doing for one day was enough to tell us what he was doing for 8 months, because he just did the same thing every day. But that only raises the question of why his training regimen had to be so stupidly simple in the first place. Because he needed to build the proper foundation in his body as he was weak? That's nonsense; for one, from the start of the series, we already saw that Goku was much stronger than the average human being. Hell, just before the training actually started, he was able to move a boulder much farther than Roshi, his own master, could. The notion that he wasn't ready to learn any actual techniques is stupid; the kid even learned how to shoot a Kamehameha just from seeing Roshi do it once back in the Pilaf arc. There's certainly no reason for him to need to stick with just the basic "foundational" stuff if he already knows the Kamehameha. That brat was already skilled enough to learn actual techniques.

    But get this. Even if Goku were a total weakling, that still wouldn't justify his training being this basic goofy shit. It's fine for weaklings to start off with basic training focusing on things like strength and endurance to develop a strong enough body for the more advanced stuff (for an example, basic muscle building with weights or cardio workouts by running), but there's no reason for that to be the only thing they do. There are plenty of series that start off with protagonists learning actual techniques to fight, and there's no reason why Goku couldn't have also learned techniques as he was doing the basic stuff to build strength. It's not that he had to learn something advanced; surely there could have been some basic techniques for beginners to learn. Why couldn't he have learned those? Oh, that's right, because Toriyama couldn't think of anything other than this goofy bullshit because he's a hack. It didn't have to be Ki techniques that Goku could have learned here. Why couldn't he have learned fighting styles and techniques to improve his physical, hand-to-hand combat skills? Because again, Toriyama is just a hack; he doesn't know how to flesh out the fighting in his series beyond generic punching, kicking and fireballs. There was never anything deep about the fighting in Dragon Ball; basically everyone fights the same and nothing is done to actually flesh out the techniques or moves they use, which certainly puts the series at a disadvantage compared to the many Shonen that do actually detail and elaborate how characters fight. The fighting in Dragon Ball is as brain-dead and shallow as can be, because again ... Toriyama is a lazy, talentless hack.

    The fact is, this is just a half-assed, worthless training arc. It can't be taken seriously at all because it's so fucking stupid and simple, which negates any sense of hard work one can feel from it. There's no depth to the training at all, and really, Goku doesn't even really have much of a hard time doing it. The panels may show him sweating and breathing hard, but there's no emphasis put on him actually struggling to do what's asked of him. Everything is shown to be within his capability, and he was able to do all of it. At no point do we really see him fail save for one short scene of him getting stung by bees, so you don't get a real sense of him overcoming a hurdle to do something he couldn't before. And that's just what happens when you write such a lazy training arc. A well-thought out training arc would detail his struggle to learn something such as a technique; have him first fail at it, show him practice to gradually get better at it and finally have him master it in the end. A few pages of Goku sweating isn't detailing anything; that's entirely surface level, so no hard work can actually be felt from it. There are many series, Shonen even, that properly handle training arcs. This isn't one of them.     

    With all of this said, there was no reason why 8 months of training had to span just 3 measly chapters. If he was training for 8 whole months, then we should have gotten to see several chapters of him training; that way, we'd actually feel for ourselves how much training he was said to put in, and thus it wouldn't be a hollow statement. Just three chapters isn't enough to truly convey that someone has trained a lot; only several chapters of training throughout the series could do that.  Seeing him do the same shit every day would have been boring, yes, but that just means Goku's training regimen should have been different; this isn't rocket science. If it's an issue to show Goku doing the same thing over and over again ... then for fuck's sake, have him do other things! Make his regimen more creative to keep readers invested. Focus on him learning one thing for a few chapters, and once that's done, move onto the next thing. All of the chapters spent on him learning stuff would add up, and if it adds up to a lot, then it could be said he actually trained hard. Of course, the arc itself shouldn't literally be nothing but training; other things will have to occur in the plot to keep the readers invested as well. The training portions would be part of a bigger storyline, which is what the meat of the story arc would be about. There are many storylines that Toriyama could have tied to Goku's training under Roshi. A tournament arc, however, was not an ideal one. 

    There's no sense in having Goku participate in a whole tournament so soon after becoming Roshi's disciple, because then no sense of him actually being prepared for it can be felt. The fact is, Toriyama just rushed into a tournament arc in a desperate attempt to boost the series' popularity; it had been unpopular up to this point, and a contest was a convenient way to bring up its ratings. But if Goku had to be put in a tournament so soon, it should have been one on a smaller scale to accommodate for him just recently becoming Roshi's disciple. Having him participate in literally the biggest martial arts tournament in the entire world after just 3 chapters of training ... in just the second story arc? Nonsense. We're so early in the story and Goku is already competing with the top dogs in the martial arts world. Making matters worse, Goku is head-and-shoulders beyond most of his competition, easily plowing through the preliminaries and advancing into the finals. And worst of all, after his tail conveniently grows back during his match with Giran, he literally becomes on par with his own master. That's right, in less than three chapters, Goku became stronger than almost everyone on Earth. And just a few chapters later, he reaches his master's level. We're only in the goddamn second arc.

    It's terrible in an in-universe sense as well, because it literally just took 8 months for Goku to become this strong. In just a few chapters and 8 months in-universe, Goku surpassed almost everyone on Earth and even rivaled his own master Roshi, an old martial artist with many more years of experience and training under his belt. And Goku's still a goddamn child; he's even retconned to be just 12 years old in this arc. Hell no, he's not some hard-working underdog. In an out-of-universe sense, he's just a cheaply written insert for little boys who gets everything handed to him as he's making these ridiculous gains in just a few chapters; three chapters to surpass almost everyone on Earth, and a little more to reach his master's level. We're so early in the story and Goku is already so ridiculously strong. And in an in-universe sense, he's just a freakish prodigy, because he literally rivaled his own master after just 8 months of training. A few pages of him sweating and breathing hard before somehow justifies gains this ridiculous? No, they don't. There's not even any reason why the training Goku did should have boosted him anywhere close to this much; that was totally arbitrary. For an example, we see that Krillin can have a whole ass skirmish with Roshi in just one instant, and we know Goku is much faster (and stronger) than Krillin. He'd be even faster (and stronger) after his tail grew back, too. None of this bullshit makes any sense; there's no reason for Goku to have gotten this much stronger and faster after just 8 months. It's just flashy shit devoid of any substance; he can't be taken seriously as a hard worker when the writing is this absurd. 

    If you're literally rivaling experienced old masters by just training for 8 months as a 12 year old boy, then you're not some hard working underdog. You're nothing but a freakish prodigy; your strength doesn't actually come from working hard, but from your cheap ass genetics and raw talent. It's even worse in the story itself when less than three chapters were shown of him training to get this strong. And when you literally got a free boost from your tail growing back as soon as you were about to be defeated by your opponent? It's even more bullshit. Please, tell me how exactly Goku "worked hard to get stronger" when the precise thing that put him on Roshi's level ... was his fucking tail growing back as soon as he was about to lose a match? That's right, he didn't. We're literally only 40 chapters in this 519 chapter story, and Goku is already on his master's level, which is just silly. The fact Goku has so much plot armor doesn't help matters, either. He should have been eliminated even before then; he blatantly cheated when he used his cloud to avoid getting rung out by Giran, but he stays in the tournament just cause he's the main character. And when he was about to lose to Roshi by falling to his lullaby, Bulma was conveniently around to wake him up. And when he was about to fall to the Thunder Shock Surprise, he was able to break free because he conveniently saw the full moon again and turned into a giant monkey. This writing sucks donkey dick.

    Anyway, he narrowly loses to Roshi and leaves to go look for his grandfather's Dragon Ball; this brings us to the Red Ribbon arc. It's mostly just an endless Goku fest with him beating almost everyone he comes across. One-off fodder after one-off fodder. The Muscle Tower chapters, for an example, are just a half-assed parody of Bruce Lee's Game of Death where Goku just beats more one-off trash. He defeats the Terminator, a ninja and a giant fat pink Teletubby, all without much difficulty; only the Terminator and Teletubby can stand up to his strength, but the former quickly (and conveniently) runs out of battery before Goku can even get serious and the latter quickly falls to an ice trap. Neither inflict any lasting damage on Goku and he moves along in the tower without a hitch. He's only in real trouble when he gets shot by General White's Hyper gun, and that's only because White used a hostage to lower Goku's guard; when they actually fought, Goku just kicked his ass like he did everyone else. Then the robot Goku conveniently befriended right before he got shot saves him from being shot to death.

    Goku then fights a robot and an octopus, defeating both of them without any real difficulty. The fights are short and Goku quickly recovers from them, receiving no lasting damage or loss of stamina. He then fights Blue and kicks his ass. It's noted by Krillin that Goku's gotten significantly stronger from when he saw him fight Roshi at the Budokai, which is pretty stupid considering we barely saw Goku do anything rigorous since then, if at all. Briefly struggling against a Terminator, a teletubby and an octopus isn't enough to explain such a big boost, especially when he was never seriously hurt by any of them, and only fighting the teletubby was said to have tired him (and still didn't stop him from recovering his strength against White). He's just making these gains because the plot called for him to. Anyway, he ends up losing the advantage to Blue after falling to his paralysis technique ... but is conveniently saved by a mouse walking past Blue, who shrieks at the sight of mice. Goku then kicks Blue's ass and leaves the cave. Blue follows him to Roshi's house and telepathically binds him with ropes before leaving him with a bomb. Lunch conveniently flies back after Blue leaves and she cuts Goku free, so he can throw the bomb into the sky. Goku then pursues Blue, only to fall to his paralysis yet again like a dumbass. Right when Blue is about to kill Goku, though, he gets saved by Arale from Dr. Slump, who is a legitimate Mary Sue in every sense of the term. Goku conveniently befriended her just a few moments ago.

    Again, this writing sucks dick. Whenever Goku finds himself in trouble, something is conveniently there to bail him out because his plot armor is too strong. Case in point, when Tao easily kicks his ass and defeats him? By all rights, he should have been killed by Tao's beam ... but he conveniently had a Dragon Ball underneath his shirt, which somehow softened the impact enough for Goku to survive. Dragon Balls can suddenly block Ki blasts now. It's bullshit, but at the very least, now Goku has utterly lost a fight for the very first time in the story. Surely he'll have to train hard for the rematch, right? Except no, because less than three chapters later, Goku utterly surpasses Tao. He flatout stomps him when they fight, taking no real damage from any of his hits, not even when he lets himself get hit by a flurry of them. It's terrible from an in-universe perspective, too, because it only took three days of him training with Karin to do it. That's also how long it took Goku to surpass Karin. Just three days. Whereas it's said to have taken Roshi three whole years. This is also the point where Goku is first said to have surpassed Roshi. Goku's a hard worker when he's literally surpassing old masters who are far more experienced than him in just three days? No, he fucking isn't. He's nothing but a freakish prodigy.

    Anyway, so Goku goes to the Red Ribbon army's headquarters and single-handedly destroys it all by himself without any difficulty, something Roshi could not have done. He then goes to Baba's palace; there, he easily defeats a mummy and a devil. It's clarified even further that he's utterly surpassed Roshi, who is astonished by how much Goku has improved; he can't even keep up with Goku's speed. Then, Goku fights his dead adoptive grandfather and beats him without much difficulty, either; he only finds himself in danger when Gohan grabs his tail, but even after it's torn off, Goku can still keep fighting and Gohan forfeits. Then, Goku easily defeats Pilaf's men again. Then, he trains for the next Tenkaichi Budokai for three years but it's all left off-screen, so we feel none of the effort he supposedly put in to get stronger during this time. At this point, he's head-and-shoulders above everyone participating in the tournament save for Tenshinhan, who still can't quite match him. Goku has him beaten in a straight fight, so Tenshinhan resorts to tricks like flashing lights, sprouting arms from his back and even blowing up the ring, but all of them fail and Goku knocks him the fuck out. In the end, Goku only loses the match by a technicality; a car popped out of nowhere to hit him.

    Yawn, so anyway, the Piccolo Daimao arc starts and Goku fights Tambourine. Because he's tired from fighting Tenshinhan, he's easily defeated, but when he fights Tambourine again after replenishing his strength by eating, he easily defeats him. Goku then fights Piccolo Daimao and is utterly defeated. It's a blatant rehash of when he was defeated by Tao, except this time, there's absolutely no reason given as to how Goku survived getting blasted. Daimao even confirmed Goku was dead by feeling that his heart stopped ... but then Goku suddenly starts breathing right after he leaves just because of his cheap ass plot armor. Just seven chapters later, Goku has now reached Daimao's level because he drank water. This water has killed everyone else who has tried to drink it, but Goku survives it only because he's lucky enough to be an alien who can become several times stronger by becoming a monkey. That's the reason he's able to beat Daimao after being crippled, too. Now he's basically become the strongest person on Earth (before Blackface and his boyfriend "God" are retconned into the story), and he's only 16 years old. Hard working underdog, my ass. He's just blessed to have his alien genetics and plot armor that bails him out of every near death situation. This character is written just like ass. He is more or less a Gary Stu. Then, after he defeats Daimao, he meets Blackface, who easily stomps him and roasts him for being weak and stupid. This serves to humble Goku after he got cocky over beating Daimao, but just two chapters later, we jump three years and Goku has surpassed him. It's a laughably short amount of time in-universe, and because it was all swept off-screen, there's nothing to be felt from it. Goku then beats Daimao 2.0 and becomes the strongest person on Earth for sure, surpassing even God. And he's only 19. 

    LMAO, you're not a fucking hard working underdog when you're literally surpassing God as a teenager! "B-but if Goku didn't train at all, then he wouldn't have gotten strong even with his genetics!" Too bad he only had to train a few years of his life to get this strong, which outweighs any supposed "effort" he put in. As does the fact almost all his training is off-screen. If you become the strongest person on Earth at just 19 years old, surpassing masters who have trained for far longer and have plenty more fighting experience than you do, then you're just a freakish prodigy because you became that strong with only a little amount of training; no matter how hard your training supposedly was, if it was only a few years, then it wasn't a lot of time. And if it didn't take you a lot of time to become the strongest person on Earth, then you didn't actually work hard for it. No, you're just a freakish prodigy who had it easy.  Real hard work only takes several years. "B-but prodigies can work hard, too"? Surely there's a limit to how prodigious you can be to truly be considered a hard worker. And becoming the strongest person on Earth as a teen? Nope, you're just a freak. Fuck outta here.

    This brings to mind the manga History's Strongest Disciple, Kenichi. Don't get me wrong, Kenichi Shirahama is a pretty cheaply written protagonist himself, lucking out by befriending a big titty waifu who just happened to live with a bunch of superhuman martial art masters. Because he just happened to come across the strongest people on Earth at the start of the story, he was able to become really strong; we don't even really see much of his training after a certain point and he makes bullshit gains because the plot calls for it. But Kenichi is 583 chapters long, even longer than Dragon Ball, and despite that, he never becomes the strongest person on Earth. The story proper only focuses on him becoming the strongest of the disciples, who are just teenagers at or around his age. Never in this story do you actually see these kids go toe to toe with the grown up adult masters who have several more years of experience than they do (at the very most, they're only able to beat the weaker masters by working together. They never beat a single master one-on-one); they stay in their own age brackets, which makes it a more grounded and realistic series than Dragon Ball. Only in the epilogue set many years later is Kenichi shown to be a master in his adulthood, and no, just because he married his big titty waifu doesn't suggest he actually beat the Elder (there are a lot of other factors that need to be considered). Of course, none of this is to say that Goku shouldn't become the strongest person on  Earth or surpass his master, but it's something that should have only come at the very end of the story. There's no real sense in Goku just hopping from master to master, quickly surpassing all of them and becoming the strongest person on Earth as a teenager; it would have been better if he had just one master, who'd he surpass and at the end of the manga, he'd become the strongest person on Earth as a grown man. That way, Goku's growth would actually feel significant and realistic. Make the master more of a mythical beast like the Elder from Kenichi if need be; whatever the case, it's something that should have come at the climax of the story after many years and chapters of training. But it didn't because Goku's a shitty Gary Stu and Toriyama is a hack.

    Anyway, we enter DBZ territory. Now it turns out Goku is the weakest of his alien race; he was born a low level Saiyan and was sent to Earth as a baby to conquer it. His big brother easily flexes on him, and it turns out his boyfriends in space are far stronger than he is. The story tries to make Goku out to be the underdog of his race who has to train hard to surpass the elites, but ... we're more than 200 chapters into the story at this point. Goku has been made out to be a freakish prodigy all this time, and all of a sudden, the story wants to paint him as the weak underdog. It falls completely flat, because it's a forced, contrived change in narrative this late in the game. 100% pretentious. And even disregarding the plot as it has been written up to this point, what follows is still terrible. In just 158 days (about 5 months), Goku goes from being his brother's stool to surpassing Vegeeta, elite of the elites, bringing his power level from under 1,000 to maxing out as 32k (his base is 8k. With 4x Kaioken, he's at 32k). "B-but that's only with Kaioken!" That doesn't make it any better; Kaioken is literally a cheat code that Goku uses to multiply his power far beyond what it is normally, which eventually creates a strong sense of power creep when he multiplies it two, three, four, ten, twenty, etc times. The fact you have such a ridiculous ace in the hole up your sleeve negates any sense of hard work you put in to become that strong, and for the record, going from under 1,000 to 8,000 in just six months is pretty damn ridiculous, too. And most of his training is off-screen yet again, so you don't feel any of his struggle. But you gotta love how Goku is the only person who can master the Kaioken, succeeding where even gods like Kaio (the creator of the technique) and Enma failed just because he's the main character. Trash writing.

    Freeza arc? Goku's base goes from 8k to 90k (a 2x Kaioken brings him to 180k, so that means his base is 90k) in literally just 5 days, and that's just looking at his base power level. Counting his Kaioken maxes, he went from 32k to 900k in 5 days. Before, he could barely handle a 4x Kaioken, and now it's implied he can handle a 10x Kaioken. It took him 40 days to fully adapt to 10x Earth's gravity, too, and now he masters 100x in just five days. Oh, and now he randomly gets stronger from recovering from near death experiences just because he's a Saiyan; the series suddenly pretends he could do this all along, and by eating a whole bag of magic beans to speed up the recovery process, he can exploit this purely genetic cheat code like no tomorrow over the course of these 5 days. And the training's mostly off-screen again. Anyway, he exploits the genetic cheat code further when he arrives on the planet of slugs. By recovering from a single ass beating, he goes from 90k at base to the multimillions; officially, according to guidebooks, he was at 3 million. Oh, and he can now do a 20x Kaioken, so his max has gone from 900k to 60 million. Then, just by getting really angry, he goes from 60 million to 150 million. Kaioken was a ridiculous cheat code to begin with, but Super Saiyan blows it out the water in that regard as it's officially a 50x boost.

    How does Goku have access to such a ridiculous transformation? Just because he's lucky enough to be a Saiyan. It even heals him from the damage he sustained when he was fighting Freeza before; a 20x boost fucked up his body, but now he can handle a 50x boost and fight even better than he could before. In just a single year, Goku's power level went from under 1,000 to 150 million. Ask yourself how many times more powerful is that. Now, ask yourself, did that actually come down to hard work or just nonsensical plot BS? Damn fucking straight it was just plot bullshit. Goku's power doesn't truly come from him working hard, but from the fact he's a Saiyan and the main character. His gains as an adult are absolutely BULLSHIT, even worse than they were when he was a child. Toriyama just sucks ass at writing. Kaioken is a bullshit plot device. Zenkai is a bullshit plot device. Super Saiyan is a bullshit plot device. It's all just nonsensical, lazy writing. At this point, there's really no reason to continue. Goku just continues to make more and more bullshit gains through off-screen training and other asspulls. 

    Granted, his strength gains in the Android/Cell arc aren't too ridiculous, all things considered; he doesn't seem drastically stronger after coming back from Yardrat than he was on Namek, at least not when you consider the crazy boosts we saw him get in the Saiyan and Freeza arcs. Not even after training on Earth for three years in prep for the androids does he seem drastically stronger, either. I can also buy Goku making bigger gains than Vegeeta and Trunks in the Time Chamber as him just being a smarter fighter. Or not. LOL, removing the strain from Super Saiyan by staying in the form for long periods of time should have been common sense; the only reason why Goku thought of it before anyone else did just screams out plot. But his gains definitely go right back into being utterly absurd in the Boo arc, when Goku randomly pulls Super Saiyan 3 straight out of his anus. "Remember when I said I was no stronger than Vegeeta? Yeah, I lied; turns out I had a new transformation all this time and I'm just now bringing this up!" Depending on who you ask, it turns out as a Super Saiyan 3, Goku's even stronger than Super Saiyan 3 Gotenks, Super Boo and Mystic Gohan, although I'm not getting into that nightmarish debate. 

    This about sums up all of Goku's bullshit gains in the original manga. Let's get into GT. Goku is significantly stronger than he was in the Boo arc at the start of this show; it's been 15 years in-universe, so it makes sense from an in-universe perspective of course (granted, all of that training was off-screen so you feel no sense of effort from it), but he just continues to make more bullshit gains. His tail randomly grows back even though it was established in the manga that Kami removed it permanently, and he uses it to transform into a pee colored giant monkey and a pink man-monkey. Again relying on his cheap genetics to get stronger. Then, the writers said fuck it altogether at the end of the show, turning Goku into some invincible OP god that can't be damaged at all for literally no given reason. GT ends. Then, about twenty years after the original manga ended, the franchise is revived because Toriyama wants more money. Now it suddenly turns out there's all these other gods who are far above Goku, and no matter how much he trains, he will always be weaker than them. Gods weren't anywhere near this special in the original manga, but now they're suddenly OP. Twenty years after the original manga ended, this is yet another completely forced change in narrative; it's way too late to make gods OP at this point. 

    It's completely pretentious, and the only reason the franchise was even revived was for money in the first place. It's more of a soulless cash cow than ever before now, so everything about it is hollow. You want to make someone a hard worker? You do it right from the start of the series, not twenty years after it originally ended when you just want more money. Doesn't help that Goku still continues to make bullshit gains, getting stronger through a cheap ass ritual, randomly bringing back Kaioken to combine it with Super Saiyan Blue just because the form is strain-free (even though by that logic he should have been able to combine it with Super Saiyan after mastering the transformation in the Cell arc. And we see Goku use Kaioken when he's heavily damaged and strained in base) and supposedly has a "calm heart" (even though that's directly contradicted by him needing to turn back into base to make the Genkidama as maliciousness still enters his heart when he's a Super Saiyan Blue) and he's randomly the only mortal who can master Ultra Instinct for no reason other than plot. The latter also gets retconned later because the writers don't know what the fuck they're doing.

    But anyway, I've pretty much just been discussing Goku's strength and abilities up to this point. Now let's get into why his personality is awful. The character is intended to represent purity and innocence; when he's first introduced, he's a country hick who was raised outside of civilization, so he has no understanding of social norms. This is really just used for unfunny gags, though, like him feeling up people's genitals to tell what their biological gender is, or stripping an underage girl in her sleep because he doesn't know what a vagina is. Really, the entire concept that anyone could be pure-hearted with no evil is bullshit; everyone has some impurity inside of them. And the fact Goku could be considered "pure" as an adult is bullshit. We see him literally sparing genocidal maniacs like Piccolo, Vegeeta and Gero just because he wants to fight them. 

    What does he do after Piccolo tries to kill him, his friends and an entire stadium of people multiple times? Give him a Senzu because he wants a rematch (and not actually because he wanted to save Kami, who wasn't in any mortal danger when Piccolo was only knocked out). What does he do when Vegeeta, the one responsible for several of Goku's friends being killed by his subordinate Nappa, is about to be killed by Krillin? Vegeeta, the one who tried to personally kill him and everyone else on Earth, including his own son? Convince Krillin to spare him because he wants a rematch. What does he do when he has a clear chance of killing Freeza as a Super Saiyan? Let him power up to 100% just because he wants to fight him, even though the planet is literally minutes away from blowing up. Even after kicking Freeza's ass, he spares him twice even though it's blatantly obvious that the evil fucker would never repent. And he still fails to kill Freeza in the end, which leads to Freeza attacking Earth with his daddy.

    His stupidity only worsens after his fight with Freeza. It seems at first he learned his lesson from sparing Freeza by saying he should have killed him on Namek ... but this is immediately followed by him sparing Gero just because he wants to fight the androids. "He hasn't done anything bad yet, so there's no reason to go after him!" That's bullshit because he literally served the Red Ribbon army, and he's been researching how to get his revenge on Goku for all these years. It's not even like Goku needed to kill him, just blow up his laboratory and have Gero imprisoned. There's absolutely no reason to leave a genocidal maniac to his resources when it's a given that they're gonna create androids and cyborgs that will destroy everything; Goku fanboys are fucking stupid for defending this. Goku deliberately allowed shit to go bad just because he wanted to fight, and as a result, all of the resulting tension in the story is entirely artificial and can't be taken seriously. That's also why Goku's decision to stay dead after Cell is defeated is dumb; it's to increase Earth's chances of peace because he attracts evil when he's alive? Stupid as hell. If he actually stopped evil before shit hits the fan instead of being a dumb fuck who lets things go bad by sparing villains, then he wouldn't need to stay dead. There's no excusing him abandoning his sons here when he's the only one at fault for being a dumb fuck.

    Come Boo arc, and Goku is back to his same old stupid shit when he spares Boo as a Super Saiyan 3; he could have easily killed him, but he decides he wants two dumb little boys to do it instead. "It wasn't his responsibility because he was dead" That's straight cap, because it was largely his own fault that Boo even came out in the first place. He stupidly chose to hold back Super Saiyan 3 against Vegeeta even after seeing that they were equal as Super Saiyan 2, which led to Boo being released from the damage he ended up taking. He created this mess, so he should be the one who takes care of it, not two dumb little kids who had nothing to do with it. But instead he chooses to let everyone on Earth get slaughtered just because he wants literal children to clean up his own shit ... which just leads to Boo killing everyone and destroying the planet; in the end, it comes down to Goku to beat Boo, completely destroying the entire point of him relying on others to do it.

    There is no reason to defend any of this nonsense; there is zero substance or meaning behind it. The author just wrote this bullshit because he didn't know how to write a story that isn't contrived, one that doesn't depend on the characters making stupid decisions. That's why he didn't just have Goten and Trunks use the Time Chamber to quickly master fusion. "But they might have needed it for later" That's bullshit, because them taking just a week in the Time Chamber (half an hour in the outside world; one hour in the outside world equals two weeks in the Time Chamber) to learn fusion wouldn't be using much of their available time in that room at all; they can stay in the Time Chamber for up to two years, which equals two days in the outside world. Toriyama just has characters make stupid decisions because he's too much of a hack to think of anything else and passes it off as profound when it's really just trash writing. And in doing so, he really just makes Goku an utter scumbag. He deliberately endangers the universe time and time again with his stupidity without a care because he's an awful person. Later, he also opts not to fuse with Vegeeta to beat Pure Boo only because he wants to fight him one-on-one, which nearly results in Boo killing all of them. Then, 10 years later at the end of the manga, he abandons his family to live with some random little boy even though he can easily teleport across the planet. Pedo vibes. 

    More of the same old bull happens in DBS; Goku sparing opponents because he wants to fight them again which leads or almost leads to everyone getting screwed over (Goku spares Freeza of all people so he can fight him again ... which leads to him getting pwnt by a ray gun and Freeza blowing up Earth, forfeits against Hit because he wanted to fight him in an all-out death match which almost leads to Earth being moved to another universe, gives Moro a Senzu and spares him because he stupidly thinks he'll have a change of heart so they can have a rematch which leads to Moro almost destroying the whole galaxy, lets Freeza live again after the Tournament of Power even though Freeza is still planning to kill him and all his friends just because he wants to fight him again which leads to Freeza kicking his ass with a new recolor transformation, etc) or just being a total idiot for no reason at all (forgetting to bring the sealing paper for the Mafuba, which leads to Trunks's entire timeline being erased when they can't beat Zamas). It's just more plot induced stupidity for the sake of artificial tension. Goku also mistakes obvious frauds for being strong, forgets basic lessons that his masters taught him long ago and doesn't even remember what meditation is. He also doesn't know what a kiss is because dumb gag. 

But of course, I can't leave out how Goku asking for the Tournament of Power gave the multiverse a chance to be saved as Zeno would have erased a bunch of universes without Goku. "See? Goku's fight boner saved everyone!" Yeah, no, one instance of him indirectly helping people with his fight boner doesn't rectify all the times he screwed or almost screwed everyone over, especially not after more than 20 years since the manga ended. None of this bullshit Toriyama pulls out of his ass matters anymore, because it's all to milk a cash cow and nothing else. There's no way around it; Goku isn't any inspirational or respectable person. He's just another selfish bastard who does whatever the fuck he wants without caring about anyone else; just wanting to please himself wouldn't be so bad, but once other people are getting endangered and getting killed? It's inexcusable. He's just an awful person all around, and that's why it's bullshit when the series pretends he's pure hearted. Really, he doesn't represent innocence, purity, hard work or self improvement. He just represents shit writing. Fuck this character.