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.
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