If Dragon Ball Super and all its related media from the greater Dragon Ball revival of the 2010s had a subtitle, “The Goku and Vegeta Show” would be an appropriate choice. The pure-hearted, battle-hungry Son Goku has been the lead of Dragon Ball since its creation in 1984, and his rivalry with Vegeta has been a prominent feature since his arrival. Original manga creator Akira Toriyama kept their relationship in balance with the other prominent members of his very large cast for a time, but by the end of the manga run and across anime adaptations, the Saiyan twosome came to dominate the action and haven’t let it go since. The stakes they fight for have escalated from planets and galaxies in the original Dragon Ball to entire universes in Super – even as their sheer power and the abilities of some of their allies take away any sense of tension or danger.
It seems that even Toriyama and his partners at Toei Animation are ready to give something else a try. Following the success of Dragon Ball Super: Broly, the newest film for the franchise, Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero, will turn away from “universe-scale battles” and instead “[focus] on a threat to Earth” according to producer Akio Iyoku. In the same interview, Iyoku confirmed that the main characters of Super Hero would not be Goku and Vegeta, but Goku’s son Gohan and his mentor Piccolo.
That Gohan would carry a Dragon Ball film may come as a surprise to casual viewers and even some longtime fans; Gohan has been a supporting character at best in Super, and in Toei’s Dragon Ball GT series produced after the original manga’s end. He didn’t even appear in Broly. But this isn’t the first time Akira Toriyama has positioned Gohan for such a role. At one time, he was even prepared to put him there permanently.
Son Gohan first appeared in the Dragon Ball manga not long after Goku was aged up to adulthood. The prior storyline to Gohan’s arrival had ended on such a note of finality – besides Goku growing up, he stopped a then-evil Piccolo from destroying the world, won the World Martial Arts Tournament after two failed tries, and got married – that Toriyama felt it necessary to include a note that the story would go on. For a variety of reasons, Toei Animation chose the storyline beginning with Gohan’s appearance as a chance to relaunch their anime adaptation with the name Dragon Ball Z. The timing was coincidental. However, at one point, they considered a full title of Dragon Ball: Gohan’s Big Adventure.
I’m not sure why Toei considered Gohan’s Great Adventure as a subtitle, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it was their guess at which way the wind was blowing after his introduction. Son Gohan is established from the beginning as a polite, shy, and sheltered boy whose mother has encouraged him to pursue education. But unknown even to Gohan himself, he explodes with power when angry or threatened, so much so that his strength rivals that of his father. And after Goku gives his life in battle, Gohan is taken by Piccolo to be trained as a warrior against the new approaching threat: the Saiyan prince Vegeta. With all of that taking place at the very beginning of the Saiyan saga, anyone could be forgiven for thinking that Gohan was about to take over the series.
Things didn’t work out that way, at least not at that point. Gohan does train with Piccolo for a year, gaining skill and control over his power and greater confidence in himself (and offering Piccolo a way to redemption). He is always engaged at the point of action and receives more screen time and character development than many an established member of the cast, including his father at times. The potential within Saiyan-human hybrids remains a tantalizing element of his character throughout, that power ending up partially awakened at one point and becoming pivotal (in roundabout fashion) to Vegeta’s defeat at another. But Goku was still the star at this stage. He brings his body into the afterlife for training until he can be wished back with the dragon balls and eventually fulfills the prophecy of the legendary Super Saiyan, while the generation of fighters he grew up with maintained a (diminished) presence.
By the Cell saga, Dragon Ball functioned much more like an ensemble than a story centered on a single lead character. Though Goku nominally still held that title, he spent much of the story absent or incapacitated, and a small group took turns leading the fight against the genetically engineered monster Cell. Gohan spends much of the arc on the sidelines with his father; whether this was an accident of Toriyama’s “plan as you go” writing style or a deliberate choice, I don’t know. But Goku eventually trains his son to achieve the level of Super Saiyan and, in the final battle with Cell, reveals his true plan for victory: set Gohan against Cell, let him get angry, and have his full potential finally unleashed. It’s a plan he doesn’t let anyone in on, not even Gohan, and it’s made without reckoning that Gohan prefers his scholarly pursuits and doesn’t relish combat for its own sake the way his father does.
It works too well; Gohan’s rage propels him to a form beyond Super Saiyan (later called Super Saiyan 2), but the form’s heightening of anger and Saiyan bloodlust drives Gohan into a miscalculation that costs Goku his life. When Gohan repents and defeats Cell (my personal favorite climax from a Dragon Ball storyline), Goku sends word from the afterlife that he doesn’t wish to be brought back with the dragon balls; he’s too much of a magnet for malign forces. His third departure in as many storylines was, finally, meant to stick. Toriyama has confirmed in interviews that he “intended to put Gohan into the leading role.” He stuck in notes to that effect in the manga at the time. And while Toei didn’t rebrand again, they did a massive overhaul on Dragon Ball Z’s opening, bumpers, and closing animation to capitalize on the new status quo: a seven-year time skip, with a now-teenaged Gohan leading the cast as a big brother to Son Goten, a high school student, and an alter-ego as the corny superhero Great Saiyaman. Since Toriyama made the story up as he went, Toei had no reason to think he was going to backtrack from his plan to make Gohan the hero, so why not go all in on it?
Watching Dragon Ball Z on Toonami as a kid, I didn’t know any of this (and didn’t have access to Toei’s openings and interstitials either). All I knew was that Gohan was my favorite character and that the series had long positioned him as a possible lead. With age and a few rewatches, it also occurred to me that the supporting cast of Dragon Ball Z, full of Goku’s old friends and rivals, kept getting bigger with fewer opportunities for them to do anything; often, they were just there. Besides promoting Gohan to protagonist, the time skip and Goku’s absence paved the way for a whole new generation of characters. Besides Goten, there was Vegeta’s son Trunks, Gohan’s girlfriend Videl, and his new high school friends. And after so many dramatic high-stakes battles for the fate of the planet, the new dynamic of a well-mannered student acting out lame poses and puns as a superhero was a lot of fun to watch.
It didn’t last long. The anime gave Orange Star High School and Great Saiyaman a little more time in the spotlight, but they eventually followed Toriyama into another World Martial Arts Tournament and a universe-on-the-line battle with the ancient Majin Buu. On-hand for that battle is Son Goku himself, granted a one-day pass among the living. But even at this point, the story still leans into Gohan as the hero. His lack of training since his fight with Cell comes with severe consequences; he’s unable to prevent Buu’s resurrection and nearly loses his life. The idea of a new generation taking over continues through the death of Vegeta and Goku becoming a mentor to Goten and Trunks, seen as the last hope after Gohan’s apparent death (in fact, he is healed and taken to the heavenly realm for training of his own). Goku even states outright that he no longer belongs, and that it’s time for new heroes to save the day.
Dragon Ball had played with multiple groups training to face a threat before, with some combination of their abilities playing a role. Goten and Trunks put up a fight against Buu, and Gohan returns from the heavenly realm with power to surpass him. Buu turns the tables by absorbing Goten and Trunks to fight Gohan. But instead of Gohan finding a way to counter this, or to rescue his brother and friend, the day is saved by Goku and Vegeta coming back to life and defeating Buu – a development that received no set-up until right before it happened, and that was actively argued against throughout the storyline.
All Akira Toriyama has said about his decision not to follow through on Gohan as the hero is that “I felt that compared to Goku, he was ultimately not suited for the part.” When he made that determination isn’t clear. It may be that he considered Goku back in the driver’s seat as soon as his one-day life pass was delivered. But so much of the Buu saga trades on the idea of the next generation, led by Gohan, saving the day, down to almost the last possible moment. Even writing by the seat of his pants, Toriyama never wrote himself into so tight a corner he couldn’t manage a largely satisfying way out – until that point in the Buu saga, the last storyline of the original manga, that ends with Goku taking the reincarnation of Majin Buu off for training and adventures with his family left behind.
As a kid, I don’t recall feeling so disappointed watching the end of the series for the first time except in comparison to previous finales; it wasn’t as exciting. But the more I’ve looked at it, the more disappointing it seems, to the point where everything Dragon Ball that’s come since feels tainted to some degree. So much time was spent on Gohan (and his new generation, once they appeared) that for him to be written out of the story so abruptly and left in the periphery of Dragon Ball ever since seems such a waste. What development Gohan has received has come through reclaiming powers he already had and learning lessons he already learnt. Goten and Trunks have fared no better. Nothing all that new or exciting has come about for Goku or Vegeta as characters since their return to the spotlight; they’ve picked up new transformations, but their characters are stagnant. And that large supporting cast of Goku’s old chums – characters that were largely retired for the Buu saga? They’re around again, still on the sidelines, still just there.
Super Hero may offer some catharsis for Dragon Ball fans left similarly disillusioned by the original story’s ending. I’m afraid I’m still skeptical and cynical (not helped by Super Hero representing a shift from traditional animation to CGI). But after being effortlessly and unceremoniously finished off by Freeza while wearing a jogging suit in Super, Gohan has nowhere to go but up.
