“Victory” is a term that was once reserved for warfare only, specifically referring to martial combat. The definition has expanded to encompass any form of conflict. There is a victor and there is a loser. The concept of victory has existed in the human mind long before the written word was even etched into existence and has more than a few agents within different belief systems. However, internal victories are often some of the hardest to win. Buddha emphasized that, “it is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles. Then the victory is yours. It cannot be taken from you, not by angels or by demons, heaven or hell.” This a sentiment that manages to find its way into many different anime characters.
Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z are shows that feature battle at their core. As a battle shōnen — and the granddaddy of battle shōnen at that —, there are winners and losers as a natural consequence of conflict; victory is essential to make the genre work. This is a major part of the show, and a good rival can really underscore the importance of conflict. While Goku has had a few rivals, Vegeta is the one who has managed to leave the biggest mark on the franchise as a rival. Many of those rivals also claimed pretty big victories over Goku — and so has Vegeta, but he would never claim anything as a true victory, especially their first conflict.
The Best Dragon Ball Z Movies Don’t Even Star Goku
Goku is frequently front and center in Dragon Ball Z’s movies, yet the films where he’s absent are actually the series’ best cinematic efforts.Vegeta And Goku’s Saiyan Saga Conflict Set The Stage For The Series
Vegeta and Goku are the cloth from which modern shōnen rivalries are cut, and it all started with what is considered to be one of the best fights in the entire series. When Goku and Vegeta first meet, Goku has just returned to Earth from the dead to face the Saiyan threat. Goku arrives right after Piccolo’s death at the hands of Nappa, breaking his spine in retaliation, which makes him less than useful to Vegeta. It also doesn’t help that his actions have made it so that the Dragon Balls are unusable on Earth. Vegeta quickly kills him as a result, and Goku sends Gohan and Krillin away to set the stage for the central conflict of the arc. Goku comes face to face with the man who, in another life, would have been the monarch he lived beneath and, here, they are able to fight as equals.
Vegeta comes into this fight cocky. He is completely convinced that his victory is inevitable, that Goku is a lower class of warrior that he should be able to crush. Sadly, it doesn’t really end up working out that way, with Goku using the Kaioken to keep pace and putting Vegeta on the back-foot. He ends up using a technique to let him transform into a Great Ape, making him much, much more difficult to deal with. This is also a moment for Goku where he realizes that he was the one who killed his grandpa, not some unnamed monster. This really is the moment where Vegeta, in essence, won the fight. He crushes every bone in Goku’s body with his hand and is about to kill him once and for all if not for Yajirobe’s intervention in cutting off his tail.
Goku vs Vegeta – Dragon Ball Z Kai (Clip)
The only reason that the heroes eke out a victory is because, unlike most previous conflicts, multiple members of the team end up having to jump in. This level of getting jumped does not happen a lot in Dragon Ball, as they’re really about one-on-one fights, but Vegeta was far too powerful for that. Vegeta is really defeated by Gohan and Yajirobe, ultimately, and considered the defeat humiliating. These moments would live in Vegeta’s mind rent-free for the rest of Dragon Ball Z, and he considered his humiliation to be at the hands of Goku, specifically — which doesn’t make much sense on the surface. Vegeta and Nappa did a ton of damage to the Z Fighters, broke Goku’s body so much that he could barely move, and Vegeta was even able to live to try another method for getting what he wanted with very little to stand in his way. A normal villain would take the small L and go on to further their agenda, but not Vegeta. This loss would be devastating to his ego going forward and become a major point in his character arc. Taking a deeper look into the way Vegeta looks at winning can give the audience a good idea as to why he would feel this way.
Does Goku Die On Planet Namek In Dragon Ball Z?
Goku only died twice throughout Dragon Ball Z, but some fans are convinced that he was also killed and revived during the end of the Frieza Saga.Vegeta Would Never Claim It As A Victory, Because It Wasn’t His
The thing about victory is that there is also the concept of a pyrrhic victory. This is a victory in which winning inflicts an incredible amount of damage upon the victor to the point where it is barely a win at all. There are a lot of victories like this in the Dragon Ball franchise and this is a key element in understanding Vegeta’s opinions on what victory should actually look like. The Saiyan race made a tidy business out of annihilating planets and selling them to the highest bidder, and seemingly had to expend very little effort in doing it despite wiping out entire advanced civilizations. The Saiyans also relied on a pretty intense class and caste system, with power levels at birth being indicative of social standing. For a prince like Vegeta, his natural ability would be his most valuable asset. This is probably one of the reasons why Frieza even kept him alive in the first place.
Vegeta’s opinion on Goku would be that he should be easily crushed, that he was nothing more than a paper tiger before a storm. For Goku to even hold his own against Vegeta would be a direct attack on his self-image — not just physically but mentally as well. The whole fight is a very real unraveling of everything Vegeta knows from his own culture and upbringing. Goku’s existence and capacity to stay in the fight, even with help, would be a blow to how Vegeta understands the way the universe itself works. Being almost killed in such a humiliating way would only put icing on that ego death cake. Losing his tail, something that tied him to his culture and planet, would also be a bit of a shock — which is immediately shown as Vegeta reduces to his base form. Victory wasn’t the only thing taken from him; a large chunk of his power was also taken from him.
All Of Vegeta’s Forms In Dragon Ball, Ranked By Power Level
Despite the fact that Vegeta fully incapacitated Goku and would have killed him if not for his friends, Vegeta still lost — not just physically, but mentally. He was defeated because he could not claim a complete victory. In Vegeta’s mind, he suffered more loss than the opposing side. Goku would come to walk again, but Vegeta wasn’t going to get his tail back. Goku wasn’t the one who really laid the finishing blow on Vegeta, but his mere existence as a lower-class Saiyan who spared his life in the long run was the greatest insult of all. Goku was battered and broken, and he made the decision to let Vegeta live, something that ate at the prince for ages. A huge chunk of Vegeta’s arc was about acknowledging Goku as worthy, as being one of the best in the Buu Saga. This major defeat would be the catalyst for that, and Vegeta’s loss here would be one of the most important events of his life. Claiming it as a victory would undercut that.
