work in progress

 

It’s time to get hardcore, because we’re going to talk about the 15 Most Brutal Dragonball and Dragonball Z Fights. See, when I say brutal, I’m talking about graphic violence, but I’m also talking about circumstances, context, and the impact the fight has on the plot. Not just fights that make you go “damn,” and nor am I talking about individual violent parts. Yes, we all cringed when Krillin was shish-kabobbed by Frieza or when Yamcha got a hole through his chest, but those weren’t fights. Those weren’t prolonged exchanges between two fighters who were trying to get in their licks as part of an arc that has provided a satisfying reason for the square-up to happen. THOSE are the ones I’m here to talk about.

Real quick before I get started: I’ve excluded GT, Super, Daima, the movies and the video games for various reasons. Either I’m not experienced enough with those series or I don’t want to count them because they aren’t canon. Maybe in the future I’ll talk about the most brutal fights in those, or perhaps do an update video where I pepper in fights from those into this already existing list. Kind of like how the Bravo 100 Scariest Movie Moments list was usurped by the Shudder 101 Scariest Movie Moments list. Enough with the chat, let’s get to the list, starting with:

15. GOKU VS. ANDROID 19

Oh, man, we are starting off with a heavy one, I could have justifiably put this one higher on the list. Okay—imagine you’re having a heart attack, or if you can’t, remember the sickest you’ve ever been. Now, you’re just starting to feel the effects of your illness when you have to lace up and fight against an automaton who is out to absorb your energy and crush your life out of you.

Goku gives a strong start here, but it’s obvious to the smarter Z fighters and to the audience almost immediately that Goku isn’t fighting the way he usually does. He’s fighting the way he might during the middle of the fight when it’s gotten serious and he’s already taken some injuries. Think about the middle of the Frieza fight, when he was trying to keep up with Frieza at 50% power and just getting dunked on. The difference is 19 hasn’t landed a hit in the first half of the fight, but then, why does Goku seem so… exhausted? So gassed, desperate even? He doesn’t have that confident smirk, that mid-fight banter with his opponent, there’s no warming up or styling, Goku’s love of the fight has been replaced with this deadly urgency to just power through, all the while 19 takes hit after hit but gets back up, unencumbered by the damage he’s taken.

The brutality here is just as psychological as it is physical, but after Goku accidentally gives 19 a free energy boost with his Kamehameha wave, the problem becomes clear—Goku is fighting in the middle of a heart attack. The virus Trunks warned him about struck later than anticipated, and Goku is fighting his own body’s disintegration more than he’s fighting the android. It’s a devastating sequence as Goku winds up underneath 19 with the Super Saiyan beaten out of him, unable to do more than grasp at his would-be murderer’s hand as his lifeforce is drained from him, his certain death only postponed by an interference from another worst enemy.

14. KING PICCOLO VS. GOKU (ROUND 1)

It’s rare for Goku to take a serious beating in the Dragonball anime, so when it does happen you know things are getting dire. Unlike in Z, where he’s absent for several episodes at a time and the story gradually shifts focus to his son and to other characters, Goku is the main man all the way in the preceding series, and we experience the world through his perspective so much more than anyone else’s.

So for our main set of eyes to be so hopelessly outmatched against this fresh new arc villain, this is frightening. It’s one thing for Goku to get beaten by someone like Jackie Chun or Tien in the middle of his Heel-Face Turn, because we know at the end of the day it’s just sport, he’s not out to save the world and he’s not fighting for his life. But here? King Piccolo is a demon, he’s been described as such, and the tone has just shifted into much darker territory with the death of Krillin. We’re already coming into this fight thrown off-kilter by such a tragic event—main good guys dying has not become commonplace yet. This is the first time the dragon balls are needed to just resurrect a member of the main cast.

Despite a decent opening combo that puts King Piccolo on his ass, once the warm-up is over, there’s no disputing who the king is on this battlefield. Goku is blasted, rag-dolled, humiliated, thrashed, and made to tremble in fear in a way we’ve never seen before. Not against Mercenary Tao, not against General Blue, not against any villain he’s dealt with. The ante has been upped dramatically, the drama elevated, and when the fight ends with Goku’s body bereft of a heartbeat while the rain pours and King Piccolo gets his hands on another dragon ball… doesn’t it feel like it could be for real, even if just for a second?

13. SECOND-FORM FRIEZA VS. GOHAN

Gohan is already having a bad time on Namek. He’s been taking hits and hiding in foxholes for what can be counted as days on the planet with no night-time, and at half the age his father started going on adventures, he has already encountered the likes of Vegeta, the Ginyu Force, and now the terror of the universe himself, Frieza. A name that might as well be spoken in the same tone as Voldemort, the champion of arc villains. There have been many more powerful characters introduced in Dragonball Z and media afterwards, but none that have inspired so much dread, not just fear, but terror.

And Akira Toriyama didn’t write checks he couldn’t cash. Frieza is that scary, and we see this in his cold-blooded torture of Gohan. It’s a brief fight, in fact it’s the bare minimum of what could constitute a fight, but since Gohan himself instigated it in a rage to rescue his friend, I think it can be counted. Much like the first two entries on this list, the hero gets his brief moment of ass-whooping, knocking Frieza to the ground and tossing a ki haymaker that lands direct on Frieza. It’s just Gohan’s misfortune that his rage state disappears and when the smoke clears, Frieza stands with a scowl, admitting that Gohan’s attack hurt. And as Goku learned, when Frieza tells you that your attack hurt him, don’t take it as a compliment. Take it as a promise that it’s your turn.

A quick combo by Frieza ends with the much taller, much more threatening fighter crushing Gohan’s head into the ground. I have to imagine Gohan had flashbacks to this moment when Videl’s head was about to be turned into smut on Spopovich’s boot, and if you think THAT little scrap won’t make the list, I have a goddamn Snake Way to sell your ass. It’s so cruel and so dark because Gohan just wanted to rescue his friend, and he did the only thing he could do to provide Dende the chance to bring him back. As Goku sensed the decline in power and Vegeta watched, disgusted despite his own evil deeds, Frieza proved once again who the most disgustingly villainous entity in Z is.

12. PICCOLO JR. VS. GOKU

As the first entrant in this list where both fighters are equal and both get their serious, crippling blows on one another, Piccolo Jr. and Goku stands not just as simply a nasty brawl, but a multi-part banger serving as a fitting transition point between the light-hearted adventuring of Son Goku and friends and the titanic planet-devouring space epic of Z. When Piccolo Jr. uses his enormous ki attack that can be seen from hundreds of miles away to not just destroy, but erase, the ring of the World Martial Arts Tournament, it’s a signal that the simple hand-trading exchanges of OG Dragonball are massively evolving.

The damage to both fighters, the blood and the violence and the pain, is hard to understate. At one point, Piccolo expands to the size of an Oozaru to try and crush Goku, who takes this as a welcome opportunity to fly straight into Piccolo’s body and rescue the small porcelain bottle containing the guardian of the Earth, releasing him from his bottle prison. Yeah, this show got fucking weird, even later in the series when the comedy was increasingly phased out. But that’s all to say, even before the Buu saga with Goku and Vegeta’s journey to the center of Majin Buu—almost his colon, too--we are already getting Magic School Bus trips inside of main arc villains before the first Saiyan has touched down to Earth!

I think the brutal part of this fight that people remember the most is the part where Piccolo has nearly been counted out of the fight after Goku lands a heavy combo ending with a Kamehameha that leaves Piccolo half-covered in dirt with his mouth agape in agony. The announcer makes it to 9 as Goku is prematurely celebrating, and then Piccolo leaps into sitting position like a horror movie villain getting in one last scare, blasting a hole through Goku’s shoulder that pierces and burns bone, muscle and skin. Goku screeches in agony, and even if Piccolo did miss all Goku’s vital organs—yes, Piccolo, all of them—the pain is clearly excruciating, made even more so when Piccolo starts attacking and digging into that spot with elbows and stomps. What was once just a fight has degraded into two exhausted beasts taking turns landing the most vicious blows they can, like two antagonists at the end of a Scream film stabbing each other to make the alibi look good.

All I have to say, it’s a good thing the cheat code senzu beans were introduced beforehand, because Goku was primed to spend the better part of a year in the hospital, and we know Roshi doesn’t do well visiting friends in hospitals.

HONORABLE MENTION 1: SSJ2 GOHAN VS. PERFECT CELL

There are a few fights I want to talk about that didn’t make the list, starting with this one. The ass-whooping Cell takes at the hands of the newly-transformed Gohan is a sight to behold. Even though you can count on one hand the number of strikes Gohan lands overall, Cell is damaged so thoroughly that he coughs up mouthfuls of blood, loses nearly all of his limbs (no, Piccolo, nearly all of them), and even vomits up an entire Cyborg, setting in motion the final fateful moments of an arc ending the way Future Trunks tried so hard to avoid: with Goku dead. And then he gets blasted through the chest, that probably wasn’t part of the plan either.

11. CELL VS. ANDROID 17

One of my favorite DBZ VHS tapes to watch and watch and watch until my parents were ready to strangle me was Imperfect Cell – 17’s End. It had four episodes starting with He’s Here and ending with Say Goodbye, 17. So many events occur in those four episodes, it’s perfect in how little filler there is. Piccolo and 17’s brawl concludes with Cell entering the battlefield, almost killing Piccolo, battling Android 16, absorbing 17 and evolving to his Semi-Perfect form, and ending off with Tien spamming the Tri-Beam while 16 and 18 escape the battlefield.

In between these events, one of the most one-sided and nasty beatdowns in all of Z occurs in the form of Imperfect Cell vs. Android 17. What kills me about the original Funi edit is the way they structured this sequence, it’s so nasty. After Piccolo’s carcass gets tossed to the briny depths, 17, who we already have seen is inadequate against Cell’s power, does his level best to defend himself. We end the initial scene with 17 dodging Cell’s tail strikes, we pivot to Bulma talking with the Z Fighters on Roshi’s island about Krillin meeting up with her and her deciding to turn it into a race between Krillin’s flight and her plane’s, and when we come back… dear God. We return to a beating so gargantuan that even after all these years, all of my viewings of that VHS tape have made it to where I can recall it from memory.

17 is rag dolled from stage right, Cell comes up on him and stomps his face over and over before a humiliating tail slap into midair. Before 17 can even land, Cell does a flying leap over 17’s arcing body and delivers a blow to the stomach before stomping his gut and landing three solid punches to the face. He then grabs 17 up by his Fred from Scooby-Doo looking orange doo-rag and rears his fist back, slamming it so hard into 17’s solar plexus that we hear his voice malfunction for a second. Finally, Cell drops him on the ground, and as he’s on his hands and knees trying to recover, Cell delivers an elbow to the back of the head, mercifully ending one of the craziest fucking combos in any DBZ fight.

Can it even be called a fight? It’s more of a torture session at this juncture of the confrontation. 17 is just moaning and gasping in pain, even Cell seems affected by 17’s agonized vocalizations, telling him he never meant for this to be so humiliating for him. And that’s perhaps the most brutal part of this brief fight, 17 was so cool and confident ever since his awakening so many episodes ago, it has the same effect as watching one of Vegeta’s many molly-whoppings. The abject shame and indignity create a sort of horror for the viewer as Cell destroys not just 17’s body, but his pride.

10. MAJIN BUU VS. MAJIN VEGETA

Starting off our top 10 right, we’ve got Fat Buu’s fight against Majin Vegeta. Fat Buu has already caught a body with Dabura—well, ate a body, I guess—and he’s laid out both Gohan and the Supreme Kai looking no worse for wear. Majin Vegeta has “betrayed” the master who was never his master by blowing up Babidi’s ship, stranding him on Earth, which is a brilliant move if you think about it. Babidi probably can’t breathe in space, so he won’t be in any hurry to blow up the Earth if space travel is out of the question. But I digress.

Vegeta tees off on Buu, who does what he did in the battle with Supreme Kai and his proper match with Dabura—let the opponent tee off first. Vegeta unleashes a flurry of attacks that winds up turning Majin Buu into a nest of cup-holders. Take this man to a Super Bowl party and lay him in front of the TV, everyone can put their red dixie cup of beer into one of the holes Vegeta just punched into him. But as we’ve come to expect now, Vegeta’s attack accomplishes nothing whatsoever.

No, it’s the next two events in this fight that put it on this list. First of all, after Buu powers up so hard it can be seen from space (big deal, that shit happens at least once per arc), he wraps Vegeta in a cocoon of his own skin and just beats him severely, kicking him, ass-stomping him, punching him over and over in the face, stomping him, and it takes the interference of Super Saiyans Trunks and Goten to hold off the eventual death of Trunks’s pops.

But now we come to the end of the fight, where Vegeta powers up so hard that he explodes himself, reducing Buu to piles of flesh. And yes, if you’re familiar with the show, those piles come to life and recombine into the Fat Buu, good as new. But it is not only to say that this moment was the conclusion of Vegeta’s emotional arc from someone who only cares about himself to someone who has people to fight for, it’s also just a very painful way to die. It must be, right? It’s the DBZ equivalent of having a heart attack while taking a shit, that’s the closest analogue—heh, “anal log”—I can think of. And the fact that it meant absolutely nothing, that Buu wound up not taking any permanent damage? This is psychological brutality at its finest, it’s right up there with Chiaotzu blowing himself up against Nappa and accomplishing nothing for his troubles. Sacrificing yourself if you’re as selfish as Vegeta is hard enough, to come to find out you didn’t even do anything? Yikes.

9. FRIEZA VS. NAIL

Here’s one of these fights that you can only call a fight because both fighters are trying to fight. Because to call Nail’s performance against Frieza “putting up a fight” is like calling someone trying to catch a city-sized asteroid “putting up a fight.” The word “fight” has lost all meaning in my brain, I’m a bad writer.

Erm, anyway, Nail getting roffle-stomped is one of the only two things Nail is known for, the other being his fusion with Piccolo that allows him some indirect get-back on Frieza. You need to keep in mind, with appearances that Frieza makes on this list, this is the villain that destroyed the power scaling of the Dragonball franchise. No other character to this day, except maybe Beerus, showed up and was immediately just so much stronger than every other character.

This man’s max power is 120 fucking million. For context, Vegeta, the villain from just one arc ago, had to become an Oozaru—a giant-ass King Kong ape with Saiyan armor—to hit 180,000. You can fit 6666 Oozaru Vegetas from the last arc in a single goddamn Frieza. That’s what Nail, with his roughly 80,000 power level, is dealing with. Frieza in his first form, he maxes out at 530,000. That’s over six Nails, so hey, maybe Nail’s got a shot, right? Look, I know we know power levels are bullshit, but sometimes they aren’t. When you have a differential like this, they aren’t.

This is the first time we see Frieza in a fight, so already we’re on edge, knowing this guy can just blow people up with his ki with no exertion at all. What is his first move of his first on-screen fight? Nothing too special, he just grabs Nail and fucking rips off his forearm, leaving him screaming in pain. I would say that it’s fortunate that Nail was able to regrow the arm, but against Frieza, he wasn’t going to be doing a goddamn thing with it.

The fight is just full of humiliations like this, and many of them are exclusive to the anime. These animators decided to spend a huge chunk of filler time straight-up torturing Nail. There’s this one part where Frieza places his hand to Nail’s back and somehow bulges his chest out until he looks like Cell powering up to Super Saiyan Grade 3. It looks insane, and Nail is just shrieking in pain as this is going on. You just picture the dude’s spine being pushed into his ribcage, his organs just dispersing to either corner of his chest as Frieza holds back just enough power to not fatally wound Nail. Because, after all, he needs to get that Namekian dragon ball password, so this isn’t even an instance where Frieza’s having fun, this is just him in enhanced interrogation mode. Not that it isn’t fun for Frieza, you understand—check out his grin as the stump that once held Nail’s forearm gushes blood, Frieza is literally an evil child with a stray cat.

By the time Frieza gets done with Nail, he is a bloody green pile of detritus on the Namekian soil. He did himself and his kind proud though, as the last of his kind, because unlike our last entry this brutality didn’t go to waste. The Z Fighters successfully summoned the dragon with Dende’s help as Frieza was distracted. This revelation, delivered from Nail with a devious, bleeding grin, sends Frieza into a fit, and I think Frieza left him here like this to torture him further. Shouldn’t have done that, man.

8. NAPPA VS. TIEN

This is early Z, where the fights are still pretty ki-less and much more about the physicality of the warriors and choreography. Nappa opens this fight with a very similar move to Frieza’s fight with Nail, only he doesn’t even grab the goddamn arm to rip it off—he is able to PUNCH Tien’s forearm clean off his body, and when I say clean, there isn’t any hanging flesh or anything. It’s just a perfectly even cut, like someone sliced a log of pepperoni into two halves.

Tien, at his absolute freshest, straight off a year of training for this shit, immediately loses an arm trying to block a punch. It’s unbelievable—it’s like someone practicing at basketball for a year, and then showing up to their first game and having their femur break trying to do a jumpshot. It’s like the show is saying, “you fucking dumbass, you actually watched all of that filler? You really sat down and wasted your sorry ass life like that? You little nine-year-old piece of shit, get a load of this!”

From there, Tien just gets served time and again. Nappa launches this man in the air, bonks him to the ground, kicks the shit out of him, he basically serves as Nappa’s fleshy punching bag for the brief duration of this battle. Once again, this is an instance where the only reason you can call this a battle is because the guy getting his shit pushed in is still throwing hands as best he can. I always think about the shot Tien throws that Nappa dodges, causing the shot to hit a rock formation and crumble it. I guess we needed a reminder that Tien has super-powers and is actually a fighter instead of, y’know, a pile of dogshit wearing a fighter Halloween costume.

Krillin tries to step in and is rewarded with another demonstration of Nappa’s seemingly endless power: he swipes his hand and puts a big-ass hole in the ground right in front of him, catching Chiaotzu in the blast, or so it seems. It’s remarked that the hole seems to have no bottom, but I don’t really like that, because much later in the Frieza arc the namesake of said arc seemingly cuts Namek in half with a single beam. If Nappa can basically put a bottomless hole in the ground, with his pissant 4,000 power level, it really makes Frieza’s feat not so impressive. DBZ is full of shit like that, one arc this guy’s power is incredible and he can put endless holes in the Earth, next arc, that guy’s a flea compared to this guy who can, uh, put endless holes in Namek.

Chiaotzu explodes himself on Nappa’s back in a suicidal desperation move to destroy the Saiyan, and man, it could have at least blown the back out of Nappa’s armor, maybe scuffed him a little. It did absolutely jack shit, leaving Tien no other choice:

Tien’s last try is to use a Tri-Beam, which Nappa blocks with just a bit of damage to his armor. I guess that’s better than Chiaotzu, who also gave his life to accomplish nothing, but at least Tien damaged the armor and can be wished back with the Earth dragon balls. I find that the theme going into this third of the list is sacrifice—Majin Vegeta’s sacrifice, Tien’s sacrifice, and even Nail’s, although at least Nail’s worked. Still, this is the bleakest fight in the Saiyan saga for sure. The situation feels just so hopeless without Goku there, with Krillin and Piccolo too weak and Gohan too weak and frightened to scuff the weakest of the two Saiyans.

7. KID BUU VS. VEGETA

This is a special instance because I’m doing a little bit of surgery here. These are two different battles that I’m piecing together as one, because between them both, Goku interferes and starts to fight Kid Buu again and also Vegeta gets wished back to life, meaning stakes on the second go-round are, well, not increased, but changed. Because in DBZ, a soul can be destroyed even if it still has its body. So, if Kid Buu had destroyed Vegeta as a dead person, he would be permanently gone. Now, though, Vegeta has gotten his life back, so Kid Buu can put him right back in that halo if he’s of a mind. Fortunately, there are so many other opps on this planet for Kid Buu to deal with, Vegeta’s never alone with the bastard for too long.

Both dead and alive, Vegeta takes a fucking shredding here. Kid Buu does not play nicely with him, probably hoping he’ll be just as much fun as the other full-blooded Saiyan he’s been mixing it up with. Vegeta probably loses enough blood here, he could give every human on Earth an injection of Saiyan blood to form the new Saiyan race, once they get revived that is.

A few of the notable moments? Well, for starters, Vegeta takes a ki blast directly in the face, just after he got a classic DBZ gut-punch where you can see the puncher’s hand cave in the punchee’s back. There’s another moment where Kid Buu elbows Vegeta on the top of the head, thankfully missing that halo since it has to float above Vegeta’s big-ass hair. And also, look at the face Vegeta makes when Kid Buu has him by the throat. Any time someone talks about these fights on YouTube, they have this shit in the thumbnail, because it is one of the goofiest faces Vegeta ever makes.

I also have to talk about what little work Vegeta manages to get off, just so we can all be reminded that this is one of the strongest dudes in the show. He blasts off Kid Buu’s legs a bunch of times and gets in a few punches. Well, shit, that was easier than I thought, I got it all in a sentence, go me. Well, there was also an explosion wave against a whole bunch of mini-Kid Buus (kid-Kid Buus?), followed by a ki blast spam that, you’re going to want to sit down for this news, did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. I know, right, usually that shit doesn’t work, but this time it didn’t work!

Ultimately, this sacrifice on Vegeta’s part goes off much better than his attempted sacrifice against Fat Buu. His only job here was to stall Buu for long enough for Goku to do the shit he had to do. Once again, it helps that every other person on that planet, even goddamn Hercule, pitched in to help keep Buu at bay, but Vegeta contributed the most, and goddamn it that counts for something. But it doesn’t mean that it also wasn’t a truly grueling and unpleasant experience to watch Vegeta get blown back by Kid Buu. Every blow Kid Buu landed felt like it could have been lethal, Vegeta by the end of it straight-up had blood coming out of his scalp, and the day Mr. Hercule Satan has to come carry your ass out of the line of fire is a day that you got more Ls than someone writing an essay about the La Li Lu Le Lo.

HONORABLE MENTION 2: VEGETA VS. ANDROID 19

This is perhaps one of the most iconic Vegeta moments in the entire show. Vegeta has just gone Super Saiyan, and he shows off his newfound power by issuing one of the most vicious smackdowns ever. Not one blow is wasted—each hit is a power shot that either sends 19 away or has him bleeding from his face. The battle concludes with 19 having both of his hands ripped off and being blown away by Vegeta’s Big Bang attack, another debut from Vegeta in this fight. Only in DBZ could you accurately describe an android being destroyed as “gory.”

It's especially rewarding because this comes right after 19 has just butchered a virus-weakened Goku. We knew 19 was free eats because Goku was dominating their fight even mid-heart attack at first, 19 was just not built for the task at hand and it showed. Having the healthy, invigorated Vegeta bash 19 like so much mechanical junk made everyone watching at the time feel like the future was changing. Which it was, just not in the way anyone could have seen coming.

6. MAJIN BUU VS. SUPREME KAI

Ooh, boy. Okay. This one.

Let’s begin with the fact that this is Supreme Kai’s one and only fight in the entirety of Z, and as far as I’m aware, the entire franchise. Actually, I take that back, he’s shown in a flashback fighting Buff Buu and getting his shit rocked then, too. Thing is, people rag on the Supreme Kai for being a wuss, but that’s because his one and only showing is against Majin Buu, who was able to put both Dabura and Gohan down for the count with a single bonk on the head. Supreme Kai takes the same hit and gets right back up to fire a huge ki blast right through Majin Buu. It doesn’t do a goddamn thing, but he didn’t just stay down either. I think people don’t put enough respect on Supreme Kai’s name, the dude stood up to Buu for a while.

Of course, that was to his detriment, as it just made his subsequent ass-whooping all the more painfully prolonged. Listen, when I see fights like this, I struggle to imagine that Buu was all that innocent and I can’t believe that Hercule was able to turn him good as easily as he did, because oh my God, Buu was a fucking bully here. If there was a toilet on this battlefield, Kai’s head would have been taking up residence in there, he’d be getting charged rent for that shit.

Literally the first blow Buu lands in this fight is him clapping Supreme Kai’s cheeks. No, I did not misuse the word “literally” in that sentence, Supreme Kai’s cheeks actually get goddamn clapped. Look at him spitting out blood, holy shit, his skull was smashed horizontally like a goddamn Looney Tunes character! Then Buu clobbers him on the top of the head and dances a little mid-air jig like he won a game of goddamn Fortnite. Unfortunately, his opp returned with a blast through the stomach. As I said earlier, this didn’t do shit, but it’s the thought that counts. Wait, what the hell am I talking about, no it doesn’t!

Supreme Kai then takes a headbutt that puts him right back in the rubble, where Buu soon meets him. It’s here that Buu turns into a goddamn slasher villain, marching slowly up to the Supreme Kai with a grin that either says “I’m going to kill you” or “I really like Lunchables, where is my helmet?” Supreme Kai tries another one of his limp-ass mental ki attacks that accomplishes little else except making Majin Buu look like a Matrix character dodging bullets. A fitting reference for the time period in which this episode debuted in America. Once Buu recovers, he does something he’s going to do several more times during this arc, and imitates the attack that was just used on him.

Yes, much like Goku, Buu can just watch someone do an attack once and master it right away. Buu’s attack is much more potent, and this face Supreme Kai makes scared the shit out of me when I was a kid. It looks like some unseen force is stretching him like he’s a piece of taffy, and he is in some real pain after this shit. He basically doesn’t get back up again until after Vegeta uses his explosion suicide attack against Buu, and this is not helped by the fact that Buu ass-stomps the total shit out of him, turning his spine into a curved over-ripe banana and emptying him of any fight he might still have had.

This fight is all Goku and Vegeta’s fault, and in hindsight, Supreme Kai may have been better off just calling Goku’s bluff at the Tournament ring earlier. Yeah, Supreme Kai may have gotten the shit blasted out of him, but… well, actually, there really isn’t an upside. Goku and Vegeta were just going to do whatever the hell they wanted, and I think personally that Goku should have had to report back to King Yemma once his time on Earth ran out so it could be decided if he needs to just be sent to hell for the good of the universe and its inhabitants.

Seriously, what good deed has Goku performed lately that could justify him knowingly bringing Buu back to life by not only taking Vegeta’s bait, but not going Super Saiyan 3 and ending the fight immediately so that Buu could never be revived? Thanks to the two dumbass full-blooded Saiyans, Majin Buu woke up and destroyed Earth and all of its inhabitants, but not before fighting God Himself and pushing the poor bastard’s shit in so hard it almost came out of his mouth.

5. OOZARU VEGETA VS. GOKU

I debated back and forth with just putting the entire Goku vs. Vegeta fight in this slot, but the reason I ultimately decided to go with this specific part where Vegeta turns into the Oozaru is because most of the preceding fight before this is just a regular banger. It’s an awesome fight that lives and has lived rent-free in many a DBZ fan’s head ever since the first time they saw it, but as far as brutality, the most it has is one of Goku’s combos against Vegeta that ultimately doesn’t do that much damage, followed by Goku’s Kaioken x4 Kamehameha that also does some damage, but falls far short of taking Vegeta out of the fight.

This, on the other hand, is a massacre. It’s probably some of the most Goku has ever suffered in such a short time span. What’s genius about it is how we’re set up for it. Yajirobe was just talking to Goku, giving himself a backslap for all the nothing he contributed, but when he tried giving Goku his own backslap, Goku let out a screech of pain. Yajirobe being far weaker than Goku, and that slap not even having a lot of mustard on it, you knew what King Kai said was true—Goku had come to the verge of destroying his own body with that last attack. To make things worse, as Goku predicted would happen, Vegeta returned to the battlefield to finish the job.

Us knowing already that a simple attaboy slap is enough to send Goku nearly manic with agony, when we hear that Vegeta is going to transform into the Great Ape, we are terrified for him. I’m sure many of us have experienced the feeling of something large—be it a person or an object—landing on us and hurting us. Maybe a friend body-slammed us a little too hard while play wrestling, maybe we accidentally pulled something heavy down on ourselves as we were trying to move it, maybe we were lifting a cinderblock and dropped it on our own foot. We all can relate to a crushing sensation, but when you add in the fact that Goku is already in full bodily agony that we can’t imagine? This can only be the opening of a door to a level of suffering unheard-of to any character in the show at this point.

At first, right after Vegeta transforms, Goku finds a second wind. Maybe it’s the sheer adrenaline of having a giant ape trailing his ass, but he starts doing acrobatics, slipping behind pillars, at one point he realizes that the thing that killed Grandpa Gohan must’ve been his very own Oozaru transformation, back when he still had his tail and Earth still had a moon. Vowing to make up for what happened to his beloved grandfather, Goku begins to charge a Spirit Bomb that Vegeta almost completely cancels out with a beam from his mouth. The only damage Goku’s able to deal in between running for his life and taking on sudden onset guilt from killing his own grandfather is a Solar Flare and a beam to Vegeta’s eye. At this point, Vegeta feels as if he’s underperformed, and he wants his get-back badly. He gets Goku right where he wants him, and it’s time to repay Goku for the pain he’s inflicted.

To put it about as mildly as I can, Oozaru Vegeta does his job. We see Goku get his legs stomped all to hell and we see him picked up and squeezed like a stress ball—look at Goku’s mouth and listen to his screams. We’re in damn near Hostel territory, someone needs to send Eli Roth a script for Hostel 4 that’s just a single continued shot of Goku’s “fight” with Oozaru Vegeta. It gets so bad, Krillin, Gohan and even goddamn Yajirobe have to combine forces to get Vegeta to stop his sheer violation of Goku. Yajirobe has to cut Vegeta’s tail off while he’s distracted to get him to stop squeezing Goku’s intestines out through his face. If a surgeon were to open up Goku’s stomach after this shit, it would look like a can of Chef Boyardee raviolis put through a paper shredder, sauce and all. And that, ladies, gentlemen, folks of a different persuasion, is why this is the second most brutal fight of the Saiyan saga.

4. GOKU AND PICCOLO VS. RADITZ

“Raditz?” You might be saying, a smirk on your face not unlike that of Raditz’s. “His weak ass beats out Oozaru Vegeta?” And to that I have to reply, you’ve let Team Four Star and a bunch of other Internet people meme you into forgetting what a menace this man was during his very brief arc. It took the combined efforts of Earth’s two strongest warriors and the son of one of Earth’s strongest warriors to bring this man down, and the only reason they succeeded was a combination of sheer luck and sacrifice.

We knew Raditz was a beast from his first moment on Earth, catching a farmer’s bullet in midair and flicking it back toward him. It’s like a twisted photo negative of Goku’s first encounter with Bulma, where Bulma shoots him in the head but it does nothing except hurt him a bit. Here, it’s Goku’s brother, and not only is he not hurt at all, he takes an innocent human life the way Goku might take out a wolf or a centipede for his dinner. The parallels are already apparent here, as Raditz then proceeds to come into confrontation with Piccolo, tanking a point-blank ki blast that probably would have put Goku at death’s door if it hit him off-guard.

Finally, Raditz flexes his powers pre-fight by crippling Goku for several minutes with no more than a knee to the gut. Goku, the hero of the world, its savior multiple times, so powerful he can punch you several times without you even seeing it, able to fire beams in a weakened state that push him high into the atmosphere, takes a single knee from his big brother and all he can do is groan in pain and beg Raditz not to take his son. These are the stakes given to us in the opening minutes of Dragonball Z, we are not eased in, this show floors it at the starting line.

After Goku and Piccolo have teamed up, they track Raditz down by sensing his ki, finding that he has stuck Gohan inside of his space-pod. With Goku and Piccolo having arrived and thrown down the gauntlet, Raditz declares he doesn’t want a weakling like Kakarot on his side anyway, and the boxing commences.

Any time I think of this fight, I think of all the interesting, sometimes off-beat ways Raditz deals with two opponents. At one point, he flashes into this laying position and kicks both Goku and Piccolo away. He also elbows them each in the back. He even fires a ki blast at each of them as they try to approach, and for their trouble, they become a three-armed duo as Piccolo’s left arm is severed. It’s obvious that everything Goku and Piccolo throw at their opponent isn’t even challenging him, never mind hurting him. Even starting off the fight with no weighted clothing, Raditz seems untouchable.

So what seals the deal on this fight being the fourth most brutal? Well, Raditz gets to fight little brother by himself when Piccolo starts to charge what he says is a devastating attack that was meant for Goku. Goku proceeds to get washed, landing nothing and being peppered with strike after strike. See, this is what I’m talking about—Raditz only looks like shit when you compare him to the two much stronger Saiyans and the Saibamen, which, okay, it is a little ridiculous that they can grow fighters almost as strong as Raditz, I’ll admit that. In any case, here, in the first few episodes of Z, Raditz provides a similar feeling of hopelessness for the heroes that villains like Frieza would later inspire.

Eventually, two major events set the stage for Raditz’s fall, and they are the major factor in this fight hitting near the top. Raditz takes a massive blow from Gohan’s first-ever slip into a rage state, something he’d been building up to for some episodes, but which finally explodes here. Then, Goku, having just been talked out of holding Raditz’s tale and gotten some broken ribs for his trouble, grabs his brother in a full-nelson and is then shish-kabobbed by the Special Beam Cannon along with him. The two brothers are dead, bleeding on the ground from softball-sized holes in their stomachs, setting the tone for the rest of the series.

3. SPOPOVICH VS. VIDEL

Not only is this the nastiest fight in the Buu saga, but by far, it’s also the most sudden tonal shift in Z. Before the World Tournament started, there was nothing to indicate that an evil force was present. Goku was back for a day of fun, sporting competition with friends and family alike, he had just met his youngest son Goten in one of the most heartwarming scenes in the show, and as the heroes came together to enter the competition, it felt less like a saga in Dragonball Z and more like the easygoing first Tournament arc in its prequel series.

Even when we get introduced to Yamu and Spopovich, they seem a far cry from the poised, intelligent villains we’ve gotten used to. They’re both these grimacing, grunting men who look like they can barely hold it together. When Videl and Spopovich get matched up, we figure, “oh, it’ll be fine. Videl can box, we already know that, and even if there’s any trouble, she can fly!”

The two get in the ring, and keep in mind, Piccolo just found out that the Supreme Kai, essentially the god of this universe, is here and Piccolo has been asked to keep this under wraps. So we know something strange is going on, but we’re put at ease with Videl’s first combo. She has Spopovich, this big, clumsy and unskilled man, laid out and the announcer starts a count right away.

Then Spopovich gets up.

Videl and him trade some attacks for a little while before Videl is once again able to get the drop on him and put him on the floor face-first. The crowd cheers.

Then Spopovich gets up.

It cuts to two of the men who participated in the last tournament talking about how Spopovich has changed, and it’s not only in his looks. Meanwhile, Videl stops him in a grab attempt and lifts him over her head, tossing him back on the ring floor, neck first. The announcer all but declares Videl the winner.

Then Spopovich gets up.

Every time this man comes back, the mood of the crowd and Videl herself shifts into increased bewilderment. How is this regular man who seems out of his depth against Videl still getting up? Eventually, after Spopovich gets off a few hits against a tired Videl, even managing to almost ring her out, and after Goku states that he can’t sense Spopovich’s energy, Videl runs out of patience and over-commits to a kick that turns Spopovich’s head completely around. He falls to the floor once again, dead. Somberly, as the crowd and Videl look on in shock, the tournament announcer states that Videl will be disqualified, putting an end to the promising young fighter’s shot at the title of World Champion.

Then Spopovich gets up. To a standing position. He turns his head and lifts it, setting it back to normal.

At this point, it’s obvious to all the Z Fighters that Videl is in danger, and while Videl herself is shocked, she refuses to quit, continuing to trade hits with Spopovich. She takes enough damage to decide its time for a break, so she flies out of the ring and that’s when her opponent reveals his own ability to fly. Then he puts out his hand and charges a weak ki wave, making Videl plummet back down.

What ensues is a sight so grotesque, I remember even when I was a kid and a big DBZ fan, watching the TV edited version was enough to creep me out. Spopovich pummels Videl repeatedly, kneeing her in the face—in the manga, she loses some teeth here—and deliberately saving her from a surefire ring out just to continue beating her.

A wave of terror hits the crowd and the announcer begs Videl openly to forfeit the match, but Videl refuses. Her pride has turned against her into being the thing that’s tethering her to potential oblivion. We have no idea how far Spopovich is willing to take his brutality, we only know he lost against Videl’s father last tournament. Videl becomes unable to defend herself, with Spopovich placing her on his knee and beating her face. The crowd and the people running the tournament hesitate to stop the onslaught until, when Spopovich places his boot on her head and Videl begins to weep in fear, shame and agony, Gohan intervenes. But Yamu gets there first, seemingly disgusted at Spopovich’s behavior, and tells him to just finish the match. Videl is unceremoniously kicked out of the ring, and her relevance to the plot as a fighter is gone.

The worst part about this, I think, is the fact it took so long for anybody to put a stop to it, long after it went from fight to mauling. It leaves a nasty flavor in my mouth, reminding me of real-world scenarios where somebody is being severely mistreated, perhaps even assaulted, in public and everyone is watching, but nobody is helping them. It’s true that Videl refused to forfeit, but by the time Spopovich saved her from ring-out, his intentions should have been read as they were—cruel and malicious. In any case, Videl’s foolhardiness is not new to DBZ, we see fighters like Vegeta or Tien keep getting up when they should just stay down, but Videl’s is a special case because she wound up against odds she could never stack up to. She is a dragon ball level fighter who got in over her head against a super-powered sadist with a grudge.

2. RECOOME VS. GOHAN

The honor of being our runner-up goes to arguably the most bleak moment in the entire Namek saga. Let me set the stage for you: Goku has still not arrived on Namek yet, and Frieza has called in the elite Ginyu Force, his strongest minions, to bring scouters and reign in Vegeta and the earthlings. Vegeta, Krillin and Gohan have been forced into an uneasy alliance, despite having different goals involving the dragon balls, because Vegeta sensed the Ginyu Force and knew he couldn’t defeat them by himself. The Ginyu Force take all seven dragonballs back from Vegeta, so Frieza is now in possession of all seven balls, leaving Vegeta and the earthlings to deal with every Ginyu Force member save for Captain Ginyu.

And for being completely outclassed, the three of them have put up a fierce fight. The weakest member, Guldo, was easy pickings for Vegeta while he was distracted with the two earthlings, and the next to square up was Recoome. Here, despite opening their one-on-one bout with maybe the finest combo he’s ever used on an opponent, Vegeta is just not strong enough to really hurt Recoome, and within a span of minutes Recoome renders his Saiyan opponent crippled to the point of uselessness.

The earthlings step in to stop Vegeta from being killed, and Vegeta admonishes them, saying they should have doubled their efforts against Recoome and left him for dead. Let’s pause and think about that for a second. The entire Namek saga has seen Vegeta with blood-red determination to procure the dragonballs and get out from Frieza’s thumb. Pulled out every stop, took out opponents when they were alone, even pulled a sneak maneuver on Frieza’s ship that resulted in him having almost every ball hidden away for himself. But now, with Recoome baring down, with Burter and Jeice observing like smirking vultures, Vegeta has given up hope for his own survival.

That’s what these three were dealing with when the Ginyu Force showed up. And yeah, they became and always were a joke, but at their debut they were untouchable. Only Nail could have beaten anyone in the force not named Ginyu, and he was about to have his hands full with an angry Frieza descending like a reaper on Guru’s lookout.

It doesn’t take long before the combined efforts of Krillin and Gohan are turned to just, well, Gohan. Krillin is taken out of the fight with a single blow, so devastating it paralyzes him. All that’s left to make a stand and keep the chance alive of bringing back the victims of Nappa and Vegeta’s rampage is a single, half-Saiyan child, barely above pre-school age, who in his brief youth so far has faced opponents that would have shaken Kid Goku off like a flea.

The few times Gohan gets off any work on Recoome, it feels like a BB gun being fired at a brick wall. Whereas every blow Recoome lands, and he gets off quite a number, feels like it could be a fight-ending blow. To state the obvious, the height and weight difference is staggering. Calling it David and Goliath would be underselling it—it’s more like a rottweiler vs. an elephant. Yeah, the rottweiler might be strong and even trained to fight, but the elephant is just bigger, and it’s got a stronger hide, it’s just going to win.

Gohan is cursed with Saiyan durability during this fight. Krillin was knocked to his ass with a single kick, there was no prolonged beatdown for him. Gohan does not get that luxury, as Recoome uses hands and feet almost as big as his Kindergarten-age opponent to pound the shit out of Gohan several times, until all he can do is weakly march toward his doom. Gohan gives a nice little preview to Goku’s Super Saiyan speech, declaring he isn’t scared of Recoome and that he is the child of Son Goku. He uses the last of his strength to launch toward Recoome… and Recoome jumps up and lands a kick to Gohan’s neck, audibly breaking it and leaving Gohan blank-eyed on the ground, bleeding from his mouth.

It's one of the most upsetting images in DBZ, because of just how needlessly cruel it is. Gohan is maybe six years old by this point, barely looking more than a foot tall, and Recoome is an enormous, grinning ogre who barely even seems to register the horror of what he’s doing. They already had the dragon balls. They already demonstrated they were stronger than the Earthlings. Even if they insisted upon carrying out Frieza’s orders to kill Vegeta, Krillin and Gohan, the way Recoome prolongs all of their suffering while that big, dumb smile resolutely stays on his face, it made me see Recoome as sadistic and ruthless in a way I hadn’t considered before doing this essay.

Recoome’s propensity to play with his food does come back to bite him and his allies when Goku pulls up on Namek just in the nick of time, using a sensu bean on his paralyzed but somehow still alive son to unbreak his neck, don’t even fucking ask me how that works. Goku and Vegeta get some much-deserved revenge on Recoome, but what haunts me is just how close things were to being unsalvageable. Given another five or ten minutes, Recoome would have a body count to rival Nappa, and Goku would have had to face the terrors of Frieza and Captain Ginyu by himself.