(AfroGamers.com) In my nearly two decades of watching Dragon Ball since my teenage years, I have seen some villains who weren’t as good and I have seen some others who were just straight up badasses.
Here are my top 5 all-time favorite Dragon Ball villains.
1. Frieza – Ever since I remember watching Frieza fighting against The Z Fighters and Goku on Namek during the peak of The DBZ Era, he is without a shadow of a doubt one of the greatest villains in anime history. The reason why he’s my favorite Dragon Ball villain is because he knows how to manipulate people and situations in his favor and he is not only deceitful, but also arrogant in his abilities much like Jiren and Vegeta were in The Tournament Of Power Arc in The Dragon Ball Super anime.
He is also one of the biggest Saiyan haters in Dragon Ball history because it’s no secret out of all races, he despises The Saiyan Race
the most. His Final Form is definitely my favorite form of Friezas because it looked so badass, iconic, and scary as hell. During The DBZ Era, he was definitely much more badass, vicious, and ruthless than he was in Dragon Ball Super where I personally felt he was kinda watered down specifically in “The Resurrection F Arc”, but nonetheless he will always be my favorite Dragon Ball villain.
2. Goku Black (anime) – When Goku Black first appeared in Dragon Ball Super episode 47, he was causing so much chaos, destruction, and mayhem as he was killing people in Future Trunks timeline indiscriminately. Even though he looked like Goku, but it was later revealed that Zamasu actually killed Goku’s family and then later stole Goku’s body in Vegeta’s own words, “For you, Kakarot’s body is just a vessel to use”. His clothing greatly resembled Dark Anakin Skywalker from a Star Wars film I remember watching many years ago.
What made this character so badass was a unique transformation that was only exclusive to him that was a corrupted version of Super Saiyan Blue called Super Saiyan Rose and I absolutely loved this unique Super Saiyan form because it was not only much stronger than Super Saiyan Blue, but it looked much better than Super Saiyan Blue Goku. Even though Turles was The Goku Black of The DBZ Era, but in terms of badassery, viciousness, savagery, and ruthlessness, and strength Goku Black surpasses him in all those traits. I absolutely enjoyed the anime than the manga version of the character.
3. Broly – Broly is a very controversial character to a lot of people in The Dragon Ball fandom because he often says “Kakarot” which actually annoys the hell out of me. But what made Broly more vicious, ruthless, intimidating, and badass in the first film than the second film was his amazing ability to tank a Super Kamehameha from Goku and his intimidating physique made Vegeta out to be a weak little coward which I absolutely hated this portrayal of Vegeta in the first film.
But what’s even more astonishing to me about this character was that he not only squashed The Z Fighters, but was also one of only few fighters that put some fear/intimidation into Goku other than his wife ChiChi. Even though I loved the Toei version of Broly in the sense of his power and stature, but the aspects about Toei’s version of Broly that I hated were his backstory where he hated Goku because he was crying all the time, him being a crybaby, the nonstop screaming, the redundant raging, and his trigger to Super Saiyan being Goku and screaming Kakarot all the time.
Note: Toriyama had nothing to do with the original Broly that was created by Toei back in the 1990s. It was recently announced that Broly is returning for the upcoming Dragon Ball Super film where he will be the main character for this film and yes Toriyama recently stated in an interview that this version of Broly is a complete reboot and won’t be the same character as Toei’s version was back in the 1990s. I’m actually excited to see this revamped version of Broly and his revamped backstory. Broly is now officially canon to the Dragon Ball continuity since this upcoming Dragon Ball Super film takes place after The Tournament Of Power Arc.
I loved Toei’s version of Broly far more in the video games like DBZ Budokai 3, DBZ Shin Budokai, & DBZ Dokkan Battle than the first film that came out in Japan 25 years ago. I recently saw the official trailer for the upcoming film “Broly” and it looks so badass and I’m definitely looking forward to seeing this film given the fact that my favorite character Vegeta will be shown in Super Saiyan Red aka Super Saiyan God for the very first time in the upcoming movie “Broly”.
4. Merged Zamasu (manga) – When Merged Zamasu appeared in The Dragon Ball Super manga, he looked much more badass, ruthless, vicious, menacing, and dangerous than he did in the anime. He absolutely put the smackdown on Goku and Vegeta using techniques such as creating these big cubes and throwing them at them, using portals with his hands not only to grab and choke the life out of Goku and Vegeta, but he also used the portals with his hands again to grab Future Mai to use as a human shield to escape being Hakai’d by Goku (which was an asspull I didn’t like). He was like Cooler, Janemba, Hatchiyak all into one in the manga.
5. Omega Shenron – Two of the main reasons why I personally hated GT because not only was Goku being constantly forced and shoved down our throats, but also the extreme underutilization of my favorite Dragon Ball character in Vegeta. Despite all of that, one villain that I definitely enjoyed seeing the most in GT is Omega Shenron who came about from Goku and co. abusing The Dark Star Dragon Balls.
When Syn Shenron merged with his fellow Shadow Dragons to become Omega Shenron, he was such a dangerous, vicious, ruthless, and menacing villain that not even Super Saiyan 4 Goku’s Dragon Hammer could kill him and he easily squashed Super Saiyan 4 Goku and Super Saiyan 4 Vegeta until they fused into Super Saiyan 4 Gogeta who wasted his time in eliminating Omega Shenron by mostly toying with him until he fired an immensely destructive Big Bang Kamehameha x100 that severely damaged Omega until he regenerated and then once SS4 Goku and Vegeta defused, they got beat down so mercilessly by Omega Shenron and I absolutely hated how they buried Omega in the very end of “The Shadow Dragon Arc”.
The Conclusion – I’ve seen plenty of villains in Dragon Ball come and go, but there will always be certain ones who will stand out from the rest of them.
Staff Writer; Kwame Shakir (aka Joe D.)