KBABZ wrote:But don't get me wrong, my critiques above are not born out of "I see Piccolo as a good guy 'cause that's what I saw the most of". For me the critiques come from the interpretation of the character overall, specifically over whether Jr. is to be considered a different individual from Daimao, which is something the story itself flip-flops on. Personally, I see Jr. as his own individual because he has things like, for example, the capacity to even care about somebody in the first place. As Gohan recites to Jr in Kai, Goku sees Jr as more grumpy than evil.
So if you consider Jr as a new character (note that he doesn't have the same nose, which implies this), then his introduction in DB doesn't do a lot to establish his specific relationship with the other characters or how he might be different from Daimao (that wouldn't be done until Raditz). He feels like a carbon copy of his dad, and his dad doesn't seem like the type to wait until a Tournament to try and kill Goku; he's the literal incarnation of evil, why would he do that? Hence, my critiques in the last post.
Hoo boy. There's a TON that's wrong with all of this. And unfortunately, its almost ENTIRELY due to the dub, which COMPLETELY eviscerates and guts everything to do with the more Eastern aspects of Piccolo's growth and evolution throughout the series.
Here's the thing: the original Japanese version (both anime and manga) make it pretty clear and explicit, for the most part, that Daimao and Ma Junior are indeed one and the same person.
By and large, Ma Junior is referred to as Daimao's "reincarnation" and "double". On RARE occasion (maybe once or twice at most), he's also referred to as his son. And that's because BOTH are
technically true.
Effectively what Daimao did was, he gave birth to a son to act as a physical body and vessel for his spirit/essence/etc. and transferred all of that into him.
When Ma Junior awakens, he's STILL Daimao... mostly.
What changes is that he's no longer a mystical entity that wholly embodies the purely malevolent/wicked aspect of the Nameless Namekian's personality. By rebirthing himself as a mortal child, he now has a conscience and mortal soul of his own.
A long, long time ago... like maybe almost a decade ago now (and somehow, don't ask me how, I still remember this) we had a HUGE debate on this forum between dub and sub fans about how much ultimately the dub's altered dialogue hindered one's basic, fundamental understanding of the characters and story. One of the BIGGEST points raised was everything to do with Piccolo's transition from Daimao to Ma Junior where a LOT was done by the dub to COMPLETELY and radically alter what was originally said (examples that even a lot of sub fans almost NEVER think to point to when talking about how much the dub totally guts the original story of its nuance and Eastern roots).
There's a crucial, critical scene in the Saiya-jin arc where Kami and Popo discuss what's happening to Piccolo. In the Japanese version, Kami goes into a ton of detail explaining that as Daimao, Piccolo was once considered a demonic entity by the spiritual laws that govern Dragon Ball's universe. As in real life Eastern mythology (Buddhism, Shintoism, Taoism, etc.) and in most Wuxia lore, when a human is murdered by a demon, their spirit cannot be reincarnated or return to the afterlife. Rather, they are left to wander the Earth lost and in torment, trapped in a sort of aimless limbo.
When Piccolo killed Raditz however, that didn't happen. Raditz showed up on Enma's doorstep in the afterlife. Meaning that once Daimao reincarnated himself, he was still Daimao... but no longer considered a demon anymore. Because by making himself born again, he's now a mortal and is no longer an epitomization of evil. Now he has a conscience and the capacity to learn goodness and to change.
And this happens SLOWLY. Its not an instant switch.
When he first comes back, he DOES want revenge on Goku and wants to kill him. But yeah, he comes at Goku through a tournament. Because he's no longer pure rage and id like he was before: he's mortal, he has a soul, he has more nuance, and he has more patience now. He hides his identity, and he tries to go about his revenge less directly than before.
Nonetheless, once he starts fighting Goku and tastes some blood, it doesn't take much for him to start cutting loose with his power and no longer give much of a crap about the tournament and about concealing his identity (he even gives the crowd at the tournament a big speech about how he is indeed Daimao and he's back to rule over them and reign terror once more). But the change has indeed already started.
And it continues when he decides to ally with Goku against Raditz. And again when he takes on Gohan as a student and forms his first ever genuine friendship with him. That's what ultimately seals it and finally brings him to the point where he understands compassion for others and thus reforms.
There's another critical scene even later on during the Cell/Artificial Humans arc. Before Piccolo goes off to find Kami and remerge (where he again changes drastically, and becomes really the original Nameless Namekian, whole again, for the first time in centuries). Before Piccolo storms off to find Kami, he listens to Kuririn give a speech about how much Piccolo has changed and how they've been friends now for some time. The small bit of the old Daimao left inside of him balks at this, and reminds everyone there that he's still the Great Demon King, and he's just been biding his time to kill them all and conquer humanity once more.
But of course that isn't the case: its crept up on him slowly, and Kuririn just happened to drive it home (causing the last several years to suddenly dawn on him, making him snap back): he's changed a LOT over the years, and now he's finding himself more and more drawn back full circle to where it all began for him... his other half, Kami.
Because yeah, as Piccolo himself states repeatedly, once he and Kami merge he is - as he famously says - "No longer Kami or Piccolo. Just a Namekian who long ago forgot his name."
You can only get the original Namekian son of Katatsu by recombining the two beings he split into: God and The Devil.
The Piccolo of the 23rd Budokai, Saiya-jin, Freeza, and early Artificial Human arcs is indeed the Devil Half we first met in the Daimao arc. Its in his logo on Gohan's gi (Daimao's kanji crest), its in the names of all his attacks, he refers to himself REPEATEDLY as "Piccolo Daimao reborn". Its a LOT less "fuzzy" in the Japanese version than it is in the dub, where they feel the need to constantly tapdance awkwardly and haphazardly around the more spiritual/Eastern mythological aspects of the series (note how they can't even ever ONCE bring themselves to name, acknowledge, or even explain at any point the concept of Ki outiside of the video games and I think maybe Kai: which is KIND OF important in this series; and also not ONE of the MANY god characters in the series is ever ONCE acknowledged as such until fucking Beerus only stupidly recently): Piccolo's Daimao and Ma Junior are one and the same person, albeit altered by taking a demonic entity and giving him a mortal soul and will/conscience.
Why else would the spiritual bond between Kami and Piccolo (the bond which denotes them as being two halves of the same person) still remain undisturbed if Daimao were gone and Piccolo were just some other dude that Daimao had spat out? Why else would he become the original nameless child of Katatsu if only ONE HALF of Katatsu's son were still kicking around and decided to merge with some random guy? Why else would he get so pissed off when Kuririn
specifically states how different he's become since his Daimao days, to the point of going on another Daimao "I'm gonna kill everyone and take over the world again!" rant (Kuririn even does it again in the Boo saga, where he once more blatantly spells out that Piccolo used to be Daimao the Demon King and killed a fuckton of people way back when: GT also acknowledges it during the Super 17 arc when Piccolo gets himself sent back to Hell)?
NONE OF THIS would make even the
tiniest bit of sense if Ma Junior were a different person from Daimao. They're the same character. He just gets put through a metaphysical spincycle that cleanses the pure wickedness from him when he reincarnates himself into a new form. The Japanese dialogue makes all of this VERY apparent and not all that ambiguous.
What muddies the waters is the fact that most U.S./English speaking fans still tend to go off of the dub, and the dub goes VERY far out of its way to NEVER mention almost ANY of this, whereas the Japanese version does. Almost EVERY scene I mentioned here, from the Kami & Popo talk post-Raditz, to both of Kuririn's various little speeches about Piccolo, to plenty of other scenes where Piccolo himself talks about it... in almost EVERY case, the dub RADICALLY alters the dialogue (almost 100% from the ground up) in order to make all of these details EXTREMELY vague and unspecific. And this change was NOT accidental: it was a VERY purposeful, consistent change made to de-Eastern and de-mystify Dragon Ball into something much more secular and Western.
Again, Ma Junior and Daimao are UNQUESTIONABLY and UNAMBIGUOUSLY depicted as being ONE AND THE SAME CHARACTER in the original Japanese version of Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z, and even Dragon Ball GT. Its only when the FUNimation dub mandated that NO Eastern religious concepts (reincarnation, Eastern folklore on demons and spirituality, Eastern gods and what their function is, etc.) be mentioned or illustrated in the series were steps taken to scrub clean ALL of those allusions from the mouths of any and all characters who ever speak of it.
This applies to everything from the characters' supernatural martial arts abilities (to the point that I famously had to
make an entire fucking thread detailing how and why these powers are still in fact martial arts abilities) to the deistic nature of a large chunk of the supporting cast, to what the afterlife itself actually was (at least for awhile there in the earlier days)... and yes, also to the backstory and development of one of the most centrally important characters in the whole series (Piccolo).
Among the lasting damage that the dub has done to Dragon Ball among Western fans is the lengths, both blatant and insidiously subtle, that it has typically gone to in order to remove any and all aspects that betray its Eastern mythological nature and origins. To the point where, even more than 20 years later and in a day and age where EVERYTHING is freely available to look up easily online, the vast majority of fans are still completely and utterly in the dark about this, and it leads to all kinds of grossly and stunningly basic misinterpretations and flat out incorrect assumptions about some fundamental facts about what the series is and how its characters and plot ideas work.
Piccolo is very much the same character we first met on Pilaf's airship in the Daimao arc all the way up through the Boo arc, GT, and now Super: one who goes through DRAMATIC changes that are heavily steeped in Buddhist and Shinto folklore. The same sort of Eastern religious mythology that both Dragon Ball and Wuxia as a whole is directly rooted deep within.
There's nothing the least bit "inconsistent" about Piccolo's behavior and attitude from the 23rd Budokai and onward. Its one of the best seeded and executed bits of character growth and progression we get in the series (from a guy who's famous for mostly winging it no less). Its just all hinged and predicated upon a ton of religious and spiritual concepts from Eastern folklore that the English dub took great pains to ignore and whitewash, and that its audience is almost universally ignorant of. Thus it often tends to go unnoticed and uncommented upon, even among sections of the fanbase who get as deep into the weeds of the finer details as this one here does.
