What is the Jump Super Anime Tour?
The Jump Super Anime Tour is just that: a touring event celebrating various Jump franchises, and generally includes things like special anime showings.
The 2008 tour — hitting ten cities in Japan from September through November that year — included a special Dragon Ball animated feature for folks who specifically applied to a lottery and won a screening ticket.
Who is Tarble?
Tarble is Vegeta’s younger brother, originally introduced in the 2008 Jump Super Anime Tour Special, Dragon Ball: Heya! Son Goku and Friends Return!!
Roughly two years after the defeat of Majin Boo (placing the special’s events in Age 776), Tarble arrives on Earth with his wife Gure, asking for help from his older brother. Vegeta says that Tarble had been sent off to a remote planet because he had no talent for battle. Tarble begs the heroes to defeat Avo and Cado, who have ravished his planet and pursued him to Earth.
Following some antics with Goten and Trunks and a couple different fusions, the villains are eventually defeated and everyone continues on with their giant party!
The events of Dragon Ball‘s Jump Super Anime Tour Special were later retold in a two-chapter manga adaptation penned by Naho Ooishi — these came packaged as supplemental booklets with the May and June 2009 issues of Shueisha’s V-Jump magazine.
Tarble’s Name Spelling
Tarble’s name is written in katakana as ターブル (tāburu) — this is pronounced like “tah-ble” (as opposed to “tay-ble” like the piece of furniture).
In Japanese, the long “a” sound is often used to indicate an “ar” sound. For instance, Zarbon’s name is written in katakana as ザーボン (zābon). While Tarble’s name is a pun on “vegetable,” writing the name as “Table” could lead to confusion with the piece of furniture.
Vegeta’s (ベジータ; bejiita) pun comes from the first half of “vegetable,” while Tarble’s (ターブル; tāburu) is on the latter half of “vegetable.” If the two names are combined, and the long vowels that were included for the sake of the pun are removed, the result is a direct match to the phonetical Japanese spelling of “vegetable” (ベジタブル; bejitaburu) in katakana — this is opposed to the actual Japanese word for “vegetable,” 野菜 (yasai), where the “Saiya” in サイヤ人 (saiya-jin) comes from.
Tarble’s Voice Actor
Tarble is played in all Japanese media by Masakazu Morita, who later went on to play Whis in Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods and Dragon Ball Super.
In Dragon Ball: Raging Blast 2 (more on this game below), Tarble is played in English by Todd Haberkorn — this is thus far his only English-language appearance, as the Jump Super Anime Tour Special was never officially dubbed and released in English.
Who came up with Tarble?
While the idea for Tarble specifically is not attributed to any one person in official documentation, the “Original Draft” (原案; gen’an) for the 2008 Jump Super Anime Tour special feature is credited to Dragon Ball creator Akira Toriyama himself.
This “Original Draft” credit is the same type of credit and involvement later attributed to things like the “Granolla the Survivor arc” of the Dragon Ball Super manga, in which Toyotarō was the one who wrote and illustrated the actual manga chapters, but Toriyama had provided a comprehensive outline and story guide for him to work from.
That said, and jumping off of that comparison, the actual script (脚本; kyakuhon) for the animated feature was handled by franchise stalwart Takao Koyama.
Additional Tarble References
Tarble’s existence was acknowledged in the 2013 theatrical film, Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods, in the scene where the character discuss how to get five additional Saiyans to contribute toward the Super Saiyan God ritual. An original script for this film was first written by Yusuke Watanabe, which was largely revised by Akira Toriyama.
BULMA: Vegeta, you’ve got an on-the-level younger brother, don’t you?
VEGETA: On a faraway planet. What’s worse, I don’t even know where it is.
BULMA: You didn’t even get his cell phone number?
Within the Dragon Ball Super television series’ scene that adapted the respective material from Battle of Gods, no reference to Tarble’s existence (or anything about Vegeta’s family) is made. The script for the respective episode in question was written by Toshio Yoshitaka.
No reference is likewise made in the contemporary manga adaptation of the same scene, though this material is adapted largely through panels with no actual dialog on the page.
Tarble was yet again referenced in the 2018 theatrical film, Dragon Ball Super: Broly. The script for this film was written by Akira Toriyama.
NAPPA: Vegeta, you have a brother, don’t you?
VEGETA: Come to think of it, what became of him? Not that I’m interested.
Tarble’s Video Game Appearances
Tarble first popped up in video games via 2010’s Dragon Ball: Raging Blast 2 for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, where he can be unlocked by completing “Galaxy Mode” as Vegeta.
Tarble next popped up in the Japanese card-based arcade game Dragon Ball Heroes beginning in September 2015’s “God Mission 4” update with the card HGD4-SEC2.
Tarble also later appeared in the mobile game Dragon Ball Z: Dokkan Battle through a summon and through the special event “Goku and Friends Are Back”.
Is Tarble Canonical?
That’s the big question, isn’t it?!
Perhaps the best way to answer this question is: any time it was Akira Toriyama directly at the helm in terms of writing, and if there was an opportunity to mention Tarble, Toriyama mentioned Tarble.
Additional Resources
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