Really Old Characters

[DBZ_323]

Now we know Roshi has lived well into his 300's because of the Immortality Phoneix but what about everyone else? Shen is about the same age as him, Tao is only a couple decades younger, how did they immortalize themselves, do you believe? And an even older question is how Korin came to be who he is, at 800 he's older than not only all the humans in the series, but even Kami/Piccolo. Is he some sort of spirit being?

Also, Gohan Sr. is into his 80s when he adopts Goku but the Ox-King (who trained alongside him under Roshi) doesn't look anywhere near that old. It seems unlikely that Roshi trained two people of wildly different ages at the same time but who knows. But the weirdest thing about it all is Baba. She's been fortunetelling for over 500 years, right? Roshi is her brother and he's not even 400 years old yet by the time the series ends, so how did their parents have two children 200 years or more apart?

[Pantalones]

Apparently the Crane and Turtle Hermit families are a bunch of freakishly long-lived magical weirdos -- literally everyone we know of related to either of them seems to live for centuries. XD

And yeah, Karin is mentioned in one of the guides as being a creature from the afterlife that was sent to help out Kami (just like Mr. Popo.) Presumably they both have a super-long lifespan just like the Kaio/Kaioshin/etc. all do, living for thousands of years if nothing manages to kill them first.

[Cipher]

It harkens back to Dragon Ball's wuxia tropes. The infinitely long-lived mystical hermit sage is a staple of the genre. You never really need/get an explanation for their longevity (though Dragon Ball does toss around a few gag ones for Kame-Sennin), because it's presumed they remain alive through some unexplored combination of their mastery of chi and mystical arts.

As Dragon Ball defines its universe more and more and lays out rules that separate it from its hodge-podge mystical martial-arts backdrop, this lack of explanation can stick out. But the reality is it traded more freely in those tropes at the time the Crane School was introduced.

Why are characters like Tsuru-Sennin and Tao Pai Pai so old? They just are. Why doesn't the same apply to characters like Tenshinhan and Kuririn? Because it's a different series now.

As for the hundred-year age difference between Uranai Baba and Kame-Sennin (is this ever stated in the series?), perhaps their parents were also a mystical sage and a witch. Don't think too hard about it. The king of the planet in this universe is a dog.

[buutenks]

Speaking of dogs, seems all animal people disappeared from the dragonball world.

[Friezacooler]

The which fusing with elder kai caused him to become an old person but when he gave Goku his life span, Goku's appreance didn't change that is weird and a major plothole for it to have a different effect on Goku.

[nite_jay]

It harkens back to Dragon Ball's wuxia tropes. The infinitely long-lived mystical hermit sage is a staple of the genre. You never really need/get an explanation for their longevity (though Dragon Ball does toss around a few gag ones for Kame-Sennin), because it's presumed they remain alive through some unexplored combination of their mastery of chi and mystical arts.

As Dragon Ball defines its universe more and more and lays out rules that separate it from its hodge-podge mystical martial-arts backdrop, this lack of explanation can stick out. But the reality is it traded more freely in those tropes at the time the Crane School was introduced.

Why are characters like Tsuru-Sennin and Tao Pai Pai so old? They just are. Why doesn't the same apply to characters like Tenshinhan and Kuririn? Because it's a different series now.

As for the hundred-year age difference between Uranai Baba and Kame-Sennin (is this ever stated in the series?), perhaps their parents were also a mystical sage and a witch. Don't think too hard about it. The king of the planet in this universe is a dog.

Know I kind of wish that the weaker Earthlings like Tenshinhan, Kuririn, and Yamucha would become old martial arts masters similar to Roshi. I would think it would kind of lame for them to just die at 94 from a heart attack or something.

[Nejishiki]

Know I kind of wish that the weaker Earthlings like Tenshinhan, Kuririn, and Yamucha would become old martial arts masters similar to Roshi. I would think it would kind of lame for them to just die at 94 from a heart attack or something.

Kuririn and Tenshinhan establish the New Turtle School and New Crane School, respectively in the future of Dragon Ball Online. The responsibility is tasked upon them specifically due to Turtle Hermit moving on from teaching students himself. They seem to die naturally, however.

[Pantalones]

The which fusing with elder kai caused him to become an old person but when he gave Goku his life span, Goku's appreance didn't change that is weird and a major plothole for it to have a different effect on Goku.

Fusing with the witch made him look old because the witch looked old at the time the fusion happened. The old Kaioshin didn't fuse with Goku, he just gave him his remaining lifespan. Why would that change Goku's appearance?

[Friezacooler]

The which fusing with elder kai caused him to become an old person but when he gave Goku his life span, Goku's appreance didn't change that is weird and a major plothole for it to have a different effect on Goku.

Fusing with the witch made him look old because the witch looked old at the time the fusion happened. The old Kaioshin didn't fuse with Goku, he just gave him his remaining lifespan. Why would that change Goku's appearance?

Because his life span was extra affected by the witch, unless the old Kai gave his life span while keeping the side effects of the witch to himself. His life span still is part of a fused character which at the time of fusion is not 2 souls but 1. Just like Piccolo and Kami.

[floofychan333]

Speaking of dogs, seems all animal people disappeared from the dragonball world.

I've noticed that they're really rare now too. Maybe they're going extinct because they can only breed with their own species?

[GodVegetto91]

Oh please....
They are NOTHING! Roshi? Baba? Really? They're infants compared to the high dragon ball gods and Majin Buu.

East Kaioshin was over 5 million years old. (Kibito aswell)

Babidi was stated in a guidebook to have lived for "tens of millions" of years. (Bibidi must be even older)

Old Kaioshin is over 75 million years old!

While our beloving God of Destruction Beerus is HUNDREDS of Millions of years!! And i suppose Whis must be even older than that. Probably in the billions i assume.
And then you've got Zarama who has been around since year 42 of the Divine Calendar. (Which is most likely litterally 42 years after creation) and Kid Buu who has existed since time immemorial.
And the Omni-King. RULER of all existence. He MUST be the oldest!

Are you beginning to see the joke of Roshi and all the other low-life? It's hilariously pathetic.

[Anime Kitten]

Hey, you're also forgetting Demigra.

[omaro34]

Well, the gods and their attendants are millions of years old. As for individuals on Earth, Korin is said to be over 800 years old, and Roshi is over 300 years old. Kami was a few centuries old as well.

Dr Briefs was older when he was first introduced back in Dragonball, so I reckon he's pretty old now too.

[Kunzait_83]

Know I kind of wish that the weaker Earthlings like Tenshinhan, Kuririn, and Yamucha would become old martial arts masters similar to Roshi. I would think it would kind of lame for them to just die at 94 from a heart attack or something.

Worth noting that Yamucha essentially is flat out retired from martial arts altogether after the Cell Games. So the likelihood of him growing to become an immortal Xian like Muten Roshi is obviously exceedingly slim to none. Kuririn KINDA retires, or tries to, by the time of the Boo arc after marrying 18 and having Marron with her, but he tends to often find himself getting continuously pulled back into the fray a lot whenever the shit gets stirred even slightly. I think with him it seems a bit more up in the air 50/50 as to whether or not he'd stay retired for good at some point, or eventually just finally up and say fuck it and allow himself to re-dedicate himself to his training and maybe some day end up at that level of quasi-immortal mastery.

(Not that its worth much, but I'm pretty sure that there's an alternate reality version of Kuririn in that DB Multiverse fan comic where he does indeed train himself to the point of Xian longevity and become a true master. I'm not much of a Multiverse fan really, but I did think his design there was kinda cool as a fun mishmash of an aged version of himself with elements of Muten Roshi's appearance.)

Tenshinhan on the other hand, almost without a doubt seems all but certain to eventually some day end up a long-lived Xian master at some point in his life. He's one of the most passionately/single-mindedly dedicated fighters in the entire series shy of Goku himself, someone who for most of the series past the Daimao arc essentially lives the hermetic & focused lifestyle of a Xian already. By most genre precedent, there's very little doubt he'd eventually down the road unlock the mysteries of long life through his Ki mastery and live to lord knows how many hundreds of years as a martial arts sage up in the mountainous wastes.

Though that being said...

It harkens back to Dragon Ball's wuxia tropes. The infinitely long-lived mystical hermit sage is a staple of the genre. You never really need/get an explanation for their longevity (though Dragon Ball does toss around a few gag ones for Kame-Sennin), because it's presumed they remain alive through some unexplored combination of their mastery of chi and mystical arts.

Apart from intensive, lifelong training of their Ki/Chi/Qi, another element of the Xian's long lifespan that's often brought up in Wuxia is that of Taoist alchemy. Xian tend to combine their countless decades of martial arts training & Ki mastery with mystical herbal elixirs (which are in most Wuxia tales made from a varied combination of real life Chinese medical herbs as well as fictitious/folkloric/magic ingredients), the concoctions of which they learn both from ancient passed down knowledge as well as their own individual experimentation.

There's a great deal of contradiction in many Wuxia stories and legends regarding which has more to do with the anciently long lifespan of a Xian: the decades upon decades of intensive Chi training & mastery or the mystical Taoist elixirs. But generally speaking, its often usually some combination of the two in tandem.

The motivational point of the Xian's use of these elixirs isn't necessarily always a greedy/cowardly desire for long life just for the sake of fearing & staving off death (though that certainly often can very well be the case for more wicked, corrupted Xian characters, or younger unscrupulous fighters seeking to become Xian-like masters for more ignoble reasons) but more as a general preservation of simple good health later in life for the sake mainly of - you guessed it - further continued intensive martial arts training and mastery into a fighters' deeper elderly years: with quasi-immortality simply being a mystical side-benefit.

Think of it sort of like a mythical/folkloric Chinese kung fu equivalent of when elderly people in real life take various prescription medications for their health. In Wuxia, an elderly Wulin fighter getting on in years can continue to get by (and certainly even dominate tremendously as a fighter) very, very late in life with a combination of supremely advanced Chi mastery as well as brewing up their own magical brand of Taoist medicines to further strengthen their withering bodies against disease and physical deterioration and thus keep themselves going and training longer so as to even further innovate and master more and more fighting techniques and thus further expand their knowledge and skill.

For purely noble/good Xian (contrasted with less scrupulous and more selfish/venal Xian), extending their lives so greatly is more just about further developing and spreading their martial arts skills and knowledge amongst students & successors for as much and as long as humanly possible before death eventually does overtake them (much, much, much, MUCH later on down the road than for most everyone else obviously).

As I went into in the original/huge-ass Wuxia thread, in many Wuxia myths and tales by passing a certain threshold of Chi power and perfected martial skill & knolwedge, a Xian can technically not be considered fully human anymore but almost a demi-god of sorts. That being said however, for as immensely powerful and transcendent beyond normal human limits as their advanced training and semi-immortality makes them, Xian are typically still at times in many stories somewhat more frail and vulnerable than a younger fighter due to their age, depending on the specific circumstances.

Not so much so that they can't still more than hold their own and give just about all of the younger warriors they come across a more than adequate run for their money; but impossibly sharpened technique and raw Ki/Chi force can at times (depending on the situation in any given story) only carry them so far in a really tough or extended brawl before the realities of their age eventually catch up with them in some manner or other and a much younger hero's vigor and vitality may be needed to help win the day. Other times however, its the utterly absurd degree of experience, wisdom, patience, and godlike skill & mystical Chi force of a Xian that's more key in defeating the villain when a youthful Youxia hero's inexperience, hot-blooded fury, and rash haste leads them to failure. Again, such things vary greatly from wuxia story to wuxia story.

The overall story formula/concept here ought to be more than familiar to any given generalized fantasy fan I'm sure, wuxia or not.

Nonetheless, while Xian certainly more than bend the rules of mortality and aging (to pretty damned extreme and insane degrees), they can't typically flat out BREAK them entirely and are still, at the end of the day and for all their heavenly powers, very, very, VERY old men & women prone to some of the same vulnerabilities of advanced age as any normal person - albeit mainly only when places under a great, GREAT deal of beyond inhuman stress & strain - when all's said and done.

A favorite example of mine of this concept (due to what a humorously and uncommonly extreme of an instance of this it is) is the character Sword Saint in Fung Wan: a ridiculously ancient Xian who is so exceptionally talented in his Chi mastery that his fighting style is almost impossible to describe in words without actually seeing it visually: his techniques are essentially that of an otherworldly, spiritual entity from another faraway plane of existence entirely divorced from our own. Which makes him virtually impossible to defeat or overcome in any way in a head to head fight, be it one on one against a vastly skilled and powerful opponent or with him alone against an entire army of hundreds.

However once in the deepest throes of his meditative focus, concentration on the fight, and the harassing of his incredible godlike power, all it takes to startle him into a premature death due to his extreme age is (in the manhua) a gentle and wholly accidental nudge against his body from Cloud or (in the film) a simple and innocent tap on the shoulder from the curious Muse.

Dragon Ball of course references these Xian immortality elixirs quite directly via a bunch of Muten Roshi's dialogue throughout the earlier arcs (seriously, you'd probably have a much, much, much shorter list of the wuxia tropes that DB doesn't tick off throughout its run rather than the ones it does: a greater emphasis on melee weapons combat, some sort of torrid and melodramatic love triangle, and the use of ancient written manuals & manuscripts for long lost/forbidden martial arts fighting styles & techniques as a plot MacGuffin are some of the very, very few that I can immediately think of off the cuff that it mostly skirts over, though I'm sure there's more of course); though whether or not such elixirs actually do exist in DB's whacked out Toriyama-fied version of Jianghu or are simply false legends is left sort of vague and murky.

Roshi claims at first that they're real and assisted in his long lasting life as far back as the Pilaf arc, then later on in the Daimao arc he mentions the elixir as being a lie: but I'm pretty sure that I distantly, vaguely recall something or other about his exact dialogue wording in the raw Japanese about the elixir not really existing as being somehow more ambiguously open-ended than most translations lead people to think. I could very well be mistaken there though. Someone like Herms or whomever could probably say more on that.

As Dragon Ball defines its universe more and more and lays out rules that separate it from its hodge-podge mystical martial-arts backdrop, this lack of explanation can stick out. But the reality is it traded more freely in those tropes at the time the Crane School was introduced.

Why are characters like Tsuru-Sennin and Tao Pai Pai so old? They just are. Why doesn't the same apply to characters like Tenshinhan and Kuririn? Because it's a different series now.

I would dispute that Dragon Ball isn't really quite as much of a flat out different series in its later arcs from its earlier ones as much as it is just numerous variations and flavorings of the same core series. The overall tone hardens quite a large bit for a good while (though never completely and certainly not permanently) and more sci fi-tinged diversions are used more frequently for a significant chunk of it (which again, had become quite the norm for the genre in many corners during that specific time period).

But those things don't make it any less of a mystical (and whimsically bent) martial arts story. Just differing shades of one (which often reflected, if only by general osmosis, the storytelling trends and fads throughout a great deal of wuxia media throughout Asia at that particular time in the latter half of the 80s & earlier half of the 90s) as it evolved and mutated throughout its (very long) run and alongside Toriyama's various random whims.

More than anything else, it really is largely Toriyama's distinctive visual style and creative personality/filter that defines and makes Dragon Ball stand out and apart so starkly from other pieces of wuxia/mystical kung fu fantasy media. The vast overwhelming majority of, if not damn near ALL, of the more specific narrative tropes and story beats he uses are much more often than not ripped fairly directly out of various forms and permutations of Wuxia media both ancient and (much more often so) contemporary. With a few notable exceptions here and there of course (Great Saiyaman and whatnot).

"Dr. Slump creator does his take on 80s/90s Wuxia (with much more of the 70s used in the early goings) for so long that it gets totally out of hand" really does just about encapsulate and sum it all up.

Tsuru-Sennin is obviously depicted to be an advanced quasi-immortal Xian master (of the corrupted, evil variety natch) and the nature of that character is not explained for the same reason than the deeper workings and nature of Ki aren't explained or the reason for why there's this inherently accepted semi-underground community of mystically powerful martial arts experts who all know of one another (either directly, or by reputation) that roam the Dragon Ball world and are fountains of knowledge on all sorts of pieces of mystical kung fu legends, techniques, and weapons/artifacts: these are exceedingly broad elements of Wuxia storytelling that are such an ingrained part of Eastern popular culture across numerous generations that they simply go without saying at this point, just as much as why wizards like Gandalf and Dumbledore are so incredibly powerful or why Dragons and Elves and Dwarves live alongside humans in Western fantasy fiction. Tao Pai Pai's a fair bit younger than Tsuru, but one can more than easily assume that he's gotten on as long as he has in large part due to association with his brother and his training methods (fan wanky though that explanation may be).

Kuririn and Tenshinhan aren't seen as becoming similarly ancient/wise martial arts masters for the simple reason that the story never really ever gets that far to that point in their lives where they might, or might not, grow to that level as fighters (outside of various forms of fan fiction and the occasional weird, and in most cases clearly non-canonical, video game or supplemental DB media oddity). You're not generally considered to be at the level of true a Xian yet in most Wuxia when you're merely pushing 50. 350 on the other hand, that's a whole other story.

[Cipher]

I would dispute that Dragon Ball isn't really quite as much of a flat out different series in its later arcs from its earlier ones as much as it is just numerous variations and flavorings of the same core series. The overall tone hardens quite a large bit for a good while (though never completely and certainly not permanently) and more sci fi-tinged diversions are used more frequently for a significant chunk of it (which again, had become quite the norm for the genre in many corners during that specific time period).

But those things don't make it any less of a mystical (and whimsically bent) martial arts story. Just differing shades of one (which often reflected, if only by general osmosis, the storytelling trends and fads throughout a great deal of wuxia media throughout Asia at that particular time in the latter half of the 80s & earlier half of the 90s) as it evolved and mutated throughout its (very long) run and alongside Toriyama's various random whims.

More than anything else, it really is largely Toriyama's distinctive visual style and creative personality/filter that defines and makes Dragon Ball stand out and apart so starkly from other pieces of wuxia/mystical kung fu fantasy media. The vast overwhelming majority of, if not damn near ALL, of the more specific narrative tropes and story beats he uses are much more often than not ripped fairly directly out of various forms and permutations of Wuxia media both ancient and (much more often so) contemporary. With a few notable exceptions here and there of course (Great Saiyaman and whatnot).

"Dr. Slump creator does his take on 80s/90s Wuxia (with much more of the 70s used in the early goings) for so long that it gets totally out of hand" really does just about encapsulate and sum it all up.

Thanks for popping in to nuance that comment in ways I couldn't. Agreed on the bolded portion as well.

I never meant to imply that the latter portions of Dragon Ball are fundamentally different from early ones; they're not. They apply a slightly different sense of logic, though, wherein the series' own codified rules override ones borrowed from wuxia fiction that could previously be invoked without question. Early on there's a sense the characters exist in a complete wuxia fantasy world, whereas later -- directly on the other side of the trip to Namek, actually -- the series shifts its overriding logic to imply these are wuxia characters existing as exceptional figures in an overall slightly more realistic world.

(Slightly, but not so much so that every cosmic villain isn't also a martial arts master for reasons of quietly absurd genre convention.)

[Herms]

As for the hundred-year age difference between Uranai Baba and Kame-Sennin (is this ever stated in the series?)

In the manga, it's just said that Kame-sennin climbed Karin Tower about 300 years ago (so he's at least that old), and no information on Uranai Baba's age is given. The anime though adds in a line where Kame-sennin says his sister has been fortune-telling for over 500 years, shows Kame-sennin climbing the tower as a young man, and even refers to him as "approximately 300 years old" at one point. So if we're going only by the manga, strictly speaking Kame-sennin could be, for instance, 1,000 and have climbed the tower when he was 700. It does seem more fitting for him to be doing this training as a young man, but this is never explicitly specified. Going by the anime though, Kame-sennin is only a relatively little bit over 300, while Uranai Baba must be somewhere over 500, hence the age gap. The guides go with the idea of Kame-sennin being in his 300s during the series, and the Daizenshuu 7/Chouzenshuu 4 timeline includes the anime thing about Uranai Baba beginning her fortune-telling caraeer around 500 years before her first appearance.

Roshi claims at first that they're real and assisted in his long lasting life as far back as the Pilaf arc, then later on in the Daimao arc he mentions the elixir as being a lie: but I'm pretty sure that I distantly, vaguely recall something or other about his exact dialogue wording in the raw Japanese about the elixir not really existing as being somehow more ambiguously open-ended than most translations lead people to think. I could very well be mistaken there though. Someone like Herms or whomever could probably say more on that.

Well, during the Pilaf arc after Kame-sennin claims he'll be dying soon (and therefore deserves to feel up Bulma), Sea Turtle asks Kame-sennin "haven't you drunk the elixir of immortality?", and his reply essentially means "never mind about that", not really confirming or denying anything. In the Daimao arc though, Kame-sennin initially tells Tenshinhan that he won't die because he's drunk the water of immortality (not elixir like last time), then after paralyzing Tenshinhan says that the water of immortality doesn't exist and that he lied.

[Anime Kitten]

Well, during the Pilaf arc after Kame-sennin claims he'll be dying soon (and therefore deserves to feel up Bulma), Sea Turtle asks Kame-sennin "haven't you drunk the elixir of immortality?", and his reply essentially means "never mind about that", not really confirming or denying anything. In the Daimao arc though, Kame-sennin initially tells Tenshinhan that he won't die because he's drunk the water of immortality (not elixir like last time), then after paralyzing Tenshinhan says that the water of immortality doesn't exist and that he lied.

This confuses me. He's vague about it, then he says he drank it, then he says he didn't... but he's still alive and well by, say, GT?

[Herms]

This confuses me. He's vague about it, then he says he drank it, then he says he didn't... but he's still alive and well by, say, GT?

He presumably owes his long life to something other than any elixir (and, though long-lived, can still be killed). Most likely it's due to his martial arts training and ki cultivation, as discussed above. Or maybe just his pet phoenix.

[Son_Gohan]

They practice the Xi Sui Jing or something similar.