Doctor. wrote:ABED wrote:Other than Gohan, who goes through the same arc?
Vegeta mostly retreads the same ground every arc. He ends the arc peacefully and adapting to Earthling life, only to go back being a dick at the start of the next one. The way his arc is executed is different each time, but they start from the same point and come to the same conclusion.
Not saying he's badly written, but his development is definitely a bumpy, messy road, mostly because of his role as the token anti-hero and Dragon Ball's insistence on not ending its story.
As far as I can tell, Vegeta only retreads his arc (to any degree) in Super. And even there, its somewhat arguable.
In the Saiya-jin arc, he's the main arc villain and demonstrates zero sympathetic characteristics. He's an entertaining, but simple enough out and out clearcut villain. By tne end of the arc he's beaten, but clearly intends to return later to cause the heroes more trouble.
In the Freeza arc he's largely the same, but with the added wrinkle that his interests run counter to his former masters (who are now the main arc villains) and he shows he's willing to align himself, at least temporarily, with the Z Warriors in order to rebel against them. By the end of the arc, Freeza's beaten and seemingly killed, and Vegeta is left without any purpose in his life. He's in no way reformed or a good person by ANY stretch, and shows no real signs of such. He's simply had the knees to his whole life's goals (surpassing and usurping Freeza) cut out from under him: and by a Saiya-jin warrior that he'd originally written off as a lowly, unskilled grunt. He's thoroughly humiliated and with no more goals left to drive him, but FAR from anything resembling a changed man.
In the Cell arc, now that Freeza and his empire are gone he's left lost and adrift without any purpose or direction. He's living on Earth and isn't causing any trouble, but that's clearly only because he has no incentive or reason to. With Goku returned home and another SSJ revealed in Future Trunks, Vegeta ultimately ends up obsessing over chasing after the Super Saiya-jin power that cheated him out of usurping Freeza and shaming his royalty/nobility.
In the meantime, he lives on Earth and fathers a son with Bulma... showing that he's gradually acclimating himself somewhat with living on Earth among his former enemies. But nonetheless, he's still clearly not a good person and remains completely unrepentant of his past. He fights against the same enemies (Gero, Cell, and the other Jinzoningen) as the other Z Warriors, but not really as much of a team player with them and if anything is a constant liability to them in his own selfish pursuits of his own interests throughout the arc. He ends the Cell arc emotionally broken, devastated, and ashamed of his performance as a fighter in Cell's tournament, and swears off martial arts out of shame and humiliation more than anything else. He's now passive, but hardly at peace with himself.
By the time of the Boo arc, now that Goku's been dead for some time we see that he's spent the ensuing 7 years living in relative peace with his new family. Its less that he's actually reformed though, so much as he's been resigned to a self-pitying funk over being so thoroughly outclassed in fighting skill by both Goku and his son during the Cell Games. During that time however, he has indeed very, very subtly and gradually (to a degree that's even surprising to himself as he admits) grown fond and attached to living with his new family, which is a large part of what's also kept him in check.
Once Babidi and Dabura show up however and he sees how the Majin charm works (along with Goku having returned as a spirit from the afterlife to compete in the newest Budokai tournament earlier), it awakens and stirs up old feelings and reopens old wounds and neurosis about his inferiority complex to Goku, which clearly have never actually mended or healed at any point prior. He's tempted and grabs the power from the Majin charm, allowing himself to regress and backslide into being a murderous psychopath, even acknowledging and throwing away his life on Earth... purely to spite Goku and to settle their beef once and for all.
Then Boo is awakened and Goku mentions how this will endanger even Vegeta's new family in Bulma and Trunks. This gets through and jars Vegeta out of his self-indulgent backslide, and he puts aside his rematch with Goku to sacrifice himself against Boo. Once he's later restored to life by Baba, the ensuing series of battles against Boo cause Vegeta to inevitably come to his big breakthrough epiphany, leading to the whole "You're no. 1" speech. Thus, Vegeta's full arc and transition from "Genocidal, self-serving scumfuck" to "Genuinely noble warrior and family man" finally completes itself and closes out.
GT, for all its faults, was at least wise enough to further run with this even more and not betray it for cheap fan pandering: in GT, Vegeta is shown to have fully made the transition into being a (relatively) normal, peaceful/loving husband and father. He hasn't given up on martial arts and training by any means, obviously, and he still aspires to be a better fighter than Goku: but now that desire has greatly matured into a friendly, spirited, and constructive rivalry, one that he pursues in a much more healthy and less self-destructive manner.
Its only Super that seems to have him regress somewhat from his Boo arc epiphany. And even then... not all THAT terribly much when all's said and done. Does Vegeta ever get seriously tempted to regress back into being a villain once again in Super? No. Does he recklessly endanger people's lives in an effort to peruse his selfish desires? Not that I can recall offhand, no (if I'm forgetting something there, someone please feel free to correct me). Does he show ANY fondness at all whatsoever for the kind of homicidal asshole he was previously the way he constantly does throughout the Cell and Boo arcs? Again, not that I can think of, no.
What Super does (and that GT avoided) is that it simply dulls down the stark contrast between how he generally acted and behaved before his emotional breakthrough on the Kaioshin world and after. He's still a peaceful inhabitant on Earth, and he's now a devoted husband and father (if still somewhat awkwardly fitting himself into that role). He's no longer anywhere near as fanatically violent about pursuing his martial arts rivalry with Goku, and has been a loyal friend and ally to the group throughout (if simply a sometimes vaguely unpleasant one).
All that Super ultimately does (once again, to the best of my recollection of it) is retain more of Vegeta's belligerent "fuck you" attitude in terms of his overall general demeanor and personality. Obviously the real reason its doing this is to shamelessly pander to fans' nostalgia for Goku and Vegeta's more edgy and standoffish relationship from Z's heyday: but nonetheless an argument CAN be made (so far anyway) that this is simply the result of the time period in which Super's story is set: the immediate aftermath of the Boo arc.
Super picks up what, only a couple of years later after Kid Boo's demise? We're nowhere near the Z epilogue, much less GT (which are a decade to a decade and a half later respectively) in terms of overall time that's elapsed. Its entirely possible (and I know that I'm probably extending Super FAR more credit here than I probably ought to be) that we're still in the midst of Vegeta's transition from having had his big epiphany in the Boo arc's finale to where we find him by the Z Epilogue (and GT if we bother to count that in the equation at all).
Again, in Super - once again, this is to the best of my recollection, if I'm missing anything major here, then someone who knows and remembers the ins and outs of Super far better than I do by all means please feel totally free to correct me here - he REALLY hasn't actually DONE anything particularly malevolent or selfish or evil. Nor has he expressed any sort of desire or temptation to. When Freeza returns, he's staunchly opposed to him and roundly rejects his offer to rejoin his army. Even when Freeza temporarily aligns himself with the group for the Tournament of Power, Vegeta is VISCERALLY disgusted by him and has to be kept on a short leash from lashing out and coming to blows against Freeza.
Hell, if anything Vegeta doesn't even endanger the planet for the sake of his martial arts to anywhere NEAR the extent that Goku does circa the Tournament of Power. He's on good, healthy terms with not only Bulma and present day Trunks, but also Trunks' future counterpart, and is a willing and heroic team player throughout the whole Zamasu incident.
Really when you boil down Vegeta's "regression" in Super, all it amounts to basically is "Vegeta's still fairly cantankerous in his attitude, and hasn't warmed his general demeanor to the extent we see in End of Z and GT". Which, if we extend Super SOME measure of the benefit of the doubt here (and I'm on the fence as to whether or not I'm genuinely willing to do that here: I'm mostly just playing devil's advocate here with it) we can easily chalk that up to the immediacy of how shortly after Boo the series is set.
End of Z was set ten years down the road, and GT was fifteen. Super's as of now something like 4 or 5 years away from the end of Boo on the Kaioshin world (if that even), so its now somewhere in the middle of that time gap. Again, and I grant you I'm probably extending Super FAR too much credit here in terms of where it'll end up ultimately going down the road... but its still within at least the REALM of possibility that we
could potentially see Vegeta further soften his attitude into a point we see him by the Z Epilogue or even GT, and that Super is simply depicting the "awkward adjustment/transition" period in the interim. It IS technically an "interquel" rather than a sequel to Z after all.
But even if that doesn't end up being the case and Super keeps him in the more snide and cranky place he's been in... end of the day that's A) not all THAT especially big a betrayal of his previous arc, and B) even if it is (and the possibility that I'm forgetting or overlooking something WAY more severe in Vegeta's actions and how he acts in Super: I'm hardly the most ardent viewer of Super, I don't remember everything in it near as well and to the extent that I do the original series), that still ultimately brings Vegeta's "arc regression" down entirely onto Super, and not at all on any of the previous material from the original run; where I would argue that Vegeta's development is kept largely more or less on a consistent and easily traceable throughline.
