What is the darkest moment/theme in Dragon Ball?

[Attitudefan]

King Piccolo saga beats the saiyan saga out of the park with the dark theme!

Shenron dies, Krillin Dies, Chiotzu dies, Roshi dies, Goku almost dies twice! Ten gets tortured; Goku is then forced to take free hits so Ten doesn't die! THe whole world is plunged into darkness and for the first time the Earth is under real tyranny!

Many others die (World Tournament participants)

I don't think you can beat that.

[Furu]

Buu turning Chi-Chi into an egg and stomping on her was some surprisingly disturbing stuff (at least when I was younger).

[Payne222]

History of Trunks
Gohan is with Trunks training and talking when the Androids strike nearby. Gohan goes to fight, stopping Trunks from going with by knocking him out. Trunks wakes up, its raining and the city is demolished. He flies around looking for Gohan and finds him dead. He collapses to the ground in tears and turns Super Saiyan.
Very dark and a big tear jerker.

[Saimaroimaru]

King Piccolo saga beats the saiyan saga out of the park with the dark theme!

Shenron dies, Krillin Dies, Chiotzu dies, Roshi dies, Goku almost dies twice! Ten gets tortured; Goku is then forced to take free hits so Ten doesn't die! THe whole world is plunged into darkness and for the first time the Earth is under real tyranny!

Many others die (World Tournament participants)

I don't think you can beat that.

Super Buu wiping out nearly most of the human population and still wanting more.

[Fin]

King Piccolo saga beats the saiyan saga out of the park with the dark theme!

Shenron dies, Krillin Dies, Chiotzu dies, Roshi dies, Goku almost dies twice! Ten gets tortured; Goku is then forced to take free hits so Ten doesn't die! THe whole world is plunged into darkness and for the first time the Earth is under real tyranny!

Many others die (World Tournament participants)

I don't think you can beat that.

Super Buu wiping out nearly most of the human population and still wanting more.

For me, the Piccolo stuff was much more affecting than the Boo example. It's a matter of context within the series, the whole tragedy versus statistic equation, and the fact that at that point in the series the battles tended to be a little more grounded in reality (still ridiculously superhuman, of course, but nonetheless easier to relate to than late Dragon Ball). Piccolo was the first major threat we'd seen, and the first time major characters had been killed off, so everything automatically feels grimmer than the deaths in the Boo arc, where people have been killed and revived so often that it's become more a mild inconvenience. For the stakes to matter any more humanity has to be wiped out with a flick of Boo's wrist or the very Earth itself has to be destroyed, and those happen too quickly and are just too large-scale to easily sympathise with.

[Piccolo Daimao]

The saiyan saga? Now that was bleak.
1. From the moment the gang encounter the saiyans, it was clear that they didn't stand a chance.
2. Episode after episode featured the gang being slowly beaten to death, while the saiyans continually mocked them
3. Even after Goku arrives, Vegeta viciously beats him to a pulp.

But the single image that summed up just how dark that arc was?
http://27.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lh9cs ... o1_400.jpg

Completely disrupting a heart-to-heart moment between a father and his son with a knee to the stomach. Pretty fucking dark, yet also is a case of Toriyama's dark sense of humor.

Yeah, the Saiyan arc was pretty dark (although I'm not quite sure it was the darkest arc). Goku being tortured by Vegeta was probably one of the most brutal beatings in the series.

[Gokuman1993]

While I certainly do agree that the subject matter of the Namek is fairly bleak, there was enough humorous subplots and small victories peppered throughtout the arc that it didn't feel too dark.

The saiyan saga? Now that was bleak.
1. From the moment the gang encounter the saiyans, it was clear that they didn't stand a chance.
2. Episode after episode featured the gang being slowly beaten to death, while the saiyans continually mocked them
3. Even after Goku arrives, Vegeta viciously beats him to a pulp.

But the single image that summed up just how dark that arc was?


Completely disrupting a heart-to-heart moment between a father and his son with a knee to the stomach. Pretty fucking dark, yet also is a case of Toriyama's dark sense of humor.

That arc alone is why Vegeta is my least favorite character Poor Goku.

[cRookie_Monster]

- Garlic Jr's theme and the "Demon Mist" theme (both from the Faulconer score.) These compositions are actually pretty good in my opinion, and they do sound rather dark and ominous. They both remind me of the score for the Halloween films.

Seems Falcouner productions were the only ones that realized that Garlic Jr. is a freaking demon. There really are some Halloween vibes there.

Thanks! Garlic Jr Saga will always hold a special place for me because it was the first time I got to do character themes like that.
I had visited PlanetNamek.com ahead of time before we started work on the Garlic Jr. series and printed out a lot of pics. We didn't have the dub names for things yet and the "Black Water Mist" was still commonly know as the "Demon Mist" on the web...so that's why that was named as such.

You might like Vampyre's Bane as well
http://soundclick.com/share.cfm?id=5918788

For me there were quite a few dark moments especially when I first started:
-Krillin getting impaled on Frieza's horn
-Kid Gohan getting brutalized by Frieza
-Vegeta dying
-Cell Devouring a whole town
-Vegeta going Majin just to pound Goku
-Videl's pounding she took at the tournament.
I didn't watch a lot of Buu stuff, but I understand he wiped out all life on the planet...that's pretty dark.
Frieza destroying Namek and Planet Vegeta should be dark...but I guess it's so zoomed back that you become callous to it. Stuff like Frieza threatening the Namek children and killing the parent seems more dark, probably because of the anguish involved.

I think the scariest piece I worked on for the series was this though:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukZTwcZ1zZ4

It was a bunch of new material overlaid onto an edited Mike Smith arrangement.

[Attitudefan]

King Piccolo saga beats the saiyan saga out of the park with the dark theme!

Shenron dies, Krillin Dies, Chiotzu dies, Roshi dies, Goku almost dies twice! Ten gets tortured; Goku is then forced to take free hits so Ten doesn't die! THe whole world is plunged into darkness and for the first time the Earth is under real tyranny!

Many others die (World Tournament participants)

I don't think you can beat that.

Super Buu wiping out nearly most of the human population and still wanting more.

For me, the Piccolo stuff was much more affecting than the Boo example. It's a matter of context within the series, the whole tragedy versus statistic equation, and the fact that at that point in the series the battles tended to be a little more grounded in reality (still ridiculously superhuman, of course, but nonetheless easier to relate to than late Dragon Ball). Piccolo was the first major threat we'd seen, and the first time major characters had been killed off, so everything automatically feels grimmer than the deaths in the Boo arc, where people have been killed and revived so often that it's become more a mild inconvenience. For the stakes to matter any more humanity has to be wiped out with a flick of Boo's wrist or the very Earth itself has to be destroyed, and those happen too quickly and are just too large-scale to easily sympathise with.

What Fin said

[cRookie_Monster]

Then there's the amount of suffering people go through. I'm guessing there wasn't much when Buu did his thing.

[shinmaru]

My darkest experience with DragonBall Z (jap version)(cantonese)was from begining of android til end of cell saga. 17 getting sucked was dark for me and goku getting sick was epic for me. the story was just the best of dbz after freeza being killed till end of cell arc.back then i was 12,13 years old, now i'm 28 but still got that mysterious dark sad feeling from that whole arc + tv special + movie 7 was and still is the best of DBZ.

[Sinestro]

For me, it's when Freeza pretty much tortures Vegeta.

[MCDaveG]

Also, one of the darkest moments is Murasaki's ass stabbed on Goku's Noiybo...... Man! That hurt even me, when I'm watching this scene....

For me one of the darkest moments

[SSJFrogGinyu]

I just finished the first GT season set - the Baby Saga is pretty damned dark! You've got Goku coming home and almost immediately being attacked by his own sons, realizing that he has very few allies left, and that he doesn't have a prayer against Vegeta-Baby. Then there's Pan, shaking with despair over 1). Her parents trying to kill her, esp. Gohan trying to choke her to death 2). Watching Baby use the ultimate Dragon Balls she and the others worked so hard to collect and them flying off to the corners of space again 3). Watching Baby appear to kill everyone right in front of her. Of course Goku actually gets pulled into another dimension (heh) instead of dying, but at that moment she's pretty sure she watched her Grandpa, Earth's last hope, die rather quickly. Young girl vs. the whole world going to hell - it's heartbreaking. You really do feel for her.

As much as I was expecting to hate GT when I picked it up, it got a lot better after the Dragon Ball hunt arc.

[BlazingFiddlesticks]

^

I watched the Baby fight again a couple days ago, I forgot how much I actually liked GT when it wasn't busy making plot holes.

[NeoKING]

I'm glad someone mentioned GT; the Baby saga was pretty dark. You have the entire Son family sans Goku and Pan worshipping an evil parasite and willing to kill their loved ones. Yeah, it's been done before with Garlic Jr., but the set-up for our heroes to come back to their home planet only to find out that they've lost the space-race was pretty bleak. And to top it off, Goku didn't have a chance of beating Baby Vegeta.

[Saimaroimaru]

Buu going inside that dude and making him explode. *Shivers*

[Godo]

That arc alone is why Vegeta is my least favorite character Poor Goku.

That, and what he did on Namek. And Bulma still wanted to bang him.

[Piccolo Daimao]

That arc alone is why Vegeta is my least favorite character Poor Goku.

That, and what he did on Namek. And Bulma still wanted to bang him.

It seems apparent that pretty much no-one but Tenshinhan cared about what Vegeta did before. Goku and the others act fine around him. Both Yamcha and Bulma (even before she banged him) appears perfectly fine living with him at Capsule Corporation, and when Bulma proposed to him that he live with them at Capsule Corp., she was even joking around about him trying something naughty with her.

And my fan theory is that Bulma initially banged Vegeta to get back at Yamcha for allegedly cheating on her, and later ended up having feelings for him on account of living with him for 7 years.

[Vhanos]

The scene were the hunters killed innocent people. Who lead to Buu releasing skinny Buu.

Cell being learned about.


The Garlic Jr. saga had some dark parts.