Who is the TRUE hero of Dragonball?

[JazzMazz]

You're confusing "catalys" with "hero".

I second this notion. Some refer to Gokū as an accidental or unintentional hero, since his goals simply tend to align with saving the day, but a catalyst is even more accidental or unintentional a hero than that; yes, Bulma's discovery of a Dragon Ball and her subsequent search for the others led her to meet Gokū, enabling absolutely everything else that happened thereafter, but her actions have never directly saved the planet, galaxy, or universe. Rather, her actions have often enabled someone else to do so, namely Gokū, or prevented someone from destroying or ruling, such as Freeza.

Applying such a principle of causality, let's use an example to compare one of the major actions of Bulma and Gokū, respectively, that are associated with saving of lives (or, in this case, the universe) in order to illustrate what I mean.

Bulma created and brought along a Dragon Radar to Planet Namek; this enabled the team to prevent the Namekian Dragon Balls from falling into the hands of Vegeta and/or Freeza, effectively preventing their potentially becoming immortal and therefore, to an extent, undefeatable. Even Super Saiyajin Gokū would not be able to defeat a 100% power Freeza who can't be killed; he might beat him down just as he did in the manga, but, after a time, Gokū's stamina and energy would deplete, enabling Freeza to kill him (assuming Freeza's immortality would include healing of wounds as it did in Future Zamas' case). Bulma is one reason for Freeza's defeat, effectively saving the universe from his reign.

When Freeza unveiled his true form, no one shy of Gokū was able to match him in combat; with the Kaiōken x20, Gokū roughly equaled 50% of Freeza's power. Regardless of what Bulma could have accomplished technologically, nothing she might have been capable of could possibly have directly affected Freeza; she could potentially have deceived him and/or prevented him from accomplishing certain things (as she did with contributing to the prevention of his immortality), but there was no way she could harm him, let alone defeat him and stop him from ruling the universe with an iron fist as the most powerful mortal (just so long as he didn't irritate Beerus again). Gokū, however, did exactly that; he engaged Freeza in battle and won. As Movie 13's title says, if Gokū didn't do it, who would have? Without him, there wouldn't have been a hero.

In other words, Gokū's actions more closely relate to what ends up saving the day and often are what saves the day in the end. It is true that, often, he could not have done so if not for Bulma's prior actions, but her actions aren't what saved the day in the end; someone else with inhuman abilities, be it Gokū, Gohan, Vegeta, or the unrivaled Monaka, took what she made possible and hit the problem really, really hard.

I kind of lost sight of the point I was making while on-and-off typing this, but hopefully that made sense. I kind of lost interest in it, but I didn't want to just discard it all. Sorry if it's a little jumbled and not as sensible as it could have been.

I get it,
Goku is of course the greatest hero of them all, even though it isn't really in his intention to be one.
When it comes all down with it, he's just a guy who like's to fight strong guys, when he saves a whole lot of people while doing so then that's a bonus.

I do have a problem with his attitude in Super though, that's why I'm sort of questioning his integrity.
The Goku in Super deliberately puts people in danger for his own selfish desires and therefore I can't really see him as a genuine hero anymore.
Goku in DBZ did some dumb things but he never went looking for trouble, trouble found him instead.
So that's why I think that Bulma is more of a hero than Goku nowadays.

Its true that Goku has incited challenges in his pursuit of looking for stronger opponents, but his never done so maliciously, and in fact, his actions have actually ended up saving more people than harming them, as was demonstrated with the Universal tournament.

Also, are we seriously forgetting Goku in the Buu arcs less than responsible decision making?