Nah, he was a cool guy, who loved to fight.rereboy wrote: Actually, he was treated as a joke and was always used as a tool for humor, measuring stick or progressing the plot.
Right in his introduction, he is not stronger than Goku and has the quirk of "fear of girls".
He decides to steal the Dragon Balls because he wants to get rid of his fears so that he can get married.
His attempts always end up badly, except when it's useful for the plot.
In his most important interventions (Boss Rabbit and Oozaru Goku), Puar was just as important as him, meaning that he doesn't really accomplish much alone.
In the 21st tournament, he was used as measuring stick to build up Jackie Chang.
In the Baba tournament, he needed the intervention of Bulma's Boobs to win against the Invisible Man (even though he probably would have won if Baba didn't start to sing), and this is his ONLY major win against an opponent who isn't fodder in a solo fight in the entire series! Right after this, he was humiliated by the Mummy, to build up the Mummy and Goku.
In the 22nd tournament, he was used as a measuring stick to build up Tenshinhan, even though this time he looked more impressive.
In the 23rd tournament, Yamcha has his most impressive fighting moment, managing to impress and slightly hurt Kami with a completely original technique. Yet, despite this, Yamcha is still used for humor in the beginning of the fight and is kind of humiliated by it.
In the battle with the saiyans, Yamcha proves to be superior to the Saibamen, which means that he has impressive power, but he gets cocky and the Saibamen manages to kill him with a kamikaze attack, ending this fight with a tie. This means that Yamcha was once again used to build up the enemy and the stakes of the fight.
And with the cyborgs, Yamcha is once again used to show that the androids are serious business by almost dying at their hands.
Krillin wasn't stronger than Goku either in his introduction.
Yes, he was. This doesn't make a character joke.
Doesn't mean that the character is a joke.
Exactly. Didn't look like a joke at all.
This is more than 99,9% of Earthlings can even hope to do. By saying that Yamcha is a joke, is the same as saying that 99,9% of Earth's population is a joke.
Yeah, the Saibamen who was as strong as a guy from Saiyan Race, one of the most elite warrior races in the universe. And Yamcha beat him.
After that Yamcha was just a spectator at best, because Toriyama stopped giving a damn about humans.
In the end a lot of people forgot (I know that you mentioned it) that he was the one who cut Oozaru Goku's tail and saved Pilaf (who later released Piccolo Daimao), Bulma (who later gave birth to Trunks and built a Time Machine) and saved a whole ton of cities from rampaging ape. Not only that, but he saved Goku and Bulma from Monster Carrot as well. Puar helped him, but that doesn't matter, Puar is Yamcha's friend, Yamcha says Puar what he should do and Yamcha comes up with the actual plans (he was the one who came up with idea of cutting Goku's tail), etc. Goku was getting help pretty much every time in DBZ. He clearly wasn't just a joke in the beginning. Toriyama turned him into one. Just like he did with pretty much everyone else later.