DBZ...the essay?

[zDBZ]

For something a little different in the fan works section: I wrote about DBZ for my extended essay, the closest thing to a thesis that I had to complete for my master's degree.

Disclaimer: the program was a film production program, and this sort of academic assignment wasn't exactly the highlight. This particular essay was also overseen by a woman who stressed arguing a statement conclusively, not offering an opinion. She aslo asked that we avoid exposition on whichever film or TV show we wrote about, which was something of a struggle when, judging by her comments in class, has never seen a single movie or show in her life. She certainly never watched DBZ, so there's a fair bit of simplifying and bending here to make it easier on her and to support the argument. But the basics of that argument are something I've thought about for a while, so for what it's worth, here it is:


The Good, The Bad, and The Twisted
Three examples of the monomyth in Dragon Ball Z

Introduction

The hero's journey, or the monomyth, is a narrative structure that has gained great popularity in cinema. Developed in the early 20th century, it has served as the template for numerous screenplays and is presented in many writing courses as essential information. But the average film will apply the monomyth to a single character, and execute the narrative arc only once in its runtime. A television series, especially a long-running and successful one, will have the opportunity to send heroes on many journeys, and not always the same hero. Such repetition provides an opportunity to study how the monomyth can be faithfully executed, subverted through other narrative devices, or mishandled. This essay will consider three examples of the monomyth in the anime series Dragon Ball Z. Two of the examples follow the series protagonist Goku, and the third his son Gohan. One is what might be called a textbook example of the monomyth; the second subverts the story by means of another narrative device; and the third follows the traditional monomyth for much of the arc before abruptly abandoning it and relying on deus ex machinas to resolve the story.

The monomyth

The monomyth, more popularly known as the hero's journey, was introduced by the mythologist Joseph Campbell in his 1949 book The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Campbell developed the idea through his reading of mythology and fairy tales, and from the works of other early 20th century theorists. He felt that the work of Freud and Jung, the latter especially, supported the concept of universally recurring archetypes, and that modern psychology "demonstrated irrefutably that the logic, the heroes, and the deeds of myth survive into modern times" (Campbell, 4).

The concept has been carried forward by later scholars such as David Adams Leeming, and in popular culture by numerous writers and Hollywood figures. Executive Christopher Vogler has built a career on teaching budding screenwriters how to "[tell] better stories and [discover] the wisdom of the ancient myths and legends" by offering a simplified version of the monomyth in his books and website ("Home Page"), and George Lucas has frequently mentioned his debt to Campbell in developing Star Wars. Bill Moyers once quoted Campbell as saying that Lucas had been "the best student he ever had" (Empire of Dreams).

The monomyth, as originally described by Campbell, follows a three-act structure, "a magnification of the formula represented in the rites of passage: separation - initiation - return" (Campbell, 28). These acts are themselves broken down into stages, which vary depending on who is doing the break down. Campbell created seventeen stages. He described the Separation, or Departure, act as containing the stages of the Call to Adventure, Refusal of the Call, Supernatural Aid, Crossing the Threshold, and Belly of the Whale; the Initiation act as containing the stages of the Road of Trials, Meeting with the Goddess, Woman as Temptress, Atonement with the Father, Apotheosis, and the Ultimate Boon; and the Return act as containing the stages of the Refusal of the Return, the Magic Flight, Rescue from Without, Crossing of the Return Threshold, Master of Two Worlds, and Freedom to Live (Campbell, 34-35). The Initiation act has in later years sometimes been split in two, with Act IIA (Descent) containing the first three stages and Act IIB (Initiation) the latter three. Campbell called this breakdown a "composite adventure...[presenting] the tales of a number of the world's symbolic carriers of the destiny of Everyman;" he acknowledged that not every story that the monomyth could apply to would follow every stage, or deal with them in his specific order(Campbell, 33).

The monomyth as a narrative structure for film became popular after the success of Star Wars, to the point that it has sometimes been criticized as a crutch. But a typical feature film follows a single character as the protagonist, and so a film that follows the hero's journey executes the monomyth only once per film, or once over a series of films. The situation is slightly different in television. A long-running TV series may see a hero go on several journeys, and who the hero is may change over the course of time. The former was certainly the case, and the latter almost so, in the Japanese animated series Dragon Ball Z.

Dragon Ball Z

Dragon Ball Z began as the comic book Dragon Ball, written and drawn by Akira Toriyama. Loosely based off of the Chinese legend of the Monkey King in its initial story arc, Dragon Ball follows a young orphan boy with a tail named Goku, who is pulled into a quest for the seven magical dragon balls that, when gathered together, summon the dragon Shenron who can grant one wish. Goku becomes involved in several quests for the dragon balls during his childhood, and also strives to become the world's greatest martial artist. Saving the world several times in the process, Goku eventually achieves this goal as a teenager, winning the World Martial Arts Tournament and getting married on the same day.

Published in the weekly serialized comic magazine Shonen Jump from 1984 to 1995, the 519 chapter comic has been one of the most popular in Japan since its inception, and an animated adaptation began in 1986. At the point in the comic where Goku becomes a full-grown married man with a young son named Gohan, the show changed its name from Dragon Ball to Dragon Ball Z. This was a transitional time, for both the comic and the show. Dragon Ball began as a fairly light-hearted adventure series, full of comic relief and magical fantasy. The portion of the comic adapted as Dragon Ball Z opens with the revelation that Goku is not a human, but part of a near-extinct alien race known as the saiyans, mercenaries who conquer planets and sell them to other aliens after exterminating the native life forms. This storyline, known as the Saiyan Saga, pulled the series in a much darker direction, and most of the storylines in Dragon Ball Z were violent science fiction as opposed to the whimsical action comedies before them.

Akira Toriyama has said on more than one occasion that the story of Dragon Ball was unplanned. He never intended to go beyond the initial "search for the dragon balls" story arc, and claimed that he "basically only thought of what I was doing for that week. Even I didn't know what was going to happen the next week." (Toriyama, 261). Story arcs were sometimes drastically changed based on editors' requests or on random ideas. The shift in tone from light-hearted to heavy science fiction was thus not part of any major plan on Toriyama's part, and an author working this way is unlikely to consciously plan to execute the monomyth. Nevertheless, several of the story arcs of the Z period ended up falling along the lines of the hero's journey, most strongly in the storyline known as the Freeza Saga.

The Good

The Freeza Saga represents Dragon Ball Z's closest approach to what might be called the textbook example of the monomyth, even though it does not cover all seventeen of Campbell's stages. The tail-end of the Saiyan Saga serves as the catalyst for the Departure act; Goku and his friends need to travel into outer space to the planet Namek to bring their comrades killed by the saiyans back to life, including the creator of the dragon balls. This need to find new dragon balls creates the Call to Adventure. The Refusal of the Call stage Campbell saw as "essentially a refusal to give up what one takes to be one's interest" and a conscious rejection of the call by the hero (Campbell, 55). Goku's refusal is counter to this in that his declining the adventure is not of his own choosing; following the Saiyan Saga, Goku sustains serious injuries and is unable to take the spaceship that his son and best friend Krillin take to Namek. Supernatural Aid was conceived by Campbell as the awarding of the hero by a "protective figure...amulets against the dragon forces he is about to pass" (Campbell 63). In this case, the "amulet" is a senzu bean, a magical legume that heals all wounds, grown and given by Korin the talking cat, and Goku uses them to heal rapidly. To get to Namek, he acquires a second spaceship and goes into outer space; this is the Crossing the Threshold stage, where "the hero goes forward in his adventure until he comes to the 'threshold guardian' at the entrance to the zone of magnified power...beyond them is darkness, the unknown, and danger" as described by Campbell (Campbell, 71).

The Initiation act's Road of Trials is described by Campbell as "the hero mov[ing] in a dream landscape of curiously fluid, ambiguous forms, where he must survive a succession of trials" (Campbell, 89). In the Freeza Saga, this stage is fairly spread out. En route to Namek, Goku trains himself back into shape after his injuries, and even goes beyond his former limits. Upon arrival, Goku must face several of Freeza's soldiers. The ease with which Goku defeats most of them prompts Vegeta, the saiyan prince and Goku's chief rival in the series, to wonder if Goku is becoming a Super Saiyan, introducing the concept. The Road of Trials concludes with Goku facing up against Freeza's second-in-command, a foe he is only able to defeat with the help of his friends and Vegeta. The battle leaves Goku badly wounded once again, and he is put into a healing tank to recover.

The Road of Trials is the only stage of IIA (Departure) that is clearly represented in the Freeza Saga. When Goku emerges from the healing tank, the battle with Freeza has already been started by his friends. Vegeta, desperate to become a Super Saiyan himself, leads the attack, but Freeza mortally wounds him just as Goku arrives on the battlefield. Goku's Atonement with the Father is not a reconciliation with a single father figure, but with his whole saiyan ancestry. Raised on Earth by an old man he took as his grandfather and an uneducated innocent, Goku has been repulsed up to this point by the amoral mercenary nature of the saiyan race. But the dying Vegeta, revealing Freeza's hand in the extinction of that race, begs Goku to take ownership of his identity and avenge their fallen people. Moved that the proud prince would beg a boon of him, and recognizing that he shares the saiyan love of battle, Goku promises to do as Vegeta asked.

Campbell envisioned the Atonement with the Father as a symbolic or literal confrontation between the hero and the being or force that possesses the ultimate power of the story. From there, the hero would go through a literal or symbolic death, and be reborn in possession of the great power - he would be in the state of apotheosis, an elevation to divinity (Campbell, 116-137). Goku's journey in the Freeza Saga does not play out in exactly this manner - the death and rebirth never occurs. Rather, Goku's Atonement with the Father leads directly into Apotheosis.

His battle with Freeza is pitched, and Freeza grows concerned at the power Goku displays, but even after sustaining serious injuries, the tyrant gains the upper hand. He kills Goku's best friend Krillin over both their pleas. Goku's rage at this murder - and rage being a powerful force in the saiyan race - is what pushes him to transform into the golden-haired, green-eyed Super Saiyan of legend that surpasses the power of Freeza and ultimately defeats him.

Before being defeated, Freeza destroys the core of the planet Namek, ensuring its destruction. The dragon balls are used to evacuate everyone to Earth, but Goku chooses to stay behind to finish his battle with Freeza. Upon victory, Goku manages to escape Namek's destruction, unbeknownst to his friends on Earth. When they attempt to use the dragon balls to bring him back to life, believing him claimed by the explosion, they are told by the dragon that he is still alive. They change their wish to bring Goku back to Earth, but the dragon informs them that Goku does not wish to return. This is the first stage of the Return act, the Refusal of the Return.

Campbell saw the hero's refusal to return as a reluctance to abandon the bliss of the enlightenment brought on by apotheosis (Campbell, 179-182); in Goku's case, he is a childlike lover of adventure and martial arts training, and chooses to spend time learning from the aliens caring for him. He elects to return a year later, Crossing the Return Threshold of space. Campbell saw this stage as demanding that the hero retain what knowledge he gained on the journey (Campbell, 192), and Goku returns to Earth with the ability to control his Super Saiyan transformations. This mastery of the Super Saiyan state could also reflect the Master of Two Worlds stage, where the hero achieves a balance between inner and outer forces in his life. The final stage of the Return act, Freedom to Live, does not see any meaningful execution, as Goku's return marks the immediate beginning of the next storyline of Dragon Ball Z, the Android Saga.

The Twisted

Although the Freeza Saga foregoes certain stages of the monomyth and rejects a full resolution in favor of a transition to the next storyline, it largely adheres to the hero's journey structure. The fact that this occurred despite Toriyama's improvisational writing style speaks to Campbell's notion of the monomyth as a universally recurring archetype. But the Freeza Saga wasn't the only time that Toriyama tapped into the hero's journey. The story arc prior to it, the Saiyan Saga, also follows the monomyth tradition. But unlike the Freeza Saga, the Saiyan Saga does not follow the hero's journey through to the end; Goku does not emerge triumphant in the final battle, and in fact has to be saved. Far from being unsatisfying in its failure to complete the monomyth narrative, the Saiyan Saga is one of Toriyama's more interesting story arcs, and it makes use of other narrative devices to make its subversion of the monomyth function.

The Call to Adventure in the Saiyan Saga occurs in the very first episode: Goku's brother Raditz arrives on Earth and reveals Goku's true nature. He also kidnaps Goku's son Gohan and threatens to kill him if Goku does not rejoin the remnants of the saiyan mercenary force. Goku and Piccolo, a demon who is the source of the dragon balls, attempt to rescue Gohan, and they succeed in defeating Raditz, but at a cost: Goku sacrifices his life to stop his brother.

The notion of death and rebirth was not explicitly distinguished as a stage in the monomyth by Campbell. He described it as a part of Apotheosis (Campbell, 135), but also as part of the Belly of the Whale stage of Departure (Campbell, 83). David Adams Leeming, in his breakdown of the monomyth, used different stages than Campbell (and, at eight, considerably fewer, cutting Belly of the Whale or any equivalent), and broke Campbell's Apotheosis stage into the stages of Death, Descent into the Underworld, Resurrection and Rebirth, and Ascension, Apotheosis, and Atonement (Leeming). The first two of these are the stages Goku embarks on after the Call to Adventure. Having died, he Crosses the Threshold into Heaven (replacing the Underworld), where he is presented with a literal Road of Trials: he must travel down the winding road of Snake Way to reach the world of King Kai, god of the galaxy, and learn advanced martial arts techniques from him.

It is vital that Goku do this, for Prince Vegeta and his aide Nappa are coming to Earth in Raditz's wake and will arrive within a year. Goku reaches King Kai's world, and learns his techniques, which include the Spirit Bomb, a ball of energy gathered from every living thing on the planet. Having mastered King Kai's arts at the end of the year, Goku returns down Snake Way, is brought back to life by the dragon balls (which, while representing Leeming's Resurrection and Rebirth stage, could also be Campbell's Rescue from Without, as he requires his friends to find and use the balls), and takes a Magical Flight on his magic cloud Nimbus to reach the battlefield where his friends have been fighting Vegeta and Nappa. All of them but Gohan and Krillin have been killed, but Goku, by means of King Kai's lesser techniques, dispatches Nappa and goes on to face Vegeta alone.

While dealing with them well out of order, the Saiyan Saga up to this point follows a hero's journey type structure, setting Goku up to use the boons he received from Heaven to defeat Vegeta and save the world. But this never happens. Goku does prove himself more powerful than Vegeta in their fight, but the saiyan prince uses special techniques of his own to seriously injure Goku before he has a chance to use the Spirit Bomb. When Goku gives the energy he gathered for the bomb to Krillin, it proves to not be enough to finish off Vegeta. Goku is left on the sidelines for the rest of the story arc, so badly injured that he is unable to move.

The failure of the monomyth to be executed in full may be unsatisfying to some audience members. The failure of the Spirit Bomb to be the means of victory, too, might be unsatisfying. It seems to be a violation, not only of certain stages of the monomyth (chiefly Apotheosis, the Ultimate Boon, and Master of Two Worlds), but of the narrative principle Chekhov's Gun, the notion that, as its namesake put it, "everything that has no relevance to the story" should be removed (Valentine, 79). But much earlier in the Saiyan Saga, Toriyama's plotting lays the groundwork for subverting both these conventions by means of several red herrings.

The red herring is a narrative device wherein an element in the plot serves as a distraction, misleading the audience into thinking a certain element will be relevant when in fact it is not. The Spirit Bomb, and Goku's broader training in Heaven, is an example of this, but it is only one of three potential means of defeating the saiyans that is established early on in the storyline. Just before Goku's death, his son Gohan has an explosive display of power when angry, power that severely injures his uncle Raditz. Piccolo sees this, and concludes that Gohan has the potential to become even stronger than Goku. But Gohan, a shy and bookish child. cannot control his power, having been forbidden by his mother to learn martial arts. After Goku's death, and after learning that Vegeta and Nappa are on their way, Piccolo takes Gohan into the wilderness for training. He intends for Gohan to defeat the saiyans. Meanwhile, Krillin gathers Goku's other friends and takes them to Kami, the guardian of Earth, for training of their own. This training includes fighting against psychic creations of saiyan warriors by means of a magical room, thus preparing these Z fighters (as they came to be known around this point in the series) for Vegeta and Nappa in a way that Goku, and Piccolo and Gohan, do not have.

By the time Vegeta and Nappa arrive, there are three different forces set up as potentially being the one that will defeat them. Goku's hero's journey is held up by several characters as the most likely to prevail, but that is never a guarantee in the story. The possibility that these three forces might collaborate is not discounted either. Indeed, when the saiyans arrive, the Z fighters meet up with Piccolo and Gohan for the initial confrontation. They prove themselves more than capable of defeating the plant-based Saibamen that the saiyans use to test them, but as Nappa faces them, they fall one by one. Only Krillin and Gohan survive. This eliminates one of the red herrings, and seems to eliminate another; while Gohan's power does increase in his year of training with Piccolo, and he is able to get in blows against Nappa, he isn't strong enough to defeat them.

Gohan's potential power comes back into play, however, after Goku is injured and the Spirit Bomb - the Ultimate Boon, that which the hero set out to gain in his journey - proves unable to defeat Vegeta. The technique that Vegeta used to injure Goku is the Oozaru form, a werewolf-like transformation that saiyans with tails can achieve during the full moon. Goku's tail was removed as a child, and Vegeta's is cut off during the battle, but Gohan still has his. When it seems that Vegeta, having survived the Spirit Bomb, will kill everyone, Gohan transforms and attacks. Vegeta manages to cut off his tail, but not before being critically injured and forced to retreat back into space.

The earlier failure of Gohan's powers to make a material impact on the plot is thus a red herring all its own. After the Z fighters prove to not be the force that will defeat the saiyans, Gohan's own failure seems to clear the way for Goku to fulfill the monomyth and emerge as the hero. Dragon Ball Z would not be the only filmic depiction of the monomyth to have multiple red herrings leading up to the hero's triumph. Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope has two different commanders make a run at the Death Star trench and come within different degrees of success before being defeated, leaving Luke to destroy the space station and save the day (Star Wars). Toriyama's choice to have Goku unable to triumph, and for a force seemingly discredited earlier be the key to victory, makes for an interesting subversion of the monomyth by other narrative devices. But no such device was employed when the monomyth failed to be fully executed in the final story arc of the series, the Buu Saga.

The Bad

The Android Saga of Dragon Ball Z proved another transitional one. Its final act involved a genetically engineered monster named Cell, who proved more powerful than even Goku as a Super Saiyan. To defeat him, Goku puts his faith in Gohan, whose potential to surpass Goku has remained a possibility throughout the series. Goku trains his son to reach the level of Super Saiyan, but when the battle with Cell gets underway, Gohan ends up transcending into a higher level of transformation, called Super Saiyan 2, which gives him the power to destroy Cell. Before this victory, however, Goku is killed. Since the dragon balls cannot grant the same wish twice, and because Goku feels that he has become too great a target for villains (Cell was created to destroy him an a revenge plot), he sends a message from Heaven that his friends and family should not use the Namekian dragon balls to revive him.

At this point in the comic, Akira Toriyama added an insert stating that "Dragon Ball will continue for just a tad longer! From now on, taking the place of the late Goku as the main character will be his serious-minded son, Son Gohan!" (Toriyama 23) The book collection of a certain number of comic chapters that contained the issues immediately following the Android Saga was titled "The New Generation," and its cover featured a now-teenaged Gohan alongside his younger brother Goten, Vegeta's son Trunks, and Gohan's girlfriend Videl. The animated series also took steps to make it clear to the audience that Gohan had inherited the role of protagonist; at this point, the series was given a new title song and credits sequence designed around the teenaged Gohan.

While a long-running series will feature its protagonist engaged with several storylines during its run, some of them following along the lines of the monomyth, a series that will actually change its main character is rare. Even today, most television programs will follow a single character as the protagonist to the end of its run. Some shows will follow a group of characters, but the group is rarely changed either. Recent examples, such as Game of Thrones, are a notable exception. Toriyama's decision to replace Goku with Gohan thus seems highly unconventional. In writing the first story arc starring Gohan, Toriyama fell once again into writing along the lines of the monomyth. He may have even put more conscious planning into doing so, for the Buu Saga contains several overt references to an archetypal hero famous for his hero's journey. But Gohan's journey never comes to a full resolution, and unlike the Saiyan Saga, this is less due to subversion by other narrative means than to an abrupt termination of one character's arc in favor of another's.

If the monomyth is applied to the Buu Saga, then the Call to Adventure comes early on. Shortly after the saga, set seven years after the previous one, begins, Gohan's soon-to-be girlfriend Videl learns that Gohan is the son of Goku, a former champion. Being a tomboyish lover of martial arts, and the daughter of the current world martial arts champion, Videl prods Gohan into entering the tournament with her, eager for the spectacle she imagines a match between the children of champions will be. The Refusal of the Call follows immediately, as unlike his father, Gohan does not enjoy fighting for its own sake and has actually given up training since his fight with Cell. But Videl insists, and Gohan accepts.

The tournament serves as a reunion of sorts for the Z fighters, as Gohan goes to each one in turn to invite them along. Even Goku returns for the tournament, granted a single day in the land of the living to compete in the tournament and settle his rivalry with Vegeta. When the day comes, everyone gathers at the stadium for a happy meeting, and the tournament begins. It is the tournament itself that serves as a more metaphorical Crossing the Threshold than was seen in the Saiyan and Freeza Sagas, as it transitions from a simple friendly contest to a more sinister affair. Videl is nearly killed during her match with a vicious fighter named Spopovitch, and a mysterious young warrior proves to be the Supreme Kai, god of the greater universe. When Gohan's match comes up, the Supreme Kai uses his psychic powers to restrain him so that Spopovitch and his partner can drain Gohan of his energy. They escape from the tournament, and Supreme Kai, after seeing that Gohan is healed, leads the Z fighters after them. He reveals that the evil pair are slaves to the wizard Babidi, who is attempting to revive the ancient demon Majin Buu, the greatest force of chaos and destruction in the universe. Babidi had sent his slaves to the tournament to steal energy, energy that could be used to awaken Buu from his slumber.

With the introduction of Majin Buu comes the Road of Trials. With most of the Z fighters slain or incapacitated, and Goku and Vegeta pitted against each other as a way for Babidi to harvest energy, it is left to Gohan and Supreme Kai to try and stop Buu's resurrection. At this point in the series, the consequences of Gohan's lack of training over the past seven years have become evident, and he is warned by his father that he must tap back into the strength that he had in his fight against Cell. Try as he might, Gohan is unable to destroy Babidi and his henchman, or prevent the awakening of Majin Buu. Buu, despite being a fat and childlike personality, proves just as powerful as his reputation suggests, and only a spell by Supreme Kai prevents Gohan's death. He is blasted far away from the battlefield, unconscious and in critical condition, and is given up for dead by his friends and family - the Death stage in Leeming's breakdown of the monomyth.

Campbell envisioned the Meeting with the Goddess stage of the Initiation act as involving a romantic attachment to a female figure, and there was not necessarily a need for her to be a literal deity (Campbell, 100-110). But the purpose behind this stage was to give the hero a final test before Atonement with the Father and Apotheosis. In the case of the Buu Saga, Gohan has a literal Meeting with the Gods, as Supreme Kai escapes from Buu, rescues Gohan, and brings him to his world in Heaven. Having been impressed with Gohan's power, Supreme Kai decides that he has the potential to pull the fabled Z sword from a mountain and gain its fabled power. This is where overt references to another archetypal hero appear; the sword in the stone is lifted straight from King Arthur, and Gohan himself remarks, "Seems like there was something like this in ancient folklore..." ("Gohan Revived - Supreme Kai's Secret Weapon!?").

Gohan does draw the Z sword, and training with the blade restores his lost strength, but the ultimate power of the sword turns out to be the god trapped inside it, known as Old Kai. After Gohan accidentally shatters the sword during training, Old Kai is freed, and in gratitude, he offers to raise Gohan to even greater heights of power. By means of a magic spell, Old Kai is able to rearrange Gohan's ki, or fighting power, and brings out even more untapped potential. He also pulls all that power into Gohan's base form, eliminating the need to go through the stress of Super Saiyan transformations. This is Gohan's moment of Apotheosis.

During the comically long time that Old Kai's spell takes to work, Goku's one day on Earth is used up, and he comes to Supreme Kai's world to see Gohan. When Old Kai's ritual is completed and the time comes for Gohan to go back to Earth to face Majin Buu, Goku comments that this is the last time he will see his son until his death. Earlier on in the storyline, Goku made note of Gohan's lack of training and how it affected his skills. The two reconcile with an embrace before Gohan has to leave; this is his Atonement with the Father, a more literal manifestation of this stage than in the Freeza Saga. Supreme Kai's manservant takes Gohan back to Earth - the Crossing of the Return Threshold - and grants Gohan the martial arts uniform of his father before returning to Heaven. In a sense, Gohan becomes a Master of Two Worlds; he has obtained godlike power yet embraces his worldly heritage. Garbed and powered, Gohan senses Majin Buu and flies off to confront him.

Like the Saiyan Saga, the Buu Saga contains an alternative possibility to Gohan's hero's journey as the means to defeat Buu. Goten and Trunks are taught the fusion technique, which allows them to merge into a new being called Gotenks for half an hour. Goku passes this ability, acquired during his years in Heaven, to the boys. As Gotenks, they are able to give Majin Buu - transformed into a much learner and fiercer form after an accident - a decent fight, but they ultimately fail to destroy him, and the fusion technique proves a red herring. Gohan arrives on the battlefield and quickly demonstrates his power over Buu. Defeated and desperate, Buu resorts to a last-ditch technique; absorption. He taunts Goten and Trunks into fusing back into Gotenks and absorbs him, acquiring a massive power boost in the process.

In a traditional monomyth, this final challenge would be overcome by the hero in the Ultimate Boon stage (in this case, the goal of the quest was to defeat the villain, not to obtain any object or technique), and the hero would gain the Freedom to Live. As the final storyline of Dragon Ball Z, the Buu Saga had no need to transition into another plot, and so was ideally suited for a final and formal resolution. But Gohan does not defeat Majin Buu. He is quickly overwhelmed by the newly-enhanced villain, and ultimately, Goku is brought back to life and dispatches Buu with the Spirit Bomb.

In commenting on the series years later, Toriyama said that "I intended to put Gohan into the leading role. It didn't work out. I felt that compared to Goku, he was ultimately not suited for the part" (Toriyama, 261). Why he felt this way he never explained, but the feeling was strong enough for him to write Gohan out as the hero and bring Goku back in. The idea seems to have been late in coming to him. Out of ninety-nine comic chapters devoted to the Buu Saga, seventy follow Gohan's journey through the monomyth. Of the ninety-six episodes of the series devoted to the Buu Saga, the number following Gohan is seventy as well.

Another indicator that Toriyama only thought to bring back Goku late in the writing process is the absence of any set-up for it. Aside from the fusion technique, no red herrings or potential alternatives to Gohan defeating Buu were included in the story. The means by which Goku is brought back to life; Old Kai trading life energies with him; is introduced right before it is used, and the idea that he would ever return to life and save the world again was not entertained prior. At one point in the series, as he trains Goten and Trunks, Goku explicitly states that he "wants those young guys to do something about [Buu]" instead of him ("The Fusion Dance"). He gives a similar sentiment just before Gohan begins his fight with Buu: "Hang in there, Gohan! The future of Earth rests on your shoulders!" ("A Whole New Gohan")

As a consequence of this lack of alternatives, the abrupt ending of Gohan's hero's journey and reintroduction of Goku can be seen as a deus ex machina. The deus ex machina as a plot device has been criticized since the days of ancient Greece; Antiphanes pithily described as "when they don't know what to say/and have completely given up on the play/just like a finger they lift the machine/and the spectators are satisfied" (Miriam). To use it as a way to escape from a monomyth construct that the author decides is not working only very late in the plot risks leaving the audience feeling unsatisfied. Indeed, while the decision to write Goku out was controversial with some fans of Dragon Ball, writing him back in at Gohan's expense was even more so. The Buu Saga is often listed as the weakest of all the story arcs in Dragon Ball Z by fans.

Conclusion

The appearance of the monomyth in various forms across the long span of Dragon Ball Z's story, despite the improvisational writing style of its original author, is a testament to the universality of the concept. That the three strongest examples of the monomyth omit or rearrange certain stages provide interesting examples of how the basic structure can be played with. And these three examples also provide insight into how different narrative devices can be brought together to enhance, subvert, or undermine one another.

[TekTheNinja]

Bravo.

I especially like your comments on why the Buu arc's conclusion failed, because I agree with that wholeheartedly. (What makes it even worse is the current state of Gohan. Ugh...)

[dbzfan7]

That was a very nice and interesting read. An interesting look into the plot layering of Dragon Ball, and how it applies to the heroes journey. I definitely agree that the subversion worked really well in the Saiyan arc, but was horribly done in the Boo arc.