The Women of Dragon Ball (and your thoughts)

[DBZAOTA482]

This topic was inspired by one in Kanzenshuu asking if all the women in Dragon Ball are "housewives". Dragon Ball's portrayal of its female characters are often subject for debate among certain circles. The franchise is has very few but notable female roles and today I will talk about them.

Bulma

Bulma is unquestionably the most significant female character in the franchise and is the first character we see in the manga. She is shown as a competent character who contributes through her inventions like the Dragon Radar, the shrink watch, and the Time Travel Machine. On the other hand she is often shown as vain, selfish, and shallow. Early on, she was also the butt of many perverted jokes. These problematic traits do tone down as the series goes along but I think that is more due to the nature of the story changing and Bulma simply mellowing out with age.

Bulma doesn't go through a significant amount of change throughout the franchise but she does show some development like her relationship with Goku whom she initially looked down upon to admiring him and even developing a minor crush. She also managed to tame Vegeta who was originally almost as bad as Freeza.

Chi-Chi

Chi-Chi is the 2nd major female character introduced but she doesn't become a regular part of the cast till the Z portion of the manga. Being the daughter of the feared Gyumao, she is quite strong in her rights and showed some promise as fighter. She casually threw a blade with enough force to behead a T-rex as a kid, made it past the prelims of the Tenkaichi Budokai during the hardest year, and was able to keep up with a non-serious weighted Goku. She even earned praise from Muten Roshi for her fighting prowess (who also noted her style resembled his).

However, she was quickly regulated to housewife. She also becomes a education mama and an overprotective parent to Gohan which the anime likes to play up (and it becomes really obvious with the DBS anime). She does mellow out by the Boo arc and even trains Goten but that is barely touched upon.

Android 18

Android 18 was introduced during the Z portion of the manga and she was the first female fighter that was shown to be a serious threat to our heroes. She was shown as sarcastic, cool, and stoic. She broke Vegeta's arm and made the legendary Super Saiyan form look weak. Her predominance didn't last as Cell was introduced as the true villain and the heroes also started to eclipse her in power. She also starts a relationship with Krillin after the Cell arc and even has a child with him as she was touched by his selfless gestor.

However, she does go the housewife route but she still gets to show her stuff every now and then like with the Tournament of Power.

Videl

Videl is floating on a similar to Chi-Chi in that she was shown as a strong and capable fighter in her own rights but was quickly reduced to housewife. She was stronger than her father (who is really strong for a regular human) despite largely being self-taught, regularly fought criminals even ones that are twice her size, and learned basic ki control and bukujutsu in just two weeks. Also unlike Chi-Chi who only seemed to pick up martial arts to impress Goku, Videl seemed genuinely interested in the sport.

Videl is now an almost unrecognizable character who is demure and inoffensive rather than the spunky and tenacious character we were initially introduced to.

Lunch

Lunch is a strange character who changes personality whenever she sneezes. The blue-hair form is uber-friendly and demure while the blonde form is aggressive and trigger-happy. Lunch largely serves as comic relief and she does the job quite well but around the Z portion of the story, she was phased out of the story and doesn't appear again outside cameos and some fillers of the DBZ anime.

Mai

Mai is a weird case as she was initially just part of a comedic villain trio known as the Pilaf Gang where the leader is a tiny blue elf man. The trio was quickly phased out after the first arc but make more appearance in the anime. They remerged with the Battle of Gods movie where they were de-aged and re-appear as children. She also develops a weird relationship with Trunks and in the future, she aids him during the war against Zamasu.

Caulifla

Caulifla was introduced as the first female Saiyan to achieve Super Saiyan (albeit further downplaying the prerequisite value) and one of the best fighters from Universe 6. She is the leader of a gang of Saiyan deliquents and just like any other Saiyans, she loves to fight strong opponents. She enters the Tournament of Power in order to achieve greater power.

She is also the teacher of Kale.

Kale

Kale is the protégé of Caulifla and she was originally concepted to be a female version of Broly by Toei which also lead to the creation of Caulifla (who was designed by Toriyama). She is a different character in both the anime and manga. In the anime, she is extremely meek and self-loathing but achieves beserker powers through rage. She does get more confident and is able to tap into that power at will. In the manga, she is more stoic and calculating.

Brianne de Chateau

Brianne is the strongest fighter from Universe 2 and she's an obvious parody of the Magic Girl genre. She does have some good showing during the tournament but her obsession with her shallow concept of love and her appearance in her Ribrianne form makes it hard to take her seriously. Also doesn't help that she outlasts a lot of fighters that are far stronger than her during the tournament.



Overall, Dragon Ball's writing with its female characters is not amazing but it's not horrible. It's a shonen anime/manga series so it can do a lot worse. While it has its issues, I don't think it's due to inherent sexism. Almost all of them are appliable to the male characters as well. In fact, I'd say Yamcha is treated much worse than any female character.

[JulieYBM]

Yamcha being a male character still has the ingrained cultural dynamic of being a male in a comic/cartoon franchise created by and for a cisheteronormative male society, though. Female and male characters don't start out on an equal footing within fictional contexts because of how real-world dynamics factor into the creation of art. Trying to use Yamcha as an example of propping up the establishment as 'progressive' is honestly just silly. There is absolutely nothing fair about Toriyama's writing, JUMP's editing, Shueisha's publishing, Bandai's producing and Toei Animation's filmmaking and television-making.

[super michael]

From the list Chi Chi and Brianne de Chateau are the worst character, first I will start with Chi Chi.

Chi Chi acts like training and martial arts are terrible things, while ignoring that those two things actually has benefits. She forbids Goku to teach Gohan any type of martial arts at all or even train Gohan in anything.
It is during the discussion of going to Namek that Chi Chi listens to others, however with conditions which is fair. Gohan could go to Namek if he does his homework, which is reasonable.
The same thing happened with the Android and Cell Saga.

Then comes Buu Saga and Chi Chi is fine with her sons studying and training, they are not forbidden from training and doing martial arts. She supports her sons in anyway possible. Then comes Yo Son Goku and she is a excellent mum and wife.

However then comes DBS Anime and he is horrible, she is garbage. Chi Chi tries to force Goku to not train, lies about spending all of Mr Satan just so Goku doesn't train and work.
Chi Chi overreact just because of how Mr Satan and Gohan were playing with Pan, then was against the idea of them teaching martial arts to Pan like she is the queen. Then to top if of Chi Chi locks herself and Pan in a room, not allowing Gohan the father to be with them.

Then on to Goten, Chi Chi didn't allow Goten to compete with Goku on who picks the most vegetable, even though that seems fun and it is like training. Goten isn't allowed to spar with Goku. Goten isn't allowed to go with Goku to Whis planet and when they do sneak away, Chi Chi gets Bulma involed.

So basically Chi Chi is a control freak and Goku has no power as a parent.


Brianne de Chateau her transformation looks awful, her personality is also awful and judgemental. She acts like a spoiled brat, by demanding everyone not do anything to them while transforming, even though they were wide open. She was judgemental on C18 choice in loving Krillin.
She even attempts to do a sneak attack on Goku doing Genki Dama, even though she complained about C17 interrupting her transformation.

[MasenkoHA]

. She acts like a spoiled brat, by demanding everyone not do anything to them while transforming, even though they were wide open.

Literally the joke

She was judgemental on C18 choice in loving Krillin.

Kind of the point. Her concept of love was very vain and shallow and ill defined. She learned her lesson after getting defeated.

[VegettoEX]

Would love to see some input and responses from folks other than the usual suspects on this kind of topic. Please feel encouraged and empowered to post!

[super michael]

Yamcha being a male character still has the ingrained cultural dynamic of being a male in a comic/cartoon franchise created by and for a cisheteronormative male society, though. Female and male characters don't start out on an equal footing within fictional contexts because of how real-world dynamics factor into the creation of art. Trying to use Yamcha as an example of propping up the establishment as 'progressive' is honestly just silly. There is absolutely nothing fair about Toriyama's writing, JUMP's editing, Shueisha's publishing, Bandai's producing and Toei Animation's filmmaking and television-making.

I am very confuse on the point you are trying to make about Yamcha, if it is no problem can you explain it in another way?

I want to mention that Yamcha is only alive thanks to Bulma and her DB Radar (Namek Saga) and Time Machine (Android Saga), unlike his future counter part were he dies.

[Koitsukai]

Videl really got the shortest end of the stick possible, didn't she?

Loved to fight, loved to train and better herself, loved to get way over her head... and ended up getting destroyed by a dude, and the guy she had a crush on her, and reciprocated that feeling, couldn't even be bothered to beat the living crap out of the guy. And after that, she quietly retired to have what she probably used to view as a lame lifestyle.

I hope DBS SH has something for her to do, at least having a job, and not always doing the dishes. I don't remember if the DBS anime had her working or something, IIRC, there was an episode where Mr. Satan has to take care of Pan because her parents were both unavailable, can't remember what she had to do.

[JulieYBM]

Yamcha being a male character still has the ingrained cultural dynamic of being a male in a comic/cartoon franchise created by and for a cisheteronormative male society, though. Female and male characters don't start out on an equal footing within fictional contexts because of how real-world dynamics factor into the creation of art. Trying to use Yamcha as an example of propping up the establishment as 'progressive' is honestly just silly. There is absolutely nothing fair about Toriyama's writing, JUMP's editing, Shueisha's publishing, Bandai's producing and Toei Animation's filmmaking and television-making.

I am very confuse on the point you are trying to make about Yamcha, if it is no problem can you explain it in another way?

I want to mention that Yamcha is only alive thanks to Bulma and her DB Radar (Namek Saga) and Time Machine (Android Saga), unlike his future counter part were he dies.

"Yamcha has it worse than the female characters!" is not really a thing when you consider the fact that female characters are historically under-represented (and poorly represented) in the various fictional mediums (novel, comic, television, film, et cetera), especially those produced for mainstream audiences, like Dragon Ball is produced for. There is also totally a discussion to be had about why the male characters of Dragon Ball are poorly written and suffer from toxic masculinity, too, but that's something of a separate discussion. Bring up Yamcha being used as a gag character deflects from the poor treatment of female characters in our media, which is primarily created, edited, published for people who buy into toxic ideas about how men and women should be.

[MasenkoHA]

Yamcha being a male character still has the ingrained cultural dynamic of being a male in a comic/cartoon franchise created by and for a cisheteronormative male society, though. Female and male characters don't start out on an equal footing within fictional contexts because of how real-world dynamics factor into the creation of art. Trying to use Yamcha as an example of propping up the establishment as 'progressive' is honestly just silly. There is absolutely nothing fair about Toriyama's writing, JUMP's editing, Shueisha's publishing, Bandai's producing and Toei Animation's filmmaking and television-making.

I am very confuse on the point you are trying to make about Yamcha, if it is no problem can you explain it in another way?

I want to mention that Yamcha is only alive thanks to Bulma and her DB Radar (Namek Saga) and Time Machine (Android Saga), unlike his future counter part were he dies.

"Yamcha has it worse than the female characters!" is not really a thing when you consider the fact that female characters are historically under-represented (and poorly represented) in the various fictional mediums (novel, comic, television, film, et cetera), especially those produced for mainstream audiences, like Dragon Ball is produced for. There is also totally a discussion to be had about why the male characters of Dragon Ball are poorly written and suffer from toxic masculinity, too, but that's something of a separate discussion. Bring up Yamcha being used as a gag character deflects from the poor treatment of female characters in our media, which is primarily created, edited, published for people who buy into toxic ideas about how men and women should be.

I agree with this but want to add even ignoring media outside of Dragon Ball, Yamcha is just one of many male characters. So the "but Yamcha" stuff doesn't work as an argument even in the confines of Dragon Ball


Like yes Yamcha (and Kuririn) want to settle down and get married. But Goku, Piccolo, and Tenshinhan dont care about that. Goku getting married is treated as a joke. And even Vegeta who finds some fulfillment in marriage seems to put Goku on the same pedastal as Bulma just, ya know, in a different way. Meanwhile nearly every significant pre-Super female character ends up married (and a housewife) or written out in Lunch's case. Who, lets remember, was written out as "chasing after Tenshinhan"

[Saiya6Cit]

I have not watched Super so can't comment on this girls bu this called my attention

She also develops a weird relationship with Trunks and in the future

someone cares to explain? I mean I have seen memes, but what happens really?

Also I never really understood what was the reason from bringing back Mai as a lead character or even "pair?" her with Future trunks.
Are you telling me it was with the sole purpose of reusing animation cells that involved pilaf and company? It can't be. Why not simply creating new characters?


Now my two cents:

BULMA: She is a very important character for me. I am not saying the way you reviewed her is wrong, but it is not even close to her whole complexity. The things Toriyama had Bulma do were very amazing for that time. When he portrays her as a single mother, that was something that was happening in america but it was not well seeing in Japan. Also when Bulma is showed smoking. She is controversial. And she is so stylish. For a shonen Manga Bulma is a character that has plenty of looks. The way Toriyama was always combining situations of the american pop culture with her is just great. I have been creating this as homage and it could be used to reinforce my point:

https://www.deviantart.com/saiya6cit/ar ... -867092709
https://www.deviantart.com/saiya6cit/ar ... -874317124
https://www.deviantart.com/saiya6cit/ar ... -871485982
https://www.deviantart.com/saiya6cit/ar ... -872907871


A woman who does more than being rescued. Without Bulma's desire to explore the world, chase her dreams and her intellect to create devices, we would have never had dragon ball.

There are many more things to say about Bulma. How she always worked to keep the warriors together. Throwing big paties, making an effort to still keep in contact with Goku. She had huge character growth from being selfish and not wanting to help the kame turtle to develop a heart of gold, helping people along with goku to save the earth. She was a nice auntie for Gohan and future Bulma (which is still Bulma) raised Trunks all on her own in an dystopian android world, revealing what she was really made of.

And perhaps let me be the first to talk about this: I think it is sad Bulma is often treated as an eye candy character only. It mostly happens with people who haven't watch or read DB and they are perhaps only into newer anime and they know her just because she is a very famous anime character. They have this generalized ide that Bulma is slutty. And Bulma is not. And if she was (bulma bunny or that time she was with captain blue) she is also way more than "that pretty anime girl in an anime of fights" the way other animes have them (I won't point out names guys, you know that is... that is just not me) and she is not just "that big boob anime girl which the protagonist must marry" and that is why Bulma is so unique.

There is no point in denying that perhaps Bulma lifted way too many skirts or showed too many panties, but could that not just be a characteristic of the shonen manga itself? is it not aimed for young boys? and what is a young boy traditionally (and mainly in 1986 and such) thinking on? I believe Toriyama was even asked to put a revealing shot here and there and he complied, as any worker does. But the character he had thought for Bulma is much more than any other.

CHICHI
I agree with all said. Just to add she is hated most of the times without a reason. She is entitled to have a bad mood, she is married to Goku, have some empaty for a moment there. I disagree with the fact that she trained because of goku. she was strong and knew how to use her helmet to fight since before even meeting goku. she is a very special woman and perfect fit for the wife of the strongest guy on earth. I think she continued to train, remember the rumors that she knows Kaioken XD and she was training Goten when he turned into a SSJ, it was not even Gohan who trained the boy IT WAS HER. Finally I think it is pretty dope she always dressed herself and her children in chinese clothers, she cooks she does laundry, she cleans, she makes clothes, what a treasure.

VIDEL
Again, agreed with what had been said.I only would like to fo further on this topic: Why did she stop training? on march I run a poll and these were the results:

Why do you think Videl quit training?
19 votes
Because she was too afraid to fight after Spopovich's incidents
37%
Because she wanted to focus on her studies
5%
Because she became a housewife and got pregnant with Pan
47%
Because Gohan asked her to
0%
Because Mr Satan (her father) asked her to
0%
Other (tell me in comments)

ps. VegettoEX be careful what you wish

[Adamant]

I think a lot of people's negative opinions on Chichi are heavily colored by Saiyan/Freeza era Toei writing, where they didn't really GET the kind of relationship the members of the Son family was meant to have and kept pushing this bizarre dysfunctional tension where Goku and Gohan just want to have fun while she insists on torturing an unwilling Gohan with endless forced studying. This characterization would eventually disappear as the writers kinda figured out this was pretty heavily at odds with how Toriyama actually presented them. Especially the various "Gohan hates studying" scenes feel extremely weird to look back at nowadays.

Naoko Watanabe's performance is also way too heavily based on this characterization, which doesn't help much. Sho sounded a lot friendlier and "dumb hick"-ish.

[jjgp1112]

I think a lot of people's negative opinions on Chichi are heavily colored by Saiyan/Freeza era Toei writing, where they didn't really GET the kind of relationship the members of the Son family was meant to have and kept pushing this bizarre dysfunctional tension where Goku and Gohan just want to have fun while she insists on torturing an unwilling Gohan with endless forced studying. This characterization would eventually disappear as the writers kinda figured out this was pretty heavily at odds with how Toriyama actually presented them. Especially the various "Gohan hates studying" feel extremely weird to look back at nowadays.

Naoko Watanabe's performance is also way too heavily based on this characterization, which doesn't help much. Sho sounded a lot friendlier and "dumb hick"-ish.

Yeah what Toei missed was that Chi-Chi, while probably not exactly happy with Goku always jumping into danger and being irresponsible, was at least fine with it. She knew what she was signing up for with the Gok man. It's that she wanted Gohan to be normal. And Gohan desired the same thing, he just understood that when the world was in danger and he had the power to help, that was more important than kid shit.

[MasenkoHA]

I think a lot of people's negative opinions on Chichi are heavily colored by Saiyan/Freeza era Toei writing, where they didn't really GET the kind of relationship the members of the Son family was meant to have and kept pushing this bizarre dysfunctional tension where Goku and Gohan just want to have fun while she insists on torturing an unwilling Gohan with endless forced studying. This characterization would eventually disappear as the writers kinda figured out this was pretty heavily at odds with how Toriyama actually presented them. Especially the various "Gohan hates studying" feel extremely weird to look back at nowadays.

Naoko Watanabe's performance is also way too heavily based on this characterization, which doesn't help much. Sho sounded a lot friendlier and "dumb hick"-ish.

Yeah fans will still act like Gohan becoming a nerd later in life was out of character and pushed on him by Chi Chi despite Toriyama saying he always intended for Gohan to be a scholar character in contrast with his dad being a fighter. Toei upping Chi Chi's Tiger Mom persona to comedic levels and playing Gohan as Goku jr as often as they could definitely colored that perception.

[super michael]

Yamcha being a male character still has the ingrained cultural dynamic of being a male in a comic/cartoon franchise created by and for a cisheteronormative male society, though. Female and male characters don't start out on an equal footing within fictional contexts because of how real-world dynamics factor into the creation of art. Trying to use Yamcha as an example of propping up the establishment as 'progressive' is honestly just silly. There is absolutely nothing fair about Toriyama's writing, JUMP's editing, Shueisha's publishing, Bandai's producing and Toei Animation's filmmaking and television-making.

I am very confuse on the point you are trying to make about Yamcha, if it is no problem can you explain it in another way?

I want to mention that Yamcha is only alive thanks to Bulma and her DB Radar (Namek Saga) and Time Machine (Android Saga), unlike his future counter part were he dies.

"Yamcha has it worse than the female characters!" is not really a thing when you consider the fact that female characters are historically under-represented (and poorly represented) in the various fictional mediums (novel, comic, television, film, et cetera), especially those produced for mainstream audiences, like Dragon Ball is produced for. There is also totally a discussion to be had about why the male characters of Dragon Ball are poorly written and suffer from toxic masculinity, too, but that's something of a separate discussion. Bring up Yamcha being used as a gag character deflects from the poor treatment of female characters in our media, which is primarily created, edited, published for people who buy into toxic ideas about how men and women should be.

People actually say that Yamcha was treated worse than the female character? In my opinion Yamcha was treated really good in DB/DBZ, just because he lost in the tournament and died against the Saibaman, that doesn't mean he was treated bad.
He has shined in the baseball episode and in the Moro chapter.

C18 in my opinion was treated good, she is still shown to be a power house in the Android Saga, Buu Saga, ToP and in the Moro chapter. She is not written as some weakling that needs protection from Krillin.

Videl in the Buu Saga she is stronger than Mr Satan, she believed that she was the best just because she was stronger than Mr Satan, however she was proven wrong when she battled Spopovich. Videl shows she is no coward and she doesn't quit no matter how tough a battle is, she would try everything possible to win her battle.
Videl was smart enough to figure out Gohan identity and was a hero by helping the police and fighting villains.

Bulma I said before why she was useful in my previous post, without her there would be no revival or time travel to change the past.

Chi Chi I said before why she is terrible and garbage.

Mai she develops a lot in DBS, especially her future self. She contributes to the battle against Goku Black and Zamasu in her own way.

Caulifla and Kale they have great personality and power, however the bad thing is we don't know what training they did. We have 0 idea to what they did to earn their power. All we know is they only gained SSJ for a short time, but gained SSJ2 and LSSJ in less than 1 month or 1 week.

[Scientist Fu]

I've never been a fan of how the females were portrayed in U7, it's like they all need to fall in love or have a romantic relationship... they all have their uses of course, not denying it but they are mostly left behind... it would be good if we got a female warrior in the Z team or something. + we never got a real female villain yet outside of "C-18", but she ended up like the others anyway. The only females I appreciate for now are Caulifla and Kale (Kale from the manga because she is confident and calculated unlike the anime).

[ankokudaishogun]

...I don't recall it was ever said Videl stopped training

also, I honestly don't see the issue with a a girl being quite feisty at 16 and then settling on a less dangerous lifestyle as she gets older, especially once she gets pregnant.

[Koitsukai]

Aside from Yamcha having one of the lamest death, he was murdered by the author when he was thrown under the bus and labelled as a cheater out of nowhere, just so Bulma could have an excuse to fuck space Hans Landa.
No other character got new negative traits added, to make room for another character. And then faded into the background in such a sad way.

Nice, likeable Yamcha turned into some fucker, because Toriyama couldn't come up with a better way to match up Bulma and Vegeta. Only Bulma and Videl got it worse than he did.

[Saiya6Cit]

...I don't recall it was ever said Videl stopped training

also, I honestly don't see the issue with a a girl being quite feisty at 16 and then settling on a less dangerous lifestyle as she gets older, especially once she gets pregnant.

In GT she did not fight, that's how I came to that conclusion. Then Super came in and she is only depicted as a housewive.

[ankokudaishogun]

...I don't recall it was ever said Videl stopped training

also, I honestly don't see the issue with a a girl being quite feisty at 16 and then settling on a less dangerous lifestyle as she gets older, especially once she gets pregnant.

In GT she did not fight, that's how I came to that conclusion.

that means very little. She might well be still training and just never got to the point she's strong enough for the events.

Then Super came in and she is only depicted as a housewive.

...which implies a lack of training HOW, exactly?

[MasenkoHA]

It shouldn't have to be said but "Well she could be doing something offscreen!" is a laughably piss poor argument.


Maybe Goku and Vegeta are having intense butt sex and we just don't see it.