Chi-Chi

Chi-Chi
チチ (Chi-Chi)
Manga Anime
Name Pun	Milk or Breast
Manga Debut	Dragon Ball Chapter 11
Anime Debut	Dragon Ball Episode 7
Japanese VA	Mayumi Shō (DB & Z 1-66) Naoko Watanabe (Z 88-291, GT, Kai)
Funimation VA	Laura Bailey (Child) Cynthia Cranz (Adult)
Personal Data
Birth	05 November, Age 737
Death	08 May, Age 774 Age 779 (Reversed)
Height	163 cm
Weight	50 kg
Classification	Human-type Earthling
Pronouns	Ora (おら) (before marriage) Ora (オラ) (after marriage)
Occupation	Housewife
Relationship Data
Family	Ox Demon King (father)
Spouse	Son Goku
Children	Son Gohan Son Goten

Chi-Chi is a fictional character in the Dragon Ball manga series by Akira Toriyama. Chi-Chi makes her debut in chapter 11, published in the 1985 #11 issue of Shueisha's Weekly Shōnen Jump. A skilled fighter who becomes a doting wife and mother, Chi-Chi is one of the principal female characters of the series.

Name and Pronouns

Chi-Chi's name is derived from the Japanese term for "milk" or "breast", 乳 (chichi).

Since she's the daughter of the Ox Demon King, I chose chichi because it's a cow-related name that was also girlish.
— Akira Toriyama, Dragon Ball Forever

The name is written phonetically in katakana (チチ).

Chi-Chi refers to herself using the first-person pronoun ora, a hick version of the masculine pronoun ore (オレ). In the beginning of Dragon Ball, Chi-Chi's ora is written in hiragana (おら), like her father. This continues through the 23rd Tenka'ichi Budōkai. After Gohan is born, Toriyama switches to spelling her ora in katakana (オラ) like Goku.

Production

Unlike many of the other early Dragon Ball characters, Chi-Chi is only lightly adapted from her analogue in Journey to the West. In the original story, the Ox Demon King (Chinese: 牛魔王, Niú mówáng; Japanese: Gyūmaō) has a son, the Red Boy (Chinese: 紅孩兒, Hóng hái'ér; Japanese: Kōgaiji), rather than a daughter. The Red Boy, a powerful martial artist who possesses the power of inextinguishable fire, becomes Sun Wukong's adversary. The Monkey King is forced to fight against his friend the Ox Demon King and his wife to steal the Bansho Fan (芭蕉扇, Bashō-sen) so that he can put out the fires on Flaming Mountain (adapted as Mount Frypan) and fight his rival. Sun Wukong is tricked by a fake fan and is nearly defeated. While Toriyama borrowed characters and elements of this section of the manga from the Red Boy story, Chi-Chi herself is an original creation with little resemblance to the original work.

As Toriyama was developing his ideas for Dragon Ball, he drew prototype stories that incorporated elements that he would later reuse. Chi-Chi was not directly based on a character that appeared in these prototypes, but her character design shares elements of two of Toriyama's one-shot characters. Chi-Chi's childhood outfit, introduced with her first appearance in chapter 11, resembles a stereotypical pulp warrior-woman including sexual (but non-practical) armor such as an exaggerated brassier, bikini-like lower garment, and cape. This design closely resembles Pola from Toriyama's one-shot Pola & Roid, released in 1981. Chi-Chi's overall look may also incorporate elements from the Princess of the Flower Country from his Dragon Boy one-shot in 1983 including her hair style and Chinese-style dress. While Pola used her sex-appeal as an integral part of her character, Chi-Chi is portrayed as an innocent child despite her dress, closer in personality to the Princess. The anime continued to use this initial design for her character in her filler episode appearances until Toriyama debuted her adult design in chapter 137.

• 
  Pola from Pola & Roid may have served as one inspiration for Chi-Chi's early design.
• 
  The Princess from Dragon Boy also resembles Chi-Chi.
• 
  Chi-Chi's childhood design appears to fuse aspects of both characters.
• 
  Chi-Chi's young adult depiction reinforces the Chinese elements of her design.

Notable Skills

Chi-Chi wields her helmet's laser beam while striking an Ultraseven pose.

The original "Emerium Beam" pose from Ultraseven

Chi-Chi dispatches ten Red Ribbon Army soldiers as a child.

In Chi-Chi's earliest appearances, she is depicted as a capable fighter and is able to dispatch a dinosaur using the weapons in her helmet. This helmet features a detachable "mohawk" boomerang that Chi-Chi can throw, as well as a gem for firing laser beams. In this first encounter, Chi-Chi decapitates the dinosaur with the boomerang then completely destroys its body using her laser. These features, and Chi-Chi's pose while using them, closely resemble those of the main character in Ultraseven, a sequel to Ultraman released in 1967. In that series, the boomerang attack was referred to as the "Eye Slugger" (アイスラッガー Ai Suraggā), while the laser beam was called the "Emerium Ray". Despite her skills, she was easily overcome by Yamcha who was able to dodge her helmet-blasts and knock her unconscious. Later in an anime-only sequence scripted by Keiji Terui in episode 32, Chi-Chi is powerful enough to defeat nearly a dozen Red Ribbon Army soldiers under the command of Colonel Silver, although she was distraught by the battle. This group even managed to capture her father, the Ox Demon King, a former pupil of the Turtle Hermit.

Several years later, Chi-Chi enters the 23rd Tenka’ichi Budōkai. She enters anonymously, with her official spot in the tournament roster listed as 匿名希望 (tokunakinozomu), meaning "name withheld by request". She is able to defeat her preliminary opponents and is seeded into the tournament with a first-round battle against Son Goku Chi-chi puts up a good fight, so much so that the Turtle Hermit recognizes her technique as being from his own style, but Goku defeats her easily. So as not to hit her directly, he pushes her out of the ring using only a shockwave. Although Chi-Chi primarily focuses on being a wife and mother, she appears to have kept up her skills enough train Son Goten while his older brother was busy.

In both her childhood and young adult appearances, Chi-Chi has been depicted as being pure enough of heart that she could ride the Kintoun. She is only of only a handful of characters depicted who could still ride it as an adult.

Red Blazing Aura

In anime-only material first seen in the Garlic Jr. Saga (episode 109 of Dragon Ball Z), Chi-Chi is enveloped by a red glow when she becomes angry. This is seen again in episode 75 of Dragon Ball Super. This "technique" is not given a name on screen or in Japanese reference material, but it is referred to as "Red Blazing Aura" in the Dragon Ball Z Collectible Card Game. It may have been a stylistic choice adopted by the animators to demonstrate Chi-Chi's rage, connecting her "rage boost" with that depicted by her son, Gohan, in the manga and anime. It may also be a visual reference to her husband's Kaiō-ken technique.

Performance

Chi-Chi was performed initially by Mayumi Shō who voiced her from her first appearance up until Dragon Ball Z episode 66 in late 1990. She was subsequently replaced on the series and nearly all subsequent character work by Naoko Watanabe. Watanabe had previously performed as Pu'er, Sno, and other characters before taking on Chi-Chi as well.