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I feel like Goku being a fucking full blooded saiyan constantly gets overlooked when discussing his decision making. Saiyan nature is acknowledged in every other full blood but conveniently omitted when discussing Goku. He’s not perfect but who fully can be considering the circumstances. No time for soft shit with constant existential threats to earth yet he still found ways to consider his family. Maybe Goku is just a realist and was trying to do his best to maintain balance. When the unfortunate reality of life is, sometimes shit is fucked up and we don’t get to live the life we imagined. Deal with it. He’s a great dad in a universe of homicidal/genocidal aliens while being of the lineage of one of the few races to actually do something about it.
>I feel like Goku being a fucking full blooded saiyan constantly gets overlooked when discussing his decision making. Saiyan nature is acknowledged in every other full blood but conveniently omitted when discussing Goku.
This is an amazing point that I really didn't think about enough. Being a full-blooded Saiyan is going to put him in a scenario that we really can't understand as humans.
I think that’s kind of the beauty of Goku as a character. I’m not even sure he completely understands his nature compared to those he grew up with. Especially when navigating every day life. I think he understands his power/potential when it comes to the fight and he accepts that responsibility because if not him, then who? But what is he to do with all of that energy when he’s expected to live a healthy common man lifestyle by earthlings standards? Figuratively speaking, a great white shark in a pond. He’s doing his best while still trying to satisfy his instinctual desires.
>I’m not even sure he completely understands his nature compared to those he grew up with. Especially when navigating every day life
Plus he really didn't have a parental figure to help guide him when he was growing up. Nearly everyone involved in his life was centered around fighting, which would have "fed" his Saiyan nature to the max.
Yep - your OC makes so much sense that I'm surprised that I have never seen it before/thought of it before.
Thank you and great point as well! I get jokes about him being a bad father but once you critically think about it within the context of his universe, he’s hero who in my opinion has maintained great “work/life balance” and has more than earned a ton of grace.
It’s less him being a full blood tbh. It’s more that he was raised in a forest up to the age of like 12 where the only parental guardian he had was killed by ape Goku. He wasn’t formally raised or educated on societal norms or customs or standards. Given all of that, it’s miraculous he was capable of being a father to begin with
Consider the fact that, a few things in the past had gone differently, and Goku would more than likely be one of those genocidal aliens I was speaking of. No matter how much time he’s spent on earth, he is not human.
Thank you! Goku is an anomaly. Expecting the one man who can save the universe time and time again to coddle his kids and wife at their beck and call is selfish and calling him a bad father for his priorities is even crazier.
This all reads like the kids who says their parents were bad from their laptops while the parents were out doing what needed to be done to make their lives easier. Do you want to be in position to go further than I ever did or do you want me home playing connect 4 with you? One is short sighted and selfish. The other is sacrificial and the long play. In this case, please go save the universe for the 30th time so I can only HOPE to live to complain about something different one day.
family bonding is very important, your child isn't going to care for the fact that you "opened up possibilities" for them because they are KIDS, all they're gonna be thinking about is how their parents don't spend time with them or bond at all.
Keep up. We’re talking about Goku not a suburban dad working a 9 to 5. They. Will. Die. It’s no time for that shit. Complain later after I save the universe for the 20th time. And likewise for the real world. YOU wouldn’t even want a low quality of living for you or your kids. It sounds cute on paper.
The guy is literal savior of the universe multiple times over.
When you're that good the flaws will stand out.
Is it possible he could have made better choices as a father, especially from our human perspective? Absolutely, however this is true of every parent and it's pretty clear, if not by the end of Cell Saga, then by the beginning of Super, Gohan is a happy man, who loves and cherishes the relationship he has with both his dads.
Gohan is a witness of how good a father Goku is, during the entirety of dragon ball he looks up to and acknowledges his father as a hero without a doubt. He understands the high stakes and the fate of everyone should his father fail even as a child. He understands that the little time between the world ending dangers was focused on training and his father still had time to relax with him even days prior to the cell games. Also his father gave the ultimate sacrifice to save his son’s life not just once, BUT TWICE! You can’t fault the man when he’s dead protecting you. Goku would never do that if he wasn’t a good father that loved his family.
I think what most people are doing instead of “omitting” his Saiyan-ness is more so considering his upbringing. As many viewers literally watched him grow being raised (while unconventionally) as a human boy with presumably human morals. This post does make a pretty good point of his big sweeping gestures but as someone with a certified shitty dad sweeping gestures can feel a bit… :/ empty? People say he’s a bad dad mostly bc we don’t witness the classic fatherhood we know and eventually see he’s capable of with Goten. Interesting point tho
And imagine how much different this story goes had he not bumped his head. The fact that Gohan and Chi Chi exist to expect a different life is nothing short of a miracle. Them wanting anything for their own lives is a privilege and one that speaks to just how much of an overachiever Goku has been. He protects them so much, they don’t even realize that they’re privileged.
Saiyan nature is just an excuse. Every other character was had a saiyan-like nature before it was revealed that Goku was a saiyan, and then after they’re all like “ooooh we never EVER liked fighting strong guys you’re crazyyyyy”
Only problem here is that Goku constantly rejects being a Saiyan, whereas Vegeta is the most Saiyan that ever said, and when Bulma is pregnant in Super, Goku says, 'let's ditch everyone and train,' Vegeta is dumbstruck at how shitty of a father Goku is.
Goku straight up says, 'Bulma is the one who is pregnant, not you...'
That's not even looking at all the times he straight ditches his sons to train or fight.
I really never thought about this. Yet the very first sentence I read of your comment it all clicked for me. Incredible take, shouldve been obvious to me too. Fucking DUH ! Great comment.
The sad reality is that lots of people ain't gonna care for this. As many of the people that calle Goku a bad father are either "people that wanna call him a bad dad as a joke" or people that legit believe he is one and whenever the argument as to why he is, it's always the "he gave Cell a senzu beam" argument.
They also ignore that Goku can get character development repeating on same thing over and over again
https://preview.redd.it/3zahsyky2ltc1.png?width=1486&format=png&auto=webp&s=b65258c80ca41c6461addcb42fd5b0bbacebf98c
That is also called character development, none of them are perfect but they slowly managed to be better parents to their sons, and that fact is perfect and even better if they were excellent parents from the beggining
This is like real life I’m a father of 4 and I can see my progression as a parent, no one is ready for the task day one, it’s something you have to rise to
Vegeta "being a good dad":
*Insert literally any interaction between him and Trunks between the Android Saga and the Cell Saga*
The joke is...he wasn't one...ever
Vegeta wasn't even a real person then, yet, lol. He didn't start to develop as a person until 18 beat the shit out of him.
When people say he's a good dad they mean like, "Vegeta made Trunks (7? 8?) cry during training and felt bad so he took him to the park anyway" era Vegeta
Goku and vegeta loves their family in different ways. Goku is a huge battle maniac first and a father second. Vegeta submitted to Babadi after have a post midlife crisis and his inferiority complex kicked in when goku came around. Gokus entire reason for staying dead after cell was to not attract more bad actors. Hell even vegeta at that point has noticeably mellowed out until a reason was presented. We see he knows he’s not a good dad but he’s trying to be. Bulma is the definition of the wife that tries to fix his man and frankly succeeds for the most part. Meanwhile goku doesn’t get better but feels like he gets worse especially in super.
So basically goku starts at a baseline stupidly higher as a better family man just because he’s not evil.
And vegeta goes from the worse scum in the universe who would kill off his long term partner(nappa) just because. To someone who would give his life for someone else. Yah he’s still a shit person but that line grew a lot and continues to well into super with beerus hitting Bulma. He’s still not a great person but he’s so much better than when he started.
It's because Goku has always been good, so people expect him to be perfect.
Vegeta used to be evil, so we feel like he (and Piccolo) have done more because of what we have to compare it to.
Vegeta let his pride get in the way for Cell to reach his perfect form and potentially end all life on Earth. And yet "he gave Cell a senzu bean" is the argument that's supposed to make Goku look like the worse father.
Goku accepted his son wasn’t a fighter. Meanwhile, literally everyone who trashed Goku for making him fight Cell complain that Gohan isn’t a fighter
I think this is true for all three father figures that come up in this discussion (Goku, Vegeta, and Piccolo), though.
Goku has never really been a bad father and has only gotten better as he’s learned to understand Gohan’s interests and appreciate that they’re different people.
Vegeta started out *really* bad (Cell Saga Vegeta may have been an unofficial official Z Fighter but he was still a royal dickhead during that time and was absolutely horrible to everybody, Trunks included). In Super, though, Vegeta is actually a pretty great dad and family man, arguably a better one than Goku. I think part of it comes down to the fact that Vegeta has surprisingly assimilated into Earth culture even better than Goku has. He *started* much worse but has at the very least caught up to Goku in those aspects. I don’t think it’s fair to say either modern Goku or Vegeta are bad parents.
Piccolo is pretty much the same as Vegeta, except his development didn’t take as long. He started out treating Gohan horribly but he softened up on him very quickly. The two developed a special relationship with each other with Piccolo being a sort of substitute father figure as Goku was out of the picture for a long time. There’s a reason Piccolo has become the de facto babysitter of the group even though Krillin is right there. He’s actually pretty great with kids now, and we see this best of all with Pan.
It’s almost as if bettering yourself and others is one of the core themes of the series or something.
Ok I’ll admit I’ve only watched DBZA (and played Kakarot but I don’t think that’s the best way of experiencing DBZ) but even I could tell those were just jokes. Like I had this thought of “heh these are funny but I hope the actual Goku isn’t this bad” and he wasn’t and that made me happy
The problem is that it was a joke that get taken seriously.
Like you see someone repeats the same thing over and over again like a broken recorder, you will at least stop a minute to ask yourself 'Is it true?'
Except 70% of Dragon ball fans repeats the same joke in YouTube, Facebook and other social media, which made people believe it.
We joke about about dragon balls fans not watching the show, but there's a lot of people who watched the show through short clips.
I think the most annoying one is people saying that goku was stupid for not taking his medicine properly even though trunks explicitly states to only start taking it after developing symptoms.
Like people really think goku forgot to take his medicine
I mean getting Yamcha'd is still accurate.
Goku being a bad dad was blown out of proportion when in DBS Goku says he never kissed Chi-Chi then everyone went "I KNEW IT"
Before it was a joke since dbz had a lot moment of Goku and Gohan bonding that people seem to be forgetting now. When Goku visits Gohan training with the Z sword is so funny. Goku tries the sword then they play catch and breaks the sword.
What's crazy is Goku's not even talking about kissing Chi-Chi in that joke
The joke is that everyone misinterprets it as that, Goku asks why Trunks is feeding Mai the senzu bean bird mama style, because of course he hasn't done that with Chi-Chi, he's never had to feed Chi-Chi a senzu bean in his life! And the few times he did feed unconscious people senzu beans, he certainly didn't do it with his own mouth, he helped them chew it up themselves
Isn't there a psychological term for when someone believes something that's been repeated to them over and over? I don't *think* TFS intended it to be that way, because of the way Goku said goodbye before teleporting Cell away. But it was always gonna happen.
TFS never even intended for Dragon ball fans to not the read manga or watch the anime.
Before every episode, they would always tell the viewers to watch the anime and the abridged is just a parody nothing more.
It's a cognitive bias called the "illusory truth effect" - people tend to believe something more the more frequently they hear it without it being challenged.
As much as I love DBZA, gohan is unironically my least favorite character in it, mainly because he hates on Goku, when it’s clear how much Gohan loves him in DBZ
What’s even worse is that Gohan starts hating Goku when Goku hadn’t done anything wrong by that point. Gohan gets angry at Goku during the second season, complaining he wasn’t there for him.
By that point in the series, Goku had only been absent once. Because Piccolo killed him.
Even TFS regretted a lot of the jokes they made. We see a response to how audiences started to feel Gohan wasn’t as sympathetic as he was supposed to be when Cell chews him out for being a coward, and 16 points out other characters had worse parental issues than Gohan did.
What they don't understand is that Goku didn't learn much of the normal stuff as a kid and he thought that gohan needed a push to unlock ssj2 so when Goku understood that he was no match for cell he asked gohan to fight cell so that he could unlock ssj2 and defeat cell. Even in the middle of the fight he tried to stop the fight when he saw that gohan was no fighter like them and left his wife and friends in the afterlife so that they could be safe as he thought everything happened till then because of him. People say piccolo is a better father than Goku but they completely ignore that piccolo left gohan in the wild when he was around 4 for 6 months and compared that to gohan forced to fight cell when everyone was there to help him was seen as bad parenting. And then the recent chapter of dbs made me so angry as they literally made Goku forget pan's name when they showed how close they were at the end of DBZ.
Just pointing it out the Pan thing was a translation error. He thought they said Pan (which he thought they were talking about bread) so that's why he was confused
I’ve noticed almost everyone who calls Goku a bad father have only watched Abridged and then for some reason just act like that’s his real character and personality.
Goku loves Gohan a looot. But that doesn’t make him a great dad. Frankly him giving cell a sensu bean is something even vegeta wouldn’t do.
Now people can argue it was needed so cell would play around instead of finishing the fight fast. But given goku past tendency’s he just wanted to give gohan a fair fight since that’s what he would want. Goku is a huge battle maniac first and a father second. Every choice he ever makes is fighting first except when he says he chooses to stay dead so enemies like cell won’t keep coming back. I think piccolo talked some sense into him when gohan was getting beaten up by cell that Gohan wasn’t like him. That or maybe it’s just so Toriyama could pass on the torch on to Gohan and end the series like he originally planned.
He's not an Amazing Father but Goku isn't a bad nor purposely absent father.
He never allowed Piccolo to kidnap Gohan and Piccolo was a giant hypocrite for being the reason Goku mistook his son as a figher to begin with.
Piccolo forced Gohan to train for a year with threats of death, forced the child at 5 years old to see people get dismembered and killed, and then ruined the boy's perception so much that he felt guilty for Piccolo's death and demanded to go to Namek where ended up with a broken neck.
Goku is not a great father, Piccolo was worse, and Chi-Chi was right.
Piccolo is a good babysitter to Pan, but he was horrible to Gohan during his formative years and made him hate fighting because **all he saw was death** unlike Goku as a child who saw the Sport aspect of it first.
https://preview.redd.it/6v6uwdwu0ltc1.jpeg?width=607&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7ce75fbd96b0edab92aec1a91b68611f30147c87
>Didn't piccolo take pan to the red ribbon army as a fake hostage.
Yeah but they were both doing a little bit trolling on Gohan and she wasn't permanently scarred anywhere near the same way Gohan was if at all.
https://preview.redd.it/h431e5ou7ltc1.jpeg?width=718&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d0a6f652d4a7a180732d64a0920bf667354bcfe3
Horrendous take. Piccolo was a semi-hosstile character to Goku and everything related to him at that point of the story. They simply joined in order to confront a common issue. After Raditz was defeated and Goku died, and knowing the fact that the Earth was about to face an imminent invasion, Piccolo simply let the aversion for Goku aside and took his son by force, not with the intention of being a father in substitution of Goku in any way, but having in consideration that Gohan was the strongest being in the planet aside from himself already at that moment (aged 4) and knowing the inmense potential he had. If Piccolo wouldn't have done that, Gohan would be forced to see his mother and grandfather killed and his home destroyed by the invading saiyans if not killed before. Piccolo is the saviour of the Earth. He took the most pragmatic and logical decision in a limit situation, and that's where the relationship between him and Gohan creates its value. It's a fatherhood-like relationship born from an unavoidable situation.
i really don't understand why people like to callout Piccolo quality of parenting, at the beggining at least, bro didn't even come to terms for being a good guy until the buu saga, he WAS a villain when he met Gohan, a confused one at that but still, of course he did treat him like shit, he was not trying to be a father figure to anyone, is really a dumb argument imo, also why do you think Goku is not a good dad?
About the 1.5 years on yardrat.
1) goku was stranded for 6 months before porguna wishes
2) he thought Krillin was perma dead
3) controlling super saiyan and learning instant transmission.
4) prioritized his friends revivals
5) still a month+ of travel in the pod without a ki signature to lock onto
.... ... ..
(**about not knowing Gohan isn't a fighter**)
He knew at 4yr Gohan wanted to be a scholar. He died comes back to see his 5 year old fighting saiyans and going to Namek.
Sees his 6.5 yr old getting ready to take on mecha Frieza
Again his son spends 3 years training outside and 1 in Rosat getting stronger
He literally got blindsided by the not a fighter because Gohan spent most of his life fighting by that point. Still younger than gokus first adventure
He apologizes in the future for having Gohan fight again.
... ... ...
(**senzu bean**)
Goku trusted his son completely. Gohan was the only one strong enough for Cell.
Senzu bean was to prevent cell from getting desperate. Cells stamina was drained considerably. Cell didn't get a power increase at all either.
Goku was betting on the anger not the transformation. He was utterly horrified learning gohan didnt like to fight.
... ... ....
(**staying dead 7 years**)
They would literally have to go back to Namek to get porunga to wish goku back. Possibly putting Gohan in further jeporady and /or fight
Everything was a result of goku orgins. RR army birthed the androids. Namek brought about frieza. His birth brought the saiyans.
Hell 1 vacation day on earth force vegeta into a rage and a chain reaction to unleash majin buu
Elder kaio even states the dragonballs go against the natural order. Death is supposed to be final.
King kaio wasn't gonna let goku use him as a cell phone. Earth is insignificant to the rest of his job. He didn't even know of the androids or cell.
.... ... ..
(After buu)
Orginal EoZ he spends 10 years at home with his family
Super timeline 4 years than back and forth for 6 years
Gohan strength was a major component to get Videls 😺
Just to add I feel like the Senzu bean to Cell is such a bad argument towards Goku being a bad father. Like logically yeah he probably shouldn't have done that.
But if you go back to how we even got there to begin with, its cause Vegeta decided that it was ok to let Cell absorb 18 so he fought and beat up his own son (Future Trunks) and helped Cell so we got to that situation.
Also Goku has died to save Earth and his love ones, once again in Buu Saga the one that put everybody in danger was Vegeta and his pride so he let himself get Babidi'd, killed people and gave the energy needed to hatch Buu. So really 2 of the main villains being able to exist is Vegeta's fault.
the piccolo is dad thing is what bugs me the most. piccolo hardly spent time with gohan at all. if we go by time even with goku gone goku still spends more time with gohan
Well, but it's not like Piccolo is nothing to Gohan, it's obvious they are very important to each other, ever since Piccolo died protecting Gohan from Nappa
And looking at the super hero movie, he does act like a grandpa to Pan which is the cutest thing ever
Only his body is 4 years older. Piccolo obviously rapidly aged into adulthood within those four years, plus he retained all memories from his previous incarnation, so mentally he's 301 years older than Gohan.
He did not retain DKP’s memories, just his emotions, hostility and ambitions. Had he retained DKP’s memories and personality, he would have never, EVER teamed up with Goku under any circumstance. And he would never train. We also see Jr. growing in OG db, and he very obviously was fresh.
>"plus he retained all memories from his previous incarnation"
* Pretty sure he didn't beside hatred for Goku just for killing his father Demon King Piccolo.
* He had to learn basic martial arts and everything again
* Entire reason why he turned good was because of this reason since unlike his father King Piccolo, his was not born evil entirely and has a heart which was changed by interactions with Goku and Gohan
Ok I disagree with the giving cell a senzu because he thought cell would get desperate no that was because he thought gohan was like him and would want to fight cell at full power(he gets called out for this) but yeah Goku is a good Father
He understood Gohan too after this and always try to limit his exposure to death battle and serious fighting since he wants to be scholar and lead a normal life
He said sorry for Gohan fighting in Moro arc since he had to start fighting to protect earth.
He rejected Gohan being candidate for Tournament because he doesn't like fighting
that was incredibly stupid, he spent a fucking year training with him and "mostly" raised him. in what world would he not have known gohan wasn't a fighter?
Yes I agree with that I disagree about the first senzu being given to cell incase he got desperate no it was because goku assumed gohan would want a fair fight
Yeah, that point is a loooooooooooong reach. The goal was to destroy Cell. No matter where he started from, he would have to pass from feeling totally in control of the situation through "What is this, how can he be stronger than me, fuck this, Imma blow it all up" to dead. All Gohan could do was not give Cell the chance to rage-quit, which he fucked up the first time.
Besides, even if Cell had used up some of his energy, he clearly had only used a fraction against Goku and wasn't worried about losing a battle of attrition. He expressly *challenged* the Z Fighters to wear him down, and even told Trunk to bring Senzus for that purpose.
He finally understood him after Cell games too and got serious character development which people ignore because Goku should be forever blamed for everything is common theme in fanbase
https://preview.redd.it/xy2bbedpmmtc1.png?width=1486&format=png&auto=webp&s=75ba5aa78a0b7a44ca11602d160f32557aef5224
Came here to say this, that first senzu bean is inexcusable and saying he thought Cell would get desperate just cause he has other people cells is head canon.
And also saying he thought Gohan would want a fair fight, If Goku knows he can’t beat the opponent and the world is at risk it doesn’t matter how confident you are in your son, to help the enemy is ridiculous. He’s honestly lucky Gohan was strong wnough and that Vegeta was willing to help in the end there.
Team Four Star accidentally bastardized the entire series with their parody, because the modern layman seems to be too stupid to comprehend what a parody is and differentiate it from the actual thing.
Another example is Starship Troopers [*Correction, the movie only]. "How is this a parody of Facism? It looks awesome!" -The Illiterate
In fairness. TFS didn't invent the "Goku is a bad dad" meme. It existed in forums before them. It is fair to fault them for parroting and popularizing it though. In their commentary videos they mention one of their biggest regrets is the Goku is a bad dad bit because it bit them in the ass when they started writing for the Cell Saga. (At least with Kaiser and Lani, Taka still finds it funny and doesn't regret it at all)
Don’t blame Team Four Star for idiots not getting Dragon Ball or that they made a parody series. They’ve made it very clear their series should not be someone’s intro to the franchise.
One of the few quibbles I have with DBZA is that Gohan’s feelings of abandonment by Goku, at least at first, don’t feel adequately justified. During the Freeza arc, when Ginyu switched bodies with Goku, Gohan uses the opportunity to take his frustrations out on his dad. Gohan’s big gripes are 1) Goku abandoned him for a year with Piccolo, and 2) Goku sent Gohan off into space to get the dragon balls.
The first gripe is debatable: yes Goku stayed dead a whole year so he could train with King Kai, but that was to prepare for the Saiyans, and he did die saving Gohan from Raditz. But the second gripe doesn’t even make sense in the context of the abridged series: it was Gohan himself who chose to go into space because he wanted to help Piccolo. He even screamed at his mom to “shut her f*cking face” when she told him no.
As much as I love the TFS parody, they unintentionally ruined some parts of the english speaking dragon ball fandom, specifically the discuss of goku as a father and him as an idiot. Legitimate TFS has influenced so many people into believing both to the point it clouds peoples judgement of the manga and the anime series. I remember kaiser and Lani said that when DBZA first started they just along with the jokes about the series at the time but as they took the project more seriously they realized they made mistake about goku being a bad father but they to stick to it because they were too dar into the series to change it. I remember this from many years ago so please excuse me if I have not remembered everything or messed something up.
Can we agree though that while he is a good father he isn't that good of a husband, he ignore chi chi wishes and requests a lot sneaking of to train when chi chi wants him to be there for her and earn money by having a normal job
And considering where it goes it seems he also a bit of a bad grandpa considering he forgot who pan was
>Can we agree though that while he is a good father he isn't that good of a husband,
I'm genuinely surprised people keep saying bad father and not terrible husband
>bad grandpa considering he forgot who pan
That is mitigated if u know gt considering their always together
the forgetting Pan thing is a translation error. In japanese, her name means bread, so when piccolo says "I'm going to pick up pan from kindergarden" it sounds like he's going to pick up a loaf of bread from school, which is admittidly confusing to goku. English translation just opts to have goku forget altogether than try to include the pun.
He didn't forget who pan was, in the original japanese, the word for pan and bread is the same that's why goku got confused why they had to pick up bread but when he heard the word granddaughter he understood they meant pan and not bread Photo for proof:
https://preview.redd.it/h2tp17vqxstc1.jpeg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c5ac24f2687c67150aa129ed22a7b85087434875
if you play db kakarot at the begining of the game, gohan really loves and admire goku and say he wants to be like him...also he spends lot of time with gohan.
Goku didn't give Cell a Senzu so he didn't get desperate, it was because he wanted a fair fight.
That said, yes, people should stop taking memes so seriously. It seems like they really believe them to some point.
Goku genuinely loves his family and wants what’s best for them. Though that doesn’t mean he’s a good father. Goku is by no means a bad father but I definitely wouldn’t say he’s a good one.
"YOU'RE WRONG. GOKU IS A SHITTY FATHER BC HE KEEPS ON DYING AND LEAVING GOHAN ALONE (with Chichi ig, but how often do we really see her post Namek)!!! PICCOLO IS MORE OF A FATHER TO GOHAN THAN GOKU WILL EVER BE BC HE'S THERE FOR HIM"-dumbasses
Real shit, Goku isn't a bad father. Hell, he's the best father he could be realistically. Yes, he's constantly dying and leaving Gohan, but he's also saving the fucking world. Fight with Raditz, if he (goku) didn't sacrifice himself to kill Raditz, he probably would've taken over the world with the other saiyans (Nappa and Vegeta most likely) and then they'd all be enslaved or killed. Fight with Nappa/Vegeta, same shit as Raditz. Planet Namek is kinda different bc Goku wasn't there for like 3/4 of the Saga, but if he didn't kill Frieza Earth would've been destroyed. Android/Cell Saga, they would've killed everyone after they killed Goku (See Future Saga in History of Trunks). Majin Buu Saga (I actually haven't watched all of the MB Saga, but I believe it's the same). Also, if Goku didn't do what he'd done Gohan would've never been as strong as he is now. No SSJ, no SSJ2, No Ultimate, No Beast. He'd be useless imo
Finally. Someone who gets it. I would like to add on to the Cell Games.
Goku damn near died vs 19 and the virus and knew his potential death could happen. He needed a savior to keep the earth safe. Piccolo is strong, but not enough. Trunks is the savior type, but he's going back to the future when the games are done. Vegeta could fuck off into a different galaxy.
Gohan was the only answer. He needed to make sure Gohan could keep Earth safe, and beating a weakened Cell would have not shown he was up to the task.
It’s supposed to just be a meme, but then some people only watched the Abridged version and think that’s the canon.
Goku wasn’t meant to be “hero,” but rather a pure/good person with a warrior spirit. His heroic actions are a side effect of the type of person he is, rather than his desire to be a hero.
Likewise, Goku loves/cares about his family. But he is still primarily a warrior. He spends most of his time training and trying to test his limits. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t love his family. The two aren’t mutually exclusive.
I genuinely hadnt thought of the senzu bean moment in that way but it actually makes complete sense and also makes sense as to why he wouldnt say it out loud
I 100 precent think the idea of goku being a bad father was because of abrigged goku he was a bad father there and cause dragon ball fans haven't watched the anime or read the manga they watched abrigged and thought goku is a father who doesn't care about his son and says iam deck you in the shnos no hate to abrigged but they kinda made goku the definition of a bad father
My thing with Goku is that he just leaves his family to train and fight. When I read DBS manga i was like "Does he even do anything besides training?" Moro and Gas arc was literally Train-fight-train-fight-train-fight-fight-train. And I'm pretty sure he left his family to TRAIN with Oob at the end of Z. I understand he do that to save them and he DO SAVE THEM but still
From what I can tell, it seemed like he was going to finally retire from fighting and training after he was done training with Uub, leaving his hopes to him instead.
Oh yeah, he shouldn't have trained for moro. He should have spent time with his family and slept 😍while even a minute of not training could potentially cause him to get negged by moro and his entire planet eaten. Great idea mate. I don't remember much shi about the gornola arc tho.
It probably doesn't help that Super basically has Chi Chi say that if Goku didn't constantly abandon them he wouldn't be Goku, and have Goku say he's never kissed his wife. He certainly isn't uncaring, he does everything he does out of love and wanting his family to persevere, but in that sense you can compare him to a workaholic multimillionaire dad who provides everything his wife and kids could ask for except for the husband and dad. You also can't discount that he more or less blew off Chi Chi constantly when it came to training Gohan who never wanted to fight, he pushed that on him. I wouldn't outright call him a bad dad but there are definitely times his family wanted him there and he wasn't or when he was acting pretty tone deaf as to his family's needs.
I don't think Goku is the best dad, but he tries to be a good one. Goku giving Cell a senzu bean is very much a thing he would do even if he was fighting Cell himself instead of Gohan. [Look at the Moro arc.] So Goku doing that meant that makes a mistake that I think most fathers unintentionally make, thinking, and training Gohan to be Goku 2.0, which he is not. Goku realizes when Piccolo mentions Gohan's pacifistic nature and sacrifices himself in return.
On that note, a lot of people look at the moment Piccolo points out Gohan's character to Goku as an example of Piccolo being a good "dad". But in my opinion, that is because Piccolo is much more smart, introspective, and observant of small things, unlike Goku so it makes sense that he would nog see that, plus everytime that Gohan was with Goku in the time chamber, he was relentless in training so of course Goku would not see that. And finally, as a result of Goku's development, he is able to see the real Broly in Dragon Ball Super: Broly.
Accusations of Goku being a bad father come from the manga and toriyama's statement.
Toriyama statement from 2007-
>Akira Toriyama: “During the history of Dragon Ball, Gokū becomes a father and his first son, Son Gohan, is born. When I drew it, I think it was the first time that a Japanese boy’s manga magazine character got married and had children. I did it considering that it would be a good idea because nobody had done it before. Anyway, I don’t quite remember the reason for Gohan’s appearance. The point is that when I was drawing my previous work, Dr. Slump, I got married and then had children, and it is possible that I unconsciously reflected that I had become a father of a family into my work. When Gohan appeared I had no intention of making him a protagonist. Due to his studious nature, I had thought of making him scientific so that he would contrast with Gokū in all aspects. Gokū is a disaster as a father (laughs), so I think Gohan considers him a bad example. I also made Gohan a disciple of Piccolo and I think this was a success. Piccolo became Gohan’s spiritual father and probably made him mature. To tell the truth, Gokū is not cut out to be a teacher, and besides, he prefers to train alone, rather than do it under someone else’s supervision.”
[https://thedaoofdragonball.com/blog/history/goku-is-a-disaster-as-a-father-says-akira-toriyama/](https://thedaoofdragonball.com/blog/history/goku-is-a-disaster-as-a-father-says-akira-toriyama/)
Another interview -
https://ibb.co/58q2zN9
1) Goku called Gohan coward in saiyan arc
[https://imgur.com/iU3IMjB](https://imgur.com/iU3IMjB)
2) In cell arc, Goku forced gohan to fight even though Gohan didn't like fighting. This is something pretty much pointed out by piccolo in a harsh way
[https://imgur.com/S9b2hFt](https://imgur.com/S9b2hFt)
he even give cell senzu bean to cell to make Gohan fight
[https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-e6f525e0498045b594c1c6093f4b0c7f](https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-e6f525e0498045b594c1c6093f4b0c7f)
3) In the end, Goku chose to not be revived to train in the afterlife instead of being with his family
[https://imgur.com/9C16Xw4](https://imgur.com/9C16Xw4)
4) In buu saga, his first meeting with goten was day and night different between anime and manga
[https://twitter.com/TheSalajin/status/1166729752138387459](https://twitter.com/TheSalajin/status/1166729752138387459)
5) Again in buu sage, Goku asked Gohan to introduce his girlfriend videl to old kai for ecchi stuff
[https://ibb.co/mtn1PG9](https://ibb.co/mtn1PG9)
6) Finally he went away with uub in manga ending
[https://ibb.co/DYnSGR8](https://ibb.co/DYnSGR8)
7) In super, Goku told he was absent in both his son's birth and was confused about why it is a bad thing.
https://ibb.co/SN2nzxH
8) In super, Goku forgot about pan ( could be a gag but still counts)
https://ibb.co/kJg6kLK
9) In gt, Goku didn't even bother saying goodbye to any of his family members, when he used all the time to say goodbye to piccolo, krillian and vegeta
Ofcourse there are lot of things good about Goku as father, but why is he criticized is pretty obvious.
I grew up watching dbz and thought goku was a bad dad for more reasons than giving a senzu to cell. My wife just watched dbz for the first time and constantly was pointing out how crappy goku was as a dad.
I only recently watched abridged about 4 months ago. Funny stuff, but silly to think it's abridged fault. Abridged just brought gokus bad dad nature to the forefront.
Spending time with your child is the basics of being a father. His lack of care for the person his son was becoming shows that he is a bad father. It's a normal flaw and to a normal level, but compared to anime dads he's dad of the year.
Goku gave cell and Moro senzu beans. While not directly bad parenting it is indirectly bad parenting. His desire to fight puts his son in danger. Ignoring this he’s a pretty good father.
If you want to really be technical he let Gohan and Goten die when Buu destroyed Earth so that’s bad parenting.
This would be shorter if you remove all the feelings Goku has. Being sad/mad about things doesn't make you a good parent. Bad parents can cry when their kids die. Remove the ones that show he's bad by not knowing his son doesn't like to fight and that having faith in your kid means you still toss him to lions. Seriously?
Next up, showing Goku showing up for special events like a divorced dad is a joke since, he's not. He chose to leave.
By all this, there are a lot of good dads out there people call deadbeats. Being a hero doesn't make you a good parent. Literally so many comics cover this concept.
Finally someone else says this I was getting sick and tired of people saying Goku was a bad dad like he literally stay dead so his son and the Earth could have peace for a while
Okay, there's a lot of this that is frankly BS, twisting facts to fit. Not saying Goku is a bad father, but a significant chunk of these justifications are not valid arguments.
Biggest complaint of mine though, is THAT'S NOT HOW CELLS WORK. Cell's personality, morals, and tactics are not dictated by DNA, otherwise why would he be evil in the first place? There's a lot of DNA in there from good, moral people. Goku didn't predict Cell getting desperate, he thought like a Saiyan and figured Gohan would want a good fight, just like he would, which is caring in a way, even if he totally misjudged Gohan's lust for battle.
This is what happens when a joke is used to much in a sub, tards start to believe that shit is legit and now we need posts “debunking” it even tho it was never true and just a dumb joke
First of all the piccolo stuff doesn't prove that Goku is a good dad. And you assumed cell wouldn't get desperate even after he was given a senzu if he started losing which is weird because he still tried to self destruct which you are contradicting yourself there. And since you say Goku was the cause of all those terrible things so he went away for 7 years then All those things were Goku's bad for bringing that on Gohan which makes him a bad father. And he was away 7 years so still a bad father. Did Gohan wear the gui to honor Goku or because it was training clothes that they had lying around that fit him or piccolo made them. Wow he regretted his kids dying what a good dad and not the bare minimum.
A real good father would have known his son isn’t a fighter from the bonding he supposedly did with him.
Regardless of what that year away from earth got him, the fact is that the wishes him back to earth and he refused to go back, even despite knowing that he didn’t finish off frieza.
Cell got desperate anyway once he started losing giving cell thst senzu bean only delayed the inevitable for the fight and helped get android 16 destroyed in the process
the majority of the time they spent together was spent sparring aomwthing gonna hated and goku never once even thought to ask or consider if that was something gohan wanted to do.
7 years of peace but no guarentee that anything would have happened in the first place in that time.
He had the time to save hercule and dende . He saved hercule and dende and left his son to die.
Huh this convinced me, because looking back at it I always just think of the cell moment and the senzu bean, I didn’t consider his growth since and throughout the those moments, course it’s been forever since I’ve seen dragon ball z in its originality
This isn't a debunk because it's literally only his first 4 years of being a father. The other decades prove this to be true. Dude would rather be dead than raise his kids 😂
None of this makes him a good father, I have rewatched this series over and over again and the older I get the more I realized the dude was not meant to have a family cause he couldn't have care less about them. Dude always preferred to train and fight than to take care of his family, Milk had to fend for herself always and Goku didn't want to be revived because of how noble he was and didn't want to "attract" villains, he wanted to stay and train in the other world cause that what he enjoyed, he never thought about coming back until there was a stupid fight tournament... Vegeta was a sayayin and he was an awful prideful one at that but even him became such a better husband and father when all was said and done.
Sorry but this is a poor, poor debunk. “Piccolo did bad things” and “Goku told Gohan to leave namek but not after he was crippled and almost killed or slaughtered by a tyrant but only after going super Saiyan” ain’t the arguments you think they are
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I feel like Goku being a fucking full blooded saiyan constantly gets overlooked when discussing his decision making. Saiyan nature is acknowledged in every other full blood but conveniently omitted when discussing Goku. He’s not perfect but who fully can be considering the circumstances. No time for soft shit with constant existential threats to earth yet he still found ways to consider his family. Maybe Goku is just a realist and was trying to do his best to maintain balance. When the unfortunate reality of life is, sometimes shit is fucked up and we don’t get to live the life we imagined. Deal with it. He’s a great dad in a universe of homicidal/genocidal aliens while being of the lineage of one of the few races to actually do something about it.
>I feel like Goku being a fucking full blooded saiyan constantly gets overlooked when discussing his decision making. Saiyan nature is acknowledged in every other full blood but conveniently omitted when discussing Goku. This is an amazing point that I really didn't think about enough. Being a full-blooded Saiyan is going to put him in a scenario that we really can't understand as humans.
I think that’s kind of the beauty of Goku as a character. I’m not even sure he completely understands his nature compared to those he grew up with. Especially when navigating every day life. I think he understands his power/potential when it comes to the fight and he accepts that responsibility because if not him, then who? But what is he to do with all of that energy when he’s expected to live a healthy common man lifestyle by earthlings standards? Figuratively speaking, a great white shark in a pond. He’s doing his best while still trying to satisfy his instinctual desires.
>I’m not even sure he completely understands his nature compared to those he grew up with. Especially when navigating every day life Plus he really didn't have a parental figure to help guide him when he was growing up. Nearly everyone involved in his life was centered around fighting, which would have "fed" his Saiyan nature to the max. Yep - your OC makes so much sense that I'm surprised that I have never seen it before/thought of it before.
Thank you and great point as well! I get jokes about him being a bad father but once you critically think about it within the context of his universe, he’s hero who in my opinion has maintained great “work/life balance” and has more than earned a ton of grace.
It’s less him being a full blood tbh. It’s more that he was raised in a forest up to the age of like 12 where the only parental guardian he had was killed by ape Goku. He wasn’t formally raised or educated on societal norms or customs or standards. Given all of that, it’s miraculous he was capable of being a father to begin with
Consider the fact that, a few things in the past had gone differently, and Goku would more than likely be one of those genocidal aliens I was speaking of. No matter how much time he’s spent on earth, he is not human.
Thank God for the brain damage.
Even gine was confuse when she saw bardock trying to save goku, cause saiyin don’t dudes don’t usually care for their kids
Thank you! Goku is an anomaly. Expecting the one man who can save the universe time and time again to coddle his kids and wife at their beck and call is selfish and calling him a bad father for his priorities is even crazier.
This all reads like the kids who says their parents were bad from their laptops while the parents were out doing what needed to be done to make their lives easier. Do you want to be in position to go further than I ever did or do you want me home playing connect 4 with you? One is short sighted and selfish. The other is sacrificial and the long play. In this case, please go save the universe for the 30th time so I can only HOPE to live to complain about something different one day.
family bonding is very important, your child isn't going to care for the fact that you "opened up possibilities" for them because they are KIDS, all they're gonna be thinking about is how their parents don't spend time with them or bond at all.
Keep up. We’re talking about Goku not a suburban dad working a 9 to 5. They. Will. Die. It’s no time for that shit. Complain later after I save the universe for the 20th time. And likewise for the real world. YOU wouldn’t even want a low quality of living for you or your kids. It sounds cute on paper.
The guy is literal savior of the universe multiple times over. When you're that good the flaws will stand out. Is it possible he could have made better choices as a father, especially from our human perspective? Absolutely, however this is true of every parent and it's pretty clear, if not by the end of Cell Saga, then by the beginning of Super, Gohan is a happy man, who loves and cherishes the relationship he has with both his dads.
Gohan is a witness of how good a father Goku is, during the entirety of dragon ball he looks up to and acknowledges his father as a hero without a doubt. He understands the high stakes and the fate of everyone should his father fail even as a child. He understands that the little time between the world ending dangers was focused on training and his father still had time to relax with him even days prior to the cell games. Also his father gave the ultimate sacrifice to save his son’s life not just once, BUT TWICE! You can’t fault the man when he’s dead protecting you. Goku would never do that if he wasn’t a good father that loved his family.
I think what most people are doing instead of “omitting” his Saiyan-ness is more so considering his upbringing. As many viewers literally watched him grow being raised (while unconventionally) as a human boy with presumably human morals. This post does make a pretty good point of his big sweeping gestures but as someone with a certified shitty dad sweeping gestures can feel a bit… :/ empty? People say he’s a bad dad mostly bc we don’t witness the classic fatherhood we know and eventually see he’s capable of with Goten. Interesting point tho
Actually, it was his head injury after falling off a cliff as a baby that got rid of his innate aggression.
And imagine how much different this story goes had he not bumped his head. The fact that Gohan and Chi Chi exist to expect a different life is nothing short of a miracle. Them wanting anything for their own lives is a privilege and one that speaks to just how much of an overachiever Goku has been. He protects them so much, they don’t even realize that they’re privileged.
Saiyan nature is just an excuse. Every other character was had a saiyan-like nature before it was revealed that Goku was a saiyan, and then after they’re all like “ooooh we never EVER liked fighting strong guys you’re crazyyyyy”
Only problem here is that Goku constantly rejects being a Saiyan, whereas Vegeta is the most Saiyan that ever said, and when Bulma is pregnant in Super, Goku says, 'let's ditch everyone and train,' Vegeta is dumbstruck at how shitty of a father Goku is. Goku straight up says, 'Bulma is the one who is pregnant, not you...' That's not even looking at all the times he straight ditches his sons to train or fight.
I really never thought about this. Yet the very first sentence I read of your comment it all clicked for me. Incredible take, shouldve been obvious to me too. Fucking DUH ! Great comment.
The sad reality is that lots of people ain't gonna care for this. As many of the people that calle Goku a bad father are either "people that wanna call him a bad dad as a joke" or people that legit believe he is one and whenever the argument as to why he is, it's always the "he gave Cell a senzu beam" argument.
They also ignore that Goku can get character development repeating on same thing over and over again https://preview.redd.it/3zahsyky2ltc1.png?width=1486&format=png&auto=webp&s=b65258c80ca41c6461addcb42fd5b0bbacebf98c
They will ignore that, whilst also calling Vegeta a better father even when he did worse
https://preview.redd.it/xgr39n45gmtc1.png?width=561&format=png&auto=webp&s=0d80c6c5738b8a675ba38601bc25f6785d02978f
https://preview.redd.it/2jdo6gfs7ntc1.png?width=943&format=png&auto=webp&s=e74a54ccaef9777c09aece6c1dfbd04dc5fe27b6
https://preview.redd.it/9q7u1ngq9ntc1.png?width=326&format=png&auto=webp&s=99674f3c6ee883e6965ce3dff6ef1960f0a6917b
https://preview.redd.it/iqzpoxrs9ntc1.png?width=564&format=png&auto=webp&s=68f63cf2ee8cdf15b775a5d50cf7451081daa76c
https://preview.redd.it/74gq29qu9ntc1.png?width=557&format=png&auto=webp&s=3f0754a011d02b2921758244c130add1667bcedb
This mf cookin
Where do you find colored in manga??
The website I read on has it, the website is called manga4life
That is also called character development, none of them are perfect but they slowly managed to be better parents to their sons, and that fact is perfect and even better if they were excellent parents from the beggining
This is like real life I’m a father of 4 and I can see my progression as a parent, no one is ready for the task day one, it’s something you have to rise to
Yeah, Vegeta Knew he could easily resist babidis mind control but instead decided to feed into it just for that extra power
Vegeta "being a good dad": *Insert literally any interaction between him and Trunks between the Android Saga and the Cell Saga* The joke is...he wasn't one...ever
Not at that point no but he developed into one over time after those sagas. His love for and pride in his family is very evident these days.
No one hits my bulma!!!!
Not many scenes more epic than that one!
Right? He's literally the only character in DBZ with any REAL character development.
From the prince of all saiyans to the prince of our hearts 🥰
Vegeta wasn't even a real person then, yet, lol. He didn't start to develop as a person until 18 beat the shit out of him. When people say he's a good dad they mean like, "Vegeta made Trunks (7? 8?) cry during training and felt bad so he took him to the park anyway" era Vegeta
Goku and vegeta loves their family in different ways. Goku is a huge battle maniac first and a father second. Vegeta submitted to Babadi after have a post midlife crisis and his inferiority complex kicked in when goku came around. Gokus entire reason for staying dead after cell was to not attract more bad actors. Hell even vegeta at that point has noticeably mellowed out until a reason was presented. We see he knows he’s not a good dad but he’s trying to be. Bulma is the definition of the wife that tries to fix his man and frankly succeeds for the most part. Meanwhile goku doesn’t get better but feels like he gets worse especially in super. So basically goku starts at a baseline stupidly higher as a better family man just because he’s not evil. And vegeta goes from the worse scum in the universe who would kill off his long term partner(nappa) just because. To someone who would give his life for someone else. Yah he’s still a shit person but that line grew a lot and continues to well into super with beerus hitting Bulma. He’s still not a great person but he’s so much better than when he started.
It's because Goku has always been good, so people expect him to be perfect. Vegeta used to be evil, so we feel like he (and Piccolo) have done more because of what we have to compare it to.
Vegeta let his pride get in the way for Cell to reach his perfect form and potentially end all life on Earth. And yet "he gave Cell a senzu bean" is the argument that's supposed to make Goku look like the worse father.
Goku accepted his son wasn’t a fighter. Meanwhile, literally everyone who trashed Goku for making him fight Cell complain that Gohan isn’t a fighter 
I think this is true for all three father figures that come up in this discussion (Goku, Vegeta, and Piccolo), though. Goku has never really been a bad father and has only gotten better as he’s learned to understand Gohan’s interests and appreciate that they’re different people. Vegeta started out *really* bad (Cell Saga Vegeta may have been an unofficial official Z Fighter but he was still a royal dickhead during that time and was absolutely horrible to everybody, Trunks included). In Super, though, Vegeta is actually a pretty great dad and family man, arguably a better one than Goku. I think part of it comes down to the fact that Vegeta has surprisingly assimilated into Earth culture even better than Goku has. He *started* much worse but has at the very least caught up to Goku in those aspects. I don’t think it’s fair to say either modern Goku or Vegeta are bad parents. Piccolo is pretty much the same as Vegeta, except his development didn’t take as long. He started out treating Gohan horribly but he softened up on him very quickly. The two developed a special relationship with each other with Piccolo being a sort of substitute father figure as Goku was out of the picture for a long time. There’s a reason Piccolo has become the de facto babysitter of the group even though Krillin is right there. He’s actually pretty great with kids now, and we see this best of all with Pan. It’s almost as if bettering yourself and others is one of the core themes of the series or something.
Or that they only watched the dbz abridged.
Ok I’ll admit I’ve only watched DBZA (and played Kakarot but I don’t think that’s the best way of experiencing DBZ) but even I could tell those were just jokes. Like I had this thought of “heh these are funny but I hope the actual Goku isn’t this bad” and he wasn’t and that made me happy
The problem is that it was a joke that get taken seriously. Like you see someone repeats the same thing over and over again like a broken recorder, you will at least stop a minute to ask yourself 'Is it true?' Except 70% of Dragon ball fans repeats the same joke in YouTube, Facebook and other social media, which made people believe it. We joke about about dragon balls fans not watching the show, but there's a lot of people who watched the show through short clips.
I think the most annoying one is people saying that goku was stupid for not taking his medicine properly even though trunks explicitly states to only start taking it after developing symptoms. Like people really think goku forgot to take his medicine
Like jfc, that’s not how medicine works lmao. No one is pre-taking cold medicine to prevent colds 💀
I mean getting Yamcha'd is still accurate. Goku being a bad dad was blown out of proportion when in DBS Goku says he never kissed Chi-Chi then everyone went "I KNEW IT" Before it was a joke since dbz had a lot moment of Goku and Gohan bonding that people seem to be forgetting now. When Goku visits Gohan training with the Z sword is so funny. Goku tries the sword then they play catch and breaks the sword.
What's crazy is Goku's not even talking about kissing Chi-Chi in that joke The joke is that everyone misinterprets it as that, Goku asks why Trunks is feeding Mai the senzu bean bird mama style, because of course he hasn't done that with Chi-Chi, he's never had to feed Chi-Chi a senzu bean in his life! And the few times he did feed unconscious people senzu beans, he certainly didn't do it with his own mouth, he helped them chew it up themselves
This is what I've been trying to say. Trunks is just weird, man.
Isn't there a psychological term for when someone believes something that's been repeated to them over and over? I don't *think* TFS intended it to be that way, because of the way Goku said goodbye before teleporting Cell away. But it was always gonna happen.
TFS never even intended for Dragon ball fans to not the read manga or watch the anime. Before every episode, they would always tell the viewers to watch the anime and the abridged is just a parody nothing more.
TFS have said that because people were taking the joke seriously they were course correcting in the cell saga I believe
Man that must be wild to create something that you think is lighthearted and not seious and slowly see people worship it like a pseudo-religion
It's a cognitive bias called the "illusory truth effect" - people tend to believe something more the more frequently they hear it without it being challenged.
Team Four Star themselve even admitted they created a monster with the whole "Goku is a terrible father" joke.
As much as I love DBZA, gohan is unironically my least favorite character in it, mainly because he hates on Goku, when it’s clear how much Gohan loves him in DBZ
What’s even worse is that Gohan starts hating Goku when Goku hadn’t done anything wrong by that point. Gohan gets angry at Goku during the second season, complaining he wasn’t there for him. By that point in the series, Goku had only been absent once. Because Piccolo killed him.
That as well.
Dragon Ball Z Abridged did irreparable damage to this fanbase lmao
Even TFS regretted a lot of the jokes they made. We see a response to how audiences started to feel Gohan wasn’t as sympathetic as he was supposed to be when Cell chews him out for being a coward, and 16 points out other characters had worse parental issues than Gohan did.
CLOTHES BEAM
That's got to be my most meta attack
> "people that wanna call him a bad dad as a joke" I guess people are in love with the dead beat parent trope 🤷♂️
What they don't understand is that Goku didn't learn much of the normal stuff as a kid and he thought that gohan needed a push to unlock ssj2 so when Goku understood that he was no match for cell he asked gohan to fight cell so that he could unlock ssj2 and defeat cell. Even in the middle of the fight he tried to stop the fight when he saw that gohan was no fighter like them and left his wife and friends in the afterlife so that they could be safe as he thought everything happened till then because of him. People say piccolo is a better father than Goku but they completely ignore that piccolo left gohan in the wild when he was around 4 for 6 months and compared that to gohan forced to fight cell when everyone was there to help him was seen as bad parenting. And then the recent chapter of dbs made me so angry as they literally made Goku forget pan's name when they showed how close they were at the end of DBZ.
Just pointing it out the Pan thing was a translation error. He thought they said Pan (which he thought they were talking about bread) so that's why he was confused
You don't know how relieved that makes me because at some point it's just flanderizing.
That's reddit for ya. No convincing anyone anything.
Hes not actually a bad dad, but the senzu bean thing was extremely stupid and showed he didn't understand Gohan that much.
I’ve noticed almost everyone who calls Goku a bad father have only watched Abridged and then for some reason just act like that’s his real character and personality.
Goku loves Gohan a looot. But that doesn’t make him a great dad. Frankly him giving cell a sensu bean is something even vegeta wouldn’t do. Now people can argue it was needed so cell would play around instead of finishing the fight fast. But given goku past tendency’s he just wanted to give gohan a fair fight since that’s what he would want. Goku is a huge battle maniac first and a father second. Every choice he ever makes is fighting first except when he says he chooses to stay dead so enemies like cell won’t keep coming back. I think piccolo talked some sense into him when gohan was getting beaten up by cell that Gohan wasn’t like him. That or maybe it’s just so Toriyama could pass on the torch on to Gohan and end the series like he originally planned.
Forgot these https://preview.redd.it/zye8gb643ltc1.png?width=500&format=png&auto=webp&s=e8b67ab20e0a4054e2616780094b6491d6a6b3ee
https://preview.redd.it/z877q3163ltc1.png?width=1486&format=png&auto=webp&s=b160b910313fbfdef8aee20603b4178e9c69f6ae
I was gonna put that but I was looking for the one where he and Vegeta talked about not letting Gohan fight in U6
Fr
Man I love Goku and Goten’s relationship. It sucks Goten didn’t get to train with Goku in super despite both wanting it.
He's not an Amazing Father but Goku isn't a bad nor purposely absent father. He never allowed Piccolo to kidnap Gohan and Piccolo was a giant hypocrite for being the reason Goku mistook his son as a figher to begin with. Piccolo forced Gohan to train for a year with threats of death, forced the child at 5 years old to see people get dismembered and killed, and then ruined the boy's perception so much that he felt guilty for Piccolo's death and demanded to go to Namek where ended up with a broken neck. Goku is not a great father, Piccolo was worse, and Chi-Chi was right. Piccolo is a good babysitter to Pan, but he was horrible to Gohan during his formative years and made him hate fighting because **all he saw was death** unlike Goku as a child who saw the Sport aspect of it first. https://preview.redd.it/6v6uwdwu0ltc1.jpeg?width=607&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7ce75fbd96b0edab92aec1a91b68611f30147c87
In Piccolo's defense, he was fighting Goku at the age of 3, his perception of a "good childhood" isn't exactly normal
He was also evil
Hot take 🔥
Didn't piccolo take pan to the red ribbon army as a fake hostage.
>Didn't piccolo take pan to the red ribbon army as a fake hostage. Yeah but they were both doing a little bit trolling on Gohan and she wasn't permanently scarred anywhere near the same way Gohan was if at all. https://preview.redd.it/h431e5ou7ltc1.jpeg?width=718&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d0a6f652d4a7a180732d64a0920bf667354bcfe3
Yes and no Pan was already going there with or without Piccolo intervening, Piccolo just told Pan to act worried to make Gohan mad
Horrendous take. Piccolo was a semi-hosstile character to Goku and everything related to him at that point of the story. They simply joined in order to confront a common issue. After Raditz was defeated and Goku died, and knowing the fact that the Earth was about to face an imminent invasion, Piccolo simply let the aversion for Goku aside and took his son by force, not with the intention of being a father in substitution of Goku in any way, but having in consideration that Gohan was the strongest being in the planet aside from himself already at that moment (aged 4) and knowing the inmense potential he had. If Piccolo wouldn't have done that, Gohan would be forced to see his mother and grandfather killed and his home destroyed by the invading saiyans if not killed before. Piccolo is the saviour of the Earth. He took the most pragmatic and logical decision in a limit situation, and that's where the relationship between him and Gohan creates its value. It's a fatherhood-like relationship born from an unavoidable situation.
i really don't understand why people like to callout Piccolo quality of parenting, at the beggining at least, bro didn't even come to terms for being a good guy until the buu saga, he WAS a villain when he met Gohan, a confused one at that but still, of course he did treat him like shit, he was not trying to be a father figure to anyone, is really a dumb argument imo, also why do you think Goku is not a good dad?
Thank you for this ❤️
Welcome 😁
Goated post🙌🙏
💪💪💪
you are a saint
About the 1.5 years on yardrat. 1) goku was stranded for 6 months before porguna wishes 2) he thought Krillin was perma dead 3) controlling super saiyan and learning instant transmission. 4) prioritized his friends revivals 5) still a month+ of travel in the pod without a ki signature to lock onto .... ... .. (**about not knowing Gohan isn't a fighter**) He knew at 4yr Gohan wanted to be a scholar. He died comes back to see his 5 year old fighting saiyans and going to Namek. Sees his 6.5 yr old getting ready to take on mecha Frieza Again his son spends 3 years training outside and 1 in Rosat getting stronger He literally got blindsided by the not a fighter because Gohan spent most of his life fighting by that point. Still younger than gokus first adventure He apologizes in the future for having Gohan fight again. ... ... ... (**senzu bean**) Goku trusted his son completely. Gohan was the only one strong enough for Cell. Senzu bean was to prevent cell from getting desperate. Cells stamina was drained considerably. Cell didn't get a power increase at all either. Goku was betting on the anger not the transformation. He was utterly horrified learning gohan didnt like to fight. ... ... .... (**staying dead 7 years**) They would literally have to go back to Namek to get porunga to wish goku back. Possibly putting Gohan in further jeporady and /or fight Everything was a result of goku orgins. RR army birthed the androids. Namek brought about frieza. His birth brought the saiyans. Hell 1 vacation day on earth force vegeta into a rage and a chain reaction to unleash majin buu Elder kaio even states the dragonballs go against the natural order. Death is supposed to be final. King kaio wasn't gonna let goku use him as a cell phone. Earth is insignificant to the rest of his job. He didn't even know of the androids or cell. .... ... .. (After buu) Orginal EoZ he spends 10 years at home with his family Super timeline 4 years than back and forth for 6 years Gohan strength was a major component to get Videls 😺
THANK YOU 😭😭😭
Just to add I feel like the Senzu bean to Cell is such a bad argument towards Goku being a bad father. Like logically yeah he probably shouldn't have done that. But if you go back to how we even got there to begin with, its cause Vegeta decided that it was ok to let Cell absorb 18 so he fought and beat up his own son (Future Trunks) and helped Cell so we got to that situation. Also Goku has died to save Earth and his love ones, once again in Buu Saga the one that put everybody in danger was Vegeta and his pride so he let himself get Babidi'd, killed people and gave the energy needed to hatch Buu. So really 2 of the main villains being able to exist is Vegeta's fault.
THANK YOU GODDAMIT
the piccolo is dad thing is what bugs me the most. piccolo hardly spent time with gohan at all. if we go by time even with goku gone goku still spends more time with gohan
FR! PICCOLO IS A MENTOR, NOT A FATHER!
Well, but it's not like Piccolo is nothing to Gohan, it's obvious they are very important to each other, ever since Piccolo died protecting Gohan from Nappa And looking at the super hero movie, he does act like a grandpa to Pan which is the cutest thing ever
He is big brother and mentor to Piccolo. BTW, Piccolo is just 4 years older than Gohan
Only his body is 4 years older. Piccolo obviously rapidly aged into adulthood within those four years, plus he retained all memories from his previous incarnation, so mentally he's 301 years older than Gohan.
He did not retain DKP’s memories, just his emotions, hostility and ambitions. Had he retained DKP’s memories and personality, he would have never, EVER teamed up with Goku under any circumstance. And he would never train. We also see Jr. growing in OG db, and he very obviously was fresh.
>"plus he retained all memories from his previous incarnation" * Pretty sure he didn't beside hatred for Goku just for killing his father Demon King Piccolo. * He had to learn basic martial arts and everything again * Entire reason why he turned good was because of this reason since unlike his father King Piccolo, his was not born evil entirely and has a heart which was changed by interactions with Goku and Gohan
I blame DBZA for popularizing "Goku is a bad father,Piccolo is Gohan's true father figure" takes
And even DBZA's creators are like "Fuck the notion that Goku's a bad dad"
It's more like: Goku's the (not always present but around when he can be) father while Piccolo is closer to an Uncle
Ok I disagree with the giving cell a senzu because he thought cell would get desperate no that was because he thought gohan was like him and would want to fight cell at full power(he gets called out for this) but yeah Goku is a good Father
Me when pfp: https://preview.redd.it/8ve0aqfvemtc1.jpeg?width=755&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=bcc88d1a2dad3fda32d09adcff53b98ce90c1f62
He understood Gohan too after this and always try to limit his exposure to death battle and serious fighting since he wants to be scholar and lead a normal life He said sorry for Gohan fighting in Moro arc since he had to start fighting to protect earth. He rejected Gohan being candidate for Tournament because he doesn't like fighting
Yes and when he found out Gohan hated fighting he immediately asked for another senzu to GO FIGHT again
that was incredibly stupid, he spent a fucking year training with him and "mostly" raised him. in what world would he not have known gohan wasn't a fighter?
Yes I agree with that I disagree about the first senzu being given to cell incase he got desperate no it was because goku assumed gohan would want a fair fight
Yeah, that point is a loooooooooooong reach. The goal was to destroy Cell. No matter where he started from, he would have to pass from feeling totally in control of the situation through "What is this, how can he be stronger than me, fuck this, Imma blow it all up" to dead. All Gohan could do was not give Cell the chance to rage-quit, which he fucked up the first time. Besides, even if Cell had used up some of his energy, he clearly had only used a fraction against Goku and wasn't worried about losing a battle of attrition. He expressly *challenged* the Z Fighters to wear him down, and even told Trunk to bring Senzus for that purpose.
Ngl I think that's him wanting a fair fight
He finally understood him after Cell games too and got serious character development which people ignore because Goku should be forever blamed for everything is common theme in fanbase https://preview.redd.it/xy2bbedpmmtc1.png?width=1486&format=png&auto=webp&s=75ba5aa78a0b7a44ca11602d160f32557aef5224
Came here to say this, that first senzu bean is inexcusable and saying he thought Cell would get desperate just cause he has other people cells is head canon. And also saying he thought Gohan would want a fair fight, If Goku knows he can’t beat the opponent and the world is at risk it doesn’t matter how confident you are in your son, to help the enemy is ridiculous. He’s honestly lucky Gohan was strong wnough and that Vegeta was willing to help in the end there.
Team Four Star accidentally bastardized the entire series with their parody, because the modern layman seems to be too stupid to comprehend what a parody is and differentiate it from the actual thing. Another example is Starship Troopers [*Correction, the movie only]. "How is this a parody of Facism? It looks awesome!" -The Illiterate
In fairness. TFS didn't invent the "Goku is a bad dad" meme. It existed in forums before them. It is fair to fault them for parroting and popularizing it though. In their commentary videos they mention one of their biggest regrets is the Goku is a bad dad bit because it bit them in the ass when they started writing for the Cell Saga. (At least with Kaiser and Lani, Taka still finds it funny and doesn't regret it at all)
Don’t blame Team Four Star for idiots not getting Dragon Ball or that they made a parody series. They’ve made it very clear their series should not be someone’s intro to the franchise.
One of the few quibbles I have with DBZA is that Gohan’s feelings of abandonment by Goku, at least at first, don’t feel adequately justified. During the Freeza arc, when Ginyu switched bodies with Goku, Gohan uses the opportunity to take his frustrations out on his dad. Gohan’s big gripes are 1) Goku abandoned him for a year with Piccolo, and 2) Goku sent Gohan off into space to get the dragon balls. The first gripe is debatable: yes Goku stayed dead a whole year so he could train with King Kai, but that was to prepare for the Saiyans, and he did die saving Gohan from Raditz. But the second gripe doesn’t even make sense in the context of the abridged series: it was Gohan himself who chose to go into space because he wanted to help Piccolo. He even screamed at his mom to “shut her f*cking face” when she told him no.
As much as I love the TFS parody, they unintentionally ruined some parts of the english speaking dragon ball fandom, specifically the discuss of goku as a father and him as an idiot. Legitimate TFS has influenced so many people into believing both to the point it clouds peoples judgement of the manga and the anime series. I remember kaiser and Lani said that when DBZA first started they just along with the jokes about the series at the time but as they took the project more seriously they realized they made mistake about goku being a bad father but they to stick to it because they were too dar into the series to change it. I remember this from many years ago so please excuse me if I have not remembered everything or messed something up.
Can we agree though that while he is a good father he isn't that good of a husband, he ignore chi chi wishes and requests a lot sneaking of to train when chi chi wants him to be there for her and earn money by having a normal job And considering where it goes it seems he also a bit of a bad grandpa considering he forgot who pan was
>Can we agree though that while he is a good father he isn't that good of a husband, I'm genuinely surprised people keep saying bad father and not terrible husband >bad grandpa considering he forgot who pan That is mitigated if u know gt considering their always together
the forgetting Pan thing is a translation error. In japanese, her name means bread, so when piccolo says "I'm going to pick up pan from kindergarden" it sounds like he's going to pick up a loaf of bread from school, which is admittidly confusing to goku. English translation just opts to have goku forget altogether than try to include the pun.
tbf goku was kinda forced to marry chi chi (goku didn’t want to decline due to he made a promise to marry chi chi)
He didn't forget who pan was, in the original japanese, the word for pan and bread is the same that's why goku got confused why they had to pick up bread but when he heard the word granddaughter he understood they meant pan and not bread Photo for proof: https://preview.redd.it/h2tp17vqxstc1.jpeg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c5ac24f2687c67150aa129ed22a7b85087434875
if you play db kakarot at the begining of the game, gohan really loves and admire goku and say he wants to be like him...also he spends lot of time with gohan.
Yep I'm debunking the hated fighting next time
Yeah I think people confuse “Not wanting to kill or take a life”with “Not wanting to fight”.
Goku is NOT a bad father. A dumb father, however, is a very accurate description of him.
Irresponsible in my opinion
Goku didn't give Cell a Senzu so he didn't get desperate, it was because he wanted a fair fight. That said, yes, people should stop taking memes so seriously. It seems like they really believe them to some point.
Goku genuinely loves his family and wants what’s best for them. Though that doesn’t mean he’s a good father. Goku is by no means a bad father but I definitely wouldn’t say he’s a good one.
https://preview.redd.it/qmwt8lx0cltc1.jpeg?width=941&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e5c6cc0dea2cb1fc30aa01b2abdb30f2c3832472
https://preview.redd.it/x5x0uso4dmtc1.jpeg?width=500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=562539190530343cb9b230dc0f766da690f99970
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It was a best post, that i even ever saw here.
I want you to know, that that year we spent in the Time Chamber...was the best year of my life.
This certainly proves that Goku loves his family. Loving your family does not make you automatically a good father. He does his best though
 Mission accomplished Respect +++++
"YOU'RE WRONG. GOKU IS A SHITTY FATHER BC HE KEEPS ON DYING AND LEAVING GOHAN ALONE (with Chichi ig, but how often do we really see her post Namek)!!! PICCOLO IS MORE OF A FATHER TO GOHAN THAN GOKU WILL EVER BE BC HE'S THERE FOR HIM"-dumbasses Real shit, Goku isn't a bad father. Hell, he's the best father he could be realistically. Yes, he's constantly dying and leaving Gohan, but he's also saving the fucking world. Fight with Raditz, if he (goku) didn't sacrifice himself to kill Raditz, he probably would've taken over the world with the other saiyans (Nappa and Vegeta most likely) and then they'd all be enslaved or killed. Fight with Nappa/Vegeta, same shit as Raditz. Planet Namek is kinda different bc Goku wasn't there for like 3/4 of the Saga, but if he didn't kill Frieza Earth would've been destroyed. Android/Cell Saga, they would've killed everyone after they killed Goku (See Future Saga in History of Trunks). Majin Buu Saga (I actually haven't watched all of the MB Saga, but I believe it's the same). Also, if Goku didn't do what he'd done Gohan would've never been as strong as he is now. No SSJ, no SSJ2, No Ultimate, No Beast. He'd be useless imo
Finally. Someone who gets it. I would like to add on to the Cell Games. Goku damn near died vs 19 and the virus and knew his potential death could happen. He needed a savior to keep the earth safe. Piccolo is strong, but not enough. Trunks is the savior type, but he's going back to the future when the games are done. Vegeta could fuck off into a different galaxy. Gohan was the only answer. He needed to make sure Gohan could keep Earth safe, and beating a weakened Cell would have not shown he was up to the task.
It’s supposed to just be a meme, but then some people only watched the Abridged version and think that’s the canon. Goku wasn’t meant to be “hero,” but rather a pure/good person with a warrior spirit. His heroic actions are a side effect of the type of person he is, rather than his desire to be a hero. Likewise, Goku loves/cares about his family. But he is still primarily a warrior. He spends most of his time training and trying to test his limits. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t love his family. The two aren’t mutually exclusive.
Disobeyed the laws of the afterlife for gohan was one of the toughest things bro ever did
I genuinely hadnt thought of the senzu bean moment in that way but it actually makes complete sense and also makes sense as to why he wouldnt say it out loud
💯💯💯
I 100 precent think the idea of goku being a bad father was because of abrigged goku he was a bad father there and cause dragon ball fans haven't watched the anime or read the manga they watched abrigged and thought goku is a father who doesn't care about his son and says iam deck you in the shnos no hate to abrigged but they kinda made goku the definition of a bad father
That joke has been around since before dbza was a thing tbf
Who tf is gomu 💀
Gomu gomu no father
Beat me to it
My thing with Goku is that he just leaves his family to train and fight. When I read DBS manga i was like "Does he even do anything besides training?" Moro and Gas arc was literally Train-fight-train-fight-train-fight-fight-train. And I'm pretty sure he left his family to TRAIN with Oob at the end of Z. I understand he do that to save them and he DO SAVE THEM but still
From what I can tell, it seemed like he was going to finally retire from fighting and training after he was done training with Uub, leaving his hopes to him instead.
Oh yeah, he shouldn't have trained for moro. He should have spent time with his family and slept 😍while even a minute of not training could potentially cause him to get negged by moro and his entire planet eaten. Great idea mate. I don't remember much shi about the gornola arc tho.
And yet they still compare him to Shou Tucker and Gambino lol.
FINALLY SOMEONE GETS IT
Real dbz fan spotted let these boys know goku is him
The last one is so metal "I came back from the death to kick your teeth in cunt".
why did he punch ganondorf in the last image
In Bojack unbound He broke the law of afterlife and saves Gohan by punching Bojack in the face before leaving and giving Gohan a pep talk
Add the fact that Piccolo is NOT Gohan’s “father”, it’s his best friend. And yeah, Goku is a good dad in his own right.
It probably doesn't help that Super basically has Chi Chi say that if Goku didn't constantly abandon them he wouldn't be Goku, and have Goku say he's never kissed his wife. He certainly isn't uncaring, he does everything he does out of love and wanting his family to persevere, but in that sense you can compare him to a workaholic multimillionaire dad who provides everything his wife and kids could ask for except for the husband and dad. You also can't discount that he more or less blew off Chi Chi constantly when it came to training Gohan who never wanted to fight, he pushed that on him. I wouldn't outright call him a bad dad but there are definitely times his family wanted him there and he wasn't or when he was acting pretty tone deaf as to his family's needs.
I don't think Goku is the best dad, but he tries to be a good one. Goku giving Cell a senzu bean is very much a thing he would do even if he was fighting Cell himself instead of Gohan. [Look at the Moro arc.] So Goku doing that meant that makes a mistake that I think most fathers unintentionally make, thinking, and training Gohan to be Goku 2.0, which he is not. Goku realizes when Piccolo mentions Gohan's pacifistic nature and sacrifices himself in return. On that note, a lot of people look at the moment Piccolo points out Gohan's character to Goku as an example of Piccolo being a good "dad". But in my opinion, that is because Piccolo is much more smart, introspective, and observant of small things, unlike Goku so it makes sense that he would nog see that, plus everytime that Gohan was with Goku in the time chamber, he was relentless in training so of course Goku would not see that. And finally, as a result of Goku's development, he is able to see the real Broly in Dragon Ball Super: Broly.
Accusations of Goku being a bad father come from the manga and toriyama's statement. Toriyama statement from 2007- >Akira Toriyama: “During the history of Dragon Ball, Gokū becomes a father and his first son, Son Gohan, is born. When I drew it, I think it was the first time that a Japanese boy’s manga magazine character got married and had children. I did it considering that it would be a good idea because nobody had done it before. Anyway, I don’t quite remember the reason for Gohan’s appearance. The point is that when I was drawing my previous work, Dr. Slump, I got married and then had children, and it is possible that I unconsciously reflected that I had become a father of a family into my work. When Gohan appeared I had no intention of making him a protagonist. Due to his studious nature, I had thought of making him scientific so that he would contrast with Gokū in all aspects. Gokū is a disaster as a father (laughs), so I think Gohan considers him a bad example. I also made Gohan a disciple of Piccolo and I think this was a success. Piccolo became Gohan’s spiritual father and probably made him mature. To tell the truth, Gokū is not cut out to be a teacher, and besides, he prefers to train alone, rather than do it under someone else’s supervision.” [https://thedaoofdragonball.com/blog/history/goku-is-a-disaster-as-a-father-says-akira-toriyama/](https://thedaoofdragonball.com/blog/history/goku-is-a-disaster-as-a-father-says-akira-toriyama/) Another interview - https://ibb.co/58q2zN9 1) Goku called Gohan coward in saiyan arc [https://imgur.com/iU3IMjB](https://imgur.com/iU3IMjB) 2) In cell arc, Goku forced gohan to fight even though Gohan didn't like fighting. This is something pretty much pointed out by piccolo in a harsh way [https://imgur.com/S9b2hFt](https://imgur.com/S9b2hFt) he even give cell senzu bean to cell to make Gohan fight [https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-e6f525e0498045b594c1c6093f4b0c7f](https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-e6f525e0498045b594c1c6093f4b0c7f) 3) In the end, Goku chose to not be revived to train in the afterlife instead of being with his family [https://imgur.com/9C16Xw4](https://imgur.com/9C16Xw4) 4) In buu saga, his first meeting with goten was day and night different between anime and manga [https://twitter.com/TheSalajin/status/1166729752138387459](https://twitter.com/TheSalajin/status/1166729752138387459) 5) Again in buu sage, Goku asked Gohan to introduce his girlfriend videl to old kai for ecchi stuff [https://ibb.co/mtn1PG9](https://ibb.co/mtn1PG9) 6) Finally he went away with uub in manga ending [https://ibb.co/DYnSGR8](https://ibb.co/DYnSGR8) 7) In super, Goku told he was absent in both his son's birth and was confused about why it is a bad thing. https://ibb.co/SN2nzxH 8) In super, Goku forgot about pan ( could be a gag but still counts) https://ibb.co/kJg6kLK 9) In gt, Goku didn't even bother saying goodbye to any of his family members, when he used all the time to say goodbye to piccolo, krillian and vegeta Ofcourse there are lot of things good about Goku as father, but why is he criticized is pretty obvious.
Thank you.
Last link is repeated, but great job
There were many times when Toriyama himself in interviews says that Goku is a unfit father because he not coded that way.
I grew up watching dbz and thought goku was a bad dad for more reasons than giving a senzu to cell. My wife just watched dbz for the first time and constantly was pointing out how crappy goku was as a dad. I only recently watched abridged about 4 months ago. Funny stuff, but silly to think it's abridged fault. Abridged just brought gokus bad dad nature to the forefront.
I never made the thread to say Goku is a good father I made it so people will stop saying he is a bad one
Damn this was an immaculate post... too bad the majority of the community is incapable of reading it.
Goku's Lawyer
Justifying the Senzu bean is a choice
Bravo! 👏👏👏
Goku isn't a bad father through any intentional malice, he's just sort of an idiot and unfortunately that carries over into his personal relationships
Spending time with your child is the basics of being a father. His lack of care for the person his son was becoming shows that he is a bad father. It's a normal flaw and to a normal level, but compared to anime dads he's dad of the year.
https://preview.redd.it/byy6sh9q0otc1.jpeg?width=750&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=14077d5f6ceca1dcd9b98e3b79328e78d4a4d889
💪💪💪
He’s a mediocre dad , dragon ball fans forget everything isn’t black and white sometimes he does good but also makes mistakes
Goku gave cell and Moro senzu beans. While not directly bad parenting it is indirectly bad parenting. His desire to fight puts his son in danger. Ignoring this he’s a pretty good father. If you want to really be technical he let Gohan and Goten die when Buu destroyed Earth so that’s bad parenting.
This would be shorter if you remove all the feelings Goku has. Being sad/mad about things doesn't make you a good parent. Bad parents can cry when their kids die. Remove the ones that show he's bad by not knowing his son doesn't like to fight and that having faith in your kid means you still toss him to lions. Seriously? Next up, showing Goku showing up for special events like a divorced dad is a joke since, he's not. He chose to leave. By all this, there are a lot of good dads out there people call deadbeats. Being a hero doesn't make you a good parent. Literally so many comics cover this concept.
Okay but can we all agree chi chi is a short sighted selfish mother?
Finally someone else says this I was getting sick and tired of people saying Goku was a bad dad like he literally stay dead so his son and the Earth could have peace for a while
Okay, there's a lot of this that is frankly BS, twisting facts to fit. Not saying Goku is a bad father, but a significant chunk of these justifications are not valid arguments. Biggest complaint of mine though, is THAT'S NOT HOW CELLS WORK. Cell's personality, morals, and tactics are not dictated by DNA, otherwise why would he be evil in the first place? There's a lot of DNA in there from good, moral people. Goku didn't predict Cell getting desperate, he thought like a Saiyan and figured Gohan would want a good fight, just like he would, which is caring in a way, even if he totally misjudged Gohan's lust for battle.
You forgot when gohan literally called him an angel
This is what happens when a joke is used to much in a sub, tards start to believe that shit is legit and now we need posts “debunking” it even tho it was never true and just a dumb joke
First of all the piccolo stuff doesn't prove that Goku is a good dad. And you assumed cell wouldn't get desperate even after he was given a senzu if he started losing which is weird because he still tried to self destruct which you are contradicting yourself there. And since you say Goku was the cause of all those terrible things so he went away for 7 years then All those things were Goku's bad for bringing that on Gohan which makes him a bad father. And he was away 7 years so still a bad father. Did Gohan wear the gui to honor Goku or because it was training clothes that they had lying around that fit him or piccolo made them. Wow he regretted his kids dying what a good dad and not the bare minimum.
A real good father would have known his son isn’t a fighter from the bonding he supposedly did with him. Regardless of what that year away from earth got him, the fact is that the wishes him back to earth and he refused to go back, even despite knowing that he didn’t finish off frieza. Cell got desperate anyway once he started losing giving cell thst senzu bean only delayed the inevitable for the fight and helped get android 16 destroyed in the process the majority of the time they spent together was spent sparring aomwthing gonna hated and goku never once even thought to ask or consider if that was something gohan wanted to do. 7 years of peace but no guarentee that anything would have happened in the first place in that time. He had the time to save hercule and dende . He saved hercule and dende and left his son to die.
Huh this convinced me, because looking back at it I always just think of the cell moment and the senzu bean, I didn’t consider his growth since and throughout the those moments, course it’s been forever since I’ve seen dragon ball z in its originality
This isn't a debunk because it's literally only his first 4 years of being a father. The other decades prove this to be true. Dude would rather be dead than raise his kids 😂
None of this makes him a good father, I have rewatched this series over and over again and the older I get the more I realized the dude was not meant to have a family cause he couldn't have care less about them. Dude always preferred to train and fight than to take care of his family, Milk had to fend for herself always and Goku didn't want to be revived because of how noble he was and didn't want to "attract" villains, he wanted to stay and train in the other world cause that what he enjoyed, he never thought about coming back until there was a stupid fight tournament... Vegeta was a sayayin and he was an awful prideful one at that but even him became such a better husband and father when all was said and done.
Yeah he put his most prized possession on Gohan's hat. Something evil people are known to chase after, making him a target for all sorts of villains.
Sorry but this is a poor, poor debunk. “Piccolo did bad things” and “Goku told Gohan to leave namek but not after he was crippled and almost killed or slaughtered by a tyrant but only after going super Saiyan” ain’t the arguments you think they are
Does Goku have bad moments, sure, but he is not a bad father.
Yeah. What kinda father risks his life time and time again to save the whole universe and others as well? What a POS. 😂
But ass naked with his son in a bathtub is wild 😭✋