Admiring Piccolo: A Standout Character in a Standout Series

 

Dragon Ball has one of the most iconic ensembles of characters in modern times. The average person has a decent chance they’ve at least heard of characters like Goku and Vegeta. The franchise has become a cultural pillar, and that’s mainly in part due to how well defined and recognized the cast is. They’re all incredibly well designed, and despite how biased the series became towards some characters (Saiyans) as time went on, everyone had a role to play and the end result was a well-established long reaching friend group that’s captured the hearts of many since the series first began serialization in 1984. Today I want to put the spotlight on Piccolo, as he’s one of my personal favorites and I’d like to explore a bit why that is.

Today's Topic of Discussion

Piccolo’s biggest strength is his character journey. He sits as a sort of transitional character in the world of DB. He’s the last major villain of the first half of the story before we  enter the “Z” portion of the series, which would drastically escalate the fights as readers had previously known them. While he starts out in Z still fully hell-bent on taking Goku out in order to conquer Earth, the threat of the Saiyans forces him to put those plans on hold in order to combat a bigger threat. The Saiyan invasion would mark the start of his turnaround as a character, going from a villain to a genuine hero in the world of DB. We have his relationship with Gohan to thank for this. While their dynamic started off harshly due to Piccolo’s strictness and Gohan’s upbringing, as Gohan begins to show more genuine acts of kindness and respect towards Piccolo, Piccolo in turn begins to lighten up and start caring for Gohan. Once he took Nappa’s killing blow head on to protect Gohan, whether he liked it or not, he began to snowball into becoming a key protector of Earth.

The Frieza saga sees Piccolo prioritize killing Frieza before the latter can kill Gohan and the others on Namek, and then travel to Earth and destroy it too. While preventing Earth's destruction is one of his primary motivations once again, he doesn’t emphasize how that’s because he wants the Earth for himself this time. By the time of the Cell saga, he rejoins with Kami with the expressed purpose of protecting the Earth from the threat of the androids and the newly arrived Cell. All the while, he’s genuinely connected with the Z fighters and becomes a key player in the group. Nobody ever really bats an eye to the fact that they’re all cool with each other now. Especially not Gohan, who developed such a strong master and pupil relationship with Piccolo over the course of Z that it’s one of the franchises most well recognized dynamics. The idea that he’s only really participating in these arcs because the antagonists involved are stopping him from focusing on Goku has vanished at this point. He’s long since stopped caring about being an absolute menace to Earth, he just genuinely cares about the planet and his friends now.

Piccolo came so far from where he was at the end of the first half of DB. The time he spends training Gohan, along with working together with Goku and the rest of the cast brings out compassion within him. He comes to embrace the better aspects of himself as a person to become someone that the entire cast comes to rely on in a seamless manner. In fact, this transition being so seamless might be the biggest argument in his favor. I doubt anyone who just finished the 23rd World Tournament would ever expect to see Piccolo actually care about other people, especially not Goku’s child. But his writing from the Saiyan saga onward is so well executed that rarely do people seem to find the shift jarring or unnatural. His journey flows well from start to finish and the end result stands strong because of it. From the most threatening person in the room to arguing with Bulma over her use of Shenron and being a surrogate uncle to Pan.

Piccolo with His Pupil's Daughter

The recent movie Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero in general was such a love letter to Piccolo in particular. While Gohan also has a large role to play, Piccolo is undeniably the main POV character for the film and is the most pivotal player in all of it. We get to see him infiltrate the Red Ribbon base in disguise, battle it out with Gamma 2 twice, his dynamic with Dende and Shenron (this one in particular was really fun to watch), and of course how he interacts with both Gohan and Pan. To top it all off, he even gets two different power-ups over the course of the film. Piccolo post-Cell saga unfortunately spends most of his time as a spectator, a problem that becomes particularly obvious in a lot of media that dropped after Z. Seeing a favorite like him get something to put him up to speed is incredible. How it’ll pan out remains to be seen, but the attempt is clear and admirable. Piccolo gets so much respect in the film and anyone who loves his character will have a great time with it.

Adding to Piccolo’s appeal is the fact that he has a stellar design. Toriyama has world-wide recognition for his character artwork, and Piccolo might be one of the best examples as to why. Namekians already have a good basis for a design, but the purple gi in combination with his weighted white cape and turban make for one of the most iconic outfits in the series. Helping that is the fact that Piccolo can just look so sick in some scenes. His expressions, both confident and serious, alongside the skills he demonstrates in his fights give off such a strong impression that it’s really hard for anyone not to come around on the guy at some point. His design in tandem with his arc make for a character with such a strong sense of personality and identity in a series already bursting with personality and identity.

 

Cover for Chapter 295 of Dragon Ball

All in all, Piccolo captures just about everything that can go right in a character. A great design combined with a well throughout journey lead to one of DB’s most well recognized characters. Piccolo deserves all his flowers and then some, and a lot of people seem to recognize that, myself included. I truly do appreciate the guy and all of his contributions to the franchise, and I’d advocate for his character any day. A wonderful character in a wonderful series.