vegetanalysis

@bookishginger is my main blog. This one is dedicated to discussing the many aspects of Vegeta's character and his development throughout DBZ & Super. Will also feature fanart and an abundance of Vegebul! |Always SFW|

[everymangavegeta]

Intriguing... Maybe I should go, too. And that means you too, Trunks! Or I'll cut your allowance in half!

[everymangavegeta]

Look at our little friend!

[everymangavegeta]

KRNCH

[vegebul-stan]

[shannonsketches]

I don't know why but Final Explosion sounds so painful to me. It just burns you away inside out , ripping all your skin and bones . Can't imagine the extent of pain Vegeta felt when he did it against Buu . .

That's why it makes me emotional thinking about the fact that knowing that he would go to hell anyways, he still decided to go out in such a agonizing manner for Bulma, Trunks and Earth.

( Buu should have died but it was a good saga anyways).

I'm sure it was! But if it helps at all I imagine it's probably a lot faster than we see in the anime, which is why he had Piccolo get the kids clear early. It's meant to mimic an atom bomb -- there is no time for anyone to flee the area while it's detonating, and he's at the epicenter. In the manga, it's over in 3 pages. I'm certain it was agony while he could feel it, but in the manga he was gone quick.

I imagine the most painful part of it for Vegeta was deciding to do it, and saying goodbye to his son. It's an excellent way to end this part of his character arc -- to make the core problem of him wanting to cling to this identity he'd spent decades fostering, and the resolution and/or consequence of that being that he has to choose to sacrifice his identity altogether. Making that decision is what frees him from the last grips of who he was always told he had to be, and is what allows him to become who he wants to be, and who he's meant to be.

If Buu had died in the blast, I think it wouldn't have forced Vegeta to come to the other conclusions he comes to in this arc, or get the opportunity to prove this shift wasn't temporary. (We also wouldn't get to keep Buu if he'd died here, or see Hercule's character arc be explored, both of which I love!)

There's a second time he's willing to give up his identity for Bulma and Trunks when Goku asks him to fuse, and a third time when he volunteers to be a meat shield while he's still dead -- which Goku tells him could result in him disappearing altogether, not just being reincarnated.

Because Buu survived this attack, Vegeta is able to repeatedly prove that he will put his family and their home ahead of himself without hesitation. That this wasn't just a fluke because he was tired or injured or not in his right state of mind. That this is the true result of his hard work on himself, and the effect of his family's love, and the power of having a supportive community of friends who genuinely want you to do well (even when you don't necessarily deserve sympathy).

With the exception of Krillin (who regularly puts himself in horrific danger for his loved ones, but his agonizing deaths have been as a bystander who gets fridged for Goku's manpain), and Gohan (who has several times voluntarily absorbed the death blows meant for other characters and survived it because he's scary as hell and also baby boy baby), all of the Z-fighters have voluntarily chosen agonizing deaths to try and protect the people they care about -- and largely failed to have their sacrifice be meaningful in the battle (but incredibly important to their character and their relationships).

This is Vegeta paying his dues, and officially joining the heroes.

God I love the Buu saga.

[vegebul-stan]

art by @vodjaaam

[everymangavegeta]

Sorry. I'm not made for standing around.

[fabuloustrash05]

This has been in my drafts for a while XD

[vegetanalysis]

@fabuloustrash05 strikes again with the perfect edit 🤌🏻

[vegetanalysis]

The way I SHRIEKED when I saw these panels from Chapter 82 of the DBS Manga, guys. Vegeta wearing a scouter again after more than a decade ??!?? and redeeming his knowledge of Freeza Force technology for good ??!?? ugh, just stab me in the heart, why don't you. 😭 This is the good stuff I absolutely eat up about Vegeta's character arc. The minute I think I can't possibly be more head-over-heels in love with this character and his development, he goes and does something so small but significant like this. I could ugly-cry at just how far he has come.

[rabirayrana]

Like Frieza and Vegeta’s relationship was absolutely abusive and exploitative from start to finish but I think people write it wrong. Well not wrong, just in a way that I personally believe removes the deeper horror in favor of an easy depiction of what a relationship like that looks like. He’s not getting strung up and whipped or locked in a cell to cry, he’s getting his chin scratched by a person who uprooted him from everything he had ever known on a whim and destroyed the culture upon which he founded his most nascent sense of identity. And that person is only keeping him alive because despite it all, he’s useful, and kind of cute, especially now that all the other Saiyans are dead. Vegeta’s a small child being made to commit atrocities for profit an amusing little novelty, still using the honorifics & regurgitating the legends of a planet that’s been obliterated. DBS is not a perfect sequel by any means but it did this part so, so well. “All hail Vegeta, prince of no one.” “I always thought you shined the brightest when you were serving as my pet.”

Sickening, yes? And the intimacy is the worst part, the realization that Frieza seems to favor him; seems to like him. Who knows, maybe Vegeta reminded him of himself at some ancient, half-forgotten stage of life. King Cold did drop him like a hot potato as soon as he was proven weaker than Trunks. Maybe that’s the whole reason he made King Vegeta give up his kid in the first place. Frieza’s relationship with his father is shallow and dependent entirely on his value as a soldier, the underlying cruelty of which they’ve both silently agreed to use superfluous affection to cover up? Fine. He’s gonna make the Saiyan king give up his own militarized child prince. He’s gonna strip away the cultural justifications for what he’s doing to his son by making him treat it like the cold, spineless profiteering that it always was. He’s gonna rub it in.

But hey, he’s not mad at the kid. It was his dad who got too big for the barrel. Vegeta is still serving his purpose, Vegeta is still being good. Why wouldn’t Frieza treat him in accordance with his “station,” even after it’s been rendered an empty title because of him. All he has to do is keep spinning the wheel on the Cold Empire, vomiting out violence into the endless vacuum of space & never getting too uppity about his dead father or dead planet or about the fact that, even when reduced to the most baseline level of childish narcissism, the state which this arrangement has emotionally stunted him into maintaining well into adulthood, he never actually wanted any of this. He didn’t want to leave Planet Vegeta! He didn’t want to grow up surrounded by strangers! He didn’t want to have no claim over anything he ever achieved! He wanted to work for himself! It wasn’t his choice!!! For all of Vegeta’s dickswinging and hierarchy and “pride,” he is so, so helpless, “like a tiny insect glowing in a jar,” as Frieza so helpfully summarized for us. Overcorrection layered on overcorrection layered on overcorrection layered on desperate, screeching fear and sadness and shame. Blow up a planet. Nuke a city. Wipe out a village. Fix It Again, Tony.

And that viciously indulgent cruelty that Vegeta used to comfort himself as he grew into a man is only emphasized by how blasé Frieza appears to be about the whole thing. He’s calm. He’s secure. He spends half the arc sitting down, just watching. He’s what Vegeta was in the first part of the Saiyan saga, and he slowly turns into what Vegeta slowly turned into in the second part of the Saiyan saga. An addled, wounded, unthinking mess, trying to put their self image back together as someone else’s superior ability causes it to crumble. Frieza was scared of the super saiyan. Under all that collected ambivalence, that whole time, he was scared.

Vegeta is Frieza’s heir. As gross as that incongruent, unwanted warmth is to witness, Frieza succeeded in establishing influence over & connection between himself and the child he orphaned. And the process of healing from that relationship involves Vegeta going back to square one and having to acquiesce to another foreign, combat oriented culture populated by vaguely hostile strangers. He gets new clothes. He gets a new place to train. He gets new tasks to perform. He gets called cute.

Like. It’s not physical torture, at least not as we usually imagine it. It’s this slow poisoning of a person’s ability to trust and connect with others, a process which is gussied up by regular assertions of fondness, so casual & consistent that you have to actively remind yourself that the guy who’s doing it sees Vegeta as a literal subhuman, and is only being good to him the way you’d be good to a valued piece of property. He tortured him to death, but he still thinks he was a good pet. Vegeta’s life was Frieza’s to end, but his feats of wanton destruction were also his to be proud of.

That’s the whole reason why Vegeta’s character development was slow, ugly and recidivist. Because it was his knowledge of how to grow, of how to exist any other way, that Frieza intentionally eroded for his own selfish, petty gain. And for a relationship between a man with a monkey tail and his pink-skinned alien overlord, the most uncomfortable part about the dynamic is that it’s realistic. Common, even.

[lzlilo]

[jorongbak]

Vegeta: a prince, a savior, a hostage, a child

[shannonsketches]

thinking about gohan and vegeta and how their bond is underrated

the difference in their reactions to each other 😭

Gohan being the first one to step between Vegeta and Certain Death, twice, without an ounce of hesitation, and Vegeta saving him back despite his feelings about battle intervention.

Vegeta knowing Gohan's the best of all of them

Vegeta and Gohan both born prodigies assigned an unfair amount of responsibility to be Great and be a Saiyan Messiah(tm) way too young by a stubborn and proud if not (relatively) well-meaning father who didn't see any other option and I just think Gohan doesn't get enough credit as like. The first serious muscle behind Geets' personal growth.

[nemhaine42]

07.04.25 | this is the vibe right? to me this is the vibe

[vegetanalysis]

This is the vibe in my heart 😭

[prissnukem]

The way Freeza is always watching Vegeta and taking note of who he loves is scary af.

[prissnukem]

[prissnukem]

and here’s a moment from chapter 60 -

Haters who claim Vegeta led a pampered life under Freeza, never struggled, suffered, or trained until he met Goku can stfu now.

[vegetanalysis]

And there it is, one of my favorite moments in the Super manga. We so rarely see Vegeta talk about his past, and the little he does say here communicates a lot. What I wouldn’t give to have a movie, a mini-series, something that tells the story of what Vegeta went through as Freeza’s slave—it’s what I’ve wanted for years.

[vegetanalysis]

You GUYS. The Bardock DLC for DBZ: Kakarot actually includes a playable kid Vegeta storyline and I’m pretty sure this is the most content we’ve gotten of Vegeta’s childhood beyond snippets in the Bardock special, anime filler, and BotG/DBS Broly. We get a little bit more of his rivalry with Cui, interactions with Freeza, Zarbon and Dodoria, uncle Nappa goodness, and lots and lots of kid Vegeta trash-talking everyone 😭

And he has bangs!! And Justin Briner voices him beautifully!! I am sitting here watching this entire 30-minute playthrough of his storyline because I can’t get enough exploration of Vegeta’s childhood and I will accept any and all scraps I can get.

[shannonsketches]

I overanalyze the hell out of everything but! While we're here--

I think a lot (and am too lazy to make the many many comics in my head) about how Vegeta was having fun with these androids (even being sportsmanlike with Piccolo about it!) until he found out who Trunks was (and also that they were the wrong androids). Then between that reveal and Bulma getting shot down, he switches back into Spite and Fury, and I just chinhands I think a lot about what a shot to the chest it would be to learn that you die -- you die in the future, you lose to these surprise enemies -- and your son, with his mother's machine and knowledge of the events, comes back to the past to make sure someone else lives.

"It's just because Goku's the first to die, so it's a domino effect!" Yes, but,

Vegeta was standing right there when Bulma said her strategy was to destroy the androids before they became an issue. Vegeta knows that Bulma feels very strongly that this is the move, and that waiting is stupid. He also knows that she watched him dabble on Earth for a year and a half before Goku came home.

So he knows that she could've sent Trunks back earlier, and had him talk to Piccolo. Vegeta could've used that entire ~12-18 months to train for a specific threat, or even just to prepare for Frieza's return.

He also knows that she could've just as easily sent Trunks back while they were all on Namek, and taken care of the issue before any of them were even made aware of it. That was her suggestion in the present! Trunks could've left Goku's medication with Roshi, or Popo, and just let it remain a mystery where it came from and how it got there.

But instead, Trunks came the day that Goku came back. So he could meet Goku. And talk to Goku. So he could make sure Goku survived. So Goku could save everyone. Because Goku would be there to win the day. Because Goku's is the strength they trust to be enough.

The way that must corrode your insides and just flood you with envy, and spite, and poison. The way he behaves for the rest of this arc despite the clever strategist we saw on Earth and on Namek, despite the cautious observation, the patience, the snarky humor, the distinct recognition of a threat that needs eliminating before it's too late -- despite all these things we've seen him be and have and do, after this point he's reckless and fuming and desperate to prove himself to the detriment of everyone around him.

As a punishment, maybe? For choosing Goku over You?

As necessity? Because you've spent 30 of your 31 years having the value of your life measured solely by your ability to win?

As a distraction? From knowing that you spent your life fighting tooth and nail for all that you are, only to die, humiliated, at the feet of your enemies having failed to do the only task you felt you were alive to do, then be revived by mistake, then learn that even your own child would prefer the person who succeeded at that one seemingly impossible task?

It's really no wonder, at this extremely low and fragile point in Vegeta's life, that he went from quietly standoffish to actively erratic from this point. It's not until Cell slaps him with the reality check of losing those precious few who continued to choose him despite his profound personal and operational failures (which were likely a death sentence, where he's from) that he settles back down (in the manga) to being quietly standoffish, strategic, and cooperative toward the higher goal.

Then spends the next seven years learning it never had to be like that because it turns out people on this planet mostly still want you to be alive and come home even if you fuck up real bad and you actually don't have to be The Star Executioner to be valued and welcomed and even?? Loved?? Which sucks to learn after you've already gotten your son and your rival and very nearly your rival's son killed by being an insecure jackass and making everything worse than it had to be.

But don't worry, it'll only happen one more time and it'll only take like 40 minutes to publicly murder like 2000 people and almost destroy the entire universe because you had something totally different to prove this time, it's a minor relapse at best, it's fine, everyone's fine, we're all gonna wish that memory away from all the innocent people and only think about it at 2am when you're awake laying in bed trying to figure out why the fuck you're still allowed in this house and you can spend the next 4-6 years turning your shit around and embracing that soft emotions are okay to feel and you're not a defective specimen being slowly deconstructed on a backwater space rock and it's actually normal to care about stuff and it's everything you were ever taught before this that was toxic and wrong and had to be unlearned so you could grow and change and harness true strength instead of chasing shallow power so it's fine!! It's totally fine. Everything's fine. He's fine. He's good.

[vegetanalysis]

Excellent take on Vegeta’s turbulent state of mind during the Android Saga (and particularly the moment when he lets Bulma’s plane fall). At this point of his character arc, the foundation he’s been standing on his whole life has been ripped out from under him. He feels insecure and humiliated, and he is desperate to regain his footing.

Nearly the entire saga is Vegeta posturing and blustering because the idea that “strength defines your worth” is what he has lived and died by for thirty years, he’s still stinging from his humiliating defeat on Earth and his cruel, awful death at the hands of the man who enslaved him, and he can’t abide by the terrifying fact that he could be judged and found wanting by his (and his race’s) own standards of failure = weakness = worthlessness. He has to prove he is strong, that his whole life and his title and his twenty-five years of violence and slavery under Freeza haven’t been a miserable pointless lie.

In other words, he’s a hot mess express and he’s going to be that way for a while.