Toriyama's Bardock: How Dragon Ball Minus Rewrote the Father of Goku

There are really two Bardocks in Dragon Ball. One is the character created for the anime in 1990, and the other is the version Akira Toriyama reimagined in 2013 for Dragon Ball Minus, later carried into Dragon Ball Super: Broly and the Dragon Ball Super manga. On October 17, 1990, the first Dragon Ball Z TV special aired in Japan and introduced Bardock, the father of Goku. As Dragon Ball Z spread across the world, he became a fan favorite in many different languages and cultures.

At the time of writing, Bardock had returned once again in the Dragon Ball Super manga with a new backstory connecting him to Planet Cereal and Granola. I'm not focusing on the original Bardock from 1990 here. I want to trace the history of Toriyama's own version and the retcons it brought to the lore, including changes to Goku and to Frieza's motivation.

Bardock appeared in the anime before Toriyama's manga

Ninety nine percent of all Dragon Ball characters appeared in the manga first and were later adapted to the anime, but Bardock was not one of those cases. He may be one of the only characters during the original run of Dragon Ball to appear in the anime first. Bardock was a collaborative effort between the producers of the Dragon Ball Z anime and Akira Toriyama back in 1990. The original special aired on television in place of a Dragon Ball Z episode in October 1990, and that was the world's first look at him.

Later, Toriyama adapted that Bardock into his manga during the scene where Frieza first confronts Goku and remembers the resemblance between Goku and his father. If you like to keep track of what is canon and what isn't, that means Toriyama took a concept he did not come up with, Bardock the father of Goku, and canonized him in the manga.

Things are never that simple with Dragon Ball, though. Because the manga's Bardock closely resembled the one in the TV special, many fans, including me, assumed the events of the special were the actual backstory behind Bardock and the destruction of Planet Vegeta. For almost a decade and a half, that's what we all expected. Toriyama never really told Bardock's backstory in anything he wrote. He once commented that he loved the TV special but that it was a bit too dark compared to the stuff he normally writes. That's true, because at the time Toriyama was more so still a gag manga writer. Dragon Ball had gotten pretty serious with its martial arts action, but in Japan he was still known as a comedy writer because of the popularity of Dr. Slump.

Jaco the Galactic Patrolman and Dragon Ball Minus brought Toriyama back to Bardock

Toriyama pretty much retired from writing manga weekly when Dragon Ball ended in 1995. He did a few one shot stories, some art and some work on video games, but his days as a weekly manga writer, which he had been since the late 70s, were far behind him. In 2013, his pen returned for a miniseries called Jaco the Galactic Patrolman. It was a short serialized manga, but it was still a new story told over multiple chapters that were later compiled into one book.

The big surprise, which was kept secret until the very end, was that Jaco acts as a bit of a prequel to Dragon Ball. It introduced Bulma's sister Tights, made the Galactic Patrol an actual entity in the Dragon Ball world and showed the connection between Jaco and Kakarot. Toriyama then went a step further with a bonus chapter called Dragon Ball Minus, his own interpretation of the final days of Planet Vegeta and the story of Bardock.

Dragon Ball Minus also introduced Goku's mother, Gine, for the very first time. That was hyped as a pretty big deal, because people had wondered for years who Goku's mother was. Some speculated she was one of Bardock's teammates from the special, and some said we had never seen her. Now we had a design for Toriyama's version of Goku's mother, along with Toriyama's version of Bardock, which greatly differed from the one in the TV special.

Takao Koyama's Bardock and Toriyama's Bardock are different characters

It truly is a tale of two Bardocks. We have the original Bardock created by Takao Koyama for the Z anime, and the Bardock Toriyama created and pretty much retconned in Dragon Ball Minus in 2013. A quick note: if the only version of the Bardock special you've seen is the English dub, its script is absolutely atrocious. There are countless changes to the story and to Bardock's motivations, so if you haven't seen it in Japanese, you need to in order to get the full context of who Bardock was in the special.

Sonny Strait, Sean Schemmel and other actors I've interviewed have expressed interest in redubbing the special because of how bad the script was back in the late 90s. Unfortunately it has never come to pass, because Funimation does not want to pay for it.

In the original special, Bardock did not care about his son at all until he was inflicted with the curse of seeing the future. He saw that his planet would be destroyed by Frieza and that Goku would eventually defeat Frieza many years later. Before then, he did not care about Goku in the slightest. The Bardock of Dragon Ball Minus and Dragon Ball Super: Broly was a different story.

Toriyama described his Bardock as having calm judgment and a measure of humanity

Toriyama himself commented on this when he was asked about Bardock's personality in a Q&A. He said that Bardock is warlike, but compared to others of his race, who are coldhearted and of simple thoughts, he happens to possess "calm judgment and a small measure of humanity." Toriyama went on to say that Bardock saves his companions, which is rare, and that he is greatly adored among a portion of the low class warriors. We actually saw a little of that in Dragon Ball Super: Broly.

In the same Q&A, Toriyama revealed that Gine was at some point in the distant past on a four person team with Bardock, and that's how they first met. He added that Gine was never cut out to be a warrior. She was too gentle and was constantly being saved by Bardock.

So the Bardock Toriyama writes in Dragon Ball Minus, Broly and the Dragon Ball Super manga is much more of a caring guy. He's kind of a hero, whereas the original Bardock was much more of a lowlife who wound up trying to change the future after seeing how grim it would become, and of course failed to prevent his people from becoming victims of a mass genocide. Falling in love with Gine gave Bardock much more empathy, and he became more kindhearted than any other version of him. I know some fans really like this and others absolutely despise it. It depends on what you like, and everyone has a right to their own opinion. Toriyama definitely added a bit of romantic flair with these two characters, which is not typical for him as a writer.

A kind Kakarot undercuts the story of Goku hitting his head

With these changes, Bardock became a different person compared to the rest of his race, but it also causes a very unique retcon of the original manga. In the original story, when Kakarot landed on Earth he was pretty out of control, and it wasn't until he hit his head that he became a loving, normal boy. In the new backstory, Goku was always loving and never really that violent. These things are stated inside the actual manga. This isn't something changed in the dub. It's in the story Toriyama told.

That raises a question. Was Goku just having a bad day before he hit his head, or did Toriyama forget about the head injury and now wants to retcon it by stating Goku was kindhearted because his parents were? It's a tough one to decipher, and you can make up your own head canon to make it work.

Personally, I've always thought the idea of Goku hitting his head was a cool one, because it's a kind of happenstance. Goku was sent to Earth to destroy it, and because of a little bump on his head, he became its greatest savior. If I'm being honest, I prefer that version, and I like that story a lot. The new version makes it seem like Kakarot inherited his kindness, and to me that's just not as interesting.

On Planet Cereal, Bardock spared Granola and his mother

Before the destruction of Planet Vegeta, Bardock had another adventure revealed in the Dragon Ball Super manga on Planet Cereal. In this arc, Saiyans in Frieza's force invaded the planet, transformed into their Oozaru forms and began to rampage and destroy everything. During the fighting, Bardock noticed a lone Cerealian woman and her child, scared to death. The Cerealians managed to destroy the moon and Bardock reverted to his base form, but even as a great ape he had second thoughts about killing them.

Here was a fighter with a history of helping Frieza conquer planets and killing a great many people, and yet he had a soft spot. In Dragon Ball Super manga chapter 77, we found out why: thanks to his connection with his wife Gine and his newborn son Kakarot, he had a gut feeling that gave him a bit of sympathy toward Granola and his mom. Bardock had another gut feeling three years later, which I'll come to below. This gut feeling comes off to me as pretty lazy writing, and I'm not a big fan of it.

Bardock teamed up with Granola's mother and Monaito, the lone Namekian guardian of the Dragon Balls on Planet Cereal, to protect them, because he had a gut feeling they might be important in the future. Or perhaps he was overcome with guilt and chose not to kill a woman or a child. That's up to you to decide. He got into a fight with the Heeter gang, the villains of the arc, who conspired with Frieza to sell the planet to the empire and pretty much drew the invasion to Cereal. When Elec of the Heeter gang fired a blast from his gun at Granola's mom, fatally wounding her, Bardock stepped up and became a hero, which ultimately led to the survival of both Granola and Monaito, key elements in the Granola arc.

I think a different Toriyama is writing modern Dragon Ball

Why did Toriyama go in this direction? He has never actually commented on it, so it's up for interpretation. My interpretation is that the Toriyama writing Dragon Ball from 2008 and beyond is a very different man from the one who wrote the original manga in the 80s and 90s. He had lived a long life, with children growing up and an established family. When he was first hungry and in the game, he was a younger man without the benefit of hindsight. A lot of writers peak in their 20s and 30s, and when they get older they tend to soften up and write different kinds of stories.

So his idea of Bardock, who was never really his idea since the original was created by Koyama, was of a somewhat more pure person. I wouldn't consider him pure by any stretch of the imagination, but he certainly had more empathy for the lives of others. Most fans don't like this version of Bardock, and I understand why. Still, Toriyama's idea of Bardock, Gine and their relationship to Goku does change the context of the original manga. He is without question doing a retcon. None of this was known during the original run, so we all assumed the Bardock special was the story. This is the story now, at least from Toriyama's point of view.

Dragon Ball Minus swaps Bardock's curse for intuition and adds Super Saiyan God

Dragon Ball Minus is easy to follow because it's only a few pages, though the story was expanded in Dragon Ball Super: Broly. I recommend reading it at least once. In it, Bardock and others are on a mission to capture a planet for the Frieza force when they're called back to Planet Vegeta for an unknown reason. Bardock ruminates on this multiple times, unsure of Frieza's plot but with a strange feeling that something bad is about to happen. In the special, Bardock knew what was coming because of his curse. Here it's all instinct and intuition, which seems a tiny bit less interesting, maybe a lot less interesting. But this is Toriyama's Bardock.

There are moments of Bardock arriving on the planet, meeting Gine and talking to friends about the mission while still unsettled by Frieza's choice to bring everyone home. Frieza had been thinking about this for over a month, letting his paranoia get to him. In the original manga, Frieza destroyed the planet because he feared the Saiyans gaining power. He knew they got a power boost every time they fought, and if several got stronger and ganged up on him, it might become a problem. Later we learned the real reason was his paranoia that one of them might become a legendary Super Saiyan.

In Dragon Ball Minus, Frieza even mentions Super Saiyan God, which hadn't been a twinkle in Toriyama's mind back in 1990. By 2013, Battle of Gods had already been released in theaters and we knew about the god lore, so Toriyama chose to incorporate it into the backstory. It seems like a cheap connection to me and not really necessary.

Sending Kakarot to Earth now reads like a Superman story

With his paranoia consuming him, Bardock chose to send Kakarot away from the planet in case something happened to it, and his intuition proved true. We get a heartwarming scene where he and Gine send Goku off to Earth to begin the story of Dragon Ball. In the original TV special, Goku was sent to Earth as a baby to take it over for the Frieza force so it could eventually be sold. We learned from Raditz in early Dragon Ball Z episodes that the Frieza force sent infants to worlds without strong fighters but with full moons. They would stare at the moon, become great apes, destroy all life in their rampage, and the Frieza force would return to sell the planet.

This is drastically different. It comes off a lot more like a Superman ripoff, with Kal-El and Jor-El replaced by Goku and Bardock, as opposed to the more creative story from the original continuity. Dragon Ball Minus didn't actually show Frieza exterminating the planet, but Dragon Ball Super: Broly did. At one point Bardock tries to do something, but his efforts are wasted as Frieza joyfully destroys the planet with nobody to stop him. There were a few survivors, but Bardock and Gine died, and Goku landed on Earth to become the main character of Dragon Ball.

Toriyama once said Bardock was unlikely to return

What other stories might Toriyama have had in mind for Bardock? A lot of fans want him to come back and meet Goku, but in an interview years ago, Toriyama stated that it was not likely Bardock would return, and that even if he did, he'd be too weak to compete with anybody else. So it doesn't seem like Bardock will come back into the present.

That could change, though, because Toriyama has changed his mind about so many things over the years and brought characters back. Broly was rewritten, and at the time of writing the Red Ribbon Army was making a comeback in Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero. You never know what the future holds for Bardock, and if nothing else, we may at least get more stories of him going on adventures while he was alive, like the Granola arc.

Which origin for Goku's kindness do you prefer: the bump on the head, or kindness inherited from Bardock and Gine?