Dragon Ball villains who won: did Zamasu beat the heroes?

Dragon Ball almost always ends its arcs with the heroes on top, but every so often the villains got their way. Peace was usually restored in the end, yet many times it came at a price. In my view, the clearest example is Zamasu, the villain of the Future Trunks arc in Dragon Ball Super, who I believe was the ultimate winner of that story.

As Akira Toriyama wrote the Dragon Ball manga, which began in 1984, he made it progressively darker. What started as a light-hearted adventure story became a grim and somewhat dark perspective of Toriyama's inner turmoil. Still, he would almost always close his arcs with a happy ending. Goku, or at one point Gohan, would save the day, and everything would return to harmony. There was sometimes a lingering fear of what was to come, but it always seemed to be back to Capsule Corp, celebrating life with the richest family on Earth, eating good food and relaxing with loved ones.

Why Akira Toriyama's Dragon Ball usually lets the good guys win

The good guys winning at the end is classic fiction. That's true not only of manga but of stories humanity has told for thousands of years. It brings closure, and it often ends with the villains getting their comeuppance and paying for their evil acts, whether through death or through suffering that mirrors the pain they caused the protagonist.

Bad things do happen in Dragon Ball, and the payoff at the end makes it worth it. One thing to understand about Toriyama is that he is a gag manga writer, and he always has been. He likes to entertain people, make them laugh and make them feel good. Dr. Slump, his previous major work and the manga that made him famous, was all gags. With Dragon Ball he created a much more epic story, one that needed villains doing bad things, protagonists and unusual, at times threatening situations. It started as a kung fu adventure story and transitioned into a science fiction, battle heavy shonen series that inspired many more in the future.

Demon King Piccolo got his revenge through Piccolo Jr.

The first villain who comes to mind goes all the way back to the original Dragon Ball: Demon King Piccolo. People don't talk about this too often, but Piccolo Daimao once proclaimed himself king of the Earth and threatened to destroy a sector of the planet until the entire thing was chaotic. He took pleasure in people's suffering. We later found out he was pure evil because he was the evil side of Kami.

Goku triumphantly defeated him, even though Demon King Piccolo beat Goku and almost killed him in their first fight. But his revenge came from his son, Piccolo Jr., also known as Ma Junior. Piccolo Jr. created the Makankosappo technique to kill Goku during the five year skip between Dragon Ball and what became the Dragon Ball Z section of the story. When Raditz arrived, Piccolo used the move to kill both Raditz and Goku.

Piccolo Jr. never really intended for things to go the way they did, and it may not necessarily have been an evil act. It was still something Piccolo wanted to do as the reincarnation of his father, and his killing of Goku became that revenge. As weird as it may sound, it was like an indirect revenge from beyond the grave.

Dr. Gero and Cell turned the Red Ribbon Army's defeat into Goku's second death

Right before the Piccolo arc came the Red Ribbon Army arc, in which Goku single-handedly took out the entire army. He never thought it would come back to haunt him, but it did, years later in Dragon Ball Z, with Cell and the artificial humans. They were created by one of the leftovers Goku never took out from the Red Ribbon Army, Dr. Gero.

Dr. Gero was obsessed with making Goku suffer, so he created several killing machines to go after him. It wasn't one Android, it was many, and the apex creation was Cell. Goku's second death in Dragon Ball Z came at Cell's hands. Yes, it was self-sacrifice, something Goku chose, much like his earlier death alongside Raditz. But it was still a measure of revenge.

At the end of the day, the scientist got what he wanted. He sent all these killing machines after Goku, and Goku still died, albeit only for about seven years. His son Gohan would take up the mantle and finish Cell off, but it's still an example of the villains winning.

Kid Buu is a gray area, but Frieza got his revenge in Resurrection F

Before getting to Dragon Ball Super, there's Kid Buu. He did blow up the Earth, which could be seen as a victory, but he was later defeated and the effects were reversed. So it's a tough one, a gray area. Kid Buu also had no personal vendetta against Goku. Majin Buu was pure evil and sociopathic, and he wanted to destroy anything he could.

Frieza is different. In Resurrection F, whether you count it as the Dragon Ball Z film or the Dragon Ball Super arc, Frieza did get his revenge, even if only briefly. When he lost to Vegeta, his final desperate attack was to destroy the entire planet Earth, and right then it seemed the heroes were doomed. Then time was reversed.

The reason I bring up Frieza is that the entire Resurrection F plotline is Frieza's revenge. You could have called the movie The Revenge of Frieza and it would have been the same concept. He killed many of Goku's loved ones on Earth and put them in a very bad crisis. Had Whis not been able to undo it with his time reversal technique, they would have lost that fight. Unfortunately for Frieza, he doesn't even remember his win, because Whis got involved in a matter he knew he should not get involved in.

Zamasu was the ultimate winner of the Future Trunks arc

The big time a Dragon Ball villain won was Zamasu, who terrorized the future timeline. After a long battle back and forth between the good guys and bad guys at many different intervals, Trunks sliced him in half, and because of his immortality, his essence became one with the universe. It's a unique and interesting thing.

Zamasu killed many people, including Future Bulma, and by then the future timeline was completely lost. There was nothing anyone could do, so Goku had to push the button to bring in Zeno, the Omni King of the multiverse, to destroy the polluted timeline. The arc ended with Trunks and Mai sent to another timeline, where there's another double of them, to live out their lives, for some reason.

That was a very unsatisfactory ending if you ask me. You don't have to have a happy ending, but everything built up in that arc was supposed to be mortals versus gods. That was the theme, and yet the series reversed it on itself so that a god wound up beating a god. To me, that was poor writing. I can see what they were going for, and it was a powerful ending, but an unsatisfactory one.

Even though the present timeline was safe and everybody there was okay, the fact that the future timeline got wiped out shows Zamasu got his way. He killed every mortal and ruined everything in that timeline. He was wiped from existence by Zeno, but he still won.

Why these villain wins in Dragon Ball matter

These are small examples of the villains getting wins in the series, and significant ones. Any time the main character dies, or any time there's a huge amount of damage to the series or its people, it's important and impactful. With the Trunks arc specifically, it's irreversible. They could probably have gathered the Super Dragon Balls and done something about it, but once Zeno wiped that timeline out, it was done, and they never bothered.