Best Dragon Ball Couple?

Who are the best Dragon Ball couple? On Valentine’s Day I held a poll to find out who fans feel are the #1 couple. Read this article to see my analysis.

Dragon Ball isn’t known for romance. In fact, Toriyama has said he doesn’t like depicting romantic stories in general, and Saiyans aren’t the romantic type.

But that doesn’t mean there’s no romance in Dragon Ball, and it hasn’t stopped fans from choosing their favorite couples.

So I decided to hold a poll on Valentine’s Day to find out who the fans felt was the best couple.

Twitter Poll

Here’s my Twitter poll for the Best Dragon Ball Couple (shows the final results).

The poll was held at 1:43 am, on Feb 14, 2021 and ran for exactly 1 day, until the same time on Feb 15.

Twitter allows 4 options in a poll, so I had to limit the choices to those couples I consider to be the main ones in Dragon Ball:

• Goku and Chichi
• Vegeta and Bulma
• Krillin and 18
• Gohan and Videl

This means I couldn’t include Yamcha and Bulma (their original relationship in DB), Dr. Brief and Bulma’s Mother, Bardock and Gine, Mai and Trunks, Tenshinhan and Lunch, and new couples that fans like to imagine exist as romantic relationships, such as Broly and Cheelai, and Kefla and Kale.

And I couldn’t do silly couples either, like ‘Goku and Vegeta.’

“The Best” is a subjective term, and the phrasing was kept simple on purpose.

I wanted fans to look at the couples and decide what “the best” meant to them.

Voting and Demographics

There were a total of 1,052 votes.

You need a Twitter account to vote, and each account can only vote a single time.

At the time of the poll, I had 4,146 Twitter followers.

Regarding the demographics of who voted, I have no specific way of knowing who each person was that voted, or where they live in the world, or their age or gender.

But given my experience, I can tell you that most of my followers live outside of Japan, are 90% male, aged 18 to 40, and they’re massive Dragon Ball fans.

I do have a few passionate Japanese followers, but most are Westerners in North America, Central America, South America, and Europe.

I wish I could be more specific than that, but Twitter Analytics doesn’t have further info.

And some of them were probably from people who don’t follow me yet, from retweets.

In any case, this is a large enough amount of votes to consider it as statistically viable and worthy of analysis.

So let’s start at #4 and work our way up to #1.

Best Couple in DB #4

According to my poll, the #4 Best Couple in Dragon Ball is Goku and Chichi.

Also known by the affectionate portmanteau of ‘Gochi.’

They earned 11% of the votes, equaling ~116 votes.

This result is both surprising and unsurprising.

Goku is the main character of the show, and his relationship with Chichi is the first to end (and begin!) in marriage.

Over the span of decades we’ve seen Goku and Chichi grow old together and have two sons and a granddaughter.

So you’d think that more people would have voted for them.

However, some fans feel that their relationship is rather questionable.

Goku is gone for months or years at a time, whether it’s because he’s training or because he’s dead. And he leaves Chichi alone to raise the kids.

As a result, Chichi is forced to become the disciplinarian and teach Gohan how to be a studious boy so he can grow up to be a scholar and make money to support the family.

Goku’s not into romance, so even when he is home, he’s not concerned with sentimentality.

This doesn’t mean that Goku doesn’t love his wife, or vice versa.

But this might be the reason why a minority of Western fans voted for Goku and Chichi.

Best Couple in DB #3

Krillin and 18 were the #3 Best Couple in Dragon Ball.

Also known as ‘K18.’

They earned 24% of the votes, equaling ~252 votes.

When Krillin first appears in the series, his goal for training in the martial arts with Kame-sennin is to impress women and score a girlfriend.

In contrast with Goku, Krillin always had his mind on more worldly affairs. But it was his friendship with Goku that compelled him to continue training and to get involved with one supernormal event after another.

It wasn’t until adulthood that he finally met the love of his life—and it was love at first sight.

Of course, Android 18 had no interest in Krillin, but through a series of events, she learned to trust him and then became his wife.

They would go on to have a daughter named Marron, and they’d become a happy family.

We see a bit of how they interact in the Majin Buu Arc of Dragon Ball Z, but it’s rather limited due to the catastrophic events of that day.

Later, in Super, we see more of how they engage as a family.

But some fans wonder if they’re a ‘good’ couple.

On my Facebook, Tyler wrote, “Krillin and 18 are still toxic.”

He didn’t elaborate on what that meant. But perhaps it has something to do with 18’s pursuit of money, or Krillin’s submissive personality.

Conversely, Ryan said, “Super made me really love Krillin and 18’s relationships a lot more. To me they didn’t feel much like a married couple in the Buu saga (to be fair there’s wasn’t much time for it), but I really enjoyed the scenes of them just being a cute innocent family in Super.”

What do you think?

Either way, they earned more than twice the votes as Goku and Chichi, so they must be doing something right.

Best Couple in DB #2

Gohan and Videl are the #2 Best Couple in Dragon Ball.

Also known as ‘Godel’ or ‘Hanvi.’

They earned 32% of the votes, equaling ~337 votes.

The relationship between Gohan and Videl is arguably the most depicted example of a loving relationship in the original Dragon Ball manga.

Akira Toriyama devotes several chapters to the evolving tension between Gohan and Videl as Gohan attends Orange Star High School.

They fight alongside one another, and once Videl learns Gohan’s secret identity, they have romantic feelings for each other.

This leads to them getting married and becoming the Great Saiyaman and Great Saiyaman 2.

Eventually they have a daughter, named Pan.

They were high school sweethearts who both love the martial arts and have a strong sense of justice.

They are the most human and grounded of all the relationships. While other characters are literal aliens or artificial humans, there’s nothing weird or crazy about Gohan and Videl’s relationship.

If anything makes it weird, it’s the other people they surround themselves with in their friends and family.

As eligamerman said, “They are too wholesome. ☺️”

And Subhadip_D_E said they “give out the perfect couple vibes.”

Godel gives out the perfect couple vibes that every man/woman desires

— De Subhadip (@Subhadip_D_E) February 14, 2021

Perhaps this relatability and wholesomeness is why so many fans voted for them.

Gohan and Videl remind us of us.

Best Couple in DB #1

The #1 Dragon Ball Couple is Vegeta and Bulma!

Also known as ‘Vegebul.’

They earned 33% of the vote, with ~347 votes.

So they were only 10 votes higher than Gohan and Videl!

Many fans feel that Vegeta is the most attractive male character in the series, with his son Trunks occasionally supplanting him.

Of course, Bulma was beautiful from page 1 of Chapter 1, and has remained beautiful, smart, and intelligent up to this day.

Some fans love this couple, calling to mind Vegeta’s famous “My BULMA!” scene from Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods.

Gochi has severely deteriorated over the years. K18 are awesome but their chemistry is weird to me on screen. Godel are good too but suffer from not being featured enough. Vegebul is the only answer here. pic.twitter.com/uhF7yrQoEw

— Nick (@NotArrowHD) February 14, 2021

Sandra on Facebook simply said, “Yessss vegebul won!”

But in contrast, Rick on Facebook said, “Gross. lol. I’ll never understand the love for Vegeta. Gohan x Videl and Krillin x 18 are by far the best couples. Bulma is bae tho.”

So what is it that fans love about their relationship?

For starters, the tension. Vegeta and Bulma both have strong personalities. They often clash against each other, but their innate confidence and pride only fuels their attraction to one another.

They’re both elites in their society. Vegeta was born a prince and often referred to himself as a Super Elite. Bulma was the heiress to the world’s wealthiest technology company. So they see eye-to-eye when it comes to their class position and money.

They have similar worldviews, as I discuss in my Dragon Ball Z “It’s Over 9,000!” When Worldviews Collide book.

Vegeta has more of a Western worldview, similar to Bulma’s, and in direct contrast to Goku and Chichi’s Eastern worldviews. This means their culture, albeit it ‘alien’ and ‘Western,’ are actually a lot alike, in that they’re both ‘foreign’ to Japan.

Can you think of other reasons why they were #1? Write them in the comments.

Watching the Results

After I launched the poll, I saw immediate results.

Right at the start, ‘Vegeta and Bulma’ and ‘Gohan and Videl’ took a strong lead, where the latter took 35% of the votes.

This may have been due to a YouTuber named Geekdom101 who said in reply, “Easy: Godel.”

It’s possible that his influence on his followers led to a surge in votes for Gohan and Videl.

But 6 hours later, Vegeta and Bulma jumped so high up that they reversed the numbers, with 35% to 30%, at a total of 681 votes.

As the day progressed, these two couples battled it out, and Vegeta and Bulma’s lead narrowed.

At one point, it was reversed again.

But in the end, Vegeta and Bulma won the Best Couple in Dragon Ball award by 1%.

So it could have gone either way.

Meanwhile, the Gochi and K18 were about the same for the entire poll. So it was really a battle for First.

Concluding Thoughts

This type of poll is a fun experiment to conduct because it offers a quick view into the fandom’s perspective.

I have a global following, but most of my followers are Westerners who live outside of Japan.

Would the results have been different if it were a Japanese poll held by a Japanese leader in the Dragon Ball community?

I suspect so.

In fact, I bet that Goku and Chichi would be #1.

Consider that Goku was voted “The #1 Boyfriend Material” in a poll on the popular ranking.goo website.

Goku earned first place with 1,905 votes. He was followed by Gohan, Future Trunks, Krillin, and then Vegeta in fifth, with 415 votes.

This is a Japanese poll site made entirely for Japanese fans.

So if the Japanese consider Goku to be the best boyfriend material—far beyond Vegeta—then it’s fair to presume that Goku would also be at the top of the charts for Best Couple.

In any case, what do you think of this poll?

Are Vegeta and Bulma the #1 Best Couple in Dragon Ball?

Or do you think another couple deserves to be at the top?