3 Most Dangerous Dragon Ball Movie Villains
Who are the most dangerous villains in Dragon Ball movie history? In this article you’ll meet the top 3!
The Dragon Ball movies have had strong villains and high stakes. With a new movie, Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero, on the way, let’s look at the Top 3 times it seemed there was no hope in the movie, and Goku and Vegeta would lose their lives.
A normal movie plot leads you to believe that the heroes will find a way to win. Exceptional movie plots set up different circumstances to make you feel like they’re going to lose, only to surprise the audience with a victorious turnaround.
I’ll start with some films that missed the cut.
What follows is a dive into the climax of the movies and what made the Dragon Ball movie villains so devastating.
This will include spoilers of villains and endings!
Honorable mentions
Beerus — Dragon Ball Super: Battle of Gods (2012)
Beerus was an overpowered and mysterious villain who debuted late in the series. Based on the appearance of Akira Toriyama’s cat, Beerus was much stronger than he appears.
If the criteria here was strength alone, Beerus would be at the top of the list. Beerus’s first battle with Goku saw him defeat Super Saiyan 3 Goku in just three attacks. It was a mere fragment of his true power. And he only fought Goku because Goku insisted on challenging him after hearing of his great strength from King Kai.
Beerus soon threatens to destroy the Earth unless he can see the ‘Super Saiyan God.’ During his battle with this God, at no point does Beerus look like he’s going to lose. Throughout the fight, he never displays a level of animosity toward Goku that is usually present from villains. This sense of levity is inflated by seeing how much Beerus enjoyed Earth’s food and Bulma’s birthday party earlier in the movie. He seemed too fascinated by Goku and Earth’s delicacies to ever destroy the planet.
This was proven true when Beerus fulfilled his promise to ‘destroy the Earth’ by destroying a single rock. Goku lost the fight despite his new power up, so the change in Beerus’ heart is what saved the day. If Beerus were evil, then nothing could have been done to stop him.
Beerus is an honorable mention because this moment never seemed that tension-inducing until the end, where there’s high pressure, followed by immediate relief.
Golden Frieza — Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection F (2015)
Like Beerus, Frieza is strong enough to destroy the Earth whenever he wants. Frieza had visited the Earth twice prior to this film, once in Dragon Ball Z and another time in Dragon Ball Z: Fusion Reborn (1995). Both times he had been killed with ease by Trunks and Gohan, respectively.
This time, while he came back with a new Golden Frieza form, it never seemed like he would beat Goku or Vegeta; certainly not both. This was to the point where the two conversed about Frieza’s weakness mid-battle, which was his stamina, and argued about who would get to kill him.
Frieza then blew up the planet, but with Whis saving everyone by using his ability to rewind time. Whis then told Goku and Vegeta that they had another chance, so despair never really set in. To go with that, Goku finishes Frieza off in one attack, almost to reemphasize that they were in control of the fight until Frieza caught them off guard.
Still, Golden Frieza’s power is undeniable. Without the intervention of an angel, he would have won.
Broly — Dragon Ball Super: Broly (2018)
Broly makes his return as a canonical movie villain when he’s written by Akira Toriyama.
The thing holding back the canon revival of Broly is that he felt like a good guy this time around, just manipulated by his dad and Frieza. Instead of the desperation felt by Goku and Vegeta in the original Broly movie, they were eager to fight him and took turns until his strength was overwhelming.
Broly’s power depicted in this film made him one of the strongest characters in the franchise. Even so, when Goku and Vegeta fused into Gogeta, they outmatched him and might have killed him if Cheelai hadn’t wished Broly off of Earth and onto the planet where he grew up.
To add to the lighter feeling of the movie, the closing scene is Goku and Broly having a moment on that planet where Goku helps him out and makes it clear that he wants to see Broly again. He was never outright villain in this movie, and at this point it became clear that Broly may return again as a good guy, and as Goku’s friend.
Top 3 Dragon Ball Movie Villains
3) Super Android 13 — Dragon Ball Z: Super Android 13! (1992)
Super Android 13 was the first Dragon Ball movie villain who seemed more dominant than all the fighters combined.
The base form Android 13 had a short-lived but dominant peak. One-on-one with Goku he was overwhelming the protagonist, while his sidekicks Android 14 and 15 fought and got the better of him. Vegeta would have to step in to save Goku, and then take 14’s attention off of Trunks.
It took longer than expected for Vegeta and Trunks to win their respective battles, but it always felt inevitable. The problem was that while going Super Saiyan put these two over the edge in their battles, Goku doing the same didn’t change much against 13. Already being saved by Vegeta, Piccolo stepped in next to save Goku mid-battle.
The real danger kicked in when 13 saw his sidekicks defeated. He absorbed their primary parts and powered up into a different-looking beast: Super Android 13.
In this state he made light work of everyone. Super Saiyan Vegeta tried to attack, but his attacks did nothing and 13 drove him toward the ground. On their way down, 13 took care of Trunks with a single attack. Right afterward, Piccolo’s attacks would do nothing before he was blasted away. With those three down for a moment and Krillin and Gohan not fighting, 13’s attention was focused on Goku.
It wasn’t a climactic fight, it was a beating, with Goku sinking in the water and toward his death. At this point, 13 had defeated everyone without taking any damage. It’s a big moment that had you wondering how he was supposed to be defeated.
The answer was a spin on a traditional Spirit Bomb. Any time a Spirit Bomb is used, it’s clear that every other option failed.
Goku began charging the attack, while everyone sacrificed themselves to hold off 13 with marginal success. Upon charging the attack, Goku absorbed it, emitted the energy into a massive sphere around his body, and forced 13 into it, destroying his body and finishing him with a death blow punch. It was the first time in the movie that an attack did anything to 13, and it happened to be enough to beat him.
Against Super Android 13, Goku was forced to use a twist on the Spirit Bomb that was only seen in this movie. The stakes felt high, and they required an innovative solution to win the day.
2) Broly — Dragon Ball Z: Broly –The Legendary Super Saiyan (1993)
The biggest testament to the original Broly’s strength is that after going into his Legendary Super Saiyan form, Vegeta, the most prideful fighter in the show, was brought to his knees and made so terrified that he couldn’t fight him. While Vegeta felt petrified, everyone else got to feel Broly’s wrath.
The Z Fighters took turns getting obliterated. Goku, Gohan, Future Trunks, and Piccolo took turns taking blows, unable to do anything themselves. The manner of Broly’s attacks were more extreme as well, sending them flying through buildings and beating them with blasts and physical attacks.
Broly had a lifelong grudge against Goku (aka Kakarot), who was born on the same day as him. Broly’s father sought revenge on Vegeta for what King Vegeta did, although it’s unclear how strong that grudge was within Broly.
He was also a self-proclaimed psycho who overlapped this fight by destroying the Shamoian’s home planet and killed his own dad, who tried to abandon Broly as the planet was soon to be destroyed.
When Vegeta finally joined the battle, he was dispatched as quickly as everyone else. Hope only arrives when everyone gives their energy to Goku. Throughout the process of energy gathering, Broly’s rampage continued. When Goku had everyone’s power, he punched Broly and emitted the energy into him, presumably through the wound King Vegeta gave him as an infant, and Broly would then explode from that energy.
It was a bit of a strange ending for another villain who seemed impossible to beat in the moment. Just like the fight against Super Android 13, that method of a finishing blow was never seen again. It seemed an unjust way for the character to go out, given his backstory and power. His reintroduction as a canon character in Dragon Ball Super: Broly felt like a nice way to make up for that.
1) Meta-Cooler — Dragon Ball Z: The Return of Cooler (1992)
http://youtu.be/R9qgSSdEd5o
The Return of Cooler had the most dangerous scene in the entire franchise.
Frieza’s older brother Cooler was far stronger as Meta-Cooler than in his debut in Dragon Ball Z: Cooler’s Revenge (1991). Goku tried to fight him alone in the early stages, but it was clear that Meta-Cooler was too strong. With Goku on the cusp of defeat, Vegeta appeared to save him. Now fighting two-on-one, it was still evident that Meta-Cooler was too mighty of a foe.
Goku and Vegeta launch a last-gasp partner effort to take him down, and are able to blast Cooler’s entire body apart before he is able to regenerate. With the battle over, they collapse to the ground and revert out of their Super Saiyan forms.
Except, it wasn’t over. As they hear a rock fall from the top of the cliff, Goku looks up in horror to see another Meta-Cooler. When Vegeta looks up, you see one after another show up, until there are 1,000 Meta-Coolers looking down at Goku and Vegeta, who used everything they had to defeat just one.
The scene was unlike any other in the series, even if the consequences may have been worse at different times. I mentioned Frieza destroying the earth in Resurrection F, Beerus threatening to do it in Battle of the Gods, and there was also Kid Buu who was able to destroy the planet in Dragon Ball Z—without Whis there to undo it.
What made this moment feel so extreme?
It felt like there was no chance! In every dramatic situation, there is usually a way out. When Cell came back after self-destructing, Gohan was still there, as well as everyone else besides Goku. When Buu blew up the planet, Goku and Vegeta were still alive, and when fused they already proved to be far too strong for Buu to handle. Here, a single enemy who it took everything to beat, reappeared with another 1,000 bodies to deal with. It seemed like the only result was instant defeat.
And that’s what it was—at least we are led to assume so, as Goku and Vegeta charge up with the Meta-Coolers sliding down the cliff toward them, the camera cuts, and the two are defeated off-screen.
The rest of the film feels tense as you wonder how Goku and Vegeta are going to defeat the 1,000 Meta-Cooler’s. The stakes are high and all hope seems lost, until they find a way!
Goku and Vegeta have both died more than once, but despite that, this movie still seems like the time their lives were in the most danger.
Those are my top 3 most dangerous Dragon Ball movie villains.
Do you agree with my choices? Is there a different character you’d pick from the Dragon Ball movie villains? Or a moment when Goku and his friends were in the most danger?!