Tuffle Lore: DBZ #20
I’ve been meaning to revisit the topic of Tuffle lore, and so I decided I should re-watch the episode where they were first introduced. And I’ve got nothing going on at the moment, so let’s do it now.
So this is Episode 20 of Dragon Ball Z. It’s a filler episode, so I don’t know if any of this footage made it into Kai, but if you’re not familiar with this one, I’ll give you a quick recap. Goku is training in the afterlife to prepare for the Saiyan invasion. He’s just passed King Kai’s challenge to catch Bubbles, so now King Kai gives him a harder test, which is to hit Gregory on the head with a mallet. Meanwhile, Piccolo trains Gohan, whose right eye is swollen shut for the whole episode. Also, Master Roshi asks Baba to predict the outcome of the coming battle, and Baba can’t see anything in her crystal ball. The fate of the Earth is too uncertain to predict. Also, the rest of the Z-Fighters complete their training on Kami’s Lookout, and Yajirobe bites Krillin on the ass.Â
However, the real meat-and-potatoes of this episode is when Goku takes a break for dinner, and King Kai offers to tell him more about the Saiyans. At this point in the story, Goku only recently learned that he was a Saiyan sent to Earth as a baby, and all he knows about his people is what little he heard from his evil brother, Raditz. Much of King Kai’s tale would be contradicted over time, but this episode still stands out as a tantalizing peek into the history of the Saiyans before they were under Frieza’s rule. And this is one of the few sources for information on the Tuffles, the Saiyans’ mysterious enemies.Â
What I decided to do here was to just screenshot this part of the episode and transcribe all the subtitles. The dub version of King Kai’s story is pretty good too, but some of the details are changed, and since this is a filler episode, the Japanese script is about as close to a primary source as possible.Â
Incidentally, “Tuffle” is a localized name for the “Tsufuru-jin”, just as “Saiyan” is a localization of “Saiya-jin”. The Funimation subtitles refers to the Tuffles as “Tsufruians.”
“Once upon a time... There were two races of people who lived on a world named Planet Vegeta.  The Saiyans, who are your forebears, and the Tsufruians.”
“Planet Vegeta, like my own planet here, had an extremely strong gravity.  As a result, the Tsufruians, who controlled the larger half of Planet Vegeta, were a race whose bodies were only about half the size of the Saiyans.  However, they had a remarkable, comparatively advanced level of civilization.”Â
“On the other hand, the Saiyans were a race that was very few in numbers, but their bodies were bigger, not to mention stronger, and they were an aggressive, primitive race.  The tails the Saiyans had were their greatest distinguishing characteristic.  They were all warrior-like people, as it were.”
“At one point, these warriors bared their fangs, and started to overrun the Tsufruians.  The Tsufruians greeted them with advanced weaponry of their own making.  The Saiyans, who should have been utterly outnumbered, were incredibly strong, and gradually, they brought the Tsufruians under their control.”
“The decisive factor was the full moon, which appeared on Planet Vegeta once every eight years.  That's because when Saiyans see the full moon, they transform into monsters.  For the Tsufruians, this was their greatest threat, and they suffered the most damage this way.  And so, little by little, as the Tsufruians civilization pulled back, the Saiyans quickly increased their numbers.  In time, they completely took over Planet Vegeta.”
“Then the Saiyans took off into space, seeking to fight even more.  However, since the Tsufruians had been exterminated, further development of their civilization was slow to occur.  They realized that even though they wanted to fight, they could not go out any farther into space.  So the Saiyans joined forces with rich, advanced alien civilizations, and in exchange for furnishing planets to these aliens for use in developing vacation estates, they were able to obtain technology and money.  For the battle-hungry Saiyans, this was killing two birds with one stone.”
“The Saiyans' activities escalated swiftly, and they even started sending babies to many other worlds, as was your case.  They had come up with long-term plans, whereby once the baby grew up, it would exterminate the planet's population.”
“But Planet Vegeta had its own Kami.  He could not bear the Saiyans' evil deeds, and using his own powers, he pulled close some giant meteors, which then collided with Planet Vegeta, causing it to explode.”Â
“Including yourself, there were only four Saiyans that survived.”
And, there we have it. Tell you what, I’ll just make a list of the details that later turned out to be continuity gaffes.
1) It would later be established that the planet was named “Plant” before the Saiyans conquered it and renamed it “Vegeta”.
2) This episode seems to be the only instance of the Tuffles being half the size of the Saiyans. In other appearances, the Tuffles are shown to be normal-sized humanoids.
3) 1993′s Plan to Eradicate the Saiyans introduced the idea of the Saiyans arriving on the Tuffles’ planet and being accepted as refugees. However, a flashback in Dragon Ball GT suggests that the Saiyans invaded the planet from the start. In Dragon Ball Super, Vegeta states that the Saiyans had lived on another planet called Sadala before emigrating to Planet Vegeta. Any way you slice it, it looks like the Saiyans were not native to Planet Vegeta, as DBZ #20 suggests.
4) Furthermore, 2011′s Episode of Bardock introduces the Plantians, who inhabited Planet Plant/Vegeta in the distant past. No Tuffles are seen in that special, suggesting that the Tuffles were not native to the planet either.
5) DBZ #20 shows Tuffle soldiers using scouters, the implication being that they were a Tuffle invention that the Saiyans later adopted for their own use. In 2018′s Dragon Ball Super: Broly, it’s Frieza who issues the scouters to the Saiyans for the first time, well after the Tuffles have already been wiped out.
6) King Kai probably shouldn’t have told Goku about the Saiyans transforming during a full moon, since that sort of borks up the big reveal in Episode 31 and 32, when Vegeta transforms and Goku realizes that he must have been the one who killed Grandpa Gohan. Then again, it took Goku a while to figure it out, even when Vegeta was transforming right in front of him, so maybe he wasn’t paying attention to this part of King Kai’s story. Let’s face it, Goku isn’t the sharpest knife in the crayon box.
7) The biggest plot hole is the part where King Kai authoritatively states that it was the Kami of Planet Vegeta who summoned the world-ending meteor shower that Raditz spoke of. In truth, it was Frieza who destroyed Planet Vegeta and spread the meteor shower story to cover up the truth. While we can forgive King Kai for not being aware of what really happened, it’s weird how he offers context to a version of events that never took place. Then again, Planet Vegeta would have had its own Kami, who must have been displeased with the Saiyans, so maybe that Kami planned to destroy the planet, and King Kai was aware of these plans, but he never knew that Frieza beat the Kami to the punch.  For that matter, maybe Frieza stopped Vegeta’s Kami from summoning the meteor shower, because he wanted to wait until the whole population was on the planet before pulling the trigger.
8) Uh sure, King Kai, only four surviving Saiyans.
All that being said, a lot of elements in this story still hold up today, probably because of Toriyama’s input on this episode, including the Tuffle concept. For example:
1) The Saiyan population is quite low in King Kai’s story, which would be echoed in Dragon Ball Minus, which states that there are roughly 10,000 Saiyans around the time Planet Vegeta was destroyed.
2) While the Kami of Planet Vegeta has been retconned to hell, the basic concept of a god condemning the Saiyans to extinction resembles the way Beerus authorized Planet Vegeta’s destruction, as revealed in Battle of Gods.
3) The Saiyans’ primitive buildings in this episode look a lot like the lumpy, misshapen houses seen in Dragon Ball Minus and DBS: Broly. And yet the larger, more advanced buildings, like King Vegeta’s palace and the elite nursery, are comparable to the Tuffle cities. So the idea of Planet Vegeta being this world of contrasts has carried on across 30+ years.
Anyway, that’s all I have.......... for now.
Oh, right, can’t talk about this episode without mentioning Knife Lady. 💗🗡️
