Certified Yamcha Scholar

Android Saga

Without a doubt, it's here that we start to see many beloved non-alien characters plunge into total irrelevancy. It no longer matters how our protagonist, Goku, became as strong as he did through his lessons and relationships here on Earth.

Now the story treats Earthlings as an absolute burden who hold no use other than providing commentary or comedy (and barely that, unless you're this guy).

Yes, if you've read my previous posts, this has always been a prominent writing issue in OG and the beginning of Z. It's expected for protagonists to save the day and all, sure, but you still can't neglect the storylines of the rest of the cast. That said, even Toriyama "tries" to make the others relevant at times, and have them carry out their own ambitions.

However, in these last two arcs of the series, you'll find that characters we grew alongside all this time barely hold any presence. Mainly cuz Z proved to be a major source of extreme creative burnout for the creator.

Through this burnout, it sounded as though Toriyama's main goal by this point was to end the series as quickly as possible. As expected of rushed-out stories, there's bound to be plenty of plot holes and out-of-character moments among our cast 😔.

In fact, a major example of this problem can be found sometime at the beginning of the Android Saga, kicking off its very premise. Instead of listening to Bulma's plan of using the Dragon Balls to prevent a major catastrophe, everyone decides not to do that 🙃.

Why? Well, how else can we get to the plot if characters waste time questioning the logic in all this 🙃🙃?

Sizing up the powerful androids predicted to have killed them all, needless to say, is a terrible plan. That's the kind of decision that's bound to get somebody's arms broken, but hey, it's fitting for someone as blindly prideful as Vegeta. 🤷🏾‍♀️

What DOES become especially irritating to witness is how Goku and friends (characters that should know better) end up agreeing to fight these androids, since they also want to see how much stronger they can get. That, or, in Krillin's case, "keep the peace between everyone." 🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃

Yep, they are all willing to risk the safety of the ENTIRE EARTH for the sake of having a decent fight T-T

BTW, this is the exact mindset that Roshi wanted to prevent his students from succumbing to. Actually, it's probably why he's conveniently not involved in this story; he would have had some strong words for these guys.

We've long established in this series that getting overly prideful about one's abilities makes you a weaker fighter; it's a recurring theme in a story that draws on Chinese martial arts philosophy. Arrogance makes you more prone to misjudgments, and those moments can be deadly.

When you look back at previous sagas, the Z-Fighters' primary motivations to advance their skills were either to compete with one another or to defend their friends and home planet from evil. Nothing wrong with friendly competition; a good rivalry can motivate us to reach new heights. Obviously, using martial arts to protect the weak is admirable, so no problem there.

This whole ordeal with the androids, however, is neither of those intentions. It's training just to stroke their ultra egos, even if that means risking the safety of innocent civilians. In other words:

ROSHI, GET YOUR WIG; YOUR STUDENTS DID NOT LEARN A DAMN THING!!! 

Tbf, this is what I mean when I say characters are written to be conveniently out-of-character. All the lessons they've learned up to this point vanish just so the plot can transition quickly. It might spontaneously be brought up again, but only to conveniently move the story along, regardless of consistency. Again, Toriyama's main objective at this time was to end Dragon Ball quickly.

You probably picked up the lack of Yamcha mentions so far in this post. That's because, as an Earthling, he also falls into this pitfall of total irrelevancy the more the story continues. When I talk about our general Earthling gang, assume Yamcha's a part of that somehow.

If you're curious, no, we're not sure where Yamcha stands on the decision to fight the androids; the story doesn't bother to show us, since we just need to get to the action 🫤.

With that, our Z-Fighters go off to train for the next three years to prepare for this totally preventable humiliating beatdown they're about to receive 😩. Fine, whatever. What does Yamcha do during this time?

Well, actually, Goku does invite his companions to come train with him and Gohan. This is a pleasant surprise, as we've never actually seen Goku and Yamcha train together. It would also be nice to see the Turtle School hang out again after so long.

But c'mon, y'all should know better by now that Toriyama never liked disturbing his precious status quo. Yamcha AND Krillin both decline the offer, believing Goku's Super Saiyan regimen would be too intense for the likes of them. I explained my thoughts about this in more detail on this other post.

Not surprisingly, fans use this scene to suggest that Yamcha, and Yamcha alone (???), has a bad habit of shying away from difficult training. They frame him as someone who fails to push himself at anything that involves a lot of effort, which is why he stagnates as a fighter. This would be a fair assessment, had this not actually been Yamcha.

He's the same guy who has trained under the most prestigious martial arts masters, who always push him beyond his limits. He's also always eager to strengthen his skills and develop new powerful techniques. This all eventually led to him becoming so strong that he's on planet-buster levels along with his fellow Earthling Z-Fighters.

Remember, Yamcha achieved all these feats without the help of a bloodline trait or an external power-up; he just trained REALLY well. Freak-

We're supposed to look at all these chapters of Yamcha's development and assume HE has a tendency to run away from hard work? Why, because he turned down Goku's offer?

If we're going with the logic that not training with Goku means you are prone to never pushing yourself, we'd have to assume this to be the case for ALL of Goku's allies. Krillin straight up tells Goku the same thing; he doesn't think he'd be able to handle his training. Notice how fans hardly chastise Krillin over this; you gotta wonder why? (looks at 18).

Tien and Chiaotzu, while they weren't asked directly, didn't bother to prompt themselves to join Goku either. We can't really reason that it's because Tien is a loner, since Piccolo is much more fitting of the loner archetype. Yet he still agrees to train with Goku and Gohan for 3 whole years.

Not to mention that Yamcha never said he wouldn't train. He AND Krillin just tell Goku they're going to commit themselves to activities better suited to their skill level. This doesn't necessarily mean they are taking it easy.

If y'all read Part 3, y'all should be aware of how Toriyama makes characters' TRUE ambitions clear through visual storytelling. When you take a look at this chapter cover, which shows a brief (and only manga) glimpse of everyone's training, no one here is slacking off. Everyone is taking this seriously - so seriously, in fact, that Yajirobe isn't present.

So yeah, Yamcha trained diligently for the Androids' arrival; there's no denying that.

I gotta say, though, it is still perplexing that none of our Earthling fighters reasoned that training alongside Goku would be most beneficial. Not just Yamcha; ALL the Earthling Z-Fighters.

They agreed to take on the killer androids in the first place just to see where they stand power-wise. You'd think sparring against Goku would satisfy that curiosity, especially when they've been itching to fight this guy since forever. Vegeta won't do it cuz he's Vegeta and he refuses to accept help. Everyone else, though - what gives? I thought we were ALL determined to catch up to Goku by all means possible. Wasn't that a whole thing they aimed for specifically in the last saga?

Like I said, it's not only Yamcha whose characterization and ambitions are oddly, but conveniently, inconsistent in this saga. The motivations of our fighters from the previous saga don't match their goals here. 🤷🏾‍♀️

Oh well, back to the story: three years pass by, and the Androids will soon make their appearance. Do we know where everyone went? No. Do we know how they trained? Of course not. Do the fruits of their training come forth within this arc, as it at least did so previously? Ehhhhhhhhhhh, not really, as we'll soon see.

Some members of our group agreed to meet at the location where the androids are predicted to spawn. It's here that Krillin comments that he senses two extremely high ki energies, correctly assuming it must be Yamcha and Tien.

(Oh, so now we concerned about innocent people getting hurt 🙄?)

Before someone tries to act funny, no, this can not be interpreted as a joke about how baby Trunks (😳 why did she bring the baby 😳) has a higher ki level than Yamcha. Somebody would have mentioned this upon coming up towards him. The baby would have greatly overshadowed Tien as well. Once again, Toriyama is not subtle in his humor.

Plus, we know how he jokes about Saiyan kid prodigies by the Buu Saga.

This is probably the only insight we'll get into how much Yamcha has improved over these past years through training. After this, it all goes downhill for everyone.

The alien characters get in some decent fights, but even they start to show early signs of struggling against the enemies. It's the Earthling fighters who fall off the most. They get jumped several times, are sent on a wild android goose chase, and generally kinda wait for Goku to recover from his illness so that he can MC the plot again.

Oh, they also spend a lot of time complaining about how weak and useless they are in this exact pose.

I guess Tien gets that one cool scene (y'know the one), but it only plays out the way it does due to a series of, say it with me now: Coincidences! Very stupid coincidences.

Y'know, for a good while, Tien's been feeling a bit discouraged in his ability to help out in any way during this entire crisis (doing the pose, but outside tm). This risky interaction with Cell only cemented the fact that he wouldn't be of any help, and thus forced Tien to stop trying completely. Great lesson here for the kids. 💫

Tien, the character fans (with no source) praise for always training and never backing down from the chance to improve himself, backs down from the chance to improve himself.

He turns down the offer to use the Hyperbolic Time Chamber, believing there's no point; he stands no chance against Cell either way. Based on how they frame this, it hardly seems anyone else cares to bother acknowledging him 😭.

Hey Tien, remember how 3 years ago you insisted on fighting the androids, even if it meant an "honorable" death? Sounds like we realized we made a bad call back then 💅🏾. Should I assume Tien is a character who always gives up whenever things get too hard, as well? No? Just checking.

Alright, I'll stop playing Dabura's advocate. I'm sorry, Tien 😔. It's ok; you weren't alone in that entire out-of-character, dumbass unanimous decision. Regardless of their stance, everyone started to feel the pressure of those consequences by now, including Goku. That's not good since we still have the Cell Games to deal with!

With his transformation completed to perfection, Cell, our 6th (?) android villain of this saga, decides to host a tournament that will determine the fate of Earth. He gives the whole world 10 days to savor their remaining existence. That, or enough time for anyone who dares to challenge him to train up.

We know the aliens are going to train; this entire saga has been centered on them, so why stop now 🙄? Let's look at the Earthlings! Do our Earthling Z-Fighters train so that they can defend the Earth as they always set out to do, even if it means death?

No clue!

If you haven't picked it up by now, the Earthlings got severely sidelined, so the story only shows them idling around by this point. We just know for sure they don't plan on participating.

"So I take it the Earthlings didn't come along to the Cell Games then?"

No they all come along.

Why? Idk. At best, the rest figured they could provide moral support, figuring they wouldn't get involved (until Cell decides to become a daddy 😉).

I know, it's still all so messy storytelling-wise. From the start of the saga, it was strongly advised NOT to show up if you didn't feel confident in your abilities.

It seems this only applied to Chiaotzu at the time, as Tien left him behind for his own safety. Yamcha has done enough training to be on par with Krillin and Tien, but that doesn't mean much here. Practically none of the fighters are confident enough to face Perfect Cell, but I guess we can't have EVERYONE stay behind, now can we 🤷🏾‍♀️?

This entire arc was a mess, but we're not here to review it. We came to see how Yamcha fared in his training compared to the rest. From what I gathered, Yamcha and the others did train hard for the androids' arrival initially, but not much really came of it. The Earthlings were completely overpowered, and they all became so depressed that they lost the will to do anything.

Since this story focused mainly on the Saiyans, that left little room for Toriyama to think of how the Earthlings could possibly get stronger to keep up; so they just don't. That's why none of them bothered to train with Goku, enter the gravity chamber, or enter the hyperbolic time chamber. They didn't utilize any of these opportunities like they would back then, because they had no place in the story.

At least in the anime, they gave them a chance to help out in this emotionally driven scene. None of this happens in the manga.

It's disappointing, but it goes to show Yamcha wasn't the only one hit with this.

Buu Saga

Alright, here we go: last Z-Saga, end of an era! There’s gotta be something to show Yamcha specifically doesn’t take his training as seriously as everyone else! Something to help me understand the folks that swear to kami this HAS to be the case!

Surprisingly, this is the saga where you may find some credible evidence for that position… but also not really when you actually look into it. Y'all thought I'd give you that satisfaction 😜?

Like most characters in this saga, Yamcha remains relatively in the background as their stories are practically "done". He doesn’t professionally fight anyone these days. Actually, for his first appearance in this saga, he explicitly states that he does not plan to enter the 25th Budokai (which Gohan asked him to join, mind you), knowing he’ll be humiliated facing these crazy-strong participants that are sure to take him out with ease. He's, of course, referring to the Saiyans and maybe Piccolo. Honestly, looking at how dirty they did the Earthlings in the last saga, I can't blame him. They sure did make it seem humans stand no chance.

So that’s that. “Definite proof" that Yamcha doesn’t train as much as everyone else, because it's "in his nature" to give up so easily. Only, it’s really not.

Y'all love making Yamcha out to be a Hercule when we already got a literal Hercule.

Oh hey, is this another moment of Toriyama creating a whole montage of pages to visually demonstrate which characters work hard vs. which ones deliberately choose to LAZE around? Crazy how they never depicted Yamcha this way. Anyways-

A whole seven years passed since Goku’s death, and the world has been in relative peace since. There wasn’t really a need to train so intensely; most of the Z-Fighters had retired from fighting professionally and naturally gotten rusty. It doesn't necessarily mean they stopped training altogether; remember, this is kinda a passion for some of them.

Gohan, notably, shared the same desire to enjoy life, now as a normal teenager. A crime-fighting teenager, sure, but dealing with petty criminals is hardly the same as preparing to fight off planet-destroying entities. It keeps him active at least.

“Well, Yamcha could have still participated in tournaments when the heavy hitters weren't present! That way he wouldn't get rusty!”

Now you have to ask: where’s the fun in that? Where’s the challenge? Regardless of how much Yamcha eased up on his training as a martial artist, he's still on planet-buster levels. Why bother joining any tournament when a flick of the finger can send all his competition flying? He already was doing that before learning ki blasts and flying techniques. The only folks who posed a challenge were mainly Yamcha's friends he could compete with.

That's the other thing: most of Yamcha's friends were busy with their own personal lives now. Krillin started a family; Tien (his buddy) went off the radar; Gohan is focused on his studies; and Piccolo is aura-farming somewhere.

"What about Vegeta?" What about Vegeta? Who wants to deal with Vegeta? Not Goku, apparently (This is a TFS joke, but also are they wrong?)

Speaking of which, Vegeta supposedly kept training to the point of reaching Super Saiyan 2 (doubt), in hopes of beating Gohan. Could've sworn he made a whole vow about never fighting again, because he recognized he could never beat the likes of true warriors like Goku or Gohan. 🤔

Then again, I have to remember this is Toriyama's burnout period we're talking about. Same as the Android Saga, he was writing these characters however way was most convenient for the plot. He needed some way to explain away how Vegeta got stronger to deal with Babaddi's henchmen, at least.

Jumping off this topic of unexplained power-scaling: do y’all think Krillin is the strongest Earthling character? Cuz according to Toriyama, that seems to be the case.

I like that Yamcha says this to ease Marron’s nerves, but I’m sorry, did Krillin ever do anything to earn such a title 😆? Not to make Krillin fans even more pissed at me with this decades-long fan debate, but compared to the other Earthlings, Tien has contributed much more to fights. There was that time on Namek, but Krillin and Gohan spent most of their days hiding from enemies; I'd hardly count that. Maybe Toriyama forgot Tien was human? Or maybe he figured that Guru's power-up would make Krillin stronger?

Look, I wouldn’t mind all too much of Krillin being the strongest human, if it weren’t for the fact that he does absolutely nothing in this saga to justify this statement. He participated in a tournament he was reluctant to join; he punched one guy no one remembers; he went off to help stop Buu’s revival, chickens out, gets stoned (not the fun kind), and then dies off-screen......wait-

My god, is THIS why Toei made up all that filler of Krillin heroically dashing to protect his family, and had him say that stuff about Yamcha never training? Is that why they made Yamcha out to be a loser in the filler? All that to make Krillin look better in comparison??!!

I guess to Toei, it wouldn’t make sense to have Earth’s strongest human fighter cowardly fall back on a mission and then die pathetically. If this is the strongest Earthling (man), that'd be pretty embarrassing for Earth. Dare I say that it would have been another case of Chekhov's Gun: Unfired. Also, 18 is literally the strongest Earthling; I'm not letting Toriyama try to be sly by putting the woman down 💅🏾.

"What was all that about the filler showing Krillin complaining about how Yamcha never trains?"

That? Oh yeah, that one is a headache to get through people's heads.

In the anime, after Buu kills everyone up on Lookout, Krillin and Yamcha are shown training in the Otherworld. Yamcha is having a blast as he takes relaxing showers and gets a good workout in with the other fighters; it's like a paradise resort to him.

He is very complacent despite the world and his friends being under threat by Majin Buu. Yes, this is out-of-character; he's always concerned about these things, whether he is alive or not. Y’all saw him have an absolute breakdown believing Goku died on Namek, right?

Toei will make you think otherwise 🤷🏾‍♀️.

Anyways, during one of these sparring sessions with the afterlife's strongest fighters, Yamcha's boastful attitude earns him this quote from Krillin:

(Note: Different dubs/subs slightly change up the wording)

This comes out of nowhere, considering Krillin himself retired from fighting and had "given it up completely" as well.

Even though this should be dismissed as nonsensical filler, it's apparently done a lot of damage to Yamcha's image. Plenty of fans take this statement to heart, and it doesn't help that many games tease Yamcha for always slacking off in his training. That's blatant mischaracterization, as you've read these posts, and we'd have to assume this random trait comes from this filler specifically.

In Sparking Zero, for instance, Roshi only questions Yamcha (1:11) about whether he keeps up with his training. Judging by his nervous response, it's implied that Yamcha was indeed slipping. 🙄

Did we forget that Krillin was canonically the only Turtle School student who tried to get out of Roshi's training? On numerous occasions??? You'd think Roshi would tease Krillin about that at least, but no, only Yamcha, whom he never had this issue with.

You can see why this is always a headache to discuss with a fanbase that wants to interpret memes as canon facts. You can also see how stuff like this takes away the GROWTH of everyone's characterizations.

Going back to the manga's canon story....well, actually, that's as far as Yamcha and the Earthlings are relevant 🥲.

They all simply die and then come back to life to lend their energy to Goku. Next thing you know, 10 years of peace (let's pretend Super doesn't exist) have passed. I can't make any further judgments about Yamcha's training mentality when they don't do anything with these characters, end of. Not even Tien, who had his one min of a Walmart-brand Cell Kikoho edition before he was immediately kicked out of the narrative (literally).

Like, y'all gotta understand that Goku was the primary motivator for all these guys to train as much as they did back in the day. After his death, naturally, all his comrades lost that drive, and so they moved on with their lives.

As depressing as that sounds, in all actuality, this would have been an ideal period for them to take a backseat.

Buu Saga was originally supposed to be a story about passing the torch to the next generation of young fighters. Gohan was also meant to become the new MC.

It comes full circle beautifully when you think about it. Roshi entrusted the future to the next generation of fighters decades ago. The cycle continues here, showing that the Z-Fighters did their job; now they can rest easy.

That is, until Toriyama said, "Never mind."

Yep, Toriyama admitted on multiple occasions that he didn't know how to write Gohan as the new face of Dragon Ball, despite prompting that storyline to begin with. Gohan is just too much of a nerd, and wouldn't focus on fighting (even tho he literally adopted a superhero persona). Toriyama, YOU did that. We can't blame the editors with this one; you had free control 😤.

Rather than challenge himself to figure out how to write this new era of fighters, Toriyama instead reverted the storyline back to being the Goku and Saiyan Show. Eventually, it just becomes the Goku Show altogether.

He literally had to bring Goku back to life, just so he could save the world. Mind you, this is right after Goku repeatedly emphasizes the importance of leaving this responsibility to the new heroes, as he won't always be there for them. This is why he chose to stay dead last saga!

Thus, the Earthlings are once again needlessly brought back into the plot just to be overshadowed by the narrative again. Even more so than before, cuz they're all retired and aren't in their top game, obviously. Out.Standing. 😬

Then Super happens. I'm not touching Super.

With that, we've finally gone through all the mainline Dragon Ball Sagas to see how much Yamcha slacks off in comparison to his comrades. Unless you lack critical reading skills or choose to stay in denial after reading these posts, it should be apparent that nothing in the story has ever implied that Yamcha is the resident lazy guy.

I still have some closing thoughts for this series, so stay tuned! It's not over yet!