The Many Flavors of Vegeta-related Irony
Proud.
Ah, irony, that finest of tropes: When things happen in a way opposite to your expectations.
Dragon Ball is great at helping us understand irony, because it gives us a character who is thoroughly incapable of coping with it. So, whenever irony, you get a lot of screaming and big flashing lights and arrows pointing to it.
Of course, I am talking about Vegeta, Prince of All Saiyans who is kind of an ornery homeless drifter with bad clothes. Over 24 volumes of manga, ther super-powered alien who insists he is the strongest being in the universe never wins any fights except against his own paraplegic sidekick, Frieza’s weakest henchmen, a lot of innocent civilians on several occasions, and a random fat robot.
Yeah, he gets his ass kicked a lot, and he makes a lot of really stupid mistakes.
He also insists that he is a villain for most of the story, despite the fact that it is very obvious that he’s going to turn out to be a hero.
He is also relentlessly hubristic to the point of parody.
Here, as a fun little memory tool, are many of the different kinds of irony, each of which Vegeta blasts out loud and clear at one point or the other.
Dramatic irony (the audience knows something the character does not) — When Vegeta comes across Gohan on Planet Namek, the young boy is hiding a stolen dragon ball behind him. In a rare moment of mercy, thinking he has all seven dragon balls and doesn’t need to, Vegeta decides not to kill Gohan. Thus, he loses the dragon ball and is eventually killed.
Situational irony (causes have the opposite of their expected effects) — In his urge to fight someone who will truly challenge him and prove his superior strength, Vegeta lets Imperfect Cell merge with Android 18 and thus transform into Perfect Cell. The resultant Perfect Cell is so far out of Vegeta’s league that he doesn’t even get to fight him at the Cell Games.
It's like rain . . .
Verbal irony — Vegeta is a self-important, sarcastic jackass for about ten years of cartoons and comic books. “What happened to the great and mighty X? Come on, X, fight me! Show me how GREAT you are. REALLY.”
Tragic irony — Vegeta kills himself to kill Majin Buu and save his family, not knowing that by killing himself and removing the possibility of fusing with Goku to fight Buu together, he has removed one of the world’s only hopes for survival. This leads directly to the death of his wife, son and rest of the human race.
Irony of fate or cosmic irony (destiny is predestined to be the opposite of expectations) — Vegeta constantly harps on how it is his fate and destiny to be the strongest fighter in the universe and the strongest member of the Saiyan race. But Toriyama’s plots are pretty well telegraphed, and by the time Vegeta rolls around, Goku is the protagonist who is pretty much guaranteed to always be the strongest character in the story, with only a few exceptions. So Vegeta’s destiny is actually always to be the weaker one.
Historical irony (real world events play out in the opposite of historical expectations) — Despite hating most people most of the time, including the heroes, the human race, and his own family, despite being hostile and antisocial, despite insisting on living in seclusion and anonymity, despite trying to destroy the earth and killing the spectators at his fights, and despite never touching his wife in the comic book or show and being entirely devoid of affection or tenderness — in the real world, Vegeta is a fan favorite and the subject of a great deal of erotic fanfiction.
See, Vegeta, it isn't impossible, because it just happened. That's how you know it isn't impossible. Because it happened.
More types of irony? Favorite parts of speech? I know I haven’t done chiasmus or zeugma yet, but there are 45 more parts to this series I have to get to! If I did everything in a timely manner, it wouldn’t be Dragon Ball, now would it?
Oh, and this clip has like five or six different examples of Vegeta-related irony.
Can you find them all? Sound off in the comments!
It’s over 9000!!!
My favorite post in a while, I had not realised until now what a truly tragic figure Vegeta is until now. A few random overthought DBZ-related questions (which could probs be entire articles by themselves) that occurred to me while reading this:
1. Does it say something about society, demographics, focus grouping or w/e else that Goku is essentially the world’s first mentally handicapped superhero? (take a look at him in the episodes when he’s not fighting, clearly the knock on the head as a baby’s had some pretty major effect)
2. Is Dragonball Z (android saga onwards) a modern-day version of ancient mythology in the style of the greeks, romans, ejyptians, norse, etc? Think about it, a place above the world full of incredibly powerful people, seeing everything, squabbling amongst themselves. A whole variety of personality flaws and secret agendas and rivalries and such, with noone to regulate them except each other… Actually this could also be the real world version of that parody “Saturday Morning Watchmen”.
3. Beyond the obvious homoerotic undertones to it, I think the whole fusion thing in the Buu saga could be a good topic for overthought. Did anyone notice that Gotenks was essentially an experiment in taking the worst of both Goku and Vegeta? Things like Goku’s playful carelessness, lack of critical thought and naivety with Vegeta’s narcissism, power lust and rage, and representing that peak of immaturity and stupidity by making their fusion be by the proxy of their sons. This is particularly interesting when you consider that Vegeto was a combination of everything that is best about each and he can only be created when each can fully understand and respect the other’s strengths, and that this is the reason why Gotenks fails and Vegeto succeeds.
Also, the video at the end is broken…
Hii!! I am a long time reader from Chile (South America, long and thin country) It was a great reading, thanks a lot. Maybe I am asking too much but, Would it be posible that you could post or send a email of the books that you where using to get those definitions (The dramaticals ones) ???
Thanks again, and thanks for the site.
Your last video broke. What was it?
Dragon Ball Kai, m’dear: http://dragonball.wikia.com/wiki/Dragon_Ball_Kai
Oh my, and you can watch it, too…
http://dbkai.net/episodes