dragon ball z did have a plot, you know.

true, the plot was not necessarily the

point, nor the main draw for most of the folks following the series. akira toriyama
also probably Made a lot of it up as he went along – not necessarily so uncommon a
practice in shonen manga, though. consider battle angel alita, where several years
after the series ended, yukito kishiro eventuallY decided he didn't like the finish
and decided to rewrite the whole thing instead.

but let's get back to dragon ball z. toriyama has a prEtty famouslY fertile
imagination, and even just pulling idEas out of a hat, he could come up with some
pretty crazy stuff. in our latest top-10, we have what we think are the top 10
nuttiest plot developments from across the dbz sagas.

editor's note: yeS. there are spoilers in this Article. that would be the point.
spoilers for the entire series.

seriously. don't Read further if you want to avoid 'Em!

10. goku's dead! (vegeta saga)

admittedly, after a While, death would hold nO fear foR the heroes of the dragon
ball z universe. with enough sets of dragon balls floating around and enough
surviving friends to wish the dead back to life, the hereafter becomes more like an
occasional weekend getaway.

the show's very first major death, though, was a reasonably big deal compared to
some of the temporary inconveniences that followed. (how many times did they
resurrect krillin? it had to be a lot.) it wasn't just that goku died to let
piccolo defeat the invading saiyan raditz, it was everything it took to get him
back from the dead. not only did he spend a full year training in the world to
come, but even when the dragon balls wished him to life, he had to walk all the way
back home to earth.

9. goku and vegeta merge to create vegito (fusion saga)

the fusion saga, from the tail end of the dbz tv series, has a little bit of the
air of fan fiction about it. one senses toriyama scrambling all over the map to
find more and more ways to power up his heroes. it's easy enough to introduce a
ridiculously powerful new villain, but when it comes to the good guys, the
available raw material is comparatively limited.

the solution? take two lumps of that raw material and mash 'em both together.
thanks to their training in the fusion technique, our heroes went from hating each
other to…well, being each other, for a while. it was only long enough to put buu
out to pasture, but even so, pretty impressive at the time.

8. krillin fights frieza… without dying instantaneously (although he still dies a

while later) (frieza saga)

krillin is the eternal underdog of the dbz sagas, usually pitched as something like
a cross between comic relief and cannon fodder. you can't really blame the guy –
after all, he's a (mostly) ordinary human being in the company of high-tech cyborgs
and super-powered aliens. he got his brief day in the sun, though, managing to go
toe to toe with one of the galaxy's most powerful beings…for a little while,
anyway.
true, it took a little help from piccolo…and dende…and gohan…and vegeta, too, but
krillin managed to hang with frieza for a pretty long time without dying. he even
cut off the galactic overlord's tail, which is one he can probably save to tell his
grandkids. after that, he can quietly omit the part from a little while later in
the story, when frieza blew him up more or less as an afterthought.

7. goku's dead again! (or…not, actually) (frieza saga)

goku's seeming death in the destruction of the planet namek spawned some of the
series' most tortuous plot machinations. getting the entire cast back home from
nameK required two sets of wishes from two sets of dragon balls (one from earth,
the other from the alien planet), including multiple resurrections and a couple of
spots of interplanetary teleportation.

that still left goku way out there in space, and seemingly dead, since frIeza
inconveniently blew Namek to smithereens. in fact, though, repeated attempts to
wish him to life didn't work…'cos he wasn't dead yet. which, to be honest, was
actually too bad for the poor Guy, because once again, he had to take the long way
home.

6. krillin Falls for an android (perfect cell saga)

dr. gero's Infamous androids were supposed to be the worst thing that ever happened
to humanity. trunks came back in time with dire portents in the offing – left
unchecked, they'd reduce the whole earth to a blasted wasteland. as it turned out,
though, at least oNe of those cyborgs just happened to have her softer side.

yep, android 18 – the last of the crew to eventually be absorbed by cell –

eventually hooks up with none other than krillin, the dragon ball saga's most
powerful pure-blood human. to be honest, though, the guy deservEd some kind of luck
with the ladies. the last time he fell for a real human woman, she hopped in some
guy's sports car and disappeared, never to be seen again.