Now that I'm feeling a lot better from my christmas head-cold, I'm steadily tackling a few commission orders on the backlogs. This one took quite a bit of angle tweaking. Enjoy!
Another detail in Dragon Ball that I adore that Super ruined is Vegeta's design reflecting his slow progress from villain to antihero to hero. He first shows up in the full Freeza Force regalia, but every arc that passes he loses another piece of it. Slowly, bit by bit, he abandons the bloodthirsty warlord lifestyle he defined himself by, another piece of the uniform that symbolizes the tyranny he fought for falling away, until the Peaceful World saga where he's wearing ordinary earthling clothes. Always a sucker for when a character's growth is reflected on their design and Vegeta is an A+ example.
You cant forget instinct. Thats why theyre called instincts. Theyre INSTINCTUAL.
I feel like some people misinterpret gokus head injury as a child. He forgot he was a saiyan. He forgot his parents. But it didnt get rid of his natural "saiyan instincts."
Saiyans were ruthless because thats the path they ended up on. Take universe 6 saiyans. Theyre not planet brokers, but saviors.
Saiyans ARENT inherently evil. Goku didnt have issues as a baby because he was a saiyan... he was violent because he was on a new planet with nothing familiar. No parents. No brother. No home. Just a strange old man and things he didnt understand.
So he threw tantrums. Like any child would. And they seemed worse because he wasnt human.
You can lose instincts over time. But Goku didnt lose his saiyan abilities or instincts at all. Theyre still there. He lost his memories. It was his saiyan instincts that kept him alive when he was alone in the woods for all those years.
The saiyans believe theyre superior through years and years of fighting and brokering planets. If their original planet, sadala, hadnt blown up then maybe they would have ended up like the universe 6 saiyans, fighting to save rather than destroy.
But it did blow up. So they had to fight for another. And then king cold made everything THAT MUCH WORSE by basically enslaving the saiyans to work for him. And then later, frieza.
If saiyans were "evil" then vegeta would have no capacity for good at all. And Goku losing his memories wouldnt have mattered. But they arent. Not inherently anyway.
Dont get me wrong. Theyre ruthless and cunning and can be downright terrifying im sure. Thats all from their intense instinct for battle. Its what they do with that that makes them flawed and could have been different.