I Don’t Care Who Wins Dragon Ball Z’s Popularity Poll, I Just Want Goten To Lose To Bulma’s Cat

I, like many other anime fans reared up on Toonami, love Dragon Ball Z. It’s GOATed. Its characters are iconic. Everyone has tried to go Super Saiyan at least once in their lives. But one thing that’s never happened in the 40 years of the late Akira Toriyama’s seminal shonen series is a popularity poll, until now. All I care about is that Goku’s second-born son loses against Bulma’s family cat. 

The official Dragon Ball Twitter account announced the series’s first-ever global popularity poll in celebration of the series’ 40th anniversary. In the typical DBZ style of doing too much, the popularity poll is a three-stage, elimination-style bracket, whittling 212 characters down to 20, with an added losers' bracket where fans can will their favorite characters back into the running. I couldn't care less who wins the damn thing come the big reveal on January 24, I just need Goten to lose.

Popularity polls are a staple of Shonen Jump series, with manga like One Piece, Naruto, Bleach, My Hero Academia, and Chainsaw Man routinely incorporating them during their runs. They serve two purposes. One, it lets the creator know which character in his overstuffed ensemble fans mess with most, so they can give that character a narrative push in later arcs and movies, fandom vindication with an overrated character actually topping the charts, or a special post-series one-shot chapter. Or, in Fujimoto’s case, they let him know which characters fans like so he can kill them off in the most emotionally devastating way possible. These polls, which usually coincide with a color-spread illustration by the mangaka, are also a hotbed for fans to throw obscure characters into the mix. Chainsaw Man’s popularity poll in 2021 had “characters” like Kobeni’s car, and that car ends up being more popular than Kobeni herself. 

While Dragon Ball has had an array of character and best bout polls, it hasn’t had a global popularity poll of this scale before. And with DBZ fans having spent years watching how other fandoms have operated in popularity polls, they’ve unsurprisingly followed suit, with some deep-pull characters placing high in the poll’s early stages. 

Said deep-pull characters all share one commonality: they’re of the “Toriyama forgot” variety. Tertiary characters that the father of shonen has forgotten he even wrote, as he escalated the series to the dizzying height it sits upon today. Characters like the Farmer who shot Raditz at the beginning of DBZ and the personality-switching heroine, Launch, who got left in Dragon Ball obscurity forever, managed to be contenders in the poll’s early stages. Still, the DBZ popularity poll's implementation of a losers bracket across its three voting stages, giving lesser-known characters a chance to rise the ranks, made the whole affair the most stressful manga popularity poll watch of my life. Mind you, this isn’t because I have a vested interest in whether they have a snowball's chance in hell to upset the poll’s secured top five favorites like Goku, Vegeta, Gohan, Piccolo, and Vegito by the time the dust has settled. I just want Goten, Goku’s second-born son, to lose out to the Brief’s family cat, Tama. 

Tama, known as Scratch in the English dub, is a pitch-black, cat-shaped pool with two beady eyes. His sole purpose in life is to sit atop Dr. Brief’s shoulders, and he excels at this task. While Tama doesn’t play a significant role in the manga or anime—aside from witnessing Dr. Brief create the spaceship that sent Goku to Namek, the gravity chamber where Vegeta trained, and helping rehabilitate Android 16 from his villainous ways—he has accomplished some impressive feats. Notably, he has lived for over 30 years in Dragon Ball's timeline without aging. Dr. Brief, the scientist behind Capsule Corp, even claims that Tama has as much experience with technology as he does. In fact, Dr. Briefs once told Chichi, "No one can troubleshoot a frozen oscillator like we can,” referring to himself and Tama. Was this nothing more than a platitude from a cat owner suffering from severe toxoplasmosis? Perhaps. But after looking into the head-empty abyss behind Tama’s black eyes, I believe him, and I want him to trounce Goten at any cost. 

My loathing for Goten is both petty and circumstantial. On a hereditary level, I dislike Goten because Chi-Chi’s genes gave up entirely and plopped out a carbon copy of Goku, sans any of his personality. He’s got Goku’s haircut. He’s got Goku’s gi (with long sleeves, ooo!). But aside from being an airhead like his absentee father, Goten’s got nothing else going for him. If anything, he’s a memberberry on Toriyama’s part for how cute kid Goku in Dragon Ball was before its gag manga antics were shoved to the side for the scowling, shonen powerscaling rule of cool the series played a pivotal part in popularizing for the entire industry. All of which makes it the more fucked up that Goten never really stood a chance to get out of his father’s shadow by literally cosplaying as the man (who he wouldn’t meet until he turned seven on account of Goku dying at the Cell Games). 

Before folks start playing Tyler, The Creator’s “Like Him,” on some pity party shit, know that I do not weep for Goten. He had his chance to make something non-derivative of himself. But even after having a chance to grow out of his father’s shadow by radically changing his looks in the bemoaned spin-off, Dragon Ball GT, he got jobbed by an alien named Baby. In totality, the most remarkable thing Goten did was be half of the Super Saiyan fusion Gotenks with Vegeta’s spawn, Trunks—a character who's got way more interesting shit going for him. So, in an admittedly petty sense of circumstantial hate meeting longtime apathy, I’d rather see Goten lose pretty handily to a house cat. 

On November 28, much to my annoyance, the second stage of the popularity poll ranking, showcasing the top 40 characters, had Goten overtake Bulma’s family cat, placing 12th while Tama sat at 20th place. In so doing, he smoked Android 17, Yamcha, Chichi, Tien, Launch, Bulma, and Videl to get there. Because DBZ is extra, on December 1, the official Twitter account shared a new poll update, with arrows showing where characters were slipping back and which were climbing the ranks. 

To my jubilation, Goten dropped to 16th place, while Tama moved up one place. Reader, I couldn’t help but try to stifle the Light Yamagi-esque smile that stretched across my face, seeing that fraud get one step closer to having a joke character rightfully usurp him.

Logging on to Twitter on December 5 was nothing short of euphoric. While Tama had slid back to 20th place, Goten was nowhere to be seen. All was right with the world for a moment. 

That is, until December 8th, when that fucking rugrat climbed back from the loser’s bracket. But we weren’t cooked yet, chat. Goten only placed at 17th while Tama stood above him at 16th place. There was still room to dream, right? Well, if you know DBZ fans as I do, you would know that they’re a bunch of Oozaru apes who hate gag manga funsies and favor anything and everything that involves “hype moments and aura.” Which brings us to the final stage ranking update on December 19th. Goten somehow rose up to rank 15, and the valiant Tama had sunk to 17th. 

Before I could yell the tried and true cry of “Stop the polls,” the dust all but settled on December 23, with the Dragon Ball Twitter account announcing that voting for the final stage of the popularity polls had closed. To add even more Marty Supreme-levels stress to my already tension-filled holidays, the account teased a guessing game where folks could predict who placed in the top 7 by posting the corresponding letters of the alphabet next to each character in a seven-letter sequence in the replies. Reading entirely too much into it, I couldn’t help but notice that while Goten and Tama were in the bottom row, Goten was given the letter “S” while Tama was given the letter “U.” This all but told me passively that the runt had stolen victory from the jaws of defeat by being placed in (albeit randomized) alphabetical importance above Bulma’s family cat and fucking Vegito of all people. 

But I believe in Tama. So much so that I’m willing to place a bet. If Tama doesn't place higher than Goten by the time the results are posted on YouTube on January 24th, I’ll do something I’ve sworn never to do. I’ll finally read Boruto. I mean it. Dear god, let Goten lose.