Who is a worst father, David Cain or Omni-Man?

[Cthulhu_of_R'lyeh]

Also, next week is Mother's day so if this thread is still around it might swing over to mothers

Chi Chi a monster prove me wrong.

[BitVyper]

Goku has also been personally responsable for needing those saves on more than one occasion. Not many crack heads have "endangered a planet, a galaxy, a universe or multiple universes" on the ol' CV either. Goku does.

In any case, I was specifically addressing the point that Goku has that same level of qualification specifically in parenting. He's also absolutely heroic - literally sacrificing his life to save hordes of others multiple times. It's just that being heroic doesn't make him a good father. That was the sole point - there was nothing about that statement that implied that Goku has the same value to society as a random crack addict father.

Goku's dad timeline (and as a general rule, lets remember that there's alien biology at play here where fighting at a young age is not only pretty normal, but there's narration telling us that Goku nearly dying in gravity training is basically following the steps of Saiyan childhood, so Goku's holding back a lot):

Dragon Ball - Dragon Ball Z: Gohan is born. Goku does no training significant enough to be remarked upon in this period. He must do some, since he is nebulously stronger, but evidence suggests the man mostly provides for his family and spends time with his son. This is long before training ever became an every-second-of-every-day thing. He is relaxed and calm, and his son appears to look up to and feel safe around him.

Saiyan Saga: Goku gets killed to stop his son being pressganged into nuking planets. Nothing he can really do here. Could come back to life sooner, but he must train for a year or the planet will explode which will also kill his son. Choice here is neutral at worst, falls to the side of good dad in any more generous interpretation.

Namek Saga: Goku is in a full body cast at first and can't really do anything. Goes after his son the second he is back to being competent enough to manage his own bowels. Not much to say about Namek, since everything is happening under extreme circumstances, but Goku actually does his best to keep Gohan out of the fighting when he has a chance to. It just doesn't work. Helps mastermind a plan that gets his son off the planet while fighting Frieza. Notably, Goku's trip to Namek, where his son is in danger, is the only time ever that Goku's training is presented as particularly hellish, with him doing the Vegeta thing of repeatedly almost killing himself to get as much power as he can as fast as he can.

The downtime: Literally does not have a chance to be present for most of it. He stays on Yardrat for some number of months when he DOES get the chance to come home, but we don't ever find out much of what went on there, and like even real parents live onthe road or abroad occasionally. Relatively small span of time, and Goku knows his son is safe and taken care of, but maybe a very small point against Goku here. A single choice made for himself instead of his son, to stay on vacation for a bit.

Androids: Goku must train or the world will explode and his son will have a shitty life and die in a hopeless post apocalypse. He includes his son in his training, but with no intention that Gohan will actually be doing the fighting. Ultimately that's just doing father/son stuff, and moreso when we consider alien biology again. Gohan wants to be there, and from what we're given to understand, the training is chilled out enough that Piccolo actually calls him out on being too nice to his son. We don't see any of the training, but this is really just Goku spending every available moment with his son for three years. During the actual fights, Goku is totally incapacitated.

Cell: Goku wakes up, takes his son somewhere safe. Goku, who has always been shown to have good senses, rapidly grasps that he's not going to beat Cell, and no one else is going to beat Cell. Cell is everyone put together with a bunch of ridiculous hacks, but he's not Gohan. Power escalation aside, I think a bit of unspoken narrative here is that being part of why Gohan has a chance to win. He also grasps that they're hitting a point of diminishing returns on all this training to near death. Goes into training expecting to be the one to beat Cell, but he realises he's not going to be the one hitting whatever the next big power point is; he's topping out around the muscle forms like Vegeta and Trunks, which is absolutely a theme in the arc that these guys are plateauing. So, Gohan must train and fight or the world will explode. Goku makes extremely good training decisions here, making sure that, rather than fruitless pursuing pushing out more power, they can do more with what they have, and Gohan will have a strong base to grow from in his own way. This is digressing a bit, but I suspect Goku's inspiration for the way he organized their training probably came from a desire to not put his son through hell.

We all know his **** up, ultimately, is that he just didn't get that Gohan doesn't like fighting. Absolutely a misjudgement, but it doesn't make him a bad dad, it just makes him fallible. He hasn't actually been around when Gohan had to be in fights for the most part because any time he was around, he was doing the fighting largely to protect his son. So he didn't get to see the panic and stuff. What he got to be present for was almost exclusively Gohan ripping someone a new ******* because they were threatening his dad. The instant Goku realises he was wrong, he tries to get back in the fight and get his son out of it, but by that point Cell isn't having it. Ultimately his choice is vindicated though. Gohan really truly is the only person who could have beaten Cell at that point in time. It's often suggested that Goku could have trained more or they all could have attacked Cell together, but even if they'd managed to put him down once (which seems incredibly unlikely), nothing shy of Super Saiyan 2 was going to give them a chance when he came back.

Goku chooses to stay dead for reasons that are 100% correct and bear out perfectly. Everything kept escalating around him, and the last 4 years of their lives had basically been spent entirely on people who wanted to blow up the planet to **** with Goku. The world enjoys its longest period of uninterrupted peace since Goku left the mountains as a child, and Gohan is allowed to mature as his own person without getting wrapped up in his father's drama. It's not a nice choice, but it was the right one. Then he gets a one day pass, and in THAT DAY, Vegeta turns evil and a new monster appears. WELP

Buu: Gohan is a young adult and doesn't need to be looked after so much. Not really much to say about them past this point. Goku immediately makes friends with his other son. He is affectionate and kind and there's really just not much to say about him as a father in this arc.

People call Goku a bad dad because they focus on these crisis situations we see in the series, but those make up a handful of weeks/months, over the course of Gohan's entire life. Even if he wasn't perfect in those situations (and I think he did as well as he possibly could have), Goku couldn't control all the factors in them. What makes a good or a bad parent is a lot more invested in the day-to-day, and everything that we see says Goku is there every second that he can be save for the relatively minor Yardrat trip, and being dead. Goku is otherwise calm and affectionate. He has at least spent enough time with Gohan that when Gohan goes fishing, it's shown as a direct parallel to the way Goku fishes. The closest thing he ever shows to anger with Gohan is when he's trying to get the kid to LEAVE during the Frieza fight.

[BitVyper]

Chi Chi a monster prove me wrong.

I think Chichi gets a bad rap because the series is just... really unrealistic about academic expectations. Yeah there's people who abuse critical period brain plasticity to get their kids doing ridiculous things, but I don't think that's what's actually going on here. I think we're mostly meant to infer that Chichi is invested in an academic future and doesn't want her son fighting, and it's easier to communicate that by having her have five year old Gohan doing math than by spending a bunch of the series on Chichi arranging age-appropriate social and academic activity. She comes off a bit high strung about it, and she clearly wants him to excel, but all we really see outside of anime filler amounts to dedicated homeschooling and not wanting her kid in deathmatches.

[Sharpandpointies]

Also, next week is Mother's day so if this thread is still around it might swing over to mothers

Again, I think a solid baseline would be Shiva.

[The Dog]

I think Chichi gets a bad rap because the series is just... really unrealistic about academic expectations. Yeah there's people who abuse critical period brain plasticity to get their kids doing ridiculous things, but I don't think that's what's actually going on here. I think we're mostly meant to infer that Chichi is invested in an academic future and doesn't want her son fighting, and it's easier to communicate that by having her have five year old Gohan doing math than by spending a bunch of the series on Chichi arranging age-appropriate social and academic activity. She comes off a bit high strung about it, and she clearly wants him to excel, but all we really see outside of anime filler amounts to dedicated homeschooling and not wanting her kid in deathmatches.

Goku and Chichi honestly aren't even worth mentioning in a "worst parent" discussion beyond the tired "haha, Goku's a bad father, Chichi's an abusive mother" joke.

[Jcogginsa]

Goku chooses to stay dead for reasons that are 100% correct and bear out perfectly. Everything kept escalating around him, and the last 4 years of their lives had basically been spent entirely on people who wanted to blow up the planet to **** with Goku. The world enjoys its longest period of uninterrupted peace since Goku left the mountains as a child, and Gohan is allowed to mature as his own person without getting wrapped up in his father's drama. It's not a nice choice, but it was the right one. Then he gets a one day pass, and in THAT DAY, Vegeta turns evil and a new monster appears. WELP
.

In fairness, Babidi was gonna show up no matter what Goku did.

I think Chichi gets a bad rap because the series is just... really unrealistic about academic expectations. Yeah there's people who abuse critical period brain plasticity to get their kids doing ridiculous things, but I don't think that's what's actually going on here. I think we're mostly meant to infer that Chichi is invested in an academic future and doesn't want her son fighting, and it's easier to communicate that by having her have five year old Gohan doing math than by spending a bunch of the series on Chichi arranging age-appropriate social and academic activity. She comes off a bit high strung about it, and she clearly wants him to excel, but all we really see outside of anime filler amounts to dedicated homeschooling and not wanting her kid in deathmatches.

The anime REALLY did Chi Chi dirty

[BitVyper]

Babidi was going to show up, but Vegeta only let Babidi mindgank him because Goku was present and that was making him go through some ****. Imagine how that whole story goes with a committed Vegeta. Even if Gohan doesn't get his groove back and loses, Babidi has absolutely nothing going for him that is going to stop the (slightly) more mature Vegeta who saw his own mistakes bear out in the past, from just walking in and killing him without Goku as a motivation.

[Alan2099]

Again, I think a solid baseline would be Shiva.

If we're talking about bad mothers, Mystique certainly deserves a mention.

[Jcogginsa]

Not to mention Ragyo Kiryuin

[The Drunkard Kid]

I mean, Goku was pretty much completely railroaded by author fiat into dying and staying dead during the Cell Saga. He took precious seconds to hang around and chat instead of just teleporting in and out before Cell blew up, and his decision to stay dead so as to avoid having his enemies come back to make more trouble, in addition to being wildly out of character for the guy that let Piccolo Jr./Vegeta/Frieza live more or less explicitly so that they could me challenge him again once they got stronger, also made no sense to going how his enemies would have just continued rampaging if he wasn't around, as evidence by everything in Teen Trunks' past, present, and future. Heck, the Android/Cell Saga even started with Frieza ordering a massacre while they waited for Goku to come back to Earth.

Also, regarding his time away from Earth after Namek, it was largely to gain control over his SSJ form, which had messed with his emotions enough that he had to actively restrain himself from attacking his beloved 5/6 year old son for not offering him fast enough (IIRC).

ALSO, also, regarding Chi Chi, we generally only see her during periods where her extremely young children are being forced to fight cosmic murderers for the sake of the world, so she's not really in her best emotional state. She mellowed out a lot after the Cell Saga, with regards to her kids learning to be martial artists.

[The Drunkard Kid]

Another argument that isn't wise is "Goku forgot his son was his son". That's just... well, speaks for itself.

I mean, the options were "deliberately supress paternal instincts to properly bring out your son's true power so that he can save the world if he doesn't suddenly and inexplicably become a pacifist against the guy with the monstrously wicked aura whom his son sensed devour cities and nearly murder his best friend (until said opponent kills a robot that was dedicated to murdering Goku and appreciating nature)" or "hold back on training your son and know that he's probably going to die in front of you, right before his murderer goes on to wipe out the universe."

Also, when did Goku's fighting addiction endanger multiple universes? The Tournament of Power was revealed to have actually been a reprieve from multiple universes getting erased without any chance to defend themselves, and Zamasu's fixation on him was pretty much entirely not Goku's fault.

Moro, maybe? Though him giving the senzu to Moro seemed very out of character, IMO, since Moro wasn't really a martial artist and specialized in powering himself up by devouring all life on entire planets, so Goku probably wouldn't have been particularly interested in fighting him again when there are already a bunch Angels and the like that he could try and fight instead.

[Sharpandpointies]

Thread about something completely different devolves into a Dragonball argument; having flashbacks to the old board. ^_^

[Sharpandpointies]

If we're talking about bad mothers, Mystique certainly deserves a mention.

Comics abound with poor parents....

[Beadle]

Thread about something completely different devolves into a Dragonball argument; having flashbacks to the old board. ^_^

Quick! Bring up Thor’s speed!

[Sharpandpointies]

Quick! Bring up Thor’s speed!

.....

Gundam again.jpg

Ask, and ye shall receive.