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Being a series about fighting and growing stronger at its core, the myriad of power-ups and transformations seen in Dragon Ball are somewhat unsurprising. The villains always have to get badder and stronger for the stakes to be raised, and Dragon Ball’s heroes must likewise follow suit.
Unfortunately for some Dragon Ball heroes, there comes a time when the peak of their power simply isn’t relevant anymore. Some are able to maintain a degree of relevancy before facing this reality, while others are suddenly forced to admit their end.
Here are the eight most useless characters in all of Dragon Ball.
Chiaotzu and Yamcha headline the 8 most useless characters in Dragon Ball
1) Babidi
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Despite being influential in the Dragon Ball story and successfully reawakening Majin Buu, Babidi is fairly useless outside of this contribution. While his magic skill somewhat makes up for his incredibly weak physical constitution, even Piccolo as a Super Namekian is able to break through Babidi’s magic and kill him.
Outside of introducing Majin Buu, Babidi serves no purpose and can accomplish almost nothing.
2) Chiaotzu
While Chiaotzu did have a time of relevance during the original Dragon Ball series, his contributions dry up in Dragon Ball Z and beyond. For a majority of Dragon Ball franchise fans, Chiaotzu’s most notable moment is blowing himself up and having nothing to show for it.
Quite frankly, it’s hard to get more useless than a kamikaze attack which doesn’t kill or hurt your target.
3) Saibamen
While being a great way of showing the Z Fighters' progress during one of the opening sagas, the Saibamen are incredibly useless otherwise. Everyone but Yamcha survived their onslaught with ease, with Piccolo even killing the majority of them himself.
Outside of proving that the Z Fighters were stronger than Raditz, the Saibamen serve zero purpose.
4) Tien Shinhan
While Tien’s impressive training and skills allow him to stay relevant for longer than most others on this list, he too eventually becomes useless. During the Saiyan saga, Tien made little contribution before his untimely and unfortunate death.
While his slowing of Semi-Perfect Cell was certainly impressive, Tien exerts himself nearly to death in the process for an ultimately fruitless endeavor.
5) Raditz
Considering how quickly the stakes and strengths get raised in Dragon Ball Z, Raditz’s short and nearly inconsequential arrival on Earth emphasizes his irrelevance. Vegeta and Nappa were quite literally able to grow Radtizes via the Saibamen, so his power level clearly wasn’t anything special.
Raditz also seemed to be of somewhat low intelligence, allowing his tail to be grabbed before dying to a sacrificial full Nelson hold from Goku. This further emphasizes his incompetence and just how irrelevant he would've been had he survived.
6) Nappa
Speaking of Nappa, his contributions to the series are also somewhat irrelevant and useless. While his destructive spree across various cities somewhat served to motivate the Z Fighters, Nappa is really only able to take out the weakest of the Z Fighters.
What’s more is that Nappa found himself at the mercy of Gohan’s untrained latent strength, further emphasizing his run-of-the-mill and useless abilities.
7) Dodoria
Despite being introduced as one of Frieza’s most elite warriors, Dodoria goes down fairly easily to Vegeta whose power level is quickly made irrelevant.
Furthermore, he’s unable to track down Gohan and Krillin due to the two’s diversionary tactics, despite Dodoria being so much stronger.
Between this failure and his eventual defeat at Vegeta’s hands, Dodoria’s time and contributions on screen were utterly useless and unimpressive.
8) Yamcha
Arguably the most useless character in the franchise, Yamcha’s prime seems to pass just as quickly as it came. Like Chiatzou, many franchise fans are first introduced to him in Z. Also like Chiatzou, Yamcha’s first battle contribution is utterly pathetic.
Being blown up by a Saibamen before the real fight even begins, Yamcha is basically shown to be the one Z Fighter who couldn’t reach Raditz’s level. While his death does take a Saibamen down with him, this is by no means an achievement.
There is little to no doubt that Yamcha is one of, if not the most useless, characters in all of Dragon Ball.
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This article was modified on Monday, July 24, at 2:19 pm
