The King Piccolo Saga is the darkest arc of Dragon Ball: twenty-one episodes that aired on Fuji TV between February 24 and August 10, 1988, adapting chapters 135-161 of Akira Toriyama's manga. It opens with Krillin's murder and ends with a broken Goku punching straight through a demon king. In between, the series loses its safety net for the first time: friends and mentors die, and the Dragon Balls stop working.
What the saga is about
The 22nd World Martial Arts Tournament Saga has just wrapped up and the gang is out celebrating at a restaurant when Goku realizes he left his Power Pole and the Four-Star Ball at the arena. Krillin goes back for them and never returns. Next to his body, the others find a sheet of paper marked with the kanji for "demon", and Master Roshi recognizes it at once.
Krillin's death and the demon's sons
The symbol belongs to King Piccolo (Piccolo Daimaō in Japanese), a demon who terrorized the world long ago until Mutaito, the teacher of both Roshi and the Crane Hermit, sealed him away with the Mafuba at the cost of his own life. Emperor Pilaf has set him free, hoping to be rewarded with a slice of the world. Now old, Piccolo wants two things: the Dragon Balls, to regain his youth, and the roster of the World Martial Arts Tournament, so he can wipe out every fighter capable of sealing him again.
To do it he spawns offspring, spitting out eggs that cost him energy and years of life, and each one is named after a musical instrument. Tambourine, Krillin's killer, beats a Goku still drained from the tournament, destroys his Flying Nimbus and starts murdering fighters one by one. Cymbal goes after the Dragon Balls but runs into Yajirobe, a hungry, grouchy swordsman who slices him in half and eats him. Goku recovers, tracks Tambourine down and finishes him with a Kamehameha.
Roshi, Chiaotzu and Shenron
That is when the father steps in. His first fight with Goku is one-sided: the demon leaves him for dead and takes his Dragon Ball. Roshi, Tien and Chiaotzu, who have gathered the remaining balls, make a desperate stand. The old master uses the Mafuba just as Mutaito once did, but misses by a hair and dies. Chiaotzu tries to steal the wish and is killed. Piccolo becomes young again and, to make sure no one can ever use the Dragon Balls against him, kills Shenron. He then seizes the castle of the King of the World, crowns himself ruler and throws open the prisons.
Goku, Korin and the Ultra Divine Water
Goku survives thanks to Yajirobe, who carries him all the way to the top of Korin Tower. The cat hermit has nothing left to teach him, but knows one last option: the Ultra Divine Water, a poison that awakens the hidden potential of whoever survives it and kills everyone else. Goku drinks it, goes through terrible agony and gets back up far stronger. Meanwhile, Tien teaches himself the Mafuba to seal the demon.
The demon's defeat
Tien reaches the castle first, but Piccolo unleashes a new son, Drum, against him and destroys the container meant for the Mafuba. Goku saves him and kills Drum with a single kick. The final battle spans three episodes: Goku dominates, Piccolo unleashes his full power and levels the city, then takes Tien hostage and breaks Goku's legs and left arm. With the arm he has left, Goku fires a Kamehameha at the ground, launches himself at the demon and bursts right through his body. Before he dies, Piccolo spits out one last egg: the son who will avenge him.
Characters introduced
- King Piccolo: the demon king, the series' first genuinely ruthless villain.
- Tambourine, Cymbal, Drum and Piano: the demon's sons; Piano does not fight and serves as his adviser.
- Yajirobe: the gluttonous, cowardly samurai who will stick around for years.
- Mutaito: Roshi's teacher, seen only in flashbacks.
- King Furry: the kind, dog-faced King of the World, held hostage by the demon.
At the center are Goku, fighting for revenge for the first time, and Tien Shinhan, who now firmly joins the heroes. Krillin leaves the stage in the very first episode, while the demon's heir will grow into the Piccolo of the later sagas. Bulma, Yamcha, Launch, Korin, Bora, Upa, Pilaf and, for one scene, Chi-Chi are back too.
Main characters in this saga
Episode list
Titles are literal translations of the Japanese ones. The Funimation dub, which aired these episodes on Toonami between September and October 2003, used its own, such as Enter King Piccolo for episode 102 and Final Showdown for episode 122.
Anime vs. manga
The opening and the finale follow the manga closely; the anime's additions are concentrated in the middle. The longest concerns the Ultra Divine Water. In the manga, Korin simply brings it out at the top of the tower, while in episodes 115-116 Goku and Yajirobe have to find it in an ice labyrinth guarded by an entity called Darkness, which tests Goku with an illusion of a still-living Master Roshi. Also anime-only are the Dragon Ball hunt of Roshi and Tien, with its pirates and an old rival of Tien's, the return of Android 8 and Suno among the ruins, and Goku's stop to help the Ox-King and Chi-Chi on the way to the final battle.
Our take
Toriyama has said that with King Piccolo he wanted a real villain, because the enemies he had drawn until then all felt a little too likeable. It shows. Pilaf and Commander Red were small men with petty wishes; Piccolo is a ruler who kills as a matter of method, and the series takes him seriously from the very first episode, when it removes the hero's best friend from the board.
This is where Dragon Ball discovers the weight of loss. The Dragon Balls had always been an emergency exit: with Shenron dead, every death suddenly looks permanent. Roshi facing the demon knowing he cannot win, Bulma keeping the bodies in refrigerated capsules, a Goku who barely cracks a joke: the tone shifts, and the tight pacing of the original chapters holds up well on television, slowing down only in the labyrinth episodes.
The legacy is enormous. A villain who dies leaving behind a son, an enemy who will become an ally, strength earned at the risk of one's life: these are the foundations of Dragon Ball Z. And Goku's last punch, thrown with a single working arm, remains one of the most powerful endings in the original series.
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