The recent Dragon Ball canonization of fan-favorite characters and power levels needs to continue by adding in Dragon Ball GT‘s favorite and only Tuffle, Baby. Dragon Ball GT didn’t deliver the same iconic villains as Frieza, Cell and Buu. The show’s direction seemed a mix between the lightheartedness of the original and the fight-heavy Dragon Ball Z. It did give the fans Baby, however, a villain with a compelling backstory and an awesome design.
A consequence of King Vegeta’s actions finally comes back to bite his son and the remaining Saiyans when Baby, a machine-organism hybrid, begins wreaking havoc across Earth. An egomaniac, King Vegeta had the Tuffles virtually exterminated when he and the other Saiyans ascended to great apes to kill off the race and take over the planet. An action that is certainly indefensible by the surviving Saiyans. Baby does not care, and much like Killmonger in Black Panther, he’s going to make the Saiyans pay. Even if this particular group of them had nothing to do with it. And that’s a story that would fit right into the canon.
Baby boasts a strength so powerful it handles Goku’s Super Saiyan 3 with ease. The Tuffle’s constantly growing power level jump mixed with Vegeta’s skill set makes for an incredible tandem. Baby starts as just a small childlike parasite that quickly jumps from character to character to gain more minions and their powers. He then taunts and takes over Vegeta, who he gives a facelift, and quickly ascends to essentially a Super Saiyan Tuffle or as he’s known to most fans of the series, Super Baby 2. The being manages to bring his planet back with the Dragon Balls, but he learns that Goku, even in a childlike physical state, is no easy out.
The Z Fighters leader harnesses the power of the Great Ape, contains it and slaps around Baby, before hurling him into the sun to remove the threat for good. Of course, that whole story doesn’t even exist anymore with Dragon Ball GT never being made canon and very few references made to the Tuffles. The next obvious step for this would be to focus on both of these specific stories.
The eradication of the Tuffles brings about an interesting story for the currently-living Saiyans. This plot wasn’t explored to the same depth in DBGT, as some of the more recent storylines. For instance, Broly’s arc became more of a tragic story that many could sympathize with including Goku. The Tuffles, although a tragic story in their own right, could be the reverse of the new Broly arc.
What does Goku do when his morals are challenged and potentially taken advantage of against a foe as cunning as Baby proved to be in Dragon Ball GT? Would he manipulate that trait in Goku, or worse yet, find someone as diabolical as Frieza to combine with? Their disdain for the Saiyan race between those two, along with a Black Frieza transformation could create power levels we’ve not seen. Similar to how they scaled Broly’s power from the non-canon version to the current one, Baby could get the same boost.
Goku already got to make the jump to Super Saiyan 4 officially in Dragon Ball Daima, and he needed that to defeat Baby last time. Could he ascend further into the heights of Saiyan powers? Or would another non-canon ability like the use of the masks from Super Dragon Ball Heroes become Capsule Corp’s latest reimagined tech to give the Saiyans an edge? Either way, it creates a whole world of possibilities to infinitely explore.
The franchise just remastered Dragon Ball Super with Dragon Ball Super: Beerus, and a short story in Dragon Ball Daima in 2024. Those works are great, but further expansion on Super‘s timeline hasn’t happened in quite some time. Would Dragon Ball fans welcome more world building or re-introducing to the series? Let us know in the comments.
