Article by Sean Wilkinson,
a.k.a. the Anime Super Saiyan
You may know from my early anime-focused posts that I watched and covered a lot of harem series, and you might also know that I like a good shonen series from time to time, with one of my favorites (and one of the most popular) being Dragon Ball, including its movies and various continuation series like Z, GT, and Super. At some point in the recent past, it occurred to me that there is something the Dragon Ball franchise and harem anime have in common, and I jokingly thought about what it would be like to have a harem anime where all of the various Saiyan transformations were different characters.
But because there are multiple transformations and I need to have some consistency of format, let's establish some rules:
First, I'm breaking things up by hair color, specifically. Any hairstyles, colored highlights, particle effects, or energy auras that differentiate forms with the same hair color will not be considered here. But I will give the most common or "canonical" form with that hair color as an example.
Second, I will give a brief explanation of each form's origin in Dragon Ball, including the first character to be seen in that form.
Third, I will explain the harem tropes associated with each hair color
Last will be the comparative analysis section, where I consider whether a Dragon Ball character (or characters) with that hair color or access to that form has a personality that matches the hair color's associated harem trope. To make things fun and as varied as possible, and to avoid Japravity tropes like incest, I am not limiting myself to only Saiyan characters, which means that, even if a form is Saiyan exclusive, hair color and its associated personality tropes will take priority, and I may select a human, deity, or alien to fill the role.
Black (Base): In their natural state, or base form, all Saiyans have black hair. They are a humanoid, alien species with prehensile, monkey-like tails who love to fight and seek out increasingly strong opponents, often to the detriment of themselves and those around them (such that a deity ordered a galactic dictator to commit genocide against them), and they increase in strength upon surviving and recovering from near-fatal injuries. They are violent by nature, but there are exceptions to this rule, such as the Dragon Ball franchise's main character, Goku (born Kakarot). Goku has the battle lust and biological advantages of a typical Saiyan, but due to a head injury he suffered as a child and his hermit-like upbringing on Earth, he is ignorant, clumsy, and socially awkward, but gains allies easily through affecting his opponents with his fighting spirit, naivete, and to-a-fault kindness. In harem anime, black hair is most often identified with the protagonist, who is usually male, builds his harem through random acts of kindness, is oblivious to their romantic advances, and almost cosmically imbued with clumsiness and spatial ignorance as a means of instigating comedic moments. Depending on the other genres of a given harem anime, the black-haired protagonist may also be secretly overpowered. So Goku checks all the boxes for being the male lead in our hypothetical Dragon Ball harem series. There are also harem series where a pseudo-relative dynamic plays a part, and the step-sibling may also have black hair, but let's not go there any further than I already have by mentioning it.
Brown (Oozaru): The Oozaru (Great Ape) form is the first Saiyan transformation ever seen in Dragon Ball, and was inspired by classic monsters like King Kong, Godzilla, and the Wolfman. If a Saiyan has their tail and looks at the full moon, they transform into giant, laser-breathing apes with brown fur. It is revealed near the end of the first arc in the original Dragon Ball that Goku accidentally crushed his adoptive grandfather to death during one of his transformations, prior to the start of the series. The transformation can also be triggered by projections of the moon, as well as released lunar energy. Constant exposure to lunar energy can also evolve a Saiyan beyond the need for the Oozaru form. The transformation can be cancelled by cutting off a Saiyan's tail or (do not try this in reality if you like Earth) blowing up the moon. Saiyans are generally unable to control themselves while in Oozaru form, but royalty and military elites can undergo training to maintain their consciousness. According to Vegeta, the "Legendary Super Saiyan" could only barely contain his Super Saiyan transformation while in the Oozaru state. This would be an inspiration for the "Golden Oozaru" and "Super Saiyan 4" transformations later on in Dragon Ball GT. Brown haired love interests in harem anime have been known to get used as Japravity fodder (the child-like, cute one), bur in more wholesome series, they are badass fighters who display a fierce but healthy loyalty to the protagonist, sometimes engaging in tsundere (reflexive, comedic violence to hide their romantic feelings) behavior. Modern fantasy harem series have been known to combine the "loyal, badass fighter tsundere" and "the young, cute one" tropes into one by making them an animal-girl of some kind. Perfect for the Oozaru, right? But who do we pick? Gohan (Goku's son) is too Japraved of a choice, as is doing a Goku-on-Goku match so early, and I'm probably going to have a lot of Vegetas in this article, too. So although she doesn't have brown hair (with the possible exception of her bloodline and some early coloring mistakes in the anime?), the Dragon Ball character that best fits the tropes of this slot is Chi-Chi. Her father is a brown-haired ox-man, she was originally designed as a child in bikini armor, she grew up to be a strong fighter with a fiery temper (until the author started using the latter quality to make angry housewife jokes), and is fiercely protective of her family.
Yellow (Super Saiyan 1-3 and Graded forms): As an American child and teen of the 90s and early 2000s, I have some personal, emotional history with the Super Saiyan form. My first taste of anime (when I knew that was what it was called) was Sailor Moon on Cartoon Network's Toonami block. Then came Inuyasha and stuff like Tenchi Muyo (which I'm going to have to figure out the order of and watch it with more mature eyes, because it didn't catch my attention at that age). But nothing could have prepared me for the faster-than-light combat and flashy energy attacks of Dragon Ball Z. I had no concept of who the characters were before this part of the story, but it did a good job of setting up the character dynamics for novices like me, shocked me by killing off the main character after what I than believed was his first fight, and built up his journey through the afterlife, challenging but hilariously subversive training, and heroic, last-minute save before blowing my high-schooler's mind with what most of the fandom considers to be the best and most dynamic fight in the series. For the longest time (buoyed by the early DBZ movies that hyped the techniques), Kaio-ken (which my Street Fighter knowledge and the dub's mispronunciation made me think was called "K.O. Ken," or "knockout fist") and the Spirit Bomb were the coolest things that the show's writer would ever or could ever come up with. But in my high school art class, I began hearing rumblings of something else: a transformation with shocked-up, yellow hair that any Saiyan could do. Some of my classmates who managed to get their hands on fan-subtitled bootleg VHS tapes were even name-dropping that there was a Super Saiyan 2! No, even further beyond that! There was a Super Saiyan 3!? Meanwhile, my well-raised, poor, ignorant ass was still slogging through loop after loop of the Raditz fight, Snake Way, King Kai's training, the slaughter of the human fighters, the amazing Vegeta fight and its ups and downs, Fake Namek, the young rebel army, Goku's gravity training in space, the multi-faceted hunt for the Namekian Dragon Balls, Bulma and Chi-Chi being selfish, judgmental, shrieking hags, those five, weird, dancing villains who scared Vegeta despite being goofy as hell outside of battle (kind of like Goku?). But just like on Earth, Goku arrives at the last moment, more powerful than ever, one-shots the brute of the team, and makes passive sport of the two fastest aliens while Vegeta watches, his mouth agape. An Oozaru silhouette with a yellow outline is imposed in the background as Vegeta exposits about a certain legend. An ancient Saiyan so powerful that his legendary form proved too much for his body to sustain. Finally, Vegeta utters the two words that I had been longing to hear for months: "Super Saiyan." The narrator's epic voice ponders the implications of Vegeta's musings, and I am left grinning with just as epic anticipation of what the next week's episode will bring...only to be greeted seven near-sleepless nights later with Raditz killing a redneck farmer for the umpteen-gajizlionth time and repressing the urge to chuck my fifty-plus-pound backpack through the television screen. I then took a months-long break from Dragon Ball Z, only checking in occasionally to see which rerun I would not be watching that week. Eventually, things changed. The voice cast changed. The show was suddenly more graphic with its gore than I remembered. And most importantly, Toonami started airing new episodes! To my disappointment, it would still be a long time before anyone went Super Saiyan, but when it did, my faith in Dragon Ball Z was renewed. The moment was perfect. Goku had been taking on Freiza (the galactic dictator I mentioned in the "Base" analysis above) strategically, using the tactical differences between the two of them against his opponent, applying his classic techniques in ways I had never seen before, taking his Kaio-ken multiplier to twenty times, and gathering a Spirit Bomb so large that it put the movie finales to shame. But just when everyone thought the technique had finished off the series' strongest villain at the time, and killed a villain for the first time in the actual series, Freiza emerged from the rubble with barely a scuff mark on him and killed Goku's childhood best friend in the most shocking and gruesome way possible. The weather changed, Goku started shaking and sparking, he screamed in despair loud enough to be heard across the alien world, and his hair turned yellow. Yay! Finally! Super Saiyan! But oh, yeah; Krillin died screaming and exploding.... Much later, in a different arc, we would learn that Super Saiyan wasn't the singular legend that Vegeta thought it was, as anyone with Saiyan blood could do it, and strangely, the less purely Saiyan a character was, the easier it would be for them to do it. Furthermore, just like the rumors said, there would also be Super Saiyan 2 and 3, as well as bulky, graded forms of the original that sacrificed speed for power. As the main character in Dragon Ball, Goku was the first to achieve the original Super Saiyan (as would be the case for most power-ups and transformations in Dragon Ball Z and later series), with a certain time traveler and Vegeta following in the next arc of the story. Goku's son, Gohan, would be the first to reach Super Saiyan 2, and Goku would reclaim the spotlight in the arc after that with Super Saiyan 3. All of these first three levels of Super Saiyan share the yellow hair, with Two being spikier and accented with lightning effects, and Three having a more primal, long-haired appearance, but being the least energy-efficient such that a comic-relief Fusion character would be the only other user. In harem anime, yellow, golden, or blonde hair is usually assigned to a character trope combination of the himedere, or princess love interest, and tsundere, or love-hate interest. They often act superior and aristocratic, and react violently towards the male lead to overcompensate for their repressed romantic feelings. So Goku x Vegeta shippers rejoice! Vegeta is excessively proud of his heritage and status as the Prince of his race, and began as an antagonist to Goku and his friends. Aside from the human characters, Vegeta is Goku's longest lasting rival in Dragon Ball, and has only recently stopped chasing him in terms of power and transformations to respect his low-class rival's skills (and plot armor) and follow his own path.
Green (Legendary/Berserker Super Saiyan): The term, "Legendary Super Saiyan," was commonly bandied about by Vegeta, in reference to the original Super Saiyan who went insane and killed many of his own people before the power overload destroyed his body. It was later used in the non-canon movie, Broly: The Legendary Super Saiyan. Though this Broly shares the title and many of the characteristics of the fabled "first Super Saiyan" (uncontrollable rage and a transformed body that can't contain his power), it is made clear that, not only can the film not fit smoothly into the show's timeline, but Broly is not the same character as the one Vegeta described. Plus, his means of achieving the form (which doubles or triples the user's muscle mass and has a spky halo of greenish-yellow hair) is widely considered to be one of the stupidest plot points in history (Goku's Saiyan birth name triggers him because Kakarot cried constantly in the incubator next to him when they were babies). More recently, there have been two "canon" characters to achieve the form: Kale, a timid Saiyan from an alternate Universe with a "notice me, senpai" girl crush on her best friend (Kale goes berserk when Goku starts to get an upper hand over Caulifla during a multiversal tournament, but is able to control it quickly with that old anime standby, the power of friendship), and a canonized retconning of Broly, who is handled with more dignity this time around, despite being more directly used as a revenge pawn by his father and a revived Freiza, and turns into a green-haired variant of Super Saiyan when Freiza murders Broly's father and blames Goku for it. Several iterations of the form later into the final battle, Broly begins to resemble his more muscular, original "Legendary" form, as he is a genetic anomaly among Saiyans, being able to leapfrog all established power levels on raw emotion alone and exploit the Saiyan battle damage boost on a micro scale in real time as he fights. In classic harem anime, green haired love interests typically exhibited two personality types that I could find: the shy, awkward, creative nerd, and the yandere, who are the epitome of the "it's always the quiet ones" cliche with the shyness, covetousness, and repressed homicidal tendencies turned to eleven and waiting to snap. Kale, and both versions of Broly, exhibit awkwardness and shyness in their base forms, and become dangerously, uncontrollably violent when they transform into their green-haired forms. But given her jealousy, protectiveness, and need for approval from her chosen senpai, Kale fits the bill most closely for the green-haired love interest archetype.
Red (God): In the penultimate film to receive Dragon Ball Z branding, Battle Of Gods (and its anime adaptation) saw a new deity character, Beerus, be awoken by a prophetic dream of something called the Super Saiyan God (which should have been called "Saiyan God" in light of the form that would succeed it in the next movie). After some near-Earth-ending shenanigans involving junk food and spousal abuse, plus Beerus almost making a mystical, wish-granting dragon wet itself in fear, our heroes learn of a ritual among six "pure-hearted" Saiyans that allows them to infuse their Super Saiyan life force into one (that one, of course, being Goku because main character), triggering the Super Saiyan God transformation. Goku fights Beerus while in this form, eventually falling out of the transformation and into regular Super Saiyan, but retaining the "God Ki" that the ritual had imbued him with, and a nearly equal level of power. While in Super Saiyan God, the user has a leaner body type, pixelated, fiery aura, and, importantly for this article, red hair. In harem anime (especially harem series of the past decade) and anime with romantic subplots, the red-haired love interest is usually the first girl that the protagonist meets, and is the best-suited choice for them to end up with when the series is over. They get the most screentime with the protagonist and are the most fleshed-out character (this is often including the blank slate, self-insert protagonist, sadly). Any Saiyan can reach this form, in theory, so long as they meet the "pure-hearted" criteria, but aside from Goku, we have only ever seen one character canonically use it, and that is Vegeta in Dragon Ball Super: Broly. So now, we have two Vegeta-based love interests for our Base-boy, Goku. Yay?
Blue (Blue, Perfected, Evolution): In Japan, the official marketing name for this form continues to be "Super Saiyan God Super Saiyan" (see what I meant about how "Saiyan God" would have been better for the red-haired form?), and the only good thing I can say about this tongue-bitten mouthful of a name is that it explains what the form is. It's taking a Saiyan in the Super Saiyan God state, or a lower form with God Ki accessed instead of mortal Ki, and going Super Saiyan on top of that. It's not a step on the traditional Super Saiyan ladder, but a branch based on a different form of Ki. So although we don't see it in the show or manga because of the rush to even higher forms, we learn through a villain in the Super Dragon Ball Heroes promotional anime that it's possible to have a Two and a Three level for what has been simplified to "Super Saiyan Blue." To illustrate this, while the red-haired God form looks like Base with a leaner body type and different hair color, Super Saiyan Blue has a more standard physique, but with a Super Saiyan hairstyle in the eponymous color. Super Saiyan God Super Saiyan, or Super Saiyan Blue, first appeared in the movie, Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection F, as an out-of nowhere transformation to compete with the newly revived and powered-up Freiza, and though head canon and previous knowledge of how Dragon Ball works indicate that Goku probably got the form before Vegeta, Blue is the first form that both of them are given at the same time (Vegeta getting God is never shown, but we know he can do it). Vegeta even gets the win on Freiza, putting him over Goku for an instant before dirty tricks by the villains (and bad, status quo writing) force a cosmic redo. The anime adaptation goes a little more into their training towards Blue, but not much. There are also two higher versions of Blue that appear in the manga and anime, respectively. The manga sees Goku use a form called "Perfected Blue," which doesn't look much different from Blue in the black-and-white medium, but uses energy more efficiently (mirroring Super Saiyan Grade 4, or Mastered Super Saiyan--Graded Super Saiyan forms are completely different from numbered forms). In the anime, Vegeta begins his own path to surpassing Goku--rather than chasing him--with Blue Evolution, a short-lived form that mimics the appearance of Super Saiyan Grade 2 but with blue hair and modern particle effects. But we're not going with yet another Vegeta ship this time because hair color is what's important, picking Vegeta again is boring, and there are other blue-haired characters in Dragon Ball. In harem anime, blue-haired characters often get short shrifted by the blondes and red-heads because they are typically introduced as the main character's friend, with a long-established history of looking out for his best interests and being a much healthier kind of protective than the average yandere would be. Thus, they are stuck in the friend zone for most of the series until their interactions with the rest of the harem girls make them realize that, "huh, maybe my concern, interest, and protective nature amount to romantic feelings that I didn't know I had, but now, it's too late!" Furthermore, the blue-haired one is also a tech genius on occasion. So guess what? I'm picking Bulma for this one. True, if we're sticking with Dragon Ball power sets in this hypothetical Hair-em Ball Z series, a non-combatant human character like Bulma has no chance competing with Saiyans, Angels, and gods, but (depending on the medium), Bulma has blue hair, she's a tech genius, and despite her early desire to use the Dragon Balls to wish for a boyfriend, she has stayed a long-time friend to Goku throughout the series. Had she not developed an early affection for Yamcha, and had Chi-Chi not been betrothed to an ignorant Goku at about the same time, Bulma might have declared her well-developed feelings for Goku at the final tournament of the original Dragon Ball, like one of her lines at the event suggested. Plus, her more recent relationship with Vegeta (now a father of two) in the second half of Z and into the Super era is potential fodder for a reverse-harem spin-off.
Pink (Super Saiyan Rose'): Future Trunks (Vegeta and Bulma's son from a dystopian timeline, and the second Super Saiyan to appear in Dragon Ball Z) makes a return in Dragon Ball Super during the "Goku Black Arc," a storyline in which a god-in-training (who is also a budding deity supremacist) uses a Dragon Ball wish to take over Goku's body, kill Goku's family, and team up with an alternate timeline version of himself to eradicate all mortal life in reality. In the manga version of events, the Kai-possessed Goku (Goku Black) can go Super Saiyan, But in both the manga and anime, when Goku Black goes through the Super Saiyan Blue process, his natural godly state creates a pink-haired variant of the form that he calls Super Saiyan Rose'. It is equivalent to Blue in terms of power and potential, but the Kai's proficiency with energy forging (blades, sickles, etc.) make him more than just a dark mirror of Goku. In harem anime, the pink-haired love interest is most infamously portrayed as a combination of the himedere and yandere tropes as explained in the Super Saiyan and Legendary analyses above, but with the driving qualities being more god complex than aristocratic air, and more distant and manipulative than possessive, seeing the male protagonist as a toy to play with and/or break at their whim. They also tend to fetishize bladed weaponry, which makes Goku Black (a.k.a. Zamasu) the perfect fit (and only candidate) to fill this spot in the harem lineup. Be afraid. Be very afraid. But not as afraid as you should be of the next section.
White/Silver (Ultra Instinct): There have been many fan-edited and head-canon-based clips on YouTube that claim "early indicator of Ultra Instinct!", but the first inklings of it didn't actually come up until Goku and Vegeta began training under Beerus' Angel attendant, Whis (yes, the GODs and Angels are all named after alcoholic beverages), who is trying to get the pair to improve their reaction time by fighting in a state of thought-free reflex. Later on, there is an episode where Goku is potentially attuning himself to this way of self-defense when he hires an assassin (whom he previously fought in a lower stake tournament than what the anime would--for now--end with) against himself. In this episode, not only is Goku seen trying to react to the assassin's attacks with his eyes closed, the assassin succeeds in killing him...except that Goku sneakily fired an energy blast into the air before he died, which fell back to him and defibrillated his heart. Cut to the Tournament of Power (which is less of a tournament and more of a twelve-Universe, 120-member battle royale contest), and Goku is once more about to defeat the "villain" of the arc with a gigantic Spirit Bomb. But unlike the Dragon Ball Z movies, Goku's track record with the technique stands at one-in-four (two-in-five, if you count Dragon Ball GT, but I don't because it's more closely tied with the movies than the series) being successful. Not only is Jiren (a bulky, E.T,-inspired alien from another Universe who serves as a measuring post and difficulty spike rather than a villain--we have two versions of Freiza in the ToP to fill that role) able to survive the attack, he pushes it back onto Goku. There's some nonsense in the dialogue about the Spirit Bomb creating a singularity that swallows Goku, but I like to connect and compare it to the aforementioned energy blast that Goku used to revive himself after the assassin killed him, and say that Goku absorbed the Spirit Bomb energy into his body (similar to what happened with one of the old Z movies' treatment of Super Saiyan, which could have been a behind-the-scenes inspiration for the sequence in Super's Tournament of Power arc, seeing as how the writers leaned hard into nostalgia bait moments there). The absorbed Spirit Bomb, or singularity, or whatever you choose to believe, ignited a new form for Goku, termed "Ultra Instinct Sign" or "Ultra Instinct Omen" depending on the translation, which is Goku with his usual, black hairstyle, but with a silvery highlight to it and a white-silver-blue aura with reverse-drip particle effects. But according to the rules I set for myself at the beginning, this does not count, so the subsequent form is what counts. Much like Kale's sudden control of her Berserk state, the later upgrade from Sign/Omen to what Beerus calls "Mastered Ultra Instinct," and what series originator Akira Toriyama and DB Super mangaka Toyotaro (formerly "Toyble," the mind behind the fan manga, Dragon Ball AF) walked back to just being called "Ultra Instinct" after they hit a wall in the character progression department, just kind of happens because Funimation and Toei Animation said the series' scope creep was getting out of control and they put a rush order on the Tournament's finale. This next level of Ultra Instinct retains the aura and particle effects of Sign/Omen and has a fuller hairstyle that is somewhere between Base and Super Saiyan, but is silver-white in color (oddly enough, this is similar to the Angels' natural hair color). Like Kaio-Ken (which I did not analyze because it violates the no-highlights rule), the Ultra Instinct skill tree is a technique that is better suited to Saiyan physiology than to humans', but is not a Saiyan-exclusive form. In the manga, Goku's childhood sensei briefly uses a version of it. In a later arc of the Super manga, we also learn that Angels are naturally in an Ultra Instinct state at all times, which is interesting enough to consider that it may never be addressed in the actual medium ever again, but the important thing for this article is the hair color. In harem anime of the recent past (particularly of the "only male student at an all-girls' combat school" variety), love interests with white or silver hair almost always fall into the "forgotten, secret childhood friend" category, and will, without fail, disguise themselves as the opposite sex to foil gender-divided housing and be closer to the main character. They also often remember the protagonist having made a romantic promise to them in childhood, and spend the series trying in vain to get him to remember it, and/or bluntly sneaking marriage talk into every conversation. No Dragon Ball characters really fit the harem personality trope, but for the sake of uniqueness and not relying on Rule 43 and self-cest as heavily as I have so far, I'm going to choose the female Angel, Marcarita. She and her GOD counterpart were designed as direct homages to DC Comics' Harley Quinn and the Joker, respectively, so while Marcarita doesn't canonically have any feelings towards Goku (Angels are pretty much neutral on mortal emotions in general), nor does she fully fit the harem trope associated with her hair color, her Harley Quinn inspirations can fill in the gaps somewhat in that regard. Also, just imagine a harem girl who's deceitful, matrimonially hyper-focused, and can effortlessly and instantly dodge anything. Plus she's a Dragon Ball Angel with a limitless, undefined power set that borders on reality-warping magic. Terrifying.
Purple (Ultra Ego): Ultra Ego is a Vegeta-exclusive form thus far, and derives from him learning Destroyer techniques from Beerus. It has the bulk of Blue Evolution, the primal brow of Super Saiyan 3, and purple hair, and its main gimmick is similar to that of Broly, getting stronger as he takes damage in the midst of a fight. Sorry if this section was a bit thin, but that's all we really know about the form so far. There are variations in other Universes, such as Toppo's destroyer form, that he uses to make his body untouchable and rapid-fire Destruction bullets from his fingers. But he's bald, his mustache doesn't turn purple, and his use of energy is different, so the form is different. In harem anime, the purple-haired love interest is a sadodere, which, if you know where the "sado-" part comes from, you know what that means. They're domineering, manipulative, and enjoy inflicting pain on the protagonist, but they differ from the above yandere variations in that their tendencies are more driven by curiosity and sensuality than hate or jealousy. In his early days, Vegeta did have a sadistic streak to him, and Ultra Ego is his exclusive form for now, and I can't think of any other purple-haired Dragon Ball characters who would fit the sadodere trope, so as much as I'd like to avoid a Goku x Vegeta-heavy lineup, Ultra Ego Vegeta will have to round out the cast.
So what did you all think? Was I accurate with my Dragon Ball lore? Were there any harem archetypes I missed or got wrong? And most importantly, did you enjoy this? Like and comment below with your thoughts, and Stay Tuned for me to decide what I should do next. I have ideas for a Christmas special down the road, but nothing in mind for next week's Anime Spotlight or any Ticket Stubs content yet.
Animeister,
Out/
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