Garlic Jr.

Garlic Jr. (ガーリック Gārikku Junia, lit. "Garlic Junior") is an alien whose father was in the running for the title of the God of Earth. He lost to Kami and tried to take it by force but was defeated and thrown into the Dead Zone. Garlic Jr. later comes to exact his revenge for this, firstly gaining immortality via the Dragon Balls (prior to Future Zamasu's debut in Dragon Ball Super, 16 years after Garlic Jr.'s debut, he held the distinction of being the only Dragon Ball villain to ever achieve this, canon or otherwise), then trying to kill Kami. He has to deal with Goku and Piccolo first and winds up falling to his own attack, The Dead Zone. He later comes back when a powerful star manages to free him and tries to take over the Earth with the Black Water Mist that turns anyone exposed to it into mindless raving vampire-like beings. Gohan, Piccolo, and Krillin are the only ones left not exposed to the mist and once again do battle with him, where he once more falls to his Dead Zone attack. This time with no way out.

Name: Garlic Jr.

Origin: Dragon Ball Z: Dead Zone

Gender: Male

Age: Unknown (At least thousands of years old)

Species: Makyan

Biography

Background

Garlic Jr. is the son and reincarnation of Garlic.

Dead Zone

Garlic Jr. is one of a handful of characters in the Dragon Ball series to be successfully granted eternal life by the Dragon Balls, thanks to his trio of lackeys Nicky, Ginger, and Sansho gathering them from around the globe. In the process, they kidnapped Gohan for the Four-Star Dragon Ball sewn onto his cap and hurt Chi-Chi, thus earning the ire of Goku.

While Gohan was being held captive, Garlic Jr. senses his power and decides to make Gohan his attendant. Delirious with joy after the granting of his wish of immortality, Garlic Jr. is then accosted by Goku and Kami and resolves to settle an old score with the latter. In the past, it was Kami who was chosen as the new successor for the throne of Guardian instead of his father, since the earlier Guardian had seen through Garlic's diabolical schemes. Garlic surmounted a rebellion against Kami's predecessor, only to be vanquished & sealed as a result. Now fearing nothing thanks to his newfound immortality, Garlic Jr. intends to return the favor.

While Garlic Jr. is preoccupied making good his grudge with Kami, Goku engages his minions. Not long after Krillin and Piccolo (who had survived an earlier attack by the villain's underlings) make their appearance, the three henchmen meet an early end.

Beset now by the combined might of Goku and Piccolo, Garlic Jr. goes from miniature to gigantic, shifting into a brutish second form able to handle both Goku and Piccolo at once. It is a back-and-forth confrontation before Goku and Piccolo take off their weights and land stronger blows on him. Livid, Garlic Jr. opens up the portal known as the Dead Zone, intending to suck his enemies into a void, which they could never return from. The power latent within Gohan explodes, and enraged, he overwhelms an awed Garlic Jr and knocks him into his own vortex to be trapped for all of eternity. Although he initially doesn't mind due to his newfound immortality, at the end of the movie, a withered Garlic Jr. can still be seen trapped within the Dead Zone's glass-like fragments.

Dragon Ball Z

Garlic Jr. Saga

Two years after Dead Zone, Garlic Jr. escapes imprisonment after the source of his power, the Makyo Star, approaches the Earth's orbit. Garlic Jr. gathers his team of demon henchmen, the Spice Boys. The Monarchs include Spice, Vinegar, Mustard, and Salt. While Kami is not on the lookout, Mr. Popo, while busy tending the Lookout, is attacked by Garlic Jr.'s Spice Boys. Attempting to flee on his Magic Carpet, the Spice Boys use their Energy Webbing to restrain him, allowing Garlic Jr. to cast the Sealed Light Beam spell to shrink and capture Mr. Popo in a glass jar. Upon his return, Kami receives similar treatment, though Garlic Jr. engages him in battle first, before the Spice Boys sneak up and surround and restrain the old Namekian, again using the Energy Webbing to allow Garlic Jr. to use a Sealed Light Beam to capture him. Garlic Jr. then schemes to take control of Earth's population by use of the Black Water Mist, which caused those who breathed it in to become mindless vampirish slaves under his rule. With only Gohan and Krillin left to fight for Earth, Garlic Jr. and his cronies have a decisive advantage, especially since Piccolo has presumably been turned into a slave of Garlic Jr. Another complicating matter was the Makyo Star; orbiting ever closer towards Earth, it served to amplify Garlic Jr. and his henchmen's already considerable power.

A fight ensues between Gohan, Krillin, the Spice Boys, and Piccolo which Garlic Jr. watches from a throne he materialized on the lookout. During the battle, Gohan obliterates Mustard and Salt with Masenko blasts, Piccolo begins to attack Gohan, and Krillin is bitten by Piccolo, taken over by the Black Water Mist himself. At one point, Spice suggests that perhaps Garlic Jr. would "Like the honor of finishing off the little ratbag yourself, my Lord", to which Garlic Jr. replies "Nah, have fun boys". However, in a change of heart, just as Piccolo lines up a strike with his claws to a limp and beaten Gohan, Garlic Jr. reaches out and stops Piccolo from dealing the death blow, commenting "Wait. I think I will finish him off after all". Piccolo was waiting for this opportunity and reaches into Garlic's robes and tosses Krillin the pair of jars containing Kami and Popo, revealing that he was immune to the Black Water Mist all along and that he pretended to bite Krillin to tell him to act as if he was possessed as well, so they could get in arm's reach of the bottles containing Kami and Mr. Popo.

With a twist of his thumbs, Krillin breaks the top of both jars and sets the Guardian and Mr. Popo free. At this point, Piccolo uses regeneration to heal the bite wounds in his neck and prepares to engage Garlic Jr. in combat. With the advantage and hostages lost, Garlic Jr. again converts to his second form. At the same time, Kami and Mr. Popo make their way into the inside of the lookout to use the Sacred Water to reverse the effects of the Black Water Mist. During the battle against Garlic Jr., Piccolo (who is linked to Kami) starts to lose strength as a result of the spirits of the former Guardians attacking Kami inside the lookout, and Garlic Jr. gains the upper-hand.

After Gohan releases a seismic two-sided blast which makes both Spice and Vinegar explode at the same time in midair, Garlic Jr., angry at his failure to make the people of Earth his permanent slaves, reopens the Dead Zone intending to trap everyone on Earth inside. Piccolo regains the ability to fight after the former Guardians stop their attack on Kami (and allow him to nullify the Black Water Mist's effect on Earth), and he and Krillin fly up to meet Garlic Jr. and distract him. Gohan then fires a powerful Masenko into the Makyo Star, destroying it and leaving an emaciated and powerless Garlic Jr. to fall prey to his Dead Zone once again, this time with no hope for return, doomed to spend an eternity in complete nothingness. Although Garlic Jr. witnessed Gohan's launching the attack at the Makyo Star, he was too dumbfounded at Gohan doing so to even attempt to intercept the attack.

Trivia

• The puns on the names of Garlic Jr. and those affiliated with him are all derivatives of spices.
• Garlic Jr.'s fangs make him look like a vampire, which is likely a play on the name "Garlic" (which, ironically, is a weakness for vampires).
  • Owing to the similarities, he was also responsible for turning most of the earth into Vampire-like demons (albeit indirectly via the Black Water Mist rather than by biting them).
• While many other villains have attempted to use the Dragon Balls to achieve immortality, Garlic Jr. is the first villain to achieve immortality, the second being Future Zamasu.
• In the English dub of "The Heavens Tremble", Garlic Jr. said that he had been imprisoned in the Dead Zone for ten years. However, Gohan (who was responsible for sealing him in the Dead Zone) was only four years old at the time and was six years old in the episode, though it could be explained by the time moving differently in the Dead Zone.
• In the English dub of the episode "Call for Restoration", Garlic Jr., who had just escaped the Dead Zone, refers to Piccolo as a Namekian. However, Piccolo (and Kami) were not aware of their heritage until after Garlic Jr. was trapped in the Dead Zone. How Garlic Jr. came to learn this fact while in the Dead Zone is not explained.
• In the English dub of the Garlic Jr. Saga, Garlic Jr. makes various comments referring to baseball. When Krillin's Kamehameha curves upward in front of him, Garlic Jr. says "What a curveball." When he beats Piccolo, Garlic Jr. remarks "It's the bottom of the ninth for you Piccolo, and here's the pitch. Strike three, you're outta there! It's the end of the game. You lose"
• Garlic Jr. looks very similar to Emperor Pilaf. Both are voiced by Chuck Huber in the FUNimation dub, Don Brown in the Ocean Group dub, as well as Shigeru Chiba in the Japanese dub (Shigeru only voiced Garlic Jr. in the anime, not the movie).
  • However, unlike Pilaf, Garlic Jr. actually succeeded in gaining the wish he desired, is more cunning and a more powerful fighter, and has a much darker and less comical personality than the Emperor.
• Shigeru Chiba, Garlic Jr.'s voice in his return filler arc, previously voiced his lackey Nicky in his debut film. Akira Kamiya was busy with other work by the time of the Garlic Jr. Saga, so Chiba, who was familiar with Kamiya's work already through Fist of the North Star and other projects, replaced him.
• Garlic Jr. is one of the only two villains who has had a saga and a movie after them, have fought and come back once, only to be defeated because they did not learn from their mistakes, the other being Frieza.
  • However they did so in a reverse manner as Garlic Jr. originated from a film and received a anime filler saga, while Frieza originated from the main series and later received a film, the story of which eventually became another main series saga, the Golden Frieza Saga.
• Garlic Jr.'s attack on The Lookout is given an indirect reference in the English dub of the Fusion Saga, where Piccolo upon being released from imprisonment via Gotenks at the Hyperbolic Time Chamber and discovers Super Buu's destruction of the Lookout says "the Lookout is destroyed... again."
• Garlic Jr. has some similarities to Piccolo, namely that he was reincarnated from another character and held a grudge against the person who doomed his father/past self (Goku regarding Piccolo, Kami regarding Garlic Jr.), and both even had a degree of immortality thanks to the Dragon Balls (Garlic Jr. directly gained complete immortality, while Piccolo inherited King Piccolo's Eternal Youth). A notable difference between the two is that Garlic Jr. remained a villain from start to finish, while Piccolo eventually became a good guy and even before his reforming had nevertheless possessed some redeemable characteristics.
  • He also bore some similarities to Uub, as he was the reincarnation of a major evil (Kid Buu, in Uub's case) as well as also being borne of a wish. The major differences are that Uub was the polar opposite of Kid Buu in overall morality while Garlic Jr. was evil just like his father/past self, and that Garlic Jr.'s birth was due to his father wishing to be reincarnated to get revenge on Kami, while Uub was created by a wish from Goku largely due to being impressed enough with Kid Buu's fighting prowess that he regretted having to kill him.