Lord Slug

Lord Slug
Vital statistics
Names	Slug, Slugg
Gender	Genderless
Race	Namekian
Occupation	Conqueror
Origin	Dragon Ball Z: Lord Slug (ドラゴンボールＺゼット　超スーパーサイヤ人じんだ孫そん悟ご空くう Doragon Bōru Zetto　Sūpā Saiya-jin da Son Gokū, lit. Dragon Ball Z: Super Saiyan Son Goku),(1991)
Alignment	Evil
Age	501 Years Old
Created By	Akira Toriyama, Takao Koyama
Height	{{{height}}}
Weight	{{{weight}}}

Lord Slug (スラッグ) is a Namekian, and the antagonist of the movie Dragon Ball Z: Lord Slug. It is explained that he is one of the Super Namekians and was sent to Planet Slug as a baby to escape the extinction that was about to ravage Namek. As he matured, the evil in his heart began to overwhelm his character thanks to a rare mutation unique to Namekians; this transformed him into a Super Namek. Since then, he had gathered an army and became a conqueror of planets.

Development

Like several Movie villains, Toriyama had a hand in his development. In particular, his design under even Toriyama's personal sketches often ended up being revised. In order to make his true species a surprise to viewers, in particular, Toriyama added in a special helmet as well as a body suit with gloves to avoid giving away evident Namekian traits.

Appearance

Lord Slug like most Namekians has a tall stature, green skin, black eyes, and two antennae. He has a large cut on his left eye and two ear plates over his ears. He wears a black, hooded cloak, along with an orange and brown scarf around his neck. Black shoulder blades, brown medallion with straps on it and yellow undercoat under it. In his old age, he possessed many wrinkles on his face and a less muscular stature. Upon regaining his youth his wrinkles became gone, and his muscular stature returned.

Personality

Lord Slug's personality is somewhat similar to King Piccolo from the original Dragon Ball series as both are Namekians who embrace darkness and are pure evil. However, while King Piccolo cared for his sons (especially in his old age), freeing convicted criminals due to being sympathetic to their plight of incarceration due to his own imprisonment, and even was willing to spare the lives of the Pilaf Gang for freeing him despite betraying them, Lord Slug, in contrast, has no problem killing a subordinate for a simple remark about his old age. It is also to be noted that Lord Slug was explicitly naturally evil, while King Piccolo was more the expelled evil from another Namekian. Lord Slug also was very impatient as he killed Gyoshu the scientist for saying he thought it could take 10 days to terrafreeze the Earth. However, like King Piccolo, Lord Slug desired the power he once possessed in his prime, thus causing him to seek eternal youth once he learned of the Earth's Dragon Balls, due to hating even the mere mention of him being old. Additionally, while King Piccolo sought global domination, Slug desired nothing less than to conquer the entire universe, though he does conquer planets in order to turn them into Battle Cruisers to travel the cosmos.

Biography

Background

Part of the main title screen for the film showcases what appear to be cave drawings of a giant Namekian, evidently Slug, as well as a creature with wings. It is unknown what race the smaller beings are, but they appear to be worshiping Slug.

There are two different and conflicting versions of Slug's origin. The original version states that Slug was sent off Namek as a baby to Planet Slug, much like the Nameless Namekian was sent to Earth, in order to save him from the cataclysms affecting his home planet. But he had a rare Namekian mutation from birth, one that made him pure evil; this made him a Super Namekian.

The Funimation dub states that Slug was born and lived on the original Namek sometime prior to the cataclysm. Slug, along with other Namekians, discovered the key to unlocking a higher consciousness within. They were known as Super Nameks, but they soon became intoxicated by their new power and began to misuse it, behaving much like the Saiyans. With the power of the Dragon Balls, the Namekians (most likely including Guru) used Porunga to banish the Super Nameks from their planet for good. Super Nameks became nomads, moving from planet to planet, taking what they wanted and moving on. King Kai theorized that Lord Slug was probably the last surviving member of these Super Nameks.

In any event, Slug formed an army of demon-like soldiers as his conquest of space continued. He used his troops to conquer planets, freezing them to make them a home for his soldiers. He would sometimes alter a planet by turning it into a giant spaceship and use it to move on to his next target.

Lord Slug

"Hahahaha! I'm young again! I feel incredible! The power! Idiots! Bow before your new master!" — Dragon Ball Z: Lord Slug

Slug is seen approaching Earth. He kills Zeeun with a Finger Beam for remarking on his old age and wants to have Earth converted into his new Planet Cruiser, killing Gyoshu in the process when his answer of 10 days to terra-freeze Earth did not satisfy him. As his soldiers start to fall to Gohan in an attempt to do this, Slug leaves his spaceship and takes the Four-Star Ball after noticing it on Gohan's hat. After reading Bulma's mind on how to obtain the other ones, he sends his Generals to bring him the remaining Earth Dragon Balls and then wishes for eternal youth. Slug's scientist then starts Terra-freezing the planet. His forces are met with resistance from Gohan, Piccolo, Krillin & Goku; after his henchmen are killed, Slug confronts Goku. After swatting away Krillin, Slug proceeds to dominate Goku. But, Goku transforms into the Pseudo Super Saiyan form for the first time and beats Slug down, breaking his arm.

"It feels good to be young." — Slug while fighting Goku

Goku reverts to his normal form after Slug rips off his damaged arm. It regenerates, and after removing his helmet, he reveals himself to be a Namekian. Slug then starts to grow in size, transforming into a Great Namekian, and once again dominates Goku. Piccolo, Gohan , and Krillin get back up and try to fight Slug. Piccolo rips off his ears and has Gohan whistle, causing Slug to double over in pain; the wavelength of Gohan's whistling makes it sound terrible to Namekians. Piccolo takes this opportunity to give Goku his energy. After regaining consciousness from Piccolo's energy, Goku then fights Slug again. Using Kaio-ken, Goku penetrates Slug with a punch, leaving a gaping hole through his chest and send him falling towards his ship, crushing both it and his remaining crew with his colossal frame. Goku then sets out to destroy the satellite that causes the terra-freezing. However, Slug is still alive and uses his dying strength to pursue Goku in an attempt to finish him off. Fortunately, Goku manages to reach out of the thick clouds and uses the sun's energy to create a Spirit Bomb which he uses to knock Slug straight towards his terra-freezing satellite, destroying it and Slug.

Plan to Eradicate the Saiyans

Slug is revived as a Ghost Warrior alongside Turles, Frieza, and Cooler. Slug declares to Vegeta that he will pay for his past sins, and offers Piccolo a chance to leave the battlefield alive as they are only after the Saiyans. In the original version, Slug could not die unless he was killed the same way he was before, which resulted in Gohan whistling once again, which cripples Slug with pain and Piccolo finishes him off with a large energy blast. In the remake, he was impossible to kill unless the Destron Gas machine was destroyed.

Trivia

• In the original Japanese version of Dragon Ball Z: Lord Slug, Lord Slug does not tell people that he is a Namekian. However, he does it in Plan to Eradicate the Saiyans.
• Lord Slug is one of the few Namekians seen eating solid food (he eats a handful of some sort of pills).
• Lord Slug has a number of similarities with King Piccolo. Both are pure evil Namekians, used the Dragon Balls to wish for their youth to be restored, and both have four top henchmen (Angila, Wings, Medamatcha, and Commander Zeeun for Slug; and Piano, Tambourine, Cymbal, and Drum for King Piccolo). Also, Goku uses his Penetrate! maneuver to rip a hole through both of them. However, a difference is that King Piccolo has red blood while Slug's is purple (it should be noted that King Piccolo having red blood may simply be a mistake as his status as a Namekian was not revealed until Dragon Ball Z) and Lord Slug is far more powerful than King Piccolo. Another difference is that Lord Slug was naturally pure evil by birth, while King Piccolo's status as pure evil was the result of him being the expelled evil from the Nameless Namekian (who himself only developed evil tendencies due to overexposure to the evil within humans).
• Slug dies in a similar manner to Turles in the previous movie, Dragon Ball Z: The Tree of Might. Both are hit with a Spirit Bomb from Goku, knocking them into the device they used to "modify" the Earth, destroying both villain and device and returning Earth to normal. Both villains also lead their own army of henchmen and seek to rule the universe.
• Both Slug and Turles can be considered dark reflections of both Piccolo and Goku respectively. Slug and Turles are even allies in Plan to Eradicate the Saiyans and Xenoverse 2, though in Xenoverse 2 while they occasionally work together, Slug and Turles are actually competitors/rivals who simply work together out of a shared goal (revenge on Goku), which is similar to the reason Piccolo and Goku team-up in both the Dead Zone and Raditz Saga in order to defeat a shared enemy (Garlic Jr. & Raditz respectively). Though Turles and Slug share the same evil nature, hatred for Goku, even work well together as a team, both seek to rule the universe and refuse to bow down to each other.
• In Xenoverse 2, it is implied that Lord Slug realized his mistake of wishing only for Eternal Youth instead of complete immortality as he wishes to use the Namekian Dragon Balls to obtain immortality.
  • Lord Slug is one of the few people who might have actually been able to use the Namekian Dragon Balls to wish for eternal life as being a Namekian himself he may be capable of speaking the Namekian language as Porunga only grants wishes spoken in Namekian (it is likely Turles was unaware of this much like Frieza, though this would be less of a problem for Slug as he long as he knew how to speak his people's native tongue). However, it should be noted that in the original Japanese, Lord Slug was sent off the planet as a baby to Planet Slug and is never heard speaking Namekian (however it is still possible he may know the language as Kami and Piccolo did even before they learned of their heritage).
• In the Budokai Tenkaichi 2 demo, he is given Piccolo's voice for all his forms.
• In Budokai Tenkaichi 3, Lord Slug and Turles have the same pose for their character select artwork.
• In the Dragon Ball Heroes trailers and the remake of Plan to Eradicate the Saiyans, Slug is a darker shade of green.
• Unlike other movie villains in remastered versions of the Funimation releases of the pre-Dragon Ball Super animation style films, Slug's voice wasn't altered.