I intend to provide an alternative theory that proves Bulma is the real, ultimate, villain in the Dragonball universe. I will offer the evidence as it stands, in chronological order, that suggests Bulma could have not only been a young genius, but also a master manipulator and a possible split personality psychopath.
Let’s just start with what we do know. We first meet a 15 year old Bulma merely seconds into the beginning of the story. Upon running into Goku, she tries to shoot him and take his dragonball. To be fair, we know in the backstory that she found her first dragon ball in the basement of the capsule corporation and after inventing the dragon radar, another before meeting Goku. We can assume she faced some kind of hostility on her way to and from that second ball, so it’s safe to say she may have been overly defensive when encountering Goku.
However, almost immediately after identifying Goku as not being a threat, she attempts to manipulate him into helping her fight for the balls. She even suggests that she might take the dragon balls once he’s helped her gather them all. Also, she shows that she’s not afraid to use her own sexuality when the opportunity appears beneficial. First, she tried it on Goku, later on Master Roshi and even against General Blue. Time and time again, she uses tactics such as this.
Let’s not forget she also tricked Oolong into thinking he took a vitamin but it was actually a reactionary capsule that causes him extreme diarrhea when she says the word ‘piggy’. She effectively made him her slave from this point forward. With this same cunning, sly prerogative, she was even able to kill two of Frieza’s soldiers later.
After forging an alliance with Yamcha and Puar, the group saw Goku turn into his giant ape form and destroy Pilaf’s palace. Bulma realized at this point that Goku was too unstable to keep as a close bodyguard forever. By then, she took the fact that Yamcha was putty in her hands and adopted him as a boyfriend/bodyguard. At the time, this was her closest ally that had a chance of standing up against Goku, should the opportunity arise, to take him out and seize the dragon balls at a further point in time.
Now that we’ve established Bulma’s intelligence, cunning, sexual manipulation and secret plotting, let’s go further into the realm of speculation. After the Pilaf fiasco, the dragon balls scattered across the earth and wouldn’t be revived again for an entire year. Bulma takes Yamcha and the others to her place in West City, while Goku went on to train with Master Roshi and Krillin for the World Martial Arts tournament. Bulma saw this as an opportunity as well.
She convinced Yamcha that he too should train to compete in the tournament. Knowing that it would be the most sensible way for Goku to be taken out of the picture, if not through death than at least permanent injury. This would leave the chance for her to seek out the dragonballs again with Yamcha’s help, undeterred. Although she said she wasn’t interested in searching for the dragon balls again, this was merely a ploy to distract Goku and the others. In reality, Bulma was planning something much more sinister.
During the year of training before the tournament Bulma made herself known to the high level ranks of the Red Ribbon Army. Namely, Commander Red, Advisor Black and General White. She did so under the pseudonym ‘Dr. Gero’. She needed the army for its resources and manpower to find the dragonballs. She also realized that should her manipulation of Yamcha fail to defeat Goku she would need an army to succeed.
Let’s take a look at the evidence suggesting this. Before parting ways, Bulma gave Goku the dragon radar. This was a failsafe in case Yamcha was unable to debilitate Goku in the future. That way he could find some or most of the dragonballs and the army could get the rest, then attempt to take his from him. Bulma is also constantly telling Goku that the army is dangerous and that he should avoid them. When he refuses to heed the warnings, she decides to go with him so she can watch things closer. Unfortunately, General Blue being the maverick he was, Commander Red felt it best he not know of their plans. So when Bulma encountered him, she was forced to attempt her manipulation on him. Also worthy of note, Bulma was going to leave Goku in the collapsing pirate base before Krillin convinced her to wait.
Also, when Goku was fighting Mercenary Tao, Bulma was developing a spy plane drone that could follow Goku wherever he was. We see a smaller, more advanced version of this in the future. Trunks showed the Z fighters that Dr. Gero’s surveillance robots had been tracking their every move on earth since the fall of the Red Ribbon Army.
Even more interesting, notice how on the ride toward Red Ribbon Headquarters, Bulma is constantly looking off to the right side of the plane and rarely at the others. She almost seems distracted. Up until this point, Goku had defeated every major officer in the army presented to us and their entire Corps. Colonel Silver, General White, General Blue, Captain Yellow, Advisor Black and Commander Red himself...but not Colonel Violet. We know Colonel Violet retrieved the sixth dragonball and that she had raided the army’s vaults before deserting the base. Interestingly enough, Violet was only able to retrieve the dragon ball once the army stopped jamming the radar signal.
I believe that Bulma built the radar for the army but made it less sophisticated than her hand held model, that way she could limit the army’s movements with it. She could then play Goku/Yamcha and the army off of each other if need be. When the army decided they should start jamming the signal to stop Goku, Bulma immediately went to work on making a new radar capable of bypassing the jam. Colonel Violet was Bulma’s inside person within the army, ready to act upon her request. When it became apparent the army was going to be defeated, Bulma ordered her to clear the vaults and leave to later meet at a rendezvous point. She needed the army’s funding in order to further her Android program. Once Violet was in the air, Bulma had her fly toward the group’s plane in order to slow them down so that they would not arrive at headquarters too soon. This is why Bulma is looking down and to the right the entire trip. She was sending coordinates to Violet to confuse Yamcha’s flight pattern.
After the army’s demise, Bulma was forced to concede victory for the time being. So she let Goku continue on his quest to Fortuneteller Baba’s. Besides, the seventh ball was missing from the radar’s reach and she needed them to use Baba to find it anyway. She would allow them to use their own wish this time and plan to reconvene to get the balls at a later point. The arrival of Piccolo and later Raditz, were unforeseen circumstances preventing her from succeeding until far into the future.
Before moving forward, I want to address the possibility of Bulma’s split personality psychosis. Besides the obvious mood swings, erratic behavior, occasional selfishness and manipulative nature, Bulma displays other traits indicative of split personality. For instance, notice how Launch’s alter ego didn’t start becoming tame until Bulma began coming around her. Although Launch’s condition is more mystical in nature, it appears Bulma is attracted and sympathetic to her. We even see her at one point intentionally making Launch sneeze in order to bring the other half up to speed on what had been going on. I think this is due to her relating to Launch’s dilemma of tangling with her own two halves within. That is why we so often see that Bulma does appear to care for others. In fact, a part of her, maybe even 50%, actually does like, love and consider the others friends.
I also think there is a strong likelihood that the blonde version of Launch was at least at one time affiliated with the Red Ribbon Army. Besides her bloodthirsty attitude and trigger happiness, the fact she wears a red ribbon in her hair, knows the location of RR HQ and is so eager to join in the fight makes you wonder. That said, it’s possible that Launch herself is an agent working for Bulma, but I’ll get to that in just a moment.
After both Piccolo crises were over, we’re left with another used up dragon ball wish, a destroyed martial arts tournament and two ridiculously powerful opposing forces left on the planet. Bulma knew that she didn’t stand a chance at this point at stopping either and was just biding her time until they took each other out and her plans of using Yamcha to gather the balls for her would work. In the meantime, she continued monitoring the others with her spybots and working away on her androids in secret. She almost got her chance when Garlic Junior nearly defeated Piccolo, Goku and Krillin all in one swoop. But what she didn’t know was that the arrival of Raditz would alter things even further.
With Goku out of commission and Piccolo, Tien, Chiaotzu and Yamcha dead from their battle with the Saiyans, Bulma had a unique opportunity. She learned that there was another set of dragonballs on Namek. With the others out of the picture, Krillin, Gohan and Yajirobe were now the three most powerful people left on earth. Yajirobe was a coward, but she was able to convince Gohan and Krillin that she wanted to help get the balls to bring Yamcha and the others back to life. It’s possible if Launch was working with her, even unknowingly, that she was attempting to use her to control Tien in the same way she was controlling Yamcha. Tien being the third strongest person on earth after Goku and Piccolo made him an asset in her plan. This would have fallen apart when Tien died fighting the Saiyans.
After the unexpected Frieza fiasco, Bulma was back to her original plan in using the androids. She had to leave earth in a hurry and couldn’t possibly have predicted Goku becoming a Super Saiyan, so she had her supercomputer continue its work without her. But once back on earth and with Goku light years away, Bulma decided it was in the best interest of her plan to drop Yamcha and begin manipulating Vegeta. Since Vegeta already had a rivalry with Goku and was the most powerful person on the planet, she used Vegeta’s vulnerable state of being alone in the universe to seduce him. But when Goku died from the heart virus, she decided her time to strike was then.
She deployed her androids to finish off the rest of the Z fighters, including Vegeta, but realized she’d made a grave mistake. WIth Piccolo gone, the dragonballs were now gone too. She then decided to send Trunks back into the past to help the others. When the new timeline version of herself heard about the androids and how much destruction they caused, the good side of her started to feel remorse. She even concocted a fake Dr. Gero in the magazines her father had and based them off the host of her Android 20 to further bury the lie.
I believe the reason Android 8, 16 and later Androids 17 and 18 have good in them is due to a programming flaw that Bulma subconsciously put in them because of the true love she has for her friends. Despite all her planning, she never anticipated actually caring for all these people. After discovering news of the alternative future, she even programmed the others to recognize Android 20 as Dr. Gero in order to distance herself from the situation.
In conclusion, by the time of the Buu Saga, Bulma had mostly reconciled her inner self, much in the same way Kami and Piccolo reconciled themselves as two separate halves. She cared for her children, Vegeta, Goku and the others. Some of her psychopathic side reared its ugly head again while possessed by Baby, but for the most part, she lived her life and died without her friends and family ever knowing about her dark, ulterior motives...a wish for infinite strawberries.
