Thread by @TheIvanhobe

Thinking about Dragon Ball and do you know who my favorite villain in the whole thing is?

Tao Pai Pai.

Like, try to imagine.

This was long before Z was a thing.

Back then, Goku was just this naive kid who against all odds was stronger than anyone else.

And it was great.

Sure, he had faced plenty of enemies before that point.

Many outsmarted him.

But he always found his way past their tricks, usually in a whimsical way.

And then Tao Pai Pai happened.

For the first time in the series, Goku faced someone who was literally smarter, faster and stronger than him.

He fought him.

And he lost.

More than that he almost died

So, having experienced a genuine defeat for the first time, Goku sought to get stronger.

He trained.

He got better.

And when he faced Tao Pai Pai again, he won.

He surpassed the man who had bested him so easily before.

It is hard to explain if you weren't there, but being a kid no more than 7 years old, seeing Goku going to such great lengths and then defeat Tao Pai Pai fair and square was incredibly satisfying.

Before that point Dragon Ball had been generally a very lighthearted and humorous show.

But Tao Pai Pai was the first villain we, the audience, genuinely feared.

And so did Goku.

In the grand scheme of all things Dragon Ball, Tao Pai Pai is generally irrelevant.

But before Piccolo and Freezer and the Androids and Buu, he was the one who showed us how effective a villain can really be.

Plus, he killed a guy using only his tongue, so there's that.