Thread by @Herms98

May 9th, Age 753: the very first Piccolo Day ends in tragedy as the newly appointed World King is assassinated by a disgruntled youth before his visionary social policies can be fully implemented. Fortunately the king has an heir lined up... #HistoryofEver

Yes, Piccolo is dead. Long live Piccolo! His son/reincarnation/doppelgänger/whatever hatches safely, thus carrying on the mystic link between Piccolo Senior and Kami. God only knows how this stuff works, but it does. Apparently.

(In the manga Piccolo hatches alone. The anime version is a parody of the Japanese fairy tale of Momotaro, who hatches from a giant peach found by an elderly couple) en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Momotarō

Despite being within earshot of Piccolo’s lengthy speech to his son, Goku doesn’t notice any of this. Instead, his concern is to revive everyone killed by Piccolo and co. But to do that, he’ll have to get Shenlong fixed first, and that means going right to the top.

After a brief case of mistaken identity, Goku and Kami work out a deal: Kami restores Shenlong at once, in exchange for Goku staying up in cloud city so he can train with Kami/Popo in order to beat Piccolo Mach 2 at the next tournament.

(Why don’t they just go take care of Piccolo Junior now, especially since Kami’s eventual plan is to seal him away without any help from Goku? I guess lil’ Piccolo is just too darn cute to lock up in a rice cooker)

Shenlong comes back and revives Piccolo and co’s victims (an encore performance after granting a wish the day before). And with that, everyone vows to train real hard for the next three years so they can reunite at another one of those darn tournaments.

This is it: May 9th. An actual date stated in the series! The joke here is that May 9th=5 9=Go Ku according to the versatile rules of Japanese number punning, which is why this date is also designated as Goku Day, thus leading to a rather overcrowded holiday for fans.

This is also the same number pun logic behind Goku’s jacket having a 59 on it, and DB quiz books containing 590 questions. And before anyone asks: yes, 9 in Japanese is typically read as kyū, but it’s kū for number pun purposes. Trust me, number puns get way crazier than this.

The upshot to this is that Piccolo Junior’s birthday is May 9th, thus making him the only character to have a birthday specified in the series itself. Well, him and Drum. And the Cell Juniors, I guess (though the date of the Cell Games is variable, as we’ll see)

Only three specific days of the month are ever stated in the original manga, and they’re almost or entirely all in May (depending on which edition you read). From these, the Daizenshuu timeline calculates specific dates for most onscreen events. Because someone had to.

May 9th in particular does the lion’s share of the work. It’s two days after the 22nd TB, meaning the tournament must’ve been May 7th. By assuming the TB is always May 7th, the daizenshuu derives dates for every story arc up to the 23rd TB, plus the Buu arc to boot. Quite a coup!

Yet despite this supreme significance of May 9th, the Funi dub changes Piccolo Day to May 13th, presumably to play off the superstition of unlucky 13. Oh well, I suppose that sort of numerology might be the closest you can get in English to a number pun.

Tomorrow: time chamber time!