Krillin Quotes

A gag, and also the most accurate thing anyone says about this franchise's stakes. Tambourine killed him at the end of the last tournament, the Dragon brought him back once Kami restored it, and here he is treating the experience as a credential. The line commits the series to a rule it never takes back: death is an errand. Frieza kills him on Namek and a wish undoes it; he dies again in the Buu arc and is restored again. What it costs is Krillin himself. A fighter who is never the strongest in the room is the one whose death gets used to trigger somebody else's power, and the gag about being unstoppable turns into the character's job description. He noticed the arrangement, joked about it, and then spent the sequel being its proof.

The correct joke about Hercule, a man the world credits with Cell's defeat, told by someone who has died twice in this line of work. In the same episode Gohan is quietly pleased that the announcer at least remembers his dad. The obvious reading is that the belt is empty, and the series eventually disagrees with Krillin. In the Buu arc, when the Spirit Bomb needs the whole Earth to raise its hands, Vegeta's appeal to the planet is not enough and Hercule's is. The cheering Krillin mocks turns out to be the one resource the fighters cannot manufacture: people will listen to the goldfish in the belt when they will not listen to a stranger in the sky. The joke is right about Hercule's strength and wrong about what the belt is for.