Vegeta

Vegeta and Nappa come to Earth for the Dragon Balls. Nappa kills several fighters, and when Goku beats him, Vegeta kills his own partner for being useless. Measuring Goku's power, he crushes his scouter: it is over 8,000, or over 9,000 in the English dub.

In the fight, Vegeta creates an artificial moon and turns into a giant ape. Yajirobe cuts off his tail, and Gohan, also transformed, falls on top of him. Nearly dead, the prince escapes in a pod because Goku asks the others to spare him.

Vegeta recovers stronger, like any Saiyan who survives near death, and heads to Namek seeking immortality. There he turns on his boss, Frieza: he kills Cui, Dodoria and, in a rematch, Zarbon.

He steals Frieza's Dragon Balls and hides them, and ends up in a wary alliance with Krillin and Gohan, whom he threatens at every chance.

To get even stronger, Vegeta has Krillin leave him on the edge of death. Even so, Frieza's final form humiliates him.

Frieza kills Vegeta with a beam through the chest. Dying, in tears, he tells Goku that Frieza destroyed Planet Vegeta and asks his rival to avenge the Saiyans. Goku buries the prince before the fight.

Revived by Namek's Dragon Balls, Vegeta trains obsessively to catch up with Goku and reveals, in front of Android 19, that he has become a Super Saiyan too. Even so, Android 18 breaks his arm.

After training in the Hyperbolic Time Chamber, he comes out as Super Vegeta and dominates Cell. Out of pride, he lets the monster absorb Android 18 just to fight its perfect form, and is defeated.

Living with Bulma and father to Trunks, Vegeta feels he has gone soft. At the 25th Tournament he lets the wizard Babidi control him, getting an M on his forehead in exchange for power. He destroys part of the stadium to force Goku to fight.

When Majin Buu awakens, Vegeta knocks Goku out, hugs Trunks for the first time and faces the monster alone. To finish him, he blows his own body up. Buu regenerates.

With a halo over his head, Vegeta comes back from Other World to help Goku. With the Potara earrings, he fuses with Goku into Vegito.

Against Kid Buu, he holds the monster off alone so Goku can charge the Spirit Bomb, and admits out loud that Goku is number one. He is also the first to ask the Earth for energy.

His name comes from vegetable, following the Saiyan rule of vegetable names. Toriyama disliked the character at first but came to find his "warped straightforwardness" interesting. He is voiced by Ryō Horikawa in Japan, Alfredo Rollo in Brazil, René García in Latin America and Christopher Sabat in the US.