These Two Dragon Ball Characters Should Never Fight

The perennially popular manga and anime franchise Dragon Ball revolves around its core cast constantly engaging in high-powered martial arts battles, sometimes even between friends and family. However, there is one pairing of fighters that should never truly come to blows in the series.

Which Two Dragon Ball Characters Should Never Fight

The two Dragon Ball characters who should never fight are Gohan and his daughter and only child Pan. While a similar argument could be made about Vegeta and Bulma’s daughter Bulla not being able to fight her father, Pan is quickly established as a fighter whereas Bulla is not. Though sparring between friends and family is common within Dragon Ball, there is something unique about Gohan and Pan’s father-daughter relationship that makes any physical confrontation between them feel decidedly off.

To be sure, there is one instance within the greater Dragon Ball franchise where Gohan and Pan did actually come to blows, but it proved distressing to both the audience and the characters themselves.

Why Gohan and Pan Should Never Fight

While it is something of a Dragon Ball hallmark for parental figures to spar with their children as a major part of their training regimen, there is something much different about the dynamic between Gohan and Pan. Gohan had a much different relationship with Goku and Piccolo, just as Trunks has a different one with Vegeta, and Goten does with Chi Chi. Gohan and Videl are much more protective of Pan, especially as the married couple moved away from being active fighters themselves to focus on their careers and home lives.

To be fair, Pan is a trained fighter, but she appears to get the vast majority of her martial arts training from Piccolo, as seen in the anime movie Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero. Similarly, Goku is briefly shown sparring with Pan in the Dragon Ball Super manga series, while Goten loses to Pan at the World Martial Arts Tournament at the end of Dragon Ball Z. Even in these instances, Piccolo and Goku aren’t as heavy-handed in their training of Pan as they were with Gohan while Pan’s fight with Goten is presented as something of a joke. Simply put, Gohan is very careful how he treats Pan, always coming from a place of love and fatherly adoration, except for one key moment.

The One Time Gohan and Pan Fought

The only time Gohan and Pan ever came to blows was in Dragon Ball GT and this confrontation was mercifully a brief one, informed by an external malevolent force. While Pan, Goku, and Trunks were scouring the cosmos for the Black Star Dragon Balls, the insidious Tuffle Baby infected the inhabitants of Earth to become his mindless acolytes, with both Gohan and Videl among the infected. Pan and her companions were completely unaware of this when they returned home with the Black Star Dragon Balls, and Pan was attacked by her parents.

Though Goku came in to rescue Pan in the nick of time, Pan was visibly traumatized by the incident, distraught that her parents would attack her so gleefully. The scene is one of the darkest and most disturbing scenes in all of Dragon Ball, twisting the idea of familial love that defined much of the franchise into something violent and evil. The incident itself was brushed over as the tide turned against Baby, with Dragon Ball GT never fully reconciling it.

While Pan should never otherwise come to blows with her parents, she can spar with her grandfather and Piccolo all day; the three characters’ mutual love of martial arts combat is something that serves as the bedrock of their relationship. Simply put, Pan doesn’t have that kind of dynamic with Gohan and Videl, who instead shower their daughter with love and affection rather than preparing her for the next big fight. Pan has plenty of other sparring partners outside of her parents and in the one time that she and Gohan did fight, it just felt fundamentally wrong.

Dragon Ball Z is available to watch now.