As most Dragon Ball fans know, Goku is a Saiyan who was born on Planet Vegeta and sent to Earth as a baby right before Lord Frieza destroyed his entire home world and nearly wiped out the entire Saiyan race. However, once he got to Earth, his origin gets even more tragic and it is all tied to his very first kill.
Goku was introduced in Dragon Ball Chapter 1 by Akira Toriyama. In this chapter, Goku is wandering the forest alone, searching for food and fire wood, before returning to his home that was completely isolated from the rest of human society. It becomes immediately apparent that Goku lives there all alone, though readers soon learn that Goku once lived there with his grandpa, Gohan, before he mysteriously died sometime before this first chapter. Before Gohan was killed, however, he trained Goku in martial arts as he was a world-class fighter in his own right. However, no amount of combat skill could have saved Gohan from his grizzly fate–a death that left Goku confused and alone.
In Dragon Ball Chapter 21, Goku, Bulma, Yamcha, Oolong, and Puar have been captured by the villainous Emperor Pilaf and his minions after they thwarted his plan to use the vast power of the Dragon Balls in order to become the ruler of Earth. The team of artifact hunters were locked in a steel cell with impenetrable glass above them as Pilaf’s plan was to execute them using the heat from the sun (which would be magnified by the glass and heat the steel trap they were locked in). At this point in time, however, it was nighttime and the only thing that came through the glass roof was the light of the full moon. As the team sat and awaited their deaths, Goku commented on the moon and wondered if there were any monsters near them that come out during a full moon. When Bulma calls him crazy, Goku defends his point by saying his grandfather was killed by a monster during the last full moon, but he wasn’t able to save him because he evidently slept through the whole thing.
As Goku was telling the story of how his grandfather was killed by a mysterious monster powered by the light of a full moon, he also added that he was never allowed to look at the moon when it was full for some reason he didn’t quite understand. Wondering if there was any correlation, the gang asks Goku if he looked at the moon the night his grandfather was killed. Goku said he did, and the entire team is sent into a panic at the thought that Goku might actually be a werewolf-type monster who was, in fact, responsible for Gohan’s death. Then, Goku looks at the full moon through the glass ceiling of their deadly prison cell and begins to transform into a Great Ape–a giant ape-like creature that grants any Saiyan who undergoes the transformation vast amounts of destructive power–which confirms that Goku did accidentally kill his grandfather. As one can imagine, realizing that you were responsible for a loved one’s death is utterly heartbreaking—even if it is an accident.
Goku’s first kill was when he was in his Great Ape form, meaning he wasn’t in control of himself when he killed Grandpa Gohan. Not only was Goku responsible for killing the only person in his life that he loved–a parental figure who took Goku in as his own–but he doesn’t even remember doing it, leaving him questioning the events of that night and keeping him from getting any closure on the loss of his grandfather–making Goku’s first Dragon Ball kill a painfully tragic origin.
