The Freeza Saga Analysis

The Freeza Saga represents Dragon Ball Z's closest approach to what might be called the textbook example of the monomyth, even though it does not cover all seventeen of Campbell's stages. The tail-end of the Saiyan Saga serves as the catalyst for the Departure act; Goku and his friends need to travel into outer space to the planet Namek to bring their comrades killed by the saiyans back to life, including the creator of the dragon balls. This need to find new dragon balls creates the Call to Adventure. The Refusal of the Call stage Campbell saw as "essentially a refusal to give up what one takes to be one's interest" and a conscious rejection of the call by the hero (Campbell, 55). Goku's refusal is counter to this in that his declining the …show more content…
To get to Namek, he acquires a second spaceship and goes into outer space; this is the Crossing the Threshold stage, where "the hero goes forward in his adventure until he comes to the 'threshold guardian' at the entrance to the zone of magnified power...beyond them is darkness, the unknown, and danger" as described by Campbell (Campbell, 71). The Initiation act's Road of Trials is described by Campbell as "the hero mov[ing] in a dream landscape of curiously fluid, ambiguous forms, where he must survive a succession of trials" (Campbell, 89). In the Freeza Saga, this stage is fairly spread out. En route to Namek, Goku trains himself back into shape after his injuries, and even goes beyond his former limits. Upon arrival, Goku must face several of Freeza's soldiers. The ease with which Goku defeats most of them prompts Vegeta, the saiyan prince and Goku's chief rival in the series, to wonder if Goku is becoming a Super Saiyan, introducing the concept. The Road of Trials concludes with Goku facing up against Freeza's second-in-command, a foe he is only able to defeat with the help of his friends and