Character · Dragon Ball
Captain Ginyu
Five mercenaries land on Namek and, before anyone throws a punch, they stop to hold a pose.
In Otakana the clue reads: Captain of a squad that strikes poses
- Type
- Character
- Series
- Dragon Ball
- Letters
- 5 · Normal
The Ginyu Force is Frieza's special squad, flown in when a job has gone wrong. Recoome, Burter, Jeice and Guldo handle the fighting; their captain handles the choreography. They rehearse. They land in formation, announce themselves, and hit a pose apiece before the introductions are even finished, and the heroes stand there waiting because interrupting seems rude.
Ginyu himself fights with a technique nobody else has. Body Change swaps his consciousness into whoever he is looking at, which means the stronger you are, the more useful you are to him. He tears open his own chest to do it, an unpleasant move played for comedy, and the arc gets a great deal of mileage out of the trick going wrong on him.
Their names come from dairy. Ginyu is gyunyu, milk, with the syllables shuffled. Recoome is cream, Burter is butter, Jeice is cheese, and Guldo is yoghurt. Toriyama built whole factions this way, and once you know the rule you can usually guess an affiliation from a name before the character does anything.
Spelling GINYU
GINYU is five letters and drops a long vowel. ギニュー is Ginyuu, held on the final syllable, so a faithful romanisation gives GINYUU or a macron over the U and neither one fits the row. The G is hard, as in milk's Japanese word gyunyu, not soft as in gin. Otakana wants the captain's name alone, not the force.