Character · Dragon Ball
Piccolo
He entered the story as a demon king's reincarnation and left it as the man who taught a four-year-old to read.
In Otakana the clue reads: Green Namekian who became the best babysitter
- Type
- Character
- Series
- Dragon Ball
- Letters
- 7 · Easy
King Piccolo was a villain who aged the world's air with a wish and killed off most of the cast before Goku put him down. With his last effort he produced an egg, and the child from it arrived years later at a martial arts tournament with one goal: kill the boy who killed his father. He lost. Then aliens turned up, and the two of them discovered they needed each other.
What follows is the best redemption arc in the franchise, and it happens through childcare. Handed Gohan for training, Piccolo abandons him in a wasteland for six months, watches him from a distance the whole time, and eventually stops pretending. He teaches the boy to fight, to read, and to think, and he ends up the only adult in the story who reliably shows up. Also, he turns out to be Namekian rather than demonic, which explains the green.
His clan is named after musical instruments: Piccolo, Tambourine, Cymbal, Drum, Piano. His counterpart Kami, the guardian of Earth, is the good half of the same original being, split in two long before the story starts, which means the demon king and the closest thing this world has to a god were once one person.
Spelling PICCOLO
PICCOLO is seven letters with a doubled C in the middle, and ピッコロ doubles it in Japanese too by way of the small tsu. The word is Italian, the small high flute, so this is a European loanword travelling through Japanese and coming back unchanged. Two O's, at the end and just before the L, with a single I opening the row.