Character · Dragon Ball
Yamcha
A desert bandit who is terrified of women becomes the man in the crater, and the crater outlived the career.
In Otakana the clue reads: Desert bandit turned baseball player
- Type
- Character
- Series
- Dragon Ball
- Letters
- 6 · Normal
Yamcha robs travellers in the wasteland with a shapeshifting cat called Puar, and he is genuinely dangerous until a girl speaks to him, at which point he falls over. He joins the heroes for the same reason he did everything early on, which is that the Dragon Balls might fix his problem, and he stays because Bulma is interesting. His fighting style is built on wolves: the Wolf Fang Fist is a flurry of claw strikes finished with both palms.
The arc that follows is a slow demotion. Earth's martial artists get outclassed by aliens, then by androids, then by gods, and Yamcha is the clearest case. He retires into professional baseball, which he is very good at, and turns up to the important fights anyway despite knowing exactly where he stands in the room.
The name is yamucha, the Cantonese yum cha, the practice of drinking tea and eating dim sum. His cat Puar and the shapeshifting pig Oolong are named after teas too, so the three of them are a single order at a Chinese restaurant.
Spelling YAMCHA
YAMCHA is six letters, and the middle is where it goes wrong. ヤムチャ is Ya-mu-cha, with a vowel between the M and the CH that English throws away, leaving a consonant cluster Japanese never pronounces. Two A's, in slots three and six. If you know the dim sum phrase yum cha, you already know how to finish the row.