While the Z-Fighters is a team of heroes consisting of the strongest Planet Earth has to offer, there are a few members who offer a bit more than others, and some who really don’t offer much at all in terms of usefulness in battle–but even the weakest among these fighters (who was introduced in DBZ) doesn’t deserve the hate, and Dragon Ball GT confirms it.
Mr. Satan (or Hercule) is a professional human martial artist who made his debut in Dragon Ball Z’s Cell Saga. When Cell challenged the entire world to a tournament he dubbed the Cell Games, all the classic Z-Fighters answered the call to stop him. Those fighters included Goku, Vegeta, Future Trunks, Krillin, and Gohan to name a few, but they weren’t the only ones who showed up to fight Cell on international television. Mr. Satan, the world-renowned martial artist, was basically obligated to challenge Cell as he had to maintain his fame and status as ‘the world’s strongest fighter’. Despite not being able to hold a candle to Cell’s power, Mr. Satan took all the credit for his eventual defeat and became even more famous. Skip ahead a few years to a World Martial Arts Tournament where Hercule paid off Android 18 to lose to him on purpose to, once again, maintain his status. Then, after Goku killed Majin Buu, Mr. Satan got credit for that victory as well. Basically, Hercule is a huge fraud who has taken credit for the victories of other fighters since his debut–but that doesn’t mean he’s a total-lost cause.
Dragon Ball GT Confirms Mr. Satan Deserves More Respect
In Dragon Ball GT season 1, episode 28 (written by Daisuke Yajima, directed by Osamu Kasai, produced by Toei Animation), Goku, Pan, and Trunks have returned to Earth following their year-long trek across the universe to find the Black Star Dragon Balls. When they get back to the planet, they find that it has been taken over by the parasitic villain known as Baby, who is GT’s most powerful Machine Mutant. Baby has the ability to ‘lay eggs’ in people’s heads and control their thoughts, effectively adding them to his ever-growing hive-mind. While Trunks fell victim to this almost immediately (while Goku was later seemingly killed by Baby), Mr. Satan survived the initial attack on the planet by hiding inside Buu. When the time came for Hercule to emerge from his friend, he is immediately met by an angry mob of people under Baby’s influence who wanted to add Hercule to the hive-mind. However, Mr. Satan tears through these people like it’s nothing, and he and Buu get out of there as fast as possible.
Hercule’s biggest issue is that he’s a regular human without ki-blast or flight-technique capabilities in a world where those powers are necessary to be a notable martial artist. However, that hasn’t stopped Mr. Satan from not only being the most famous martial artist in the world, but also a pretty capable fighter. If someone in real life were to take on an entire mob of people who were wielding blunt objects as weapons and had no inhibitions due to being mind-controlled by an intergalactic parasite, that person would be regarded as some kind of super human. Plus, the fact that Hercule was around to achieve that amazing feat of strength speaks to his intelligence.
Mr. Satan knew he couldn’t beat Baby upon the initial takeover, but he also knew that as long as he survived just for a little while, he’d be able to assist those who could–like Goku and Pan. So, even though he’s a fraud in DBZ, Dragon Ball GT proves Mr. Satan doesn’t deserve the hate by portraying him as a capable and intelligent Z-Fighter, even during an ‘end of the world’ scenario.