Dragon Ball Super 2: Toyotarou Officially Abandoned 3 Characters Everyone Knows Is Unfair

Dragon Ball Super has never been shy about picking favorites, and lately the list has gotten shorter. Toriyama handed Goku, Vegeta, Gohan, and Piccolo new transformations and bigger stakes, while three original Z-Fighters fade quietly into the background.

Tien, Yamcha, and Krillin have fought alongside Goku since Dragon Ball‘s earliest tournaments, back when the four of them were Earth’s whole defense plan, yet the manga’s later arcs barely remember they exist. Fans have clocked the pattern for years, and it looks less like a snub than a side effect of a story that keeps building around its strongest leads.

Dragon Ball Super‘s Manga Keeps Sidelining Its Original Trio

Look at where the manga’s gone since the anime stopped catching up to it. The Moro Arc gave Goku and Vegeta entirely new power sets, the Granolah Arc did the same thing all over again, and the Super Hero tie-in was basically a two-man show for Gohan and Piccolo. Tien, Yamcha, and Krillin? They show up for a panel or two, crack a joke, maybe throw a punch nobody remembers, then vanish until the next big group shot. It’s not subtle anymore.

Even the small stuff stings. When Dragon Ball Super finally came back from its hiatus after Akira Toriyama’s passing, the one-shot that reintroduced the series put Goten and Trunks front and center, a nice change of pace, but also proof the writers had other characters they’d rather dust off first. Then Volume 24 dropped with a cover built entirely around a “who’s the strongest now” lineup: Ultra Instinct Goku, Ultra Ego Vegeta, Orange Piccolo, Broly, and Gohan Beast, drawn with more care than Toyotarou usually bothers with. Not one spot for the guys who used to be the whole roster before Goku ever met a god.

That’s the real gut punch here. It’s probably not a case of Toyotarou sitting down and deciding these three don’t matter anymore; it’s more that every new saga needs its leads to hit a new gear, and there’s only so much room at the top of the power scale. The problem is the effect looks the same either way: the rest of the original cast gets treated like background noise from a show that already ended, and “busy focusing on other characters” stops being a good excuse once it’s been the excuse for a decade straight.

How Potential Unleashed Could Finally Fix Their Power Gaps

Gohan Potential Unleashed from Dragon Ball | Credits: Toei Animation

Here’s the thing: there’s no shortage of ways Toyotarou could fix this, if he wanted to. Potential Unleashed is sitting right there, established back in the Buu Saga when Elder Kai woke up dormant power inside Gohan with a single ritual. Nothing about that technique is confirmed to be Saiyan-specific or tied to natural talent; it just clears blocked ki, which means Krillin, Tien, or Yamcha could walk out of it hitting numbers nobody’s expected from any of them in years.

Then there’s a technique with a direct history for one of them already. Grand Elder Guru pulled off a similar trick on Krillin back on Namek, years before Elder Kai ever touched Gohan, unlocking his hidden power and turning him into Earth’s strongest human fighter for a while. Toyotarou wouldn’t even be inventing something new here, just repeating a move Dragon Ball already used once and then quietly forgot about for everyone except the Saiyans.

Fusion is sitting right there too. The Fusion Dance was never locked to Saiyans; any two fighters of similar size and power can pull it off, and Tien and Yamcha have spent decades roughly in the same weight class. A combined fighter built from two guys who’ve been stuck as comic relief for years could be exactly the gimmick that gets people talking about them again, even if it only lasts for one arc.

None of this requires Toyotarou to rewrite anything about the world he’s building. Dragon Ball has always had tools lying around for exactly this kind of problem. The bar here isn’t complicated: give these three one real moment, built on something the story already believes in, and let it actually matter.

What are your thoughts on Tien, Krillin, and Yamcha being sidelined in Dragon Ball Super? We’d love to know your opinions in the comments below.