Dragon Ball: Chi-Chi's God-Tier Origin Proves She Deserves More Respect
While Chi-Chi is primarily thought of as Goku's wife and not a fighter in the Dragon Ball franchise, her mythical inspiration suggests that she should be a much more powerful and prominent character. Throughout Dragon Ball’s early years, several characters cycled in and out of the main cast rotation. One of these characters was Chi-Chi who, although she debuted rather early on in the series, wouldn’t return until much later in the Piccolo Saga. Like many characters in early Dragon Ball, Chi-Chi was loosely based off of a character from Wu Cheng’en’s story classic, Journey to the West.
The first appearance of Chi-Chi is in Dragon Ball chapter 11 when Goku, Bulma, and Oolong arrive at Frypan Mountain. Yamcha and Pu’ar have been tailing the gang for a while and come into contact with a young girl who somehow severs the head of a Tyrannosaurus. This girl turns out to be Chi-Chi, the only daughter of the Ox-King. The rest of the chapter plays out with Yamcha knocking her out and Ox-King interrogating Goku about where he got the Flying Nimbus. Almost immediately Chi-Chi is relegated to being a tool of the plot rather than a character who functions within it.
Related: Dragon Ball's Krillin Proves His Power in Jaw-Dropping Stop-Motion Video
Chi-Chi’s origins in Journey to the West lie with a character known as Princess Iron Fan. In the original Journey to the West story, Princess Iron Fan functions as a massive extortionist, actively forcing a village to rely on her to put out the raging fires of a nearby volcanic chain with her mystical fan. Though Princess Iron Fan puts the fires out once every year with her magical Banana Leaf Fan, she always makes sure they return so the villagers continue to require her help and thus pay
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