One of the most important and most influential characters from Akira Toriyama's legendary Dragon Ball franchise is someone that is easily overlooked, as tends to happen with non-combatants in battle shōnen. However, when one closely inspects the events of the Dragon Ball story, all the way through Super and probably beyond that, it becomes apparent that one character has managed to have a hand in nearly all the major events in the narrative.

Without Bulma, the most basic premise of Dragon Ball remains largely unattainable for the majority, if not all the characters in the initial part of the story. With her scientific knowledge and brazen challenging of the common laws of the world and universe, Bulma Briefs is the Dragon Ball franchise's most important character – possibly even more so than Goku.

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Call to Action

In the original Dragon Ball, why Goku leaves Mount Paozu in the first place is because Bulma arrives there in search of the Four-Star Dragon Ball, which had been in Goku's possession after the death of Grandpa Gohan. The young Bulma's reason for finding the Dragon Balls was to secure herself a boyfriend, but that trivial reason essentially sets into motion the journey that continues even now, nearly 40 years later.

After seeing Goku's uncanny strength, Bulma is convinced that she would need a bodyguard like him, especially as she secures more Dragon Balls. Goku would go on to meet characters like Yamcha, who was initially a bandit but comes to be defeated partly as a result of his inability to talk to girls. Within the simple fact that Bulma is the trigger for the Dragon Ball journey, there is a far more significant aspect of Bulma's importance: her intelligence and scientific expertise.

The Dragon Radar

There are a number of things in Bulma's life that have been inherited from her family. Capsule Corporation, founded by Bulma's father is probably the most important company in the Dragon Ball universe due to their production of the DynoCaps technology, the capsules that make it possible for one to carry around some of the biggest objects in the form of tiny capsules. This technology is very important to the series, particularly when it comes to Bulma's arrival on Paozu, as she was able to carry various support objects like vehicles, entire homes and more. Without the capsule technology, and the immense resources available to her, Bulma would not have been able to survive her journey leading up to Goku's house on Mount Paozu and thereafter.

That being said, Bulma's achievements are integral to the Dragon Ball plot, and the single most important thing she has ever done was the creation of the Dragon Radar. This tool makes it possible to know the exact location of the Dragon Balls, and she created this technology at around 16 years old, meaning that Bulma Briefs had effectively connected magic and science, turning the nigh-impossible task of finding seven magical orbs scattered across the Earth into a cake-walk. How Bulma came to learn of the legend is unknown; however, her curiosity and thirst for adventure are essentially the reason why the Dragon Balls have gone from myth to literal household decoration.

A Brief Overview

Beyond the invention of the Dragon Radar, we can zoom in on Bulma's impact in various sagas, such as her successful conversion of alien technology when she repaired Raditz's broken scouter and even managed to decrypt its language. Bulma and her father were also behind the space shuttle that took the gang to Planet Namek, which was a mission to use the Namekian Dragon Balls to revive Piccolo, who died protecting Gohan from Nappa. Piccolo's death is Kami's death, which results in the death of the Dragon Balls themselves, and in Dragon Ball Super, it is Bulma who is able to extract information about the Super Dragon Balls from the all-knowing Zuno, subsequently creating the Super Dragon Radar capable of detecting the planet-sized orbs.

During the Android Saga, Bulma is able to analyse and repair Android 16 (prior to his thorough destruction at the hands of Cell), and she created remotes that could have shut down Androids 17 and 18 without a fight, meaning that her technological prowess is, at the very least on the same level as Dr. Gero. However, it is also in the Android Saga that we see that Bulma's intelligence is closer to the greatest in the series. Future Trunks is able to return to the past through his mother's invention of a time machine – this specific achievement is beyond description when one considers the fact that Whis, a literal angel, did not think time-travel on any level was achievable for mortals through non-magical means. In Dragon Ball GT, while under Baby's mind control, Bulma invents a mechanism capable of generating Blutz Waves, which means Bulma can turn even a tailless Saiyan into a Great Ape. This machine is also what enables Vegeta's Super Saiyan 4 transformation.

Impact

Without Bulma, there is no Dragon Radar. With no Dragon Radar, she does not locate the Four-Star Dragon Ball, or ever meet Goku; and he very likely never ever leaves Mount Paozu. Even if she somehow still met Goku, went on the journey to locate the Dragon Balls, and succeeded, there would only be a single opportunity to use them unless they located one of the other Dragon Radars created by villains throughout the series.

Beyond that, the dramatic end of the world at the hands of the Androids is set in stone without Future Bulma's plot-altering time machine – without it, Future Trunks never returns to the past, Goku dies of his heart virus and the bleak future is confirmed once again. The significance of this time-machine is comparable to that of the Dragon Radar. Without Bulma, the Dragon Ball story as we know it does not even begin, making her the series' most important character.

Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z, & Dragon Ball Super are available to stream on Crunchyroll.

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