With it being such a long-running series, it’s no surprise that not every character still commonly shows up inDragon Ball. However, a fan-favorite from early on in the show suddenly disappearing is something that’s hard not to notice. Launch, with her iconic split personalities that changed whenever she sneezed, was one of those characters.
Sadly, it seems thatDragon Ball’screator Akira Toriyama actually forgot about her accidentally while creating the series. “To tell you the truth, I totally forgot about her at one point,” he told Mandō Kobayashi in an interview. “And then I remembered her after a while and I had to think of a reason why she disappeared. So I made it seem as if she were running after Tien Shinhan.” Despite this lapse of memory, she has made many curious cameos and her influence on the series still is felt to this day.
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Launch has two extremely distinct personalities — Good Launch and Bad Launch. Good Launch has blue hair and is incredibly sweet and kind. She’s so pure of heart thatshe can even ride the Flying Nimbusin the series. She’s also a bit ditzy and somewhat clueless, always missing Master Roshi’s attempts to try and be a bit too perverted towards her when she lives in the Kame House.
Bad Launch has blonde hair and is more likely to fire at people with her machine gun than make nice talk of any kind. She’s a wanted criminal with a bounty of $2,000,000 and is seen committing robberies in her first appearance in the anime. While she later becomes far less arrogant and bullying in this form towards her friends as the series goes on, she’s still always a powder keg ready to blow.
Launch’s Early Role In The Series
Launch was actually introduced to the series whenMaster Roshi sent Goku and Krillin out on a training missionto “find him a woman.” She’s actually on the run after a recent heist, but after a sneeze, she returns to her kinder self and is saved by the young dynamic duo. She decides to stay at the Kame House to lay low from the authorities and potentially train, though Roshi’s idea of doing this for her is giving her lingerie as a “fighting uniform.” Of course, after her nose gets tickled and she sneezes, chaos breaks loose as the old master learns just how terrifying Launch can be.
After this, she’s a bit of a comedic side character, mostly cooking for the crew as Good Launch while they train. She is around throughthe first World Martial Arts Tournamentand the Red Ribbon Arc doing this. She does eventually try to join those fighting the Red Ribbon Army while in Bad Launch mode, but seeing as how Goku single-handled took out the entire enemy forces, she sadly didn’t get a chance to fight.
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During the second World Martial Arts Tournament, Launch actually comes along and helps get Goku and friends good seats to watch the show by firing her gun into the air before turning back into Good Launch. She ends up sneezing quite a bit throughout the tournament changing between forms while cheering her friends on. Launch even helped Goku avoid disqualification after Pamput’s manager tried to trick him away from being at the arena, beating up a bunch of bodyguards in the process. She ends up becoming quite attracted to Tien after seeing his performance in the tournament as well, becoming a small romantic interest.
The only other major fight she participates in, if it can be called that, is when she fires bullets at Tambourine which bounce right off of him during the King Piccolo saga. She does threaten to shoot King Piccolo with her gun however if she hurts Tien. She ends up staying with Tien and Chiaotzu through the Saiyan Saga ofDragon Ball Zas she’s become extremely interested in the tall strong warrior. She even tries to climb up Korin Tower to find him and is seen drowning her sorrows away at the bar after Tien dies while fighting Nappa.
The Cameos After
Unfortunately for Launch’s fans, she doesn’t appear much after that point. She shows up in two flashbacks in the Frieza Saga and Cell Saga respectively and does have a small cameo in the Kid Buu Saga where she’s shown raising up her arms to give energy toGoku for a Spirit Bomb. This is just filler and not featured in the manga, though the episode was worked on by Akira Toriyama himself.
She does show up in the second and third movies of the series —Dragon Ball: Sleeping Princess in Devil’s CastleandDragon Ball: Mystical Adventure. She also briefly appears at a banquet hosted by Mr. Satan inDragon Ball: The Return of Son Goku and Friends!which at the time was the first animated project the series had seen in nearly a decade. She also cameos inAkira Toriyama’s other series Dr. Slumpfor a brief scene, though she’s slightly obscured by Oolong.
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