Dragon Ball: That Time I Got Reincarnated as Yamcha!

A Dragon Ball fan wakes up and discovers he’s Yamcha.

Plot Summary

A nameless Dragon Ball super fan falls down a flight of stairs after trying to get a look of a girl in a short skirt. He awakens in the Dragon Ball universe reincarnated as Yamcha at the tail end of the Pilaf Arc.

By using his vast knowledge of future Dragon Ball events, the fan makes Yamcha stronger to give him a larger role in the series: he goes with Goku to train with Roshi, then during the Saiyan Saga, gets Piccolo’s space ship repaired and heads over to Namek for an easy strength boost from Saichoro (Guru, the Eldest Namek…whatever you want to call him).

As the story goes on, the fan falls in love with Bulma and does his best to keep Vegeta from stealing her away from him, as is destined to happen; he fails but learns to accept it.

Right before the Cell Games, the fan/Yamcha has an encounter with Chaozu. He’s another reincarnated Dragon Ball super fan, but doesn’t like his new identity and has aspirations to rule the world. But after a fight, the two fans recognize their shared love of Dragon Ball and become friends.

At the end, this whole reincarnation business is revealed to be a part of a game Beerus is playing with Champa, and they send the super fans back to their original bodies.

Thoughts

A creative way of doing a “What if?” story mixed with what felt like a self-insert fan fiction (but not in a bad way). Good ole Yamcha’s been the butt of jokes and memes for years – and this comic could have continued that at Yamcha’s expense, but instead it acknowledged the character’s shortcomings while also treating him with respect. Watch him kick ass for once!

It comes in at 144 pages, but it surprisingly went by really fast – almost like it was inhaled in a single breath, rather than read a page at a time. Lots of fun in this one. I loved how “Yamcha” used spoilers as an advantage to the point of confusing all the other characters (like saying Goku is an alien way, way before that was revealed in the original manga).

I do wish we could’ve seen more of what he was up to in the rest of Dragon Ball before jumping to Z; it just skips right from the end of Pilaf to the Saiyan Saga, and it would’ve been cool to have seen at least a few panels of how Yamcha handled himself against Piccolo. But that’s just a minor qualm.