Garlic Jr. is one of the most notable movie villains of the Dragon Ball Z franchise. He’s a very unusual antagonist, but in some ways he’s a bit too much like the original bad guy from the first Dragon Ball saga, which was Emperor Pilaf. I’m pretty sure in the original English dub he was actually voiced by the same guy using almost the exact same voice. I guess it was a good thing Emperor Pilaf wasn’t really a character at all in Dragon Ball Z.
He’s one of the few bad guys in the series to get his hands on the Dragon Balls. Instead of making a stupid wish like eternal youth, as King Piccolo did, Garlic Jr. smartly wishes for immortality, which grants protection from age and harm. This is the exact same thing that Vegeta originally wanted, and so did Frieza.
The reason he is called Garlic Jr. is because Kami originally defeated his father and sealed him away in the Dead Zone when both of them were competing for the role of Guardian of the Earth. And sure enough, he’s in a very petty mood. Everything looks kind of easy for Goku and Piccolo until Garlic Jr. turns into a gigantic beast of a warrior rather than the little shrimp we normally see him as.
The movie copies a lot from the Raditz fight in how Goku and Piccolo have a fighting chance against him, but ultimately they drop the ball. With a slight twist, it’s Gohan who uses his rage to knock Garlic Jr. into the Dead Zone for good.
Then he comes back in Dragon Ball Z proper during the filler arc between the Namek Saga and the Android Saga. This makes him unique among the movie villains, since nobody else managed this, despite the fact that it maybe doesn’t make a lot of sense canonically. He shows up at the Lookout looking for trouble and has a new group of underlings called the Spice Boys, which sounds more like a boy band than a group of ruthless villains.
It kind of ticked me off that Garlic Jr. was able to be such a threat in this filler arc. Obviously Goku was out of the picture because he was off-planet, but Piccolo was at least as strong as Frieza’s second form, which still made him one of the strongest warriors in the universe if you discount Vegeta and Goku.
At the end of the saga, it’s Gohan who once again lands the finishing move against Garlic Jr., destroying the evil star that was powering him and sending him back to the Dead Zone, where we never saw him again. So it makes me wonder: if they try reviving the Dragon Ball Super series or movies, are they going to try bringing this guy back in some way, shape, or form? I’d mostly be against it, because it just seems a little too redundant and silly.