Jump to ratings and reviews
Rate this book

Dragon Ball Full Color #20

Dragon Ball Color: Saga Freezer 5

Rate this book
Nueva edición argentina. Saga Freezer, tomo 5 de 5.

248 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1984

17 people are currently reading
123 people want to read

About the author

Akira Toriyama

1,918 books1,727 followers
Akira Toriyama (鳥山明) was a Japanese manga artist and character designer. He first achieved mainstream recognition for creating the popular manga series Dr. Slump, before going on to create Dragon Ball (his most famous work) and acting as a character designer for several popular video games such as the Dragon Quest series, Chrono Trigger, and Blue Dragon. Toriyama came to be regarded as one of the most important authors in the history of manga with his works highly influential and popular, particularly Dragon Ball, which many manga artists cite as a source of inspiration.
He earned the 1981 Shogakukan Manga Award for best shōnen/shōjo manga with Dr. Slump, and it went on to sell over 35 million copies in Japan. It was adapted into a successful anime series, with a second anime created in 1997, 13 years after the manga ended.
His next series, Dragon Ball, would become one of the most popular and successful manga in the world. Having sold 260 million copies worldwide, it is one of the best-selling manga series of all time and is considered a key work in increasing manga circulation to its peak in the mid-1980s and mid-1990s. Overseas, Dragon Ball's anime adaptations have been more successful than the manga and are credited with boosting anime's popularity in the Western world. In 2019, Toriyama was decorated a Chevalier of the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres for his contributions to the arts.
In October 2024, Toriyama was inducted into the Harvey Awards Hall of Fame.

Ratings & Reviews

What do you think?
Rate this book

Friends & Following

Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!

Community Reviews

5 stars
167 (71%)
4 stars
49 (21%)
3 stars
12 (5%)
2 stars
3 (1%)
1 star
2 (<1%)
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
Profile Image for Urbon Adamsson.
1,955 reviews103 followers
August 20, 2025
EN Our heroes give everything they have to defeat Freeza, but none of their efforts seem to work. Everything changes when, in a moment of pure rage after the death of one of his companions, Son Goku transforms — for the first time — into a Super Saiyan.

From that moment on, Goku's power clearly surpasses Freeza's, and it becomes only a matter of time before the battle comes to an end.

In the end, our friends return to Earth together with the Namekians, but Son Goku remains missing, somewhere in space, after his victory over Freeza.

--

PT Os nossos heróis dão tudo por tudo para derrotar Freezer, mas nenhum dos seus esforços parece surtir efeito. Tudo muda quando, num momento de pura fúria após a morte de um dos seus companheiros, Son Goku se transforma — pela primeira vez — num Super Guerreiro.

A partir desse instante, o poder de Goku ultrapassa claramente o de Freezer, tornando-se apenas uma questão de tempo até o confronto chegar ao fim.

No final, os nossos amigos regressam à Terra acompanhados pelos Nameks, mas Son Goku permanece desaparecido, algures no espaço, após a sua vitória sobre Freezer.
Profile Image for Facundo Mosquera.
323 reviews8 followers
December 13, 2021
La verdad que el super saiyajin fue una poronga. La transformación es de un panel al otro, sin emoción, sin esfuerzo ni expectativa. Nada que ver con la versión animada, dónde le pasa el trapo. Por otro lado, el tomo es pura pelea, demasiada. Lo único destacable es la patada con el talón de goku. Y goku... no me acordaba que era tan estúpido. Vegeta siempre tuvo razón.
Profile Image for Brandon.
1,338 reviews
July 28, 2020
This is it. Peak Dragon Ball. I still enjoy everything after Freeza's initial defeat, but it is actually inferior. The Jinzoningen/Cell arc is Toriyama at war with his editor, and the Boo arc is a victory lap of Toriyama taking the piss. Good shit all around, I enjoy the race to surpass the first Super Saiyan state as well as all the bonkers things introduced with SS3, Fusion, Potara, and Super Boo's many forms, but nothing tops Son Goku going Super Saiyan and surging with the warrior spirit of his racial ancestry in the defeat of Freeza.

Pretty sure I simply cannot watch the anime ever again, having re-read this part of the manga. There's a meme/joke about how long five minutes last on Namek, as it takes several episodes for the planet to explode during the Goku/Freeza fight. It's not bad at all in the manga. Sure, you still have several chapters occur during a period of a handful of minutes, but there isn't much dialogue so it flies by fast enough. You can read manga as fast as you can, but you can't really do the same with 22-minute anime episodes beyond increasing playback speed. Goku and Freeza don't exchange too many blows overall, to the point that the fight realistically could last only three episodes, but whatever.

A strange thing here is the difference between how Son Goku becomes a Super Saiyan versus the later anime adaptation. Freeza uses psychokinesis to explode Krillin's body. Goku snaps and switches immediately into his blond-haired transformation. The anime has a more "epic" transformation, but much of it is padding runtime for the episode in question. I can certainly understand how some fans might prefer several minutes of Goku yelling in anger and exploding into the Super Saiyan state, but I think by now I prefer the instantaneous shift. Krillin has died before, at the hands of one of Piccolo Sr.'s minions, so Goku believes Krillin is gone for good because the Earth Dragon Balls can't resurrect anybody more than once (conveniently, it's not until after the big battle is resolved that we learn the Namek Balls can revive over and over, so long as it wasn't a natural death...), this is the final straw as regards Goku's tolerance of Freeza's evil, and he has no choice but to stop fucking around and kill the lizard. Of course, we then get Goku lapsing into the racial characteristics of his ancestors, and his Super Saiyan energy compels him to first toy with Freeza and later offer a noble end to the fight by giving some chi to his foe so the latter might survive long enough to find peace after Namek's end and live the rest of his life in silence. Neither event is new to Son Goku's character - Goku played with Freeza earlier, played with the Ginyu boys, and first started doing it with Piccolo Sr. way back when; Goku gave a senzu bean to a defeated Piccolo Jr. after their fight in the World Tournament, and had Krillin spare Vegeta so he might have a good rival for the future - but things are more extreme with Freeza, as a second death for Krillin marked the finality of Krillin's existence (again, before the Great Elder noted otherwise).

In the past several dozen chapters, Vegeta believed the Super Saiyan state to be a hard plateau of power-level, reachable from constantly boosting one's strength through training and the "zenkai boosts" a Saiyan receives after recovering from near-fatal wounds. In Son Goku, we learn just why the transformation was a legend: "I'm a Saiyan. Sent from Earth to defeat you. The legendary warrior, with a pure heart awakened by rage. Son Goku... the Super Saiyan!!!" Goku, "the Saiyan raised on Earth," is the only one who is able to become a Super Saiyan (thus far) because he's the only Saiyan to have learned friendship and love, and thus the only one to be able to feel the rage that comes when friendship is taken away by the murder of a comrade. Vegeta and the other warriors only knew battle. Nappa was an older soldier who acted as bodyguard and teacher to Prince Vegeta and fellow young fighter Raditz. The three were comrades, but only by technicality. They didn't care for each other, as evidenced by Nappa and Vegeta shitting on the deceased Raditz as they mock the strength of Earth's fighters, or Vegeta's murder of Nappa when the older man proves his weakness against Son Goku. Roughly two decades later, Akira Toriyama would come up with the "Super Saiyan God" legend, which kinda-sorta retcons the original Super Saiyan legend by making it such that the first SSG was also the first SS1 (and arguably that the concept of SS1 was a mistaken understanding of the actual SSG myth), with "god ki" granted to a Saiyan from five close friends, something essentially impossible for the cold-blooded warrior race. Son Goku is quick to dismiss the safety of his friends in favor of an exciting fight with a powerful foe, but he still ultimately cherishes their lives. It is through this sense of brotherhood that he may become Super Saiyan, and later Super Saiyan God. It is through brotherhood with an older Son Gohan that young Trunks gains his Super Saiyan power before time-traveling to curbstomp Cyborg Freeza and warn the Z-fighters of the Android threat. Pretty sure it's through pure angst and jealousy that Vegeta unlocks Super Saiyan, but it may also have been through the magic of Bulma's pussy, I don't remember right now. We'll see later on that Vegeta and Trunks fail to master the SS1 form by pushing its limits and wasting energy with the ungabunga power-weighted "ascended" versions, while Goku and Gohan successfully "complete" SS1 by learning how to use the form with a calm mind. Son Gohan would later awaken to SS2 with the rage of seeing Android 16 stomped on by Cell and Vegeta get his ass beaten while Cell mocks Gohan and friends. My point is that Super Saiyan is indeed somewhat silly, but there's an internal consistency that's mostly kept together (barring the wackness of "SS3 achieved through dead Goku's infinite stamina" and "Goten and kid Trunks get SS1 as a joke").

It's interesting to see Freeza accuse Goku of being a zombie on page 148, as well as next page making the mistake of mocking the deceased Krillin, which of course pisses Goku off, which of course further increases his power. It's interesting as well to see pages 176 and 177, wherein Goku "quits" the battle, having decided he'd already won, that Freeza's strength peaked ages ago and has been steadily dwindling (possibly foreshadowing the waste of energy that is Vegeta and Trunks's ascended forms, which like 100% Max Power Freeza are just really swole), that Freeza's pride must have died after being bested by a Saiyan. Then that dumb lizard tries to steal Krillin's Kienzan attack, which ultimately ends in Freeza cutting off his own lower body like an asshole.

If any singular panel can be said to best encapsulate Dragon Ball, it's the face Son Goku makes on page 211 after Freeza wastes the gift of Goku's chi in a last ditch effort to kill the Super Saiyan. Goku looks upon Freeza with a mix of pity and shame, that he gave a noble way out for Freeza to continue living, squandered by the proud emperor, who now deserves only death for disgracing himself so. Obviously, Freeza comes back, gets promptly killed by Trunks, comes back again, almost destroys the world before Whis rewinds time and Goku kills Freeza again, and then comes back once more to help in the Tournament of Power, after which he is fully resurrected, and fucking summons Broly to try to kill Goku and Vegeta again, because this dumb motherfucker never learns anything (but I still want him to join the heroes full-time later on...). This is also unfortunately Goku's last great moment, as he will later let himself die to force his son to kill Cell, and when he wishes Boo will reincarnate as a good guy (being Oob) it's basically just to have another cool rival. Goku's judgment in this panel shows he's more deserving of the Kami role than he would ever have believed back when it was offered to him after Piccolo's defeat. But it also shows that Goku is something else, too unique to limit himself to a role as passive guardian of Earth and judge of its inhabitants. In this moment, Son Goku, the first Super Saiyan in centuries, is the strongest being in the universe (as Boo and Beerus haven't been written yet...). If this is a meritocracy, Goku has the final judgment. But it's not, or at least Goku doesn't plan on abusing his strength, so he only wants to return to Earth, to live the rest of his life in peace (until the Androids arrive and he gets a heart disease...).

****

I got too distracted talking about Super Saiyan stuff that I missed the chronological opportunity to talk about the Genki-dama, but basically it's neat to see Goku attempt the attack yet again, much larger than before, and still fail. The movies will fart around with successful (but non-canon) attempts (Goku absorbing the Spirit Bomb's power in Movie 7, and the punch variant against Broly in Movie 8, as the immediate examples that spring to mind), but it isn't until Pure Boo that a Genki-dama actually fuckin' works in canon. A good way to end the series, I guess.

Freeza's max power stage is curious to consider, as well. His earlier transformations increased his body mass, before condensing his power in his final form, barely larger than his initial appearance. With 100% power, he's roided out. This reflects Muten-Roshi's max power form from ages ago, as well as foretelling Perfect Cell (as based on Freeza), and much later Jiren and Broly in Super. As the final opponent of the main Super anime, Jiren doesn't have the bells and whistles of multiple transformations, unlike Freeza, Cell, Boo, and Zamasu before him (and Baby and Syn Shenron from GT). He just gets more swole. Broly is a Super Saiyan, but his final form is simply referred to as "Full Power," as if it's just a roided-out version of his regular SS1 state (but also with green hair). It's a good balance with the chain of transformations with other foes.

You also have to enjoy page 228, with Bulma playfully flirting with Vegeta, who is offended by how "vulgar" she is, setting him up briefly as a male "tsundere," while also leading to the conception of Trunks, and Vegeta's later appearance as a good family-man in GT (where he loves his daughter but is indifferent to his son) and Super (where he loves his wife more than Goku cares about Chi-chi).

****

A minor note: it must be weird as hell for anyone who's somehow gotten into Dragon Ball through the "Full Color" editions. This arc ends with the arrival of Cyborg Freeza and his father King Cold on Earth, with the latter being only in the second form for their race's transformation hierarchy. It seems we're about to face a huge threat, but past readers know Trunks will appear out of nowhere to murder the shit out of both dudes.

Another side note: with the resurrection of Yamcha, Tenshinhan, and Chaozu, we've basically seen the end of the humans' story. Ten will get to hold Cell off with a barrage of Ki-ko-ho attacks, and everyone gets a Cell Junior to fight in the Cell Game, but otherwise they're out for the rest of the manga. I can't even remember if they play in the World Tournament that opens the Majin arc. Hell, Krillin is basically out of the story now, too, aside from having sex with a robot. Quite a shame, but honestly we have Vegeta joining the main cast, and Trunks is about to arrive from the future, so there's no way the humans can compete when everyone else is a Super Saiyan. Even Piccolo barely keeps up, and he'll eventually be demoted to Gotenks's retainer for his most important act in the Boo arc. Props to Super for allowing Krillin, Piccolo, and Tenshinhan to do shit (also Roshi), but poor Yamcha has had enough jobbing for his existence and just retires from fighting completely. It's also funny to see Chi-chi in the last chapters of this volume, having been absent for a long ass time, because she was once a pretty good fighter herself, and the only thing she'll do in the future is birth Goten, who isn't really an important character anyway.
Profile Image for Blake the Book Eater.
1,273 reviews409 followers
May 13, 2022
What an amazing and iconic end to this arc. The battle between Goku and Freeza was so mind-blowingly intense as the series fully shifts from martial arts into cosmic sci-di epicness! This arc was worth getting into Dragon Ball in the first place!
Profile Image for Guido.
1,186 reviews8 followers
December 5, 2022
Pelea final de Goku contra Freezer y anticipo de la pelea de Mecha-Freezer y King Cold contra...
Entre otros personajes aparecen Bulma, Chaoz, Chichi, Dende, el Dr. Brief, la mamá de Bulma, Freezer (luego convertido en Mecha-Freezre), Son Gohan, Son Goku (que se convierte por primera vez en Super Son Goku), Kaioh-sama, Kami-sama, King Cold, Krilin (que BOOM pero después ZAP), Oolong y Puar, Piccolo, Shen Long, Polunga, Ten Shin Han, Vegeta, Yamcha, el Patriarca de Namek (viejo y sucesor) más otros namekianos, etc.
284 reviews1 follower
September 4, 2024
Saga sviluppata in 5 volumi molto belli e ben bilanciati.
Per chiunque ricordi l'anime trasmesso con una interminabile battaglia, beh, il manga è assolutamente più dinamico e fattibile.
La storia certamente si fa più complicata rispetto alle altre saghe, con pianeti, dei, poteri speciali, particolarità sulle sfere del drago. Per questi motivi Dragon Ball qui (ma forse già da prima) diventa una roba da veri nerd.
Indiscutibile il valore grafico di questa opera.
Profile Image for M.D. Williams.
448 reviews5 followers
July 6, 2021
I love the color spread. It really is the only thing I'm reviewing for these books. Because it's DBZ and I've seen this story dozens of times. I know it inside out and I'm sure most ppl do too.
3 reviews
June 1, 2022
it was cool because in full color you get the experience of the full fight. But basically, everybody has plot armor they just get revived by the dragon balls, overall the art makes up for it. 9/10
Profile Image for Bings.
378 reviews1 follower
February 12, 2024
Epic conclusion!

I love this series so much and seeing it in color is pure chefs kiss.

Goku is such a pure of heart, through and through fighter. Fast paced action, well written and drawn.
Profile Image for Shazne.
170 reviews
August 1, 2022
The Freeza Arc is an absolute Masterpiece. It's my favorite manga arc of all-time. It was a pleasure to experience it in this Oversized Full Color format. A MUST PICK UP FOR ALL DBZ FANS.
Profile Image for Dony Grayman.
7,000 reviews36 followers
November 13, 2025
Tomo Final de la Saga de Freezer a todo color. Al igual que toda la etapa equivalente a DBZ, tuvo al menos dos impresiones con dos ISBNs distintos. Se tomaron su tiempo para reimprimir estos tomos.
9 reviews1 follower
Read
October 19, 2017
dragon ball full color freeza arc #5 by Akira Toriyama is about Goku and his battle against the galactic dictator Freeza. Gokus's anger takes a new level when his best friend Krillen is killed by lord Freeza's hand. Goku ascends to a new level known as the super sayian transformation. As planet Namek is about to explode Goku rushes to get on a space ship. Can Goku beat Freeza, can he escape the exploding planet, or will he die with the whole planet you'll have to read to find out

This was a very good book. I understand it because I have seen the T.V show version many times so it was rote memory. If you like action, lore, and epic battles dragon ball is the series for you.

I would recommend this to Fans of this series and of the manga. Readers who like epic battles and great story. I would give this book a 9/10 because it's really great but it miss uses a lot of characters, But it's a great book and T.V series.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews

Can't find what you're looking for?

Get help and learn more about the design.