Emperor Pilaf: The Ruler Who Wanted the Dragon Balls

He gathered all seven Dragon Balls, summoned the dragon, and had his wish stolen at the very last moment: Pilaf just can't catch a break. Here's the story of this little blue ruler, from his booby-trapped castle to Dragon Ball GT.

Pilaf, the little blue ruler who wants the world

Pilaf is an impish-looking little blue creature who dreams of nothing but power and world domination. He reigns over his castle, set in a forest of giant mushrooms, with two henchmen: Shu and Mai.

In Japanese, he calls himself “Pirafu Daiō,” literally “Great King Pilaf,” and his henchmen call him that too; “Emperor Pilaf” is the name chosen by the English dub. Funimation's dub also often calls him simply Pilaf.

His name is a pun on pilaf, a dish of rice browned in oil with onions, then baked in the oven or cooked in a covered pot for about twenty minutes; the Chinese characters on his chest, 炒饭, actually mean “fried rice.” In the anime, he wears a green, red and black tunic with a ruff collar, blue pants, cream-colored shoes (black in the manga) and a multicolored hat.

Pilaf isn't a fighter and he's weak, but he's considered very intelligent: he's credited with building a Dragon Radar and combat robots, the Pilaf Machines, which can combine into one giant robot.

Shu is an anthropomorphic dog, a Shiba Inu, dressed as a ninja; Mai is a calculating woman who relies on weapons and technology, and whose seriousness serves as a counterpoint to Shu's comedy. In the manga, Shu is first called “Soba”: when the anime staff asked Akira Toriyama for the character's name, the author, who had forgotten he'd already named him, answered “Shu,” a name he then went on to use in the manga.

In the anime, Pilaf shows up as early as episode 1 of Dragon Ball, “The Secret of the Dragon Balls,” which aired in Japan on February 26, 1986: there, he and his sidekicks find the One-Star Dragon Ball, far from Goku and Bulma. In the manga, the gang doesn't enter the story until chapter 18, titled “Who's Got My Balls?!” in Viz's English edition. In chapter 19, in a manga-only scene, Mai waves around a stick topped with a piece of poop, a nod to Dr. Slump, which leads Pilaf to scold her: in his view, such a crude joke is unworthy of Weekly Shōnen Jump and its many readers.

💡 In the anime, Pilaf gets his hands on the One-Star Dragon Ball in the very first episode; to have a ball just like it glowing on your nightstand, choose from our Dragon Ball lamps and night lights: as it happens, the Crystal Ball lamp comes in a one-star version.

The castle, Goku captured and the wish that got away

In chapter 18, Mai keeps watch from a mushroom for the car carrying Goku, Bulma and Oolong; Shu, at the controls of a Pilaf Machine, wrecks it and steals the case holding five of their Dragon Balls. Pilaf's Castle, his main residence, stands in the western part of a desert where giant mushrooms grow.

Goku and his friends walk in through the front door, follow an arrow drawn on the floor and find themselves trapped when a wall springs up behind them; the room turned into a giant pinball machine, on the other hand, exists only in the anime (episode 11). In chapter 19, Bulma refuses to hand over the Four-Star Dragon Ball and gives Pilaf the finger; he “tortures” her by blowing her a kiss, hoping to scare her, without the slightest effect.

Pilaf then floods the cell with gas: the prisoners fall asleep, and so does he; while they sleep, Shu and Mai find the last Dragon Ball on Goku. In the anime, Pilaf had forgotten his gas mask. A few hours later, the gang summons Shenron in front of the castle: it's the first summoning of the dragon shown in the series.

In chapter 20, “Just One Wish!!” in the Viz edition, Pilaf starts to make his wish, but Oolong cuts him off and asks for a pair of girl's panties, which drop from the sky right onto Oolong's own face: the dream of world domination goes up in smoke. In the anime (episode 12, “A Wish to the Eternal Dragon,” which aired on May 14, 1986), Pilaf, too intimidated by the dragon, is slow to voice his wish to become master of the Earth, and Oolong beats him to it.

Furious, Pilaf locks the group in a steel cell with a reinforced glass roof and tells the prisoners they'll die under the desert sun. That very night, Goku looks at the full moon and turns into a Great Ape that wrecks the castle; Pilaf and his henchmen flee by plane, but Goku hurls one of the castle's towers, which brings the aircraft down (chapters 21 and 22). In the anime only (episode 13), before the tower brings his plane down, Pilaf turns back to counterattack: Mai fires a missile that knocks the Great Ape to the ground, and Pilaf goes down to kick him, until Goku wakes up.

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Pilaf Machines and the awakening of King Piccolo

In the anime only, during the Red Ribbon Army Saga, Pilaf goes hunting again aboard his flying fortress; he parachutes out to escape Goku, then the army, led by Colonel Silver, captures him and confiscates the only Dragon Ball he had found. In the manga, in chapter 107, Pilaf watches on screen as Goku fights a mysterious masked fighter and learns, delighted, that Goku's tail is his weak spot. Pilaf then reveals that he keeps one of the seven balls in a special case meant to make it invisible to the radar.

In chapter 109, “A Second Helping of Pilaf,” Goku comes across the trio's car: Pilaf, Shu and Mai each throw a capsule that releases a Pilaf Machine. In chapter 110, “The Pilaf Machine,” discovering that Goku no longer has his tail, they combine their three machines into one giant Pilaf Machine: Pilaf's forms the head, Mai's the torso and Shu's the legs.

Goku catches the missile fired by Shu and sends it right back at them, destroying the last machines; Pilaf hands back the Dragon Ball, and Shu has to give his clothes to Goku, whose pants he had burned. In the anime, this fight takes up episode 77, “Pilaf's Tactics,” which aired in Japan on September 2, 1987, at the end of which Goku gets the One-Star Dragon Ball from Pilaf.

In chapter 135, King Piccolo appears aboard Pilaf's airship; in chapter 136, Pilaf realizes he had underestimated the power of the being his gang set free. The anime reveals, in episode 102 (“Enter King Piccolo”), that Pilaf and his gang found the electric rice cooker the demon was sealed in, released him and told him about the Dragon Balls.

By freeing the demon, Pilaf hopes that once King Piccolo rules the world, he'll give him a share of it to govern; he puts his airship and his global Dragon Radar at the demon's disposal. In chapter 148, the demon, who has just regained his youth thanks to Shenron, tells Pilaf, who has come timidly to claim his share of the world, that he no longer needs him and drops him out of the airship through a trapdoor, along with Mai and Shu. The chapter ends with the gang injured but alive: it's their last appearance in the original Dragon Ball manga.

By freeing King Piccolo, Pilaf is indirectly behind King Piccolo's spawn, such as Tambourine, and later Piccolo Jr., the demon's reincarnation: so the Piccolo who becomes Goku's ally isn't the one he freed.

🧱 The three Pilaf Machines lock together into one giant robot, with Pilaf at the head, Mai at the torso and Shu at the legs; to put together your own build, choose from our Dragon Ball building blocks, including a Pilaf model.

A kid again: Battle of Gods and Dragon Ball Super

Before the events of the movie Battle of Gods, Pilaf, Mai and Shu gather the seven balls and wish to get their youth back, but Shenron makes them too young: they turn back into children. The wish isn't shown on screen: the movie presents it as something that already happened. A bonus chapter of the Dragon Ball Super manga, drawn by Toyotarou, does however show the Pilaf Gang of Future Trunks's timeline making the same wish while the androids ravage the Earth.

In Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods, released in Japan on March 30, 2013, the three kids sneak into Bulma's birthday party to steal the Dragon Balls; unrecognizable, they even end up invited to the party. Little Trunks falls head over heels for Mai there and claims she's his girlfriend to impress Goten.

The Dragon Ball Super anime takes up this story, changing and expanding it: in episode 4, which is anime-only (aired in Japan on August 2, 2015), Pilaf is fishing on a small desert island while Shu and Mai dig for treasure. In the movie Resurrection 'F' (2015), Sorbet and Tagoma stumble upon the gang, who are looking for the Dragon Balls: under threat, Pilaf, Mai and Shu have to hand the balls over, and Pilaf summons Shenron so that Sorbet can ask for Frieza to be brought back to life. Shu then grabs the second wish for himself and gets a million zeni.

In episode 43 of the Dragon Ball Super anime (aired May 15, 2016), the gang unveils a new Pilaf Machine to attack Goku; Mai accidentally takes baby Pan along, the robot is destroyed in the stratosphere, and the three cohorts end up dangling from the foot of Pan, who floats in the sky. Bulma eventually takes the gang in: Pilaf, Shu and Mai live at Capsule Corporation and take private lessons with little Trunks. In the manga (chapter 15) as in the anime (episode 48), it's just as their teacher lets them out for lunch that Future Trunks's time machine appears.

In the anime (episode 51) as in the manga (chapter 16), Mai falls for Future Trunks, much to little Trunks's dismay. In the Dragon Ball Super manga (chapter 88), Trunks, now a high schooler turned masked vigilante, asks Pilaf to build him a transformation watch like Gohan's, and asks Mai out to the movies, without success. As a kid, Pilaf wears a beanie marked with a star, a yellow shirt, magenta shorts and blue shoes.

The GT wish, Daima and Pilaf's voices

At the start of Dragon Ball GT, an anime-only sequel, an elderly Pilaf arrives at Kami's Lookout with Shu and Mai, who have grown old too, to use the Black Star Dragon Balls (episode 1, aired in Japan on February 7, 1996). Created by Kami before he split from King Piccolo, these balls summon a red dragon, Ultimate Shenron.

Startled by Goku, Pilaf loses his temper and says he wishes Goku were a kid again so he could beat him, without noticing that the dragon is still waiting for his wish: the wish is granted, and Goku becomes a kid again. After the wish, the balls scatter across the entire universe and, if they aren't brought back within a year, destroy the planet where the wish was made: hence the space journey of Goku, Pan and Trunks. Before the Earth explodes, Super Saiyan 4 Goku teleports the gang to a new planet: it's their last appearance in the GT story. Dragon Ball GT doesn't take into account the rejuvenation revealed later by Battle of Gods and Dragon Ball Super: in GT, Pilaf, Shu and Mai are elderly.

In Dragon Ball Daima (2024), it's Gomah, now the Supreme Demon King, who uses Earth's Dragon Balls to turn Goku and his friends into kids: a wish that echoes Pilaf's in GT. In the movie Dragon Ball: Mystical Adventure (1988), Pilaf, Mai and Shu work for the empire of Mifan, under the orders of Minister Shen and General Tao, and design a global Dragon Radar for the empire, before being betrayed. In Cross Epoch, a crossover manga with One Piece, Pilaf leads an “evil alliance” with Buggy the Clown, who has the same Japanese voice actor as he does.

That actor is Shigeru Chiba, who also voices Raditz in Dragon Ball Z. In English, Funimation gives Pilaf the voice of Chuck Huber in Dragon Ball, Battle of Gods, Resurrection 'F' and the Dragon Ball Super series, and that of Mike McFarland in the movie Mystical Adventure; Chuck Huber is also Funimation's English voice of Android 17. In the 1995 Ocean dub of the first episodes of Dragon Ball, Pilaf was voiced by Don Brown; Dean Galloway voices him in the Blue Water dub, and Tom Fahn in the Bang Zoom! dub of Dragon Ball Super.

Pilaf at a glance

Frequently Asked Questions

• Who is Pilaf?
  He's a small blue creature who dreams of ruling the world with the Dragon Balls. With Mai and Shu, he's the main villain of Dragon Ball's first saga, the Emperor Pilaf Saga.
• Is Pilaf a king or an emperor?
  In Japanese, he calls himself Pirafu Daiō, “Great King Pilaf.” “Emperor Pilaf” comes from the English translation; Funimation's dub also often calls him simply Pilaf.
• Why doesn't Pilaf get his wish from Shenron?
  In chapter 20, just as he's starting to make his wish, Oolong cuts him off and asks for a pair of panties, a wish the dragon grants on the spot.
• Why is Pilaf a kid in Dragon Ball Super?
  Along with Mai and Shu, he asked Shenron to give them back their youth, but the dragon made them too young. The movie Battle of Gods presents this wish as something that already happened.
• Who turns Goku back into a kid at the start of Dragon Ball GT?
  Pilaf, without meaning to: in front of the Black Star Dragon Balls, he says he wishes Goku were a kid again, and the dragon grants that wish.
• Who voices Pilaf?
  In Japanese, Shigeru Chiba. In English, Chuck Huber in Funimation's dubs of Dragon Ball, Battle of Gods, Resurrection 'F' and Dragon Ball Super, and Mike McFarland in its dub of the movie Mystical Adventure.

🧶 As a kid again, Pilaf wears a beanie marked with a star; to cover your own head in turn, choose from our Dragon Ball beanies.