Apparently I can’t post images here for some reason, but I got like 3 seperate quotes of Toriyama years apart one right after dbz ended and another in the broly movie, that Goku is a bad dad. Or specifically that he doesn’t think about his kids much, but there are direct quotes in other interviews where he says that Goku doesn’t consider his family in the same way other people do or that he’s not qualified to be a father due to lack of interest.
It’s fairly obvious he doesn’t care about his family like that, not in a malicious way. He loves them, in the same way he loves his friends, but it’s not like he seeks out their companionship.
He finds Gohan with his neck broken on the ground vs reccome homie does not give a fuck, he just beats up reccome with one hit and moves along, he was more upset vs nappa.
He spends many years with Gohan, did not know that Gohan doesn’t like battles like that. Apparently didn’t talk to him about what he’d been going through in the 3 years of training and the one year in the rosat.
Dude met Goten in the manga, he did not give a shit, he could have killed buu, and instead he left it to the boys, the ones that were 7 and 8 and he’d just met that day, to fight the guy that killed both their fathers (at this point that’s basically what Gohan was to goten)
He’s then leaving all the time in super, and in the end of z he leaves his family to train uub, for no reason other than he wants a good fight. To Goku > fight family. I mean hell he literally could not understand why vegeta wanted to be around for the birth of bulla.
I’m not saying he’s the devil, I’m saying that the writer says he’s a bad dad, and the evidence is everywhere in the story if you just ignore the photos of the characters smiling and judge his actions and priorities for what they are, and yet most people refuse to accept this.
I don’t understand why though, like it makes him more interesting. Goku is pure, not pure good, pure, he loves to fight, it’s what gives him his purity. The dark side of that is scene almost every arc. His fight with vegeta in the saiyan saga, lets him go cause he wants to fight him again, inspired by his power, even at the risk of the planet. In the frieza saga, let’s frieza get to 100%. In the android saga he’s bummed he didn’t get to fight the androids and his main reason to not pre kill gero is that he wants to beat the androids. Etc etc.
One of those drawbacks is that he prioritizes training and fighting over his family. This is more interesting than making him out to be some completely good person. Idk I wanna hear thoughts on this is all.
Sorry for long post.