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Anime fan stumbles across the recipe for Dragon Ball Z Parent and Child Rice Bowl

Casey Baseel Apr 8, 2015
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Japanese cuisine is filled with dishes that end in don, meaning “rice bowl.” One of the most descriptive is oyakodon, literally “parent and child bowl.”

Ordinarily, oyakodon is rice topped with chicken and egg. Some sushi restaurants, though, have their own variation which instead uses sliced raw salmon and ikura (salmon roe). And now, one clever anime fan has come up with yet another version, the Dragon Ball Z oyakodon rice bowl.

Twitter user Daracchimax was puzzled recently when he sat down for dinner with his son. Using his chopsticks, the boy picked up a morsel of kinpira gobo, a popular Japanese vegetable dish. Rather than eating it directly, though, the boy first placed the veggies on top of his rice, declaring that he’d made himself an oyakodon.

夕飯の時に息子がご飯の上にきんぴら乗せて「親子丼」って言っててしばらくなんのことかわからなかった。
……わからねぇよ…バーダック（ごぼう）とカカロット（人参）なんてよ…
しかもごはんも合わせて親子三代じゃん… pic.twitter.com/rqM2WnxPdt

— だらっちMAX@ジョー☆OKADA11周年 (@daracchimax) April 6, 2015

But this wasn’t like any oyakodon that Daracchimax had ever seen before. Rather than immediately correct his son’s vocabulary, though, he thought for a moment, trying to figure out how you could have a “parent and child bowl” without any animal products.

The answer lies within the extensive cast of creator Akira Toriyama’s Dragon Ball. It can be easy to forget, what with all the scenes of martial artists beating each other to death, but underneath the well-developed pecs of the Dragon Ball franchise beats a pretty silly heart. Just about every one of the saga’s dozens of characters has a name that’s some sort of pun. What’s more, Toriyama likes to keep the themes consistent for each family or group of aliens. For example, stoic tough guy Trunks? He gets his name from the term used in Japan for “boxer shorts.”

Then there are the Saiyajin, the extraterrestrial race that main character Goku is a member of. Taking their name from yasai, the Japanese word for vegetables, the Saiyajin have names derived from edible plants. For example, main character Goku’s real, birth name is Kakarotto, inspired by the word “carrot.”

His series-long penchant for wearing orange suddenly seems very appropriate.

Thin-sliced carrots are one of the two main ingredients in kinpira gobo, which Daracchimax’s son was claiming counted as a proper topping for a “parent and child bowl.” So what’s the other ingredient in kinpira gobo? Gobo, which translates to burdock root in English. Now change the U in burdock to an A, and you get……Bardock, Saiyan soldier and father of Goku.

So there you have it: father and son together in a rice bowl. Except, Daracchimax noticed that there was one more member of Dragon Ball’s first family accounted for. Goku eventually fathers two sons, naming the older one Gohan. Gohan, it just happens, is also the Japanese word for “rice.”

In the end, Daracchimax’s son had three generations of mighty warriors in his bowl, plus a pretty clever head on his shoulders. So the next time you find yourself in a losing argument trying to get your kids to eat their vegetables, try calling them “Dragon Ball Z toppings” instead.

Source: Twitter