While Goku is known for being the main hero in the Dragon Ball series as his love for fighting bad guys is only matched by his love of food, he didn’t start out that way as his now hilarious and seemingly endless hunger originally made the Saiyan hero an absolute monster.
Goku is a member of an all but extinct warrior race known as Saiyans and was sent to Earth as a baby upon his homeworld’s impending destruction. When he arrived on Earth, Goku was taken in by a well-known martial artist named Gohan who taught Goku the ways of combat. With his inherent Saiyan strength and aptitude for fighting, Goku quickly became a powerful fighter even as a young child. However, Goku was practically raised in isolation and didn’t make contact with another person until after Gohan passed away which left him completely socially inept. To make matters worse, Goku became something of a wild child when he was left to fend for himself, and his lack of a conscience whenever he got hungry was shocking.
In Dragon Ball Chapter 1 by Akira Toriyama, readers are introduced to Goku as he is walking through the forest, doing some solo training and thinking about what his next meal will be. While walking around, Goku says to himself, “I just ate a bear earlier… wonder if there’s a tiger nearby…” before he sets his sights on a fish swimming in the stream near his path. Goku uses his tail as bait, and when the fish sees it, the creature says to itself, “What do we have here, a monkey?! A stray cat?!” and when it goes to attack Goku’s tail, the Saiyan lifts the fish out of the water then Goku kills the creature with a single kick to the face.
In the world of Dragon Ball, most animals have similar brain functions as people in that they have the ability to speak and are just as self-aware as any human on the planet. Due to this fact, Goku’s methods of finding food are downright monstrous as he evidently doesn’t care how intelligent an animal is, he will kill it and eat it all the same–and he has the power to do so. The fish Goku kills is a perfect example of this being true as he didn’t pay any mind to the fact that the fish could speak or process emotions and thoughts just as he could, he simply pulled it out of the water and killed it so Goku could have a meal. This is equivalent to a troll or giant who eats humans in any number of fairy tale stories as it shows a powerful, uncaring entity consuming intelligent creatures without considering the ethics behind what they’re doing in the slightest–with Goku as the monster in this scenario.
While all animals deserve kindness and respect, there is something especially dark about killing and eating them in the Dragon Ball universe. For instance, one of Goku’s greatest allies is a talking pig named Oolong, and a number of background characters are animals that have decided to move to the city. If any of them–who are by all-counts human aside from their physical appearance–happened to be wandering through the forest at the same time and place as a young Goku, they very well could have been eaten–a terrifying concept that proves Goku’s love of food originally made him a monster.