RUGUL ⭐ ルーグル

Rugul is Spina’s father. When working backwards building context for Spina, I thought it would be interesting if one or both of her parents were low-class Saiyans that were particularly antagonistic toward the Saiyan elites and the royal family. Given when Spina was born, it was also inevitable that her parents’ lives were going to have been marked first by the long Saiyan-Tuffle war and then the annexation of the Saiyans by King Cold and later Frieza. They turned out to be an excellent vehicle for exploring these lesser-explored but extremely pivotal parts of recent Saiyan history as they contrast with what would have come before.

Rugul’s entire schtick is both hating the elites because of Scallion’s teachings and his own experiences both with Nappa and the events of the war and afterward, and being an excessively earnest and open guy, enough to break down Letta’s guard. His relationship with her somewhat mirror’s Spina’s with Vegeta - a kind soul giving a lost, deeply isolated person a place of comfort and trust. Rugul also deeply values stories and the oral tradition of Saiyan legends and tales as passed to him by Scallion, and he passes them on to Spina, giving her a stronger sense of traditional Saiyan culture than would normally have been possible for someone so isolated from her own kind.

Rugul began his life peacefully growing up in a creche with other children from his area, looked after by a caregiver and occasionally also his mate, a fisherman. When the Saiyan-Tuffle War began, Rugul was a 9-year-old child recruited into a scouting party headed by Scallion with three other children from the creche. The old hunter struck Rugul as fascinating and wise right from the start, and he imprinted on him in the manner that a Saiyan child does with a mentor figure. When Scallion and Chive are killed seven years into the war, Rugul is made captain and Letta and Daiko are added to the group.

Personality-wise, Rugul is the kind of guy who feels responsible for and protective of those under or around him, and strongly judges those who lead with an iron fist - those who treat allies no better than enemies. He hates King Vegeta so much that he continues to call their homeworld Planet Plant once the king renames it after himself. Rugul’s main failing is in being terrible at hiding his feelings. This ironically leads to most of his crew’s demise 5 years after the war (well into the Frieza Force era), when the king has finally had it with him and takes Rugul’s request for a harder mission (to try to make gains) as an opportunity to get rid of the whole group for good by giving them an impossible one.

Rugul’s signature move is Tyrant Crusher, an attack he developed as part of a pipe dream to get strong enough to assassinate the Saiyan royalty. The annexation by Cold and Frieza somewhat rendered these plans moot, as even without the Saiyans’ own monarchy, the old way of life could never be restored so long as they were slaves to the Force, and as much as he “loves his fairy tales” as Letta puts it, even Rugul couldn’t fathom the possibility of anything less than the Super Saiyan of legend being able to do anything about that.

GALLERY