Giran

Directory: Characters → Giras → Tournament fighters Giran is a Giras that entered the World Martial Arts Tournament. Although he is initially hostile against Goku and his companions, he later comes to respect Goku and even cooperates with him on more than one occasion.

Personality

Ruthless and hard-of-heart, Giran is always eager to fight, and enjoys pounding anyone foolish enough to challenge him. This enormous dinosaur-like creature is able to fly using his powerful wings. He also spits out a strange gooey substance he calls his "Merry-Go-Round Gum," which he uses to trap his opponents. Giran is something of a bully and in one episode he was shown stealing a fish from a few bears. He seems to be very self conceited and selfish. However, he is not without kindness. Though he often seems cruel, brief glimpses of the good part of him are seen. When he is not fighting, Giran has a voracious appetite, and enjoys washing down his considerable meals with a few cold glasses of milk. However, he is wasteful and throws a half-eaten chicken drum across Competition Hall when eating with Goku at the World Tournament, which disgusts another contestant, Nam. When he meets Goku right after the tournament, he is respectful to him, because of their fight. Still, Giran seems to love tormenting people and threatening to kill them. However, the fact that he was twice revived by the Dragon Balls proves that he is not truly evil.

History

Dragon Ball

Tournament Saga

Main article: Tournament Saga

"You took my food! No one does that!"
— "Quarterfinals Continue"

He competes as one of the eight finalists in the 21st World Martial Arts Tournament and fights Goku in the Quarter Finals.

Only in the anime, early on before their match, Giran gets close to a bar fight after a hungry Goku steals a large amount of the fried chicken he was eating, and knocked over his milk bottles. Giran later got into another after his match with Goku is interrupted by the rain and they stay at a bar for the night so they can finish their match the next day, when some intoxicated Orin Temple students started teasing him for ordering milk at the bar. Giran threatened to kill them and beats them all in an outnumbered fight before ordering another bottle. He then got into a fight with Yamcha, until Master Roshi calmed him down.

GiranVsGoku — Giran vs. Goku during the Tournament Saga

In his fight against Goku, despite using a number of underhanded tricks as well as his powers of flight and his Merry go round gum, he forfeits after Goku breaks out of his gum and shatters a wall with a kick.

Red Ribbon Army Saga

Main article: Red Ribbon Army Saga

GiranRoamingLake — Giran agrees to release the dome made of merry go round gum that was blocking the water channel if Goku could break it down

In a filler episode that happened shortly after the end of the 21st World Martial Arts Tournament, it was shown that Giran's race, the Giras, was responsible for the drought that plagued Nam's village. They had used their gum to block a waterfall of the roaming lake (a never ending stream of water that passed through Nam's village every generation or so). With it sealed up, Nam's villagers have been trying to sell carrots to make money to buy water, so they could use the water to live. Instead, Giran and his race have been using it for themselves ever since they inherited it at one point. One of the Giras tries to make Nam pay to let the dam be broken, when in fact they could not break it themselves even if they tried. Goku defeated the beasts and Giran arrived following their defeat. Giran agreed to release the dome made of merry go round gum that was blocking the water channel, if Goku could break it down, which he does with his Kamehameha wave.

King Piccolo Saga

Main article: King Piccolo Saga

TamkillsGiran — Giran is killed by Tambourine

Three years later, Giran is shown to be passing his time tormenting a storybook-esque village's inhabitants and stealing their food. Giran was about to beat up two bears after stealing their fish, when he was attacked by Tambourine, due to his name being on the martial arts tournament registry from when he participated in the 21st tournament.

Of all the martial artists who Tambourine killed, he lasted the longest against the evil mutated Namekian. Giran put up a better fight against him than Goku, because Goku was worn out and weak from his fight with Tien Shinhan, and even managed to strike Tambourine in the face with his large powerful tail, although it caused little to no damage. Tambourine retaliated by ramming his hand clear through Giran's body. After killing Giran and licking the blood off his hands, Tambourine killed one of the bears who thanked him before coldly telling the son that he killed the papa bear for fun. Giran is later brought back by the Dragon Balls, along with the rest of King Piccolo's victims.

Dragon Ball Z

Kid Buu Saga

Main article: Kid Buu Saga

GiranPOEU — Giran and his friends giving their ki to Goku's Spirit Bomb

Years later, Giran dies from either Super Buu's Genocide Blast or Kid Buu's Planet Burst. He was revived by Porunga along with everybody else killed by Buu and contributed to Goku's Super Spirit Bomb to defeat Buu, along with his friends.

Power level

The movie pamphlet for Dragon Ball Z: The Tree of Might states that Giran has a power level of 100.

Special abilities

Flight – Giran and his race can fly using their wings.
Superhuman Strength – Giran has superhuman strength that exceeds that of the average creature on Earth.
Tail Attack – Giran can attack his opponent using his large and powerful tail.
Merry-Go-Round Gum – Giran shoots a strange elastic rubbery gum like substance out of his mouth. The gum encases the opponent and wraps around their body tightly. However, the gum can easily be broken by powerful fighters like Goku or Tambourine.

Video game appearances

Giran is a boss in Dragon Ball 3: Gokuden and Dragon Ball Z: Super Gokuden: Totsugeki-Hen. He appears as a boss and playable character in Dragon Ball: Advanced Adventure.

In Dragon Ball: Origins, Giran is a boss in the 21st World Martial Arts Tournament, as well as in two bonus levels: an exhibition match after the final of the tournament (level 8-10) and on Mount Paozu (level 1-6). On Mount Paozu, Goku thought Giran blocked the river because Giran planned to invite his friends there; in fact it was Goku who blocked the river early in the game (in level 1-2) to gain access to a secret cave with Bulma, but Goku only remembered this after Giran's defeat.

Giran briefly appears in the opening cinematic of Dragon Ball Z: Sagas.

Voice actors

Japanese version: Banjō Ginga
Ocean Group Dub: Michael Kopsa
FUNimation Dub: Andrew Chandler
Latin American Dub: Mario Sauret
Brazilian Dub: Mauro Castro

Trivia

The Dragon Ball Collectible Card Game lists Giran as Human.
In the FUNimation dub, there are two different pronunciations of Giran's name. In the cut version that was aired on Cartoon Network, Tambourine pronounced it as "Geer-in", while in the uncut version, his name was pronounced "Geer-ahn".
In the manga, Giran initially had three toes on each foot during the Tournament Saga, but during the King Piccolo Saga he has four. In the anime, Giran initially has four fingers on each hand and three toes on each foot, but later he has five fingers and four toes throughout the rest of the series.
Maraikoh, an Other World Tournament competitor, is very similar in appearance to Giran.