English: Frieza
Japanese: Freezer

Ah, the mighty Frieza. Quite frankly, he only appears in the saga of his name (with a cameo or two afterward), so on the face of it, he doesn't really qualify as a Primary Character in the truest sense. But he's here, and with good reason: he is the ultimate evil that made Dragon Ball Z possible. Let me show you how.

Frieza commands a mighty army that consists of the most powerful, wicked beings in the northern galaxy. We know very little about his origins (I don't believe his species is ever mentioned), so he and his kin could very well be some kind of biological anomaly: a band of beings with completely phenomenal fighting abilities. However, despite the incredible power at his fingertips, he prefers a more background role at first. He prefers manipulating "lesser" beings than getting his hands dirty against unworthy combatants.

Frieza and the Saiyans had something of a working relationship: they purged planets, most often he was the buyer. However, it became clear that Frieza only utilized the Saiyans in order to keep close tabs on them, for they were a breed of uncontrollable, powerful warriors. And after the Saiyans got harder to control under the reign of King Vegeta, he decided to wipe out the entire race. The only ones that survived the genocide were the prince (who had apparently become something of a ward to Frieza as part of the contract with the Saiyans), two other warriors, and Kakarott, who left the planet to purge Earth (yeah, that's Goku.)

So Frieza is responsible for the destruction of Vejiitasei. And while he didn't take credit for the deed until decades later, Prince Vegeta had always suspected Frieza's culpability. We don't know what life was like for Vegeta as a "member" of Frieza's armies, but we do know that Vegeta is one emotionally scarred man. And his hatred and fear of Frieza gave testament to how demonically cruel the oft-delicate looking being truly was.

Frieza laid the groundwork for much of the action of Dragon Ball Z, but his active role during the series is also essential. For not only did he kill the Saiyan race, he also searched for the Dragon Balls of Namek. Why? Well, for immortality. While his fighting power made every other warrior in the galaxy laughable, he was still a mortal being, doomed to eventually die. But he wanted absolute power, and the only absolute kind of power has no time limit.

His desire to reach immortality attests to something far deeper than just ambition... a deep-seated fear that he wasn't as almighty as he believed. He was concerned that perhaps there would be someone with the power to defeat him... perhaps the legendary Super Saiyan. This was clearly a motivating factor for him to annihilate the species as a whole. He held the "monkeys" in disdain, but he also feared that limitless potential of theirs to grow stronger after every fight. And while he thought he made a clean sweep of the Saiyan race, he left one unaccounted for- the Earth-Saiyan, whose absolute determination to save his loved ones helped him burn down the barriers between phenomenal power and the stuff of legends.

But in my opinion, it wasn't just Goku that defeated Frieza. It was Frieza's own pride. The battle between Frieza and the Z-Senshi dragged out far longer than it needed to, simply because he wanted to humiliate his adversaries. He wanted to torture them, using just enough power to deal devastating blows that weren't quite deadly. He never actually felt he was in danger... until Goku showed him what a Super Saiyan can do. If he had used his 100% power earlier, Goku never would even have attained Super Saiyan. It was a hard lesson learned... and amazingly enough, Frieza didn't learn it.

Thanks to Goku's bottomless kindness, Frieza was left alive after the destruction of Namek. He eventually was found by his father King Cold, and his body was repaired with the help of mechanical implants. He became Cyborg Frieza, supposedly even more powerful than he was before. His new body gave him access to even more of his true power... now, crushing Goku and his friends would be easy, right?

Wrong. For once again, instead of taking opponents seriously, he decided to haughtily mock them. And that's how Trunks, teenaged Super Saiyan from the future, completely obliterated Frieza in two moves.

How disappointing... just barely avoiding death, and even getting the power to exact revenge, only to be brutally cut down by a kid in a fight that probably lasted five minutes. We never got to see what Frieza's full potential was, because in his infinite arrogance, he didn't think he'd ever need it.

Oh well. Despite his humiliating death, Frieza was the greatest villain on all of Dragon Ball. He was The Enemy, the creature of true evil that threatened the entire universe. He destroyed solar systems, cruelly manipulated his own allies, and wiped out anyone who even had the potential to annoy him. He was feared by the gods, but a band of brave mortals stood against him. And they toppled the ultimate personification of evil.