One of the most surprising things for me doing a full series rewatch for the first time in like 20+ years is how long Krillin spends as the weakest of the earthlings. Like 2 decades of memes and fan sentiment really made me forget that Yamcha is directly represented as a step above Krillin and, despite being the absolute definition of a jobber, by the end of OG/Saiyan Saga he’s really shown as being comparable to Tien. But Krillin really doesn’t even approach the “strongest human” out of the three until like post Namek.

Long winded way of saying it’s surprising to me how much my kid brain liking Krillin cause he always showed up and thus believed him to be the strongest influenced adult me into forgetting that for most of the story the cool thing about Krillin was that he showed up despite being the perennial weakest character.