ahill1 said:
Goku getting into a city the first time was pretty funny and well handled. You could see through Goku some pertinent critics made to the life in big cities, such as ppl rushing from left to right, how bustly it seems making ppl to go crazy, etc.
One part of that I find quite interesting is how little value Goku places on money. Through having made a self-sufficient lifestyle in the wilderness, it shows how he sees money as just a means to an end compared to most civilised life viewing it as a goal to acquire. This rings pretty true to how the cash system can be critiqued in real life as, unlike the gold standard which has a finite enough amount to place significant value on it, cash in itself is just paper that could be printed infinitely if not for governments wanting to keep in place a system of debt and inflation. That analysis could be seen as reaching, but considering Toriyama is no stranger to adding political or social critique through gags and metaphors such as Oolong's design being a literal communist pig in the first arc or Toriyama going on record to state Freeza being an intergalactic loan shark as what makes him a truly menacing villain, I wouldn't put this subtle nod past him in his prime.
There's that fighter there Goku fought and got the money. His hair seems a lot like Bruce Lee's. Wonder if Toriyama inspired on Bruce to make him. He is basically a nobody though lol.
Toriyama has made it apparent he's a big fan of Kung-Fu flicks (mainly Jackie Chan movies, as made obvious by Jackie Chun and his drunken fist) and it's assumed the structure of Muscle Tower was based on the Bruce Lee film Game of Death (though I'm unsure if this was confirmed by Toriyama himself), so a homage like this is expected.
He probably made him a jobber to show the difference between the peak of our world's martial artists and what makes for Tenkaichi Budokai material.
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