krillin is a popular character in the series; in 2004 japanese fans voted him the seventh most popular character. in january 2007, oricon held a poll in which they asked japanese fans of manga and anime which characters from any series they would most like to see in spin-off series. krillin ranked third in the men's poll and sixth in the overall poll. in 2016, krillin was ranked no. 3 on the saikoplus.com list "10 most popular characters in dragon ball z". when younger fans would belittle the character as weak, krillin's voice actress mayumi tanaka said she would explain to them that krillin and yamcha are the strongest earthlings, the other characters are all aliens. she also said it was more fun to play krillin when he was a dirty-minded bad kid, that she was not fond of him growing his hair out and was shocked when he died for the first time.