Lord Beerus wrote:TheMikado wrote:Lord Beerus wrote:
I have no idea why its suddenly become an issue. Apparently, you can't be incredibly strong in Dragon Ball without having some kind of gimmick. The concept of a martial artist with a high amount of natural born power has become forbidden to fandom.
It's not forbidden, the issue was and has been the gap in power. The gap between the rest of everyone in the tournament and Jiren was so wide and vast Jiren should be legendary. Yet he is played like a complete nobody. As stated above, Jiren may only be slightly stronger than the strongest fighters of his universe in manga. So nothing so exceptional about him other than just happening to be the strongest out of the Pride Troops.
Basically
Anime: Jiren appears to be very strong by a wide margin. Far stronger than SSJxKKx20. Toppo seems to have trouble with SSKxKK. Jiren is at least 10x possibly a lot more than that than Toppo.
Jiren was forced to be this exceptionally strong because Toppo was not overwhelming against SSBxKK. Thus because your starting point is so high you have to artificially inflate Jiren further to increase the drama because we know Goku can go SSBxKKx10 at will.
Manga: Jiren is stronger Toppo who is stronger than Goku's strongest forms. Even if Jiren is only 2x stronger than Toppo, Goku has nothing to combat this. Drama is still present without increasing the strength of Jiren and in turn the power gap.
So again to break this down. Because of the setup Jiren can be only mildly stronger than Toppo and still a dire threat in the manga. This helps the suspension of belief even within a fictional world. In the anime, Jiren must be at least 10x stronger than Toppo to even be at the level where he can rival Goku in his stronger form. Thus in order to make him a threat Jiren must be beyond 10x stronger than SSB which subsequently leaves every other character in the dust powerwise and make every other fighter trivial by comparison to Goku's power which he will fight Jiren at.
This is more about setup and story construction. The characters can be as strong as they need to be, but an 2x gap in power is going to be a lot easier to swallow than 100x gap in power and I would think a good author would be prepared to explain why that gap is so large. It's not that the gap can't exist but one that size is going to harder to explain as "just because".
We've still yet to see
everyone in the tournament fight. So to say that Jiren is far beyond anyone in the tournament is really jumping the gun. Especially from Jiren's own account as he's only fought Goku and Hit with any kind of serious effort. How strong Jiren is to the rest of the competition in the Tournament Of Power is still inconclusive because there's no determination of how strong every other character that is still remaining in this Tournament Of Power compared to among themselves.
The only thing that was stated essentially rumoured was that there was a mortal stronger than Hakaishin. And of course, that was a rumour. There's no way that Jiren could have become household name because of his power as a) Nobody knows who Jiren is outside of the Pride Troopers b) The concept of a mortal being as strong or stronger than Hakaishin was an unsubstantiated rumour, very much like the initial SSJ. And the anime has been VERY vague about whether Jiren is indeed stronger than a Hakaishin as it's never directly stated to be the case. Of course, Jiren's bio on Toei's website states his power is in the same domain as an Hakaishin, but bio's of characters in the Tournament Of Power on website have been changed in the past.
In the anime, Toppo fought evenly with SSJB Goku, and even withstood a Kamehameha at point-blank range from him. And then Toppo basically shrugged over everything that just happened and began to power up, indicating that he wasn't even facing SSJB Goku at his strongest. And Goku replying by powering up, through stacking the Kaioken on top of SSJB. Grand Priest even instructs the both of them stop when he notices this because even he believed if they were going to fight like that, one of them would die. So there's no concrete indication that Toppo couldn't withstand SSJB with Kaioken stacked on top, as the fight is left ambiguous as to who would win if the both of them were to go all out. And Toppo even notes that if the best that Goku can do is match his strength, then Jiren will absolutely defeat him in battle in the Tournament Of Power. And before Goku went Ultra Instinct, we've actually yet to see Goku fight Toppo again. For all we know, Toppo when he's fully powered up, could face Goku with Kaioken x2/3/5/10/20 stacked on top and actually defeat him. So whether Goku could defeat Toppo when they both go all out is still up in the air. The situation with Toppo's strength compared to Goku is made even more ambiguous given both parties stated they weren't sure if they could defeat the other opponent.
Both the anime and manga actually have an identical setup: Goku using SSJB can't defeat Toppo and Jiren is stronger than a Hakaishin. The anime adds the emphasis of this by having Toppo indicating he wasn't fighting at full strength and also withstanding everything that SSJB Goku could dish out to him and insinuating that Goku would need to stack Kaioken on top on SSJB to have a chance of possibly defeating him. And the manga adds emphasis to this by having Toppo ring out (Mastered) SSJB Goku almost immediately after Goku turned into (Mastered) SSJB.
As you said characters, can be strong as they need to be, which is pretty much the rule of thumb in Dragon Ball. The reason for an immense gap in strength is something that is rarely discussed in-universe. Nobody every questioned why Freeza, in his suppressed base form was at least 30 times stronger than any of the major antagonist in the previous arc (Vegeta, Nappa and Raditz). The only thing that was established about Freeza is that he was a very strong person in the universe who went around conquering planets. There was no elaboration on where that strength came from or how he developed it. Freeza just had that incredible amount of power to flex around and no one at the time could challenge him.It same reason why the Android were much stronger than Super Saiyans, even though the person who built the Androids had no idea that Super Saiyan even existed. No one questioned how that could be the case. That was just scenario that need to be the case for the plot to move forward, regardless of lack of logic behind it.
But the step is only the same if you were reading bulletpoints which ironically is likely why we have such a discrepancy in execution.
In the anime we know Goku has the capability to SSBxKKx10 and that at whatever level he fought Toppo at he was able to inflict a hit on him.
In fact, at no point was manga Goku even able to land a hit at all on Toppo and that is with Goku using the known full extent of his power which contrasts greatly with the presentation of Goku only using 10% of his maximum power that we know of.
That's pretty much my point, in one scenario Goku is going all at at his highest form and cannot even land a hit. In the other we have Goku able to get 10x stronger but still getting hits in on Toppo and seeming to have the edge.
As far as the no explanation for previous scenarios I've said it 100x times, just because it was done previously doesn't make it good and doesn't give license to do it again even worse. Frieza is the arc I detest the most of Z partially due to this.
However, even in this Frieza is the emperior of the entire universe. He has status and a proven record no one else can be close to claiming. His power matches his title.
The Androids were the apocalyptic doomsday bringers. Their power matched what they were plot and character wise.
Cell claims to be the ultimate life-form formed from the cells of the strongest creatures. His power, once completed, matches his claim.
Jiren is a Pride troop. And that's fine but what about Jiren separates him from the other Pride Trooper? His Strength alone.
The difference in presentation here is that in the manga the Pride Troops as a whole are getting representation as being exceedingly strong against Goku's strongest form. Whether that continues is unknown. However the setup seems to be making the Pride Troops over all a strong group just like the Ginyu force rather than groups strength being represented by a single character. In this way Jiren is and can be just the strong silent guy, because he isn't the whole enemy, rather the Pride Troopers as a whole are a possible treat to Goku rather than just Jiren himself.
The dynamic completely changes from him being Super strong when compared to his peers to just the strong guy among the already really strong guys that are giving Goku trouble.
I do think we have to wait to see how it all plays out but thus far the step narratively is exactly what I expected. My chief complaint on Jirenx execution has been Jirens exceptionalism in this tournament and once again my chief argument has been addressed by the narrative of the manga. I don’t think that my ability to identify these issues and the mangas ability to correct them are mere coincidence. It’s because i an identifying a real and valid storytelling critique of the anime and the manga uses good story telling mechanisms to correct it avoid that issue.
It’s clear when making the manga they realized the folly of Jirens exceptionalism too.
