Legend of the Legendary Super Saiyan of Legend

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Legend of the Legendary Super Saiyan of Legend

Post by Herms » Wed Nov 09, 2011 5:52 pm

Episode of Bardock and podcast episode #272 got me thinking that it’s high time to go over the whole issue of just what the heck the legend of the Super Saiyan is anyway, and who’s really the Legendary Super Saiyan. The issue of course being that the answer to both those questions shifts throughout the series and its various tie-ins and adaptations. So let’s see if we can’t sort through all this nonsense once and for all. I’m going to split this into three big parts: all the hype surrounding the Super Saiyan in the buildup to the first appearance of Super Saiyan Goku in the series, the ways in which what was said about the Super Saiyan before its actual debut are or aren’t upheld throughout the rest of the series, and a look at the various candidates offered afterward as the “real” Legendary Super Saiyan in an attempt to reconcile these apparent contradictions. To be clear, this guide will focus on the “legend” aspect of the Super Saiyan concept, and will not be a guide to Super Saiyans in general ala the Daizenshuu EX Transformation Guide. For today, here’s Part 1:

Building Up the Legend

Manga

The term “Super Saiyan” itself first turns up in chapter 204, as Vegeta and Nappa discuss the situation as they head off to Earth. Vegeta notes that Gohan is unusually strong for a Saiyan child, and says that when Saiyans interbreed with Earthlings it must create a powerful hybrid. “A ‘Super Saiyan’, you could say” replies Nappa. Far from treating the Super Saiyan as a subject of legends, Nappa makes it sound like he just made the term up on the spot. In fact, the wording in Japanese is almost exactly the same as when Goku is explaining the different stages of Super Saiyan to Boo, and shows him the Super Saiyan that surpasses Super Saiyan: “’Super Saiyan 2’, you could call it”. This is one of those cases where, while there’s not necessarily a plot hole or overt contradiction, the implications seem to go against what we later see in the series. It’s probably not impossible to reconcile Nappa’s line with the later depiction of the Super Saiyan, but at the same time it doesn’t give any indication that Toriyama had at this point come up with the idea of the Super Saiyan as a legendary warrior. In the anime, episode 35’s title likewise uses “Super Saiyan” in this more general way, referring to Gohan as one due to the “miraculous” role he plays in Vegeta’s defeat. In both these cases, “Super Saiyan” is written slightly differently than it later would be in the manga, but I’ll explain about that later.

“Super Saiyan” isn’t used in its more familiar sense until chapter 264. Freeza tells Zarbon that he has a premonition that a powerful Saiyan will soon become a threat. After Zarbon leaves, Freeza thinks to himself about the Saiyans’ constantly growing power. He doesn’t think they could be a match for him, but if he doesn’t stop them now they might become Super Saiyans, which would be a real nuisance. In the next chapter, Kuririn meets the Great Elder of Namek and tells him about how the Namekian who fled to Earth was killed by a Saiyan. Though he knows the Saiyans are powerful, the Great Elder still doesn’t believe that one could have killed a prodigy of the Dragon Clan, and asks if this Saiyan could have been a Super Saiyan. However, it’s not until chapter 280 as Goku fights Recoom that we get a real explanation as to just what a Super Saiyan is. Vegeta is shocked at Goku’s strength, and is furious at the idea that a low-level warrior like Goku may have become the “legendary Super Saiyan”. He has a helpful internal monologue explaining the concept:
A Super Saiyan appears once every thousand years… a Saiyan who overcomes the wall which no warrior, no matter how gifted, can overcome…That’s supposed to just be a stupid tradition…And even if the legend were true…only I would have the potential to become a Super Saiyan.
Goku effortlessly defeats Recoom and Burta, but he lets them live and allows Jheese to escape. In chapter 282 when Vegeta opportunistically kills the unconscious Recoom and Burta, Goku yells at him for killing them when there was no need. Vegeta says Goku’s softness disgusts him, and notes that he apparently hasn’t managed to become a “complete” Super Saiyan. Goku asks what he’s talking about, but Vegeta just starts talking about Freeza’s strength.

Soon Goku’s fighting Ginyu, and when he shows off a bit of his true power (via the Kaio-ken) Ginyu freaks out and wonders if Goku is a Super Saiyan. Jheese is shocked to hear this, and says that the Super Saiyan is the legendary mightiest of warriors, and the one thing that Freeza feared. But Goku thinks it’s pointless to fight Ginyu (since Ginyu can’t possibly win) and doesn’t want to kill him, so he advises Ginyu to leave the planet. Ginyu can’t believe this: the Super Saiyan is supposed to be strongest warrior in the universe, and love blood and battle. Similar to Vegeta, he says that Goku must not have managed to completely become a Super Saiyan.

And that’s really all the new information we get until Goku actually becomes a Super Saiyan. These basic points get repeated several times, with the term “mightiest of warriors” knocked around a fair deal, and Vegeta constantly admonishing Goku to stop being so darn soft if he’s ever going to truly become a Super Saiyan. So let’s just lay all this stuff out. Before Goku’s actual transformation, what we are told is that a Super Saiyan:

---Is a legendary figure
---Appears once every thousand years.
---Is the mightiest warrior in the universe
---Overcomes the wall which no warrior, no matter how gifted, can overcome
---Loves blood and battle
---Acts ruthlessly
---Is the one thing Freeza fears

I suppose that last point is more about Freeza’s reaction to the legend than it is part of the legend itself, but it gets repeated often enough and is so central to the plot that I thought it worth including. Plus, the Episode of Bardock offers an origin of the legend that primarily focuses on explaining how Freeza came to know of it.

The subject not touched on at any point is what a Super Saiyan actually looks like, and this is one of the key ways that the various bits of hype leading up to the Super Saiyan differ from how it’s ultimately presented in the series. A recurring theme during the later Namek arc is people wondering whether someone has become a Super Saiyan. Not whether they might become one, or are close to becoming one (though we do get a fair bit of that too), but whether or not they are actually at that very moment a Super Saiyan. Vegeta and Ginyu both assume that Goku has become a Super Saiyan but change their minds when they see him act mercifully (Vegeta even does this twice, first with Recoom and then in the Freeza fight), and Vegeta for a while assumes that he himself has finally become a Super Saiyan, before Freeza persuades him otherwise. We ultimately see that becoming a Super Saiyan is accompanied by several fairly unmistakable visual changes: upturned golden hair, green eyes, and a glowing aura. However, none of these things are even hinted at in the legend, at least not in the manga (the anime’s a bit different, but we’ll get to that). Everyone just assumes that a Super Saiyan will be an extraordinarily powerful Saiyan, but not visually distinct from a regular Saiyan. When Freeza finally sees Goku transform into a Super Saiyan, he doesn’t understand what has happened, and needs a good deal of convincing before he finally admits that Goku is indeed a Super Saiyan. This can partially be put down to stubbornness and denial, but Freeza seems genuinely puzzled at Goku’s transformation.

Going along with that, while Super Saiyan and its variants are ultimately treated as temporarily transformations (it’s considered a difficult feat when Goku and Gohan try to stay Super Saiyans around the clock), that idea is also not present early on. Again, while Freeza was rather obsessed with the idea of Super Saiyans, when he finally sees Goku transform it completely flies over his head. He wonders what this change could possibly be, saying that Saiyans are only supposed to transform into Oozaru. The idea of Super Saiyan as a sudden transformation or change seems completely foreign to him. On the other hand, while Super Saiyan isn’t seen as a transformation, it’s still treated as something a Saiyan becomes rather than something they’re born as. Freeza worries about Saiyans becoming Super Saiyans, while Vegeta believed that he alone had the potential to become one. Both Vegeta and Ginyu note that Goku has apparently failed to completely become Super Saiyan. So the idea at this stage seems to be that Super Saiyan is something that must be achieved, but which isn’t a sudden transformation or marked by visual change. It also sounds like Vegeta et al envision Super Saiyan as a permanent change, something reached once and for all time.

A Note on the Name “Super Saiyan”

Before moving on to the anime, I should probably throw in an explanation about how “Super Saiyan” is written and pronounced. This is a fairly long aside to explain only two points that are actually relevant to the topic, so you can skip down to “Anime” if you want (I forbid you to skip any other sections though).

To give a quick and simplified explanation, written Japanese features three scripts. First is kanji, which is ideographic. Then there are two phonetic scripts: hiragana (for Japanese words) and katakana (for foreign words). In other words, kanji have a more or less set meaning but can be pronounced in different ways depending on the context. Books aimed at kids therefore use a tiny superscript above kanji to specify the correct way of reading them, written in either hiragana or katakana (the letters of which have set pronunciations but no inherent meaning, similar to alphabet letters). This superscript is called “furigana”, and besides specifying standard readings it can also be used to provide unusual readings for words, such as having a kanji be pronounced as the equivalent English word. The Japanese character for the concept of “surpass/exceed/overcome” is 超. When written on its own and used as a suffix, this is read as chou and means “super/ultra” (in DB this is used to write attacks like the Super Kamehameha or the Super Genki-Dama). It’s also used to write the word 超える/koeru, “to surpass” or “to overcome”, which is thrown around a lot in DB in regards to characters outclassing each other, Super Saiyans being better than regular Saiyans, Super Saiyan 2 being better than Super Saiyan, etc. The English word “super” meanwhile is written in Japanese as katakana: スーパー /suupaa (it’s this that’s used to write “Super Dodon-pa”). The “Super” in “Super Saiyan” however, is written with 超 but with スーパー written above it as furigana. In this way, while Toriyama uses an English word, he still indicates its meaning in Japanese.

However, when Nappa first tosses out the term “Super Saiyan”, in the manga “Super” is written simply in katakana, rather than in kanji with a katakana superscript. The more standard way of writing it first shows up when Freeza introduces the term in its later use as a legendary warrior rather than a Saiyan/Earthling hybrid. This is another sign that the initial use of the term “Super Saiyan” by Nappa was probably just a coincidence rather than Toriyama foreshadowing the developments of the Namek/Freeza story arc. “Super Saiyan” does get written in katakana a couple other times later in the manga though, like when people unaware of the term repeat it after hearing it for the first time (a common manga technique for displaying unfamiliarity with kanji words or names). Gotenks also writes it that way, as part of his general quirkiness, and because his attacks are almost all written purely in katakana. In many video games as well we see the term written in katakana, both because older games couldn’t display kanji very well, and because furigana isn’t much used in games. The Jump Library book for DBZ movie 13 also writes it in katakana.

On the flipside, the term Chou Saiya-jin sometimes turns up. In the anime when Freeza introduces the term in his internal monologue, he pronounces it this way. Perhaps this was just a goof on the part of Nakao Ryuusei, or maybe the anime staff was considering using that pronunciation for the anime but ultimately thought better of it. The closing song to DBZ movie 13 also refers to Chou Saiya-jin, though oddly the lyrics for the song featured in the aforementioned Jump Library book for the movie have Suupaa Saiya-jin written with the same kanji/katakana combo as in the manga (the only place in the book the term is written the same as in the manga, in fact). Maybe Hironobu Kageyama also made a mistake, or just purposefully changed the lyrics because he thought Chou Saiya-jin flowed better.

Anime

DBZ episode 66 adapts Vegeta’s explanation of the Super Saiyan concept, and while his explanation is word-for-word the same as the manga (in the Japanese version anyway), the anime adds in fairly significant visual elements. In the manga, the only imaginary that goes along with Vegeta’s explanation, besides just shots of him and Goku, is a picture of a full moon or perhaps a planet. In the anime though, between Vegeta’s statement that the Super Saiyan is “supposed to just be a stupid tradition” and his claim that “even if the legend were true… only I would have the potential to become a Super Saiyan”, we get a fairly long, narration-free scene showing what is apparently a Super Saiyan. The Super Saiyan is portrayed as an Oozaru-like figure with glowing red eyes, mostly covered in shadows but with bits of gold visible along the edges of its body. It stands amidst a scene of fiery destruction, holding terrified figures in its hand King Kong-style (showing that it’s the size of an Oozaru and not just shaped like one). It roars, which seems to cause the planet it is on to explode. The scene fades to white, and we see the Super Saiyan with the universe in the background. Vegeta is then superimposed on the Super Saiyan (they even have the same pose), and it’s only then that his narration resumes.

This piece of filler is well-known for foreshadowing (advertently or not) the Golden Oozarus in GT, which has led people to speculate that the Golden Oozaru is the “real” Super Saiyan form the legend was talking about. As we’ll see, this view is actually not without official support. The depiction here of the Super Saiyan as a kind of Oozaru might stem from the image of the full moon (or planet) shown with Vegeta’s explanation in the manga. Still, it’s notable that the figure in the episode has no visible tail, despite two shots of its entire body, so it seems like more of a figurative monster than a literal Oozaru (more on this later). The destructive actions of the Super Saiyan in this scene probably come from the lines about the Super Saiyan loving “blood and battle” and the repeated idea that to truly become one a Saiyan must be merciless.

What’s not generally appreciated is that not only does this filler scene foreshadow the Golden Oozaru, it also foreshadows Super Saiyan’s trademark golden hair entirely. DBZ episode 66 was first aired on November 7th, 1990, while Super Saiyan Goku didn’t debut in the manga until chapter 317, released in Jump on April 1st, 1991. It wasn’t even until chapter 323 over a month later that the world finally got color artwork of Super Saiyan Goku revealing his specific hair color, though a color image Toriyama made for the anime staff might have been floating around at Toei a little earlier. DBZ movie 4, which came a little more than a week earlier on March 19th, infamously portrays Super Saiyan Goku as having upright hair (an idea Toriyama provided for Toei) and a reddish-gold aura, but not a trace of gold hair. The daizenshuu (released after the manga’s end) explain that this was a result of Super Saiyan Goku having not yet appeared in the manga when the movie was made, and are stuck labeling the form “Pseudo Super Saiyan”, with a suggestion that it’s a form prior to the real thing.

Even if Toriyama hadn’t thought up the golden hair yet (or had and just wasn’t telling Toei for whatever reason), you might wonder why Toei didn’t just portray “Super Saiyan” Goku in DBZ movie 4 in a manner more consistent with the filler in DBZ episode 66. I think the answer is that the shadowy figure there was never really intended to be a literal representation of Super Saiyan, even if its golden color and Oozaru-like shape turned out to be incredibly predictive. DBZ episode 122 has a similar bit of filler as Trunks warns Goku about Gero’s two androids. The androids are represented as hulking, shadowy figures with color only along the edges of their body (blue for one, purple for the other). Funny thing is, episode 122 was broadcast on January 8th, 1992. By this point the manga was up to chapter 354; 17 and 18 debuted over a month earlier in chapter 349 (November 25th, 1991), while 19 and 20 appeared three months before even that, in chapter 337 (August 26th, 1991). In other words, the anime staff almost certainly knew that the shadowy musclemen they were showing bore no resemblance to either of the villainous android pairs that would be showing up, but they depicted them like that anyway. Maybe they were just being dumb, but I think probably this was meant as a metaphoric representation of the pair. A huge shadowy monster neatly illustrates the threatening and mysterious image of the androids, and since the anime staff knew the androids would really look physically unintimidating, this might have been an attempt to purposefully misdirect the audience to heighten their surprise when the androids turn up.

I imagine the same logic was behind the shadowy golden Oozaru: a silhouetted figure goes along with the exact nature of the Super Saiyan still being a mystery, a huge quasi-Oozaru represents power and makes the figure distinctively Saiyan, and the color gold is typically associated with superiority. But, crucially, at this point in the story there was still no indication in either the manga or anime that a Super Saiyan would look any different than a normal one. The anime shows Vegeta imagining this huge monster, but it still has him wonder if Goku is already a Super Saiyan, which makes no sense if the monster imagery is taken literally. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the Golden Oozarus in GT weren’t based on this episode’s depiction of the Super Saiyan (though there’s no official confirmation that they were), just that at the time this depiction wasn’t meant any more literally than the shadow monster androids were.

The Funimation Dub

For the most part I’m trying to cover all this material in roughly the order it was released rather than in in-universe chronology, but while I’m on DBZ episode 66 I might as well discuss the Funi dub version of Vegeta’s Super Saiyan monologue, which is a notable example of the dub totally changing things around. While in the Japanese anime Vegeta’s speech is the same as the manga and therefore doesn’t directly relate to the images of the Oozaru-like figure (which as mentioned were not in the manga), his speech in the Funi dub is mostly based on that filler scene. Here’s what he says, courtesy of, God help me, the DB wikia:
According to Legend, the last Super Saiyan could only maintain his status in the transformed state. His power was extraordinary, he had no equal in the universe. But he was too primitive to control it, his rage burned so intensely that it eventually consumed him. In the end, he was destroyed by his own power.
For comparison, here’s Vegeta’s quote in the Japanese manga/anime once again:
A Super Saiyan appears once every thousand years… a Saiyan who overcomes the wall which no warrior, no matter how gifted, can overcome…That’s supposed to just be a stupid tradition…And even if the legend were true…only I would have the potential to become a Super Saiyan.
I’ve also heard that the dub changes the timescale on which a new Super Saiyan is supposed to appear from 1,000 years to 3,000 years, but if true I don’t know where that’s mentioned in the dub.

Here we get the idea that the previous Super Saiyan was “too primitive” (probably a reference to his Oozaru-like form) and so was “destroyed by his own power”, an idea that apparently comes from the way the Super Saiyan is shown destroying the planet he’s on. This idea has also led to statements that the Super Saiyan destroyed the original homeworld of the Saiyans (where they lived before invading Planet Plant, as depicted in the OVA and GT), but if this is mentioned elsewhere in the dub or is just fan speculation I don’t know. At any rate, there’s no hint in the Japanese anime as to what planet the Super Saiyan is on, and there’s nothing to suggest that blowing up that planet was a self-destructive act. It seems no different than other bits of filler showing kid Vegeta and his fellow Saiyans blowing up planets. In fact, after the planet’s explosion we see the Super Saiyan with outer space as the background. This probably isn’t meant as a literal representation of the Super Saiyan floating in space after the planet’s destruction (its pose is a little too stiff) but it also doesn’t give much of a sense that the Super Saiyan killed itself. Still, this idea that the previous Super Saiyan somehow self-destructed as a result of not being able to properly control its power has become widespread among fans, even ones not directly familiar with the Funi dub. In fact, back in one of the old “Ask VegettoEX columns, Mike and Julian themselves say that, had Goku died on Namek, it would mean that “the ‘Legendary Super Saiyan’ would have indeed been crushed, just as the legend had predicted”. It seems to have become yet another piece of spurious “accepted wisdom” among fans (that same Ask VegettoEX column provides several other examples of “accepted wisdom” regarding Toriyama’s original plans for ending the series, but I’ve done that subject to death already).

And I think I can see why. Despite all the talk about the Super Saiyan being “legendary”, in the Japanese version we never get much of an actual legend. Sure, there are various attributes of the Super Saiyan thrown around (strongest in the universe, loves blood and battle, etc), but no actual story, which is fundamentally what legends are supposed to be. The closest we get is the idea that one appears every thousand years, but that’s not much. The Funi dub, meanwhile, provides a short but complete story of the Super Saiyan, with a beginning, middle, and end: 1) the Super Saiyan was really strong 2) but couldn’t control its power 3) so it ultimately destroyed itself. I think that’s a large part of why this bit of dub dialogue seems to stick out in people’s minds, despite being just one thing said in one episode. But like most dub inventions that are fairly good ideas in and of themselves, it gets messed up by poor execution. After all, the dub can have Vegeta talk about the previous Super Saiyan destroying itself, but they can’t really follow up on it, since no Super Saiyans ever actually destroy themselves by failing to control their power. So the dub inserts this memorable idea which is never brought up again. This probably feeds into the (spurious) idea that Toriyama was forced to change the ending of the Namek/Freeza arc, which is the context Mike and Julian discussed the story.

Some other notable additions of the dub is Vegeta describing the Super Saiyan as a “transformed state”, while in the original version Super Saiyan isn’t treated as a transformation until much later. The dub also explicitly identifies the shadowy figure we see as the “last Super Saiyan”, while in the Japanese anime it’s not said precisely what it is. It could be any of the previous Super Saiyans, or (as I think makes the most sense) a largely figurative depiction of the Super Saiyan concept in general. Still, in this regard the dub’s just continuing the trend set by the original filler, in making the idea of “previous Super Saiyan(s)” a more concrete concept. In the manga Vegeta simply mentions that a Super Saiyan appears once every thousand years. This implies there have been Super Saiyans before, but they are neither shown nor directly talked about. While not necessarily meant literally, the filler image of the gold Oozaru-like Super Saiyan raises the question of what Super Saiyans prior to Goku were like, and the dub takes this and rolls with it to create their story of the last Super Saiyan who appeared. Fandom has tended to take things even further, and so the DB wikia treats this figure as the original Super Saiyan, something not even specified in the dub.

The Movies

Well, I already mentioned DBZ movie 4’s infamous “Pseudo Super Saiyan” (a term not coined until years later), which at the time was apparently supposed to be an actual Super Saiyan, hence the movie’s title: Super Saiyan Son Goku. Besides this obvious sign that the movie was made before the Super Saiyan was properly introduced in the manga, the movie’s also the last place we see the early idea of a Super Saiyan as a person or state instead of a straightforward transformation. When Goku becomes a Pseudo Super Saiyan and beats up Slug, Kaio wonders whether this is the power of a Super Saiyan, a somewhat odd way of phrasing things. Then at the movie’s end, Kaio thinks that Goku might be a Super Saiyan. He doesn’t think that Goku might have temporarily become a Super Saiyan while fighting Slug, but that he currently is one. Again, this makes it seem like Super Saiyan is envisioned as a permanent state rather than a transformation. This might explain why Kaio thought Goku was using “the power of the Super Saiyan” to fight Slug, instead of wondering whether Goku had suddenly transformed into a Super Saiyan, and why Kaio still thinks of Goku as a Super Saiyan even when he’s back to looking and acting normal. Perhaps the idea is that Goku might already be a Super Saiyan, but he still hasn’t learned to properly control and utilize his Super Saiyan power yet. At any rate, like with most movies the logic here seems rather muddled, even by DB standards.

Myth-Busting

Now that we’ve gone over what was said about the Super Saiyan prior to Goku’s transformation, let’s take a look at what we get afterward and compare the two. To review, here’s that list of what we’re told about the Super Saiyan in the manga prior to its debut. The Super Saiyan:

---Is a legendary figure
---Appears once every thousand years.
---Is the mightiest warrior in the universe
---Overcomes the wall which no warrior, no matter how gifted, can overcome
---Loves blood and battle
---Acts ruthlessly
---Is the one thing Freeza fears

There’s also the assumption, never explicitly stated, that while a Super Saiyan can be recognized by its strength, it doesn’t actually look any different than a regular Saiyan. This is of course the first idea to go out the window, with Super Saiyan golden hair and green/blue eyes being one of the most iconic things in the series. Out of all the ways the actual Super Saiyans we see in the manga differ from what’s assumed about them before they show up, I’m pretty sure this one was intentional. Freeza is confused when he finally sees a real Super Saiyan, at first not even thinking to connect the sudden change in Goku to the one thing he fears, and which Vegeta was incessantly harping on about. So Toriyama seems to be highlighting the fact that the Super Saiyan’s form is unexpected. We also know from the Super Exciting Guide: Story Volume and the daizenshuu that the light hair of the Super Saiyan was something Toriyama planned in advance to help make his assistant’s job easier, since it was his assistant’s job to always black in Goku’s hair. Toriyama also says in the SEG that changing Goku’s hair color made it easy to tell at a glance that Goku was different.

Then there’s the stuff about a Super Saiyan loving blood and battle, and being merciless. After he first transforms, Goku yells at Gohan to get away while he still has some of his reason left, and when Goku demands that Kaio let him stay on Namek to finish off Freeza, Kaio says Goku is no longer himself, but the “warrior of rage”. On the other hand Goku ultimately spares Freeza in much the same way he did Piccolo, Vegeta, and the Ginyu Force. His reasons aren’t exactly humanitarian (he’s not interested in fighting the increasingly weak Freeza, who’s already been completely humiliated anyway), but he still doesn’t feel much like a “warrior of rage” who can barely control himself. Later when Vegeta fights No.19 he says that he becomes more violent as a Super Saiyan, and remains in a slightly excited condition while in that form. Gohan also becomes cruel when he first transforms into a Super Saiyan 2. So I guess all in all this condition was upheld fairly well, but I can see why Toei thought what the world needed was a really bloodthirsty Super Saiyan.

Oh, and Freeza’s definitely afraid of Super Saiyans. Check that one off.

So that leaves the idea that a Super Saiyan is the most powerful warrior in the universe, one who surpasses the wall which all other gifted warriors cannot overcome, and that one such person appears every thousand years. This is the part most people see as being messed up by the later portion of the series, and it’s not hard to see why. We gets tons of Super Saiyan characters, loads of enemies stronger than Super Saiyans, and even new and improved versions of Super Saiyan itself. That idea of Super Saiyan as strongest might not be in all that bad shape though. After all, while the rest of the series introduces stronger and stronger forms of Super Saiyan, these are still all…forms of Super Saiyan. Sure, they’re described as “surpassing Super Saiyan”, but all these variants on Super Saiyan are still more similar to each other than to anything else. Plus, the names “Super Saiyan 2” and “Super Saiyan 3” are explicitly shown to be terms invented by Goku for convenience sake, and the other sub-forms aren’t even given specific names in the actual series. For all we know, the Super Saiyans of old could have all reached Super Saiyan 3.

And while we get lots of villains stronger than Super Saiyan Goku was on Namek, they’re usually still taken down by some stronger Super Saiyan. It’s really not until midway through the Boo arc with the introduction of Fusion that we finally get a power-up treated as superior to the whole idea of Super Saiyan forms. Even then, Fusion just amounts to sticking two Super Saiyans together to make an even stronger one. Elder Kaioshin’s power-up is the only time we truly get the idea that Super Saiyan forms and transformations in general are imperfect and that there’s something better. But despite that, the most powerful character we see in the entire manga ends up being Super Vegetto, a regular old Super Saiyan, although one whose unbeatable strength largely comes from being a Potara fusion. Seems the Super Saiyan really is the mightiest in the universe.

That just leaves the issue of a Super Saiyan supposedly appearing only once every thousand years, and there’s really no way out of this one. Now, the fact that Super Saiyan Goku on Namek gets completely outclassed by later heroes and villains (his future self included) obviously comes from the general Shonen pattern of power inflation, and the introduction of more and more Super Saiyan characters goes right along with that. Still, I frankly think Toriyama just forgot about how there’s supposedly only one Super Saiyan each millennium. The stuff about the Super Saiyan being strongest in the universe and cruel and whatnot gets repeated again and again throughout the Namek/Freeza story arc, but the “once a thousand years” thing is only mentioned once, in chapter 280. That leaves over a year before the Namek/Freeza arc wraps up with chapter 229 and Toriyama would need to even consider the possibility of more Super Saiyans, plenty of time for it to slip his mind.

And it seems to: in chapter 364 Vegeta, the only character to ever really give a damn about the “legendary” status of the Super Saiyan, complains about the proliferation of people stronger than the initial batch of Super Saiyans, and in chapter 429 he complains about how little kids like Trunks and Goten easily manage to become the legendary warrior. So through Vegeta, Toriyama reminds people of what the Super Saiyan is supposed to be, even as he tears down these ideas. But oddly, he never has Vegeta complain about the actual presence of multiple Super Saiyans. Vegeta might not like who some of these extra golden boys are (weirdoes from the future, little brats), but he never harps on how there can be only one. In fact, Vegeta himself vows right at the end of the Namek/Freeza arc that he will surpass Super Saiyan Goku, which is logically impossible if the legend of the Super Saiyan being one of a kind and stronger than anyone is true. Apparently he doesn’t put much stock in the parts of the legend that inconvenience him. Then when Trunks comes along, Vegeta simply argues that Trunks can’t really be a Super Saiyan because there aren’t any Saiyans besides himself, Goku, and Gohan. He doesn’t say anything about the legend of there only being a single Super Saiyan every thousand years, though you’d think it’d be the first thing he’d mention.

When Vegeta himself first becomes a Super Saiyan, Toriyama goes out of his way to include a conversation where Kuririn says it’s impossible because Vegeta doesn’t have a calm heart (a necessarily component according to Goku back in the Freeza arc) and Vegeta explains that he is calm, plus pure evil. But we never get any similar scene where Toriyama tries to explain away the “once a thousand years” thing. Maybe he just couldn’t think up a presentable excuse, but a think he simply forgot about that rule, the same way he seemed to forget the whole thing about needing to train fifty years to learn the Kamehameha.

So overall the latter portion of the series contradicts the legend we’re told in the Freeza arc in several ways. Should we care? Well, that’s ultimately a matter of personal taste, but it may be worth asking what reason there is to believe the legend in the first place. I mean, we’re never given any actual source for the legend; Vegeta simply asserts that there is one. Apparently, some unknown person or persons said at some unknown point in the past, based on unknown authority, that a Super Saiyan is the strongest thing in the universe and appears once in a thousand years. Are we just supposed to assume they knew everything there is to know about the DB universe in general and Super Saiyans in particular? Why should we think the legend is infallible? It is, after all, just a legend. Admittedly “a legend says so, therefore it’s true” is the level of logic DB typically runs on (this is in fact how the dragonballs themselves are introduced), but in a case like this where the legend gets contradicted by the actual events of the series, it seems fine to me to just say the legend was wrong and move on. Still, both fans and apparently some of those working on the series weren't able to, which brings us to our next issue...the multiple candidates for the status of the "true" legendary Super Saiyan.

Click here to jump to the post on the candidates for Super Saiyan
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Re: Legend of the Legendary Super Saiyan of Legend

Post by Gohaz » Wed Nov 09, 2011 7:02 pm

Well I believe that, in the original, it is stated that the last one appeared in a thousand years, not that it happened once every 1000
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Re: Legend of the Legendary Super Saiyan of Legend

Post by Herms » Wed Nov 09, 2011 7:42 pm

Gohaz wrote:Well I believe that, in the original, it is stated that the last one appeared in a thousand years, not that it happened once every 1000
Nope, it's "once every 1,000 years". There's nothing at all said in the original about "the last one", apart from the general idea that there were Super Saiyans before Goku. The idea of the "last/original Super Saiyan" as a distinct character was only developed later, partly by filler, the guidebooks, and the Funi dub, but mostly by fandom misinformation.
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Re: Legend of the Legendary Super Saiyan of Legend

Post by Gohaz » Wed Nov 09, 2011 8:06 pm

Oh alright, thanks for clarifying that...

Well, you fogot to mention that GT screwed it up a bit too... even though it's not Toriyama-made, it's considered canon, and they messed up making Old Shin seem to already have seen a Super Saiyan 4 before... and with episode Bardock (tho not canon I guess) made it as Bardock.. it's a whole confusing thing, unless we're thinking different millenia, since Old Shin is way too old!
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Re: Legend of the Legendary Super Saiyan of Legend

Post by Adamant » Wed Nov 09, 2011 9:12 pm

Herms wrote: In the anime when Freeza introduces the term in his internal monologue, he pronounces it this way. Perhaps this was just a goof on the part of Nakao Ryuusei, or maybe the anime staff was considering using that pronunciation for the anime but ultimately thought better of it.
It's worth noting that he says "super" in Kai. I'd lean towards the "Nakao goofed up" theory as most likely.
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Re: Legend of the Legendary Super Saiyan of Legend

Post by Nazi Cola » Wed Nov 09, 2011 9:42 pm

Another very insightful passage, Herms. It's good to have all that information in one place. Thank you.
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Re: Legend of the Legendary Super Saiyan of Legend

Post by Fox666 » Thu Nov 10, 2011 2:59 am

Herms wrote:Fandom has tended to take things even further, and so the DB wikia treats this figure as the original Super Saiyan, something not even specified in the dub.
Since we are talking about urban legends, I think we should look at the Wikia article:

Image

The first think to look is the very beggining of the article, how they provide an explanation for the title: "The Original Super Saiyan (オリジナル超サイヤ人, Orijinaru Sūpā Saiya-jin)".
It's quite obvious that "Original Super Saiyan" was a made-up name with no preceding, so how does it has an original japanese name? Besides, "orijinaru" looks quite an obvious choice for who is trying to translate from English to Japanese, not the opposite.

"The original legend of the Super Saiyan was more about his power than the Saiyan himself, stating that he had achieved a level of power so overwhelming that it could only be maintained in a transformed state."
As far I know at this point there was no mention the Super Saiyan as a "transformation", so I am quite sure this claim has no back-up.

"When the anime episode was released, a filler scene in the episode Goku's New Power was added showing the Super Saiyan as a Great Ape with yellowish colored fur instead of the standard brown."
The Wikia has no discretion in stating that is IS an Oozaru with golden fur. However there are some points to check:
- The figure significantly resebles Vegeta, with his typical hair and it clearly wears boots like him.
- While it shares some attributes (eyes, ears and teeth), the figure is also significantly different from an Oozaru, having no tails and his shape being more like an obscure human figure rather than an Oozaru.
- The "color" yellow seems to be a result of the destruction of the planet, rather than the color of the figure itself.

The article also adds that it destroyed his own planet, and like Herms mentioned, this has no back-up in the original japanese source.

And check the "Techniques" section: "Self Destruction". Not even in the dub it was mentioned that he used a self-destruction technique. If he killing himself in the process is enough to classify it as some sort of special technique, maybe whenever Goku eats rice he is using the "Rice Eater Technique"?

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Re: Legend of the Legendary Super Saiyan of Legend

Post by hleV » Thu Nov 10, 2011 7:22 am

Gohaz wrote:even though it's not Toriyama-made, it's considered canon
How so?

Anyway thanks a lot, Herms. That's a nice read.

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Re: Legend of the Legendary Super Saiyan of Legend

Post by Gohaz » Thu Nov 10, 2011 8:14 am

It just is man, they link the GT story to the main Z, DB portion everywhere, and we all know Toriyama contributed, if not with everything, a great deal of stuff, to GT...

But ofc, Toei messed up big time, suppose Old Shin is 75 million years old, and he's been stuck for around 70 million, that means the Saiyans would have to go back that much time... and it's odd to think of a race that is 70ish million years old and took about that much time to become civilized and cease to being "cave" people....
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Re: Legend of the Legendary Super Saiyan of Legend

Post by Bussani » Thu Nov 10, 2011 8:20 am

Gohaz wrote:It just is man, they link the GT story to the main Z, DB portion everywhere, and we all know Toriyama contributed, if not with everything, a great deal of stuff, to GT...
None of which means anything. There is no established official canon. It's something people have to decide for themselves. Well, not "have to", because you can get through life as a fan just fine without caring what is and isn't canon...
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Re: Legend of the Legendary Super Saiyan of Legend

Post by Gohaz » Thu Nov 10, 2011 8:29 am

Sure, whatever floats your boat! :wink:
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Re: Legend of the Legendary Super Saiyan of Legend

Post by Herms » Thu Nov 10, 2011 10:02 am

Alright, here's Part 2:

Myth-Busting

Now that we’ve gone over what was said about the Super Saiyan prior to Goku’s transformation, let’s take a look at what we get afterward and compare the two. To review, here’s that list of what we’re told about the Super Saiyan in the manga prior to its debut. The Super Saiyan:

---Is a legendary figure
---Appears once every thousand years.
---Is the mightiest warrior in the universe
---Overcomes the wall which no warrior, no matter how gifted, can overcome
---Loves blood and battle
---Acts ruthlessly
---Is the one thing Freeza fears

There’s also the assumption, never explicitly stated, that while a Super Saiyan can be recognized by its strength, it doesn’t actually look any different than a regular Saiyan. This is of course the first idea to go out the window, with Super Saiyan golden hair and green/blue eyes being one of the most iconic things in the series. Out of all the ways the actual Super Saiyans we see in the manga differ from what’s assumed about them before they show up, I’m pretty sure this one was intentional. Freeza is confused when he finally sees a real Super Saiyan, at first not even thinking to connect the sudden change in Goku to the one thing he fears, and which Vegeta was incessantly harping on about. So Toriyama seems to be highlighting the fact that the Super Saiyan’s form is unexpected. We also know from the Super Exciting Guide: Story Volume and the daizenshuu that the light hair of the Super Saiyan was something Toriyama planned in advance to help make his assistant’s job easier, since it was his assistant’s job to always black in Goku’s hair. Toriyama also says in the SEG that changing Goku’s hair color made it easy to tell at a glance that Goku was different.

Then there’s the stuff about a Super Saiyan loving blood and battle, and being merciless. After he first transforms, Goku yells at Gohan to get away while he still has some of his reason left, and when Goku demands that Kaio let him stay on Namek to finish off Freeza, Kaio says Goku is no longer himself, but the “warrior of rage”. On the other hand Goku ultimately spares Freeza in much the same way he did Piccolo, Vegeta, and the Ginyu Force. His reasons aren’t exactly humanitarian (he’s not interested in fighting the increasingly weak Freeza, who’s already been completely humiliated anyway), but he still doesn’t feel much like a “warrior of rage” who can barely control himself. Later when Vegeta fights No.19 he says that he becomes more violent as a Super Saiyan, and remains in a slightly excited condition while in that form. Gohan also becomes cruel when he first transforms into a Super Saiyan 2. So I guess all in all this condition was upheld fairly well, but I can see why Toei thought what the world needed was a really bloodthirsty Super Saiyan.

Oh, and Freeza’s definitely afraid of Super Saiyans. Check that one off.

So that leaves the idea that a Super Saiyan is the most powerful warrior in the universe, one who surpasses the wall which all other gifted warriors cannot overcome, and that one such person appears every thousand years. This is the part most people see as being messed up by the later portion of the series, and it’s not hard to see why. We gets tons of Super Saiyan characters, loads of enemies stronger than Super Saiyans, and even new and improved versions of Super Saiyan itself. That idea of Super Saiyan as strongest might not be in all that bad shape though. After all, while the rest of the series introduces stronger and stronger forms of Super Saiyan, these are still all…forms of Super Saiyan. Sure, they’re described as “surpassing Super Saiyan”, but all these variants on Super Saiyan are still more similar to each other than to anything else. Plus, the names “Super Saiyan 2” and “Super Saiyan 3” are explicitly shown to be terms invented by Goku for convenience sake, and the other sub-forms aren’t even given specific names in the actual series. For all we know, the Super Saiyans of old could have all reached Super Saiyan 3.

And while we get lots of villains stronger than Super Saiyan Goku was on Namek, they’re usually still taken down by some stronger Super Saiyan. It’s really not until midway through the Boo arc with the introduction of Fusion that we finally get a power-up treated as superior to the whole idea of Super Saiyan forms. Even then, Fusion just amounts to sticking two Super Saiyans together to make an even stronger one. Elder Kaioshin’s power-up is the only time we truly get the idea that Super Saiyan forms and transformations in general are imperfect and that there’s something better. But despite that, the most powerful character we see in the entire manga ends up being Super Vegetto, a regular old Super Saiyan, although one whose unbeatable strength largely comes from being a Potara fusion. Seems the Super Saiyan really is the mightiest in the universe.

That just leaves the issue of a Super Saiyan supposedly appearing only once every thousand years, and there’s really no way out of this one. Now, the fact that Super Saiyan Goku on Namek gets completely outclassed by later heroes and villains (his future self included) obviously comes from the general Shonen pattern of power inflation, and the introduction of more and more Super Saiyan characters goes right along with that. Still, I frankly think Toriyama just forgot about how there’s supposedly only one Super Saiyan each millennium. The stuff about the Super Saiyan being strongest in the universe and cruel and whatnot gets repeated again and again throughout the Namek/Freeza story arc, but the “once a thousand years” thing is only mentioned once, in chapter 280. That leaves over a year before the Namek/Freeza arc wraps up with chapter 229 and Toriyama would need to even consider the possibility of more Super Saiyans, plenty of time for it to slip his mind.

And it seems to: in chapter 364 Vegeta, the only character to ever really give a damn about the “legendary” status of the Super Saiyan, complains about the proliferation of people stronger than the initial batch of Super Saiyans, and in chapter 429 he complains about how little kids like Trunks and Goten easily manage to become the legendary warrior. So through Vegeta, Toriyama reminds people of what the Super Saiyan is supposed to be, even as he tears down these ideas. But oddly, he never has Vegeta complain about the actual presence of multiple Super Saiyans. Vegeta might not like who some of these extra golden boys are (weirdoes from the future, little brats), but he never harps on how there can be only one. In fact, Vegeta himself vows right at the end of the Namek/Freeza arc that he will surpass Super Saiyan Goku, which is logically impossible if the legend of the Super Saiyan being one of a kind and stronger than anyone is true. Apparently he doesn’t put much stock in the parts of the legend that inconvenience him. Then when Trunks comes along, Vegeta simply argues that Trunks can’t really be a Super Saiyan because there aren’t any Saiyans besides himself, Goku, and Gohan. He doesn’t say anything about the legend of there only being a single Super Saiyan every thousand years, though you’d think it’d be the first thing he’d mention.

When Vegeta himself first becomes a Super Saiyan, Toriyama goes out of his way to include a conversation where Kuririn says it’s impossible because Vegeta doesn’t have a calm heart (a necessarily component according to Goku back in the Freeza arc) and Vegeta explains that he is calm, plus pure evil. But we never get any similar scene where Toriyama tries to explain away the “once a thousand years” thing. Maybe he just couldn’t think up a presentable excuse, but a think he simply forgot about that rule, the same way he seemed to forget the whole thing about needing to train fifty years to learn the Kamehameha.

So overall the latter portion of the series contradicts the legend we’re told in the Freeza arc in several ways. Should we care? Well, that’s ultimately a matter of personal taste, but it may be worth asking what reason there is to believe the legend in the first place. I mean, we’re never given any actual source for the legend; Vegeta simply asserts that there is one. Apparently, some unknown person or persons said at some unknown point in the past, based on unknown authority, that a Super Saiyan is the strongest thing in the universe and appears once in a thousand years. Are we just supposed to assume they knew everything there is to know about the DB universe in general and Super Saiyans in particular? Why should we think the legend is infallible? It is, after all, just a legend. Admittedly “a legend says so, therefore it’s true” is the level of logic DB typically runs on (this is in fact how the dragonballs themselves are introduced), but in a case like this where the legend gets contradicted by the actual events of the series, it seems fine to me to just say the legend was wrong and move on. Still, both fans and apparently some of those working on the series weren't able to, which brings us to our next issue...the multiple candidates for the status of the "true" legendary Super Saiyan.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fox666 wrote:The first think to look is the very beggining of the article, how they provide an explanation for the title: "The Original Super Saiyan (オリジナル超サイヤ人, Orijinaru Sūpā Saiya-jin)".
It's quite obvious that "Original Super Saiyan" was a made-up name with no preceding, so how does it has an original japanese name? Besides, "orijinaru" looks quite an obvious choice for who is trying to translate from English to Japanese, not the opposite.
Yeah, they just made that name up and translated it into Japanese to make it look official. The phrase "Original Super Saiyan" never appears in the Japanese series or guidebooks.
As far I know at this point there was no mention the Super Saiyan as a "transformation", so I am quite sure this claim has no back-up.
That part probably comes from the Funi dub explanation of Super Saiyan, which seems to be the main source for the article, together with a heavy dose of them just making stuff up.
- The "color" yellow seems to be a result of the destruction of the planet, rather than the color of the figure itself.
Ah, I never thought of that. That makes sense.
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Re: Legend of the Legendary Super Saiyan of Legend

Post by SaiyaJedi » Thu Nov 10, 2011 10:48 am

Fox666 wrote:Since we are talking about urban legends, I think we should look at the Wikia article:

Image

The first think to look is the very beggining of the article, how they provide an explanation for the title: "The Original Super Saiyan (オリジナル超サイヤ人, Orijinaru Sūpā Saiya-jin)".
It's quite obvious that "Original Super Saiyan" was a made-up name with no preceding, so how does it has an original japanese name? Besides, "orijinaru" looks quite an obvious choice for who is trying to translate from English to Japanese, not the opposite.
You're probably right about that specific use of オリジナル. In Japan, it's usually used in the sense of "a new creation" (e.g., "an original work of fiction"), and pretty much exclusively so when used to modify another noun.

The question is, how do we convince people who take the Wikia as gospel (and don't speak Japanese) that it needs to go?
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Re: Legend of the Legendary Super Saiyan of Legend

Post by Herms » Thu Nov 10, 2011 11:21 am

SaiyaJedi wrote:
It's quite obvious that "Original Super Saiyan" was a made-up name with no preceding, so how does it has an original japanese name? Besides, "orijinaru" looks quite an obvious choice for who is trying to translate from English to Japanese, not the opposite.
You're probably right about that specific use of オリジナル. In Japan, it's usually used in the sense of "a new creation" (e.g., "an original work of fiction"), and pretty much exclusively so when used to modify another noun.
初代の超サイヤ人 would be a better fit for what they were going for, right? Not that I want to be giving them tips.
The question is, how do we convince people who take the Wikia as gospel (and don't speak Japanese) that it needs to go?
That's what I want to know. Hypnotism? Drugs? Cash incentives?
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Re: Legend of the Legendary Super Saiyan of Legend

Post by StarRot » Thu Nov 10, 2011 1:09 pm

Ooh! A juicy big post. I’m in the middle of reading this now. I just love all the effort that you go into making these topics.

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Re: Legend of the Legendary Super Saiyan of Legend

Post by FNF » Thu Nov 10, 2011 1:26 pm

Another good read Herms.
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Re: Legend of the Legendary Super Saiyan of Legend

Post by kaialone » Thu Nov 10, 2011 1:42 pm

A nice and good read. Just Herms at his best! C: I never get bored when I read your stuff.
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Re: Legend of the Legendary Super Saiyan of Legend

Post by Adamant » Thu Nov 10, 2011 2:35 pm

Herms wrote:
The question is, how do we convince people who take the Wikia as gospel (and don't speak Japanese) that it needs to go?
That's what I want to know. Hypnotism? Drugs? Cash incentives?
A well-written wiki that actually sources its shit?

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Re: Legend of the Legendary Super Saiyan of Legend

Post by hleV » Thu Nov 10, 2011 6:42 pm

Vegeta knows of the legend. He doesn't know of facts (neither does anybody else, unless we take into consideration the Episode of Bardock, which we probably don't). So, if only one Super Saiyan appears in a 1,000 years, it doesn't prove that there can be only one. If Goku decided that you need a pure heart to become a Super Saiyan, that doesn't make it true. Especially when such assumptions get shot down later in the series.
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Re: Legend of the Legendary Super Saiyan of Legend

Post by Saiga » Thu Nov 10, 2011 7:19 pm

Bussani wrote:
Gohaz wrote:It just is man, they link the GT story to the main Z, DB portion everywhere, and we all know Toriyama contributed, if not with everything, a great deal of stuff, to GT...
None of which means anything. There is no established official canon. It's something people have to decide for themselves. Well, not "have to", because you can get through life as a fan just fine without caring what is and isn't canon...
Exactly. GT isn't canon, because it wasn't in the original manga. What you want to include in your personal canon is up to you.
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