The original Super Saiyan revealed!

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Meshack
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Re: The original Super Saiyan revealed!

Post by Meshack » Wed Dec 06, 2017 2:48 pm

Draconic wrote:
LightBing wrote:I wonder if there's a need for even more S-Cells to obtain SSJ2 and SSJ3. We know SSJ2 still needs the anger trigger, which points in that direction.
Well, seeing as Goku obtained SSJ3 while dead, I don't really think so... unless his dead body in the afterlife is still "alive" in some way, therefore still producing those cells or if the S-Cells are actually on the spiritual side, rather than the biological.
Well, Gokuh has his body so there’s no difference. He’s just dead.

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Re: The original Super Saiyan revealed!

Post by KBABZ » Wed Dec 06, 2017 3:53 pm

LightBing wrote:I wonder if there's a need for even more S-Cells to obtain SSJ2 and SSJ3. We know SSJ2 still needs the anger trigger, which points in that direction.
I would agree. The calm thing about S-Cells would mean that by having Gohan have six days of rest, he inadvertently gave Gohan the best environment for his body to produce more S-Cells, which helped a lot when he also got the anger trigger later on by Cell.

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Re: The original Super Saiyan revealed!

Post by PerhapsTheOtherOne » Wed Dec 06, 2017 4:16 pm

I've seen people say that the whole idea of S-Cells being produced more is contradictory to the whole point of Saiyans and only a justification for Universe 6 Saiyans.

I disagree.

Personally, I find the notion to be somewhat poetic in a sense. Despite being immense warriors that constantly battle, the Universe 7 Saiyans were always depicted as one of the most flawed species in their Universe because of this biological/sociological disposition they have, which greatly diminished their ability to reach their fullest potential. With S-Cells, the martial arts roots of the series are respected in that sense because a good martial artist balances intense training and fighting capability with a calm disposition and proper relaxation.

Goku perfectly embodies the whole idea. Thanks to a head injury received at a very young age, he got rid of the barbaric disposition that prevented the Saiyans from reaching their fullest potential and opened the door for the future. He trained hard, but also was calm and grew up in an environment that allowed for personal and spiritual growth that would lay the foundation for what potential he has as a warrior, without requiring as much constant struggle. S-Cells are very much a martial arts-inspired idea despite the initial science-fiction perception of them.

Roshi's Turtle School also perfectly encapsulates what S-Cells are about. One has to train well, eat well, play well, and rest well to be the best one can be.

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Re: The original Super Saiyan revealed!

Post by KBABZ » Wed Dec 06, 2017 6:02 pm

PerhapsTheOtherOne wrote:I've seen people say that the whole idea of S-Cells being produced more is contradictory to the whole point of Saiyans and only a justification for Universe 6 Saiyans.

I disagree.

Personally, I find the notion to be somewhat poetic in a sense. Despite being immense warriors that constantly battle, the Universe 7 Saiyans were always depicted as one of the most flawed species in their Universe because of this biological/sociological disposition they have, which greatly diminished their ability to reach their fullest potential. With S-Cells, the martial arts roots of the series are respected in that sense because a good martial artist balances intense training and fighting capability with a calm disposition and proper relaxation.

Goku perfectly embodies the whole idea. Thanks to a head injury received at a very young age, he got rid of the barbaric disposition that prevented the Saiyans from reaching their fullest potential and opened the door for the future. He trained hard, but also was calm and grew up in an environment that allowed for personal and spiritual growth that would lay the foundation for what potential he has as a warrior, without requiring as much constant struggle. S-Cells are very much a martial arts-inspired idea despite the initial science-fiction perception of them.

Roshi's Turtle School also perfectly encapsulates what S-Cells are about. One has to train well, eat well, play well, and rest well to be the best one can be.
I agree! That's exactly what I thought of when I first heard the theory, that there's a cruel irony of sorts preventing the Saiyans from achieving Super Saiyan due to the mechanics of S-Cells. They have the savagery to trigger it, but their environment and mental outlook prevented them from having enough S-Cells to be triggered in the first place, despite having space travel allowing them access to more relaxed worlds. And as I mentioned before, it explains why Vegeta struggles so much with it post-Namek.

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Re: The original Super Saiyan revealed!

Post by SingleFringe&Sparks » Thu Dec 07, 2017 7:59 pm

Meshack wrote:
SingleFringe&Sparks wrote:
Meshack wrote: You don’t need to be gentle to become a Super Saiyan. A gentle soul increases the number of S-Cells a Saiyan has that can help them become Super Saiyan. Also, it’s nothing new. Gokuh said he had a gentle/calm soul when he became Super Saiyan. So did Vegeta but he said it was purely evil.
And why exactly would that be? Why would being gentle increase your S-Cells when the Saiyan biology is wired to fighting and respond to self-preservation? It sounds arbitrary. How does anger awaken that intense power when its contradicting pacifism? Calmness and gentleness aren't inherently the same.
According to the word odayaka, gentle and calm are the same thing. Odayaka is used when describing the soul of Gokuh and Vegeta when they became Super Saiyan. Toriyama uses the same word in the interview. Your soul can be calm but you can have a heart for battle, like Gokuh. Gine is a perfect example on how her gentleness made her leave battle but her gentleness brushed off on Barduck. There’s nothing wrong with this concept. It’s been in the series since Gokuh transformed. Now people wanna complain because of S-Cells that change nothing about the Saiyans from a lore perspective.
Except being calm and gentle aren't the same, even if the are interchangable in Japanese. Gentleness is too specific of a temperament to make sense. Gentleness is the reluctance to fight and/or harm while all the Saiyans (except Cabba) had an innate desire for power. It doesn't even make sense on an evolutionary level for being Gentle to make you more likely to go SSJ when the gentle Saiyans were often weak and cast. The strongest Saiyans with the desire for strength were the ones that survived the longest by honing their aggressive instincts. I just see this as a contradiction. S-Cells aren't the problem. There are plenty ways that S-Cells by itself could have been rationalized into the series with everything else described about Super Saiyans without that one requirement.
Zephyr wrote:The fandom's collective fetishizing of "moments" is also ridiculous to me. No, not everyone needs a fucking "shine" moment. If that's all you want, then all you want is fanservice, rather than an actual coherent story. And of course those aren't mutually exclusive; you could have a coherent story with "shine" moments! But if a story is perfectly coherent (and I'm really not seeing any compelling arguments that this one is anything but, despite constantly recurring, really poorly reasoned, attempts to argue otherwise), and you're bemoaning the lack of "shine" moments as a reason for the story's poor quality, then you're letting your thirst for "shine" moments obfuscate your ability to detect basic storytelling when it's right in front of you.

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Re: The original Super Saiyan revealed!

Post by PerhapsTheOtherOne » Thu Dec 07, 2017 9:39 pm

SingleFringe&Sparks wrote:
Meshack wrote:
SingleFringe&Sparks wrote: And why exactly would that be? Why would being gentle increase your S-Cells when the Saiyan biology is wired to fighting and respond to self-preservation? It sounds arbitrary. How does anger awaken that intense power when its contradicting pacifism? Calmness and gentleness aren't inherently the same.
According to the word odayaka, gentle and calm are the same thing. Odayaka is used when describing the soul of Gokuh and Vegeta when they became Super Saiyan. Toriyama uses the same word in the interview. Your soul can be calm but you can have a heart for battle, like Gokuh. Gine is a perfect example on how her gentleness made her leave battle but her gentleness brushed off on Barduck. There’s nothing wrong with this concept. It’s been in the series since Gokuh transformed. Now people wanna complain because of S-Cells that change nothing about the Saiyans from a lore perspective.
Except being calm and gentle aren't the same, even if the are interchangable in Japanese. Gentleness is too specific of a temperament to make sense. Gentleness is the reluctance to fight and/or harm while all the Saiyans (except Cabba) had an innate desire for power. It doesn't even make sense on an evolutionary level for being Gentle to make you more likely to go SSJ when the gentle Saiyans were often weak and cast. The strongest Saiyans with the desire for strength were the ones that survived the longest by honing their aggressive instincts. I just see this as a contradiction. S-Cells aren't the problem. There are plenty ways that S-Cells by itself could have been rationalized into the series with everything else described about Super Saiyans without that one requirement.
Well, since they are in Japanese in a sense, and that's the language of origination for the entire series, I'm inclined to believe that the translation was meant to be interpreted the way the user you quoted pointed out.

SSB is also described the same way if I recall correctly in the anime. A calm/gentle heart, which is a part of its amazing Ki control, allowing the form to stack Kaio-ken on top of it.

Also, think of it this way: a gentle spirit is often described as the path to true power/enlightenment in many Eastern mythologies and martial arts philosophies. A true martial artist is calm in spirit but intense in body, and Super Saiyan comes from building up one's potential before unleashing it in a huge explosion.

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Re: The original Super Saiyan revealed!

Post by Meshack » Fri Dec 08, 2017 1:59 am

PerhapsTheOtherOne wrote:
SingleFringe&Sparks wrote:
Meshack wrote: According to the word odayaka, gentle and calm are the same thing. Odayaka is used when describing the soul of Gokuh and Vegeta when they became Super Saiyan. Toriyama uses the same word in the interview. Your soul can be calm but you can have a heart for battle, like Gokuh. Gine is a perfect example on how her gentleness made her leave battle but her gentleness brushed off on Barduck. There’s nothing wrong with this concept. It’s been in the series since Gokuh transformed. Now people wanna complain because of S-Cells that change nothing about the Saiyans from a lore perspective.
Except being calm and gentle aren't the same, even if the are interchangable in Japanese. Gentleness is too specific of a temperament to make sense. Gentleness is the reluctance to fight and/or harm while all the Saiyans (except Cabba) had an innate desire for power. It doesn't even make sense on an evolutionary level for being Gentle to make you more likely to go SSJ when the gentle Saiyans were often weak and cast. The strongest Saiyans with the desire for strength were the ones that survived the longest by honing their aggressive instincts. I just see this as a contradiction. S-Cells aren't the problem. There are plenty ways that S-Cells by itself could have been rationalized into the series with everything else described about Super Saiyans without that one requirement.
Well, since they are in Japanese in a sense, and that's the language of origination for the entire series, I'm inclined to believe that the translation was meant to be interpreted the way the user you quoted pointed out.

SSB is also described the same way if I recall correctly in the anime. A calm/gentle heart, which is a part of its amazing Ki control, allowing the form to stack Kaio-ken on top of it.

Also, think of it this way: a gentle spirit is often described as the path to true power/enlightenment in many Eastern mythologies and martial arts philosophies. A true martial artist is calm in spirit but intense in body, and Super Saiyan comes from building up one's potential before unleashing it in a huge explosion.
Thank you. If you don’t like that the word gentle is being used, blame the translator.

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Re: The original Super Saiyan revealed!

Post by SingleFringe&Sparks » Mon Dec 18, 2017 1:46 am

PerhapsTheOtherOne wrote:SSB is also described the same way if I recall correctly in the anime. A calm/gentle heart, which is a part of its amazing Ki control, allowing the form to stack Kaio-ken on top of it.

Also, think of it this way: a gentle spirit is often described as the path to true power/enlightenment in many Eastern mythologies and martial arts philosophies. A true martial artist is calm in spirit but intense in body, and Super Saiyan comes from building up one's potential before unleashing it in a huge explosion.
It only makes sense after they achieve the form, for this trait to be required. That would be easy to conceptualize. Them needing to be gentle prior the form is where the form becomes contradicted.
Zephyr wrote:The fandom's collective fetishizing of "moments" is also ridiculous to me. No, not everyone needs a fucking "shine" moment. If that's all you want, then all you want is fanservice, rather than an actual coherent story. And of course those aren't mutually exclusive; you could have a coherent story with "shine" moments! But if a story is perfectly coherent (and I'm really not seeing any compelling arguments that this one is anything but, despite constantly recurring, really poorly reasoned, attempts to argue otherwise), and you're bemoaning the lack of "shine" moments as a reason for the story's poor quality, then you're letting your thirst for "shine" moments obfuscate your ability to detect basic storytelling when it's right in front of you.

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Re: The original Super Saiyan revealed!

Post by PerhapsTheOtherOne » Mon Dec 18, 2017 7:13 pm

SingleFringe&Sparks wrote:
PerhapsTheOtherOne wrote:SSB is also described the same way if I recall correctly in the anime. A calm/gentle heart, which is a part of its amazing Ki control, allowing the form to stack Kaio-ken on top of it.

Also, think of it this way: a gentle spirit is often described as the path to true power/enlightenment in many Eastern mythologies and martial arts philosophies. A true martial artist is calm in spirit but intense in body, and Super Saiyan comes from building up one's potential before unleashing it in a huge explosion.
It only makes sense after they achieve the form, for this trait to be required. That would be easy to conceptualize. Them needing to be gentle prior the form is where the form becomes contradicted.
Again, not exactly.

The whole notion is based on martial arts, and gentle is merely another descriptor term for the general idea of one's soul being at peace. In martial arts, the mind must be clear and free of malice in order for one's true potential to shine, no matter how much the body may be trained. POTENTIAL. That's the key thing. A gentle spirit builds up one's potential, something we also see with Gohan, whom is noted for his massive potential multiple times.

In the mystical martial arts world of this franchise, it's the next step up. This stuff is also pertinent to Caulifla becoming a SS for the first time. She has a gentle spirit, as do most other Universe 6 Saiyans from the sounds of things, innate potential, and a trained body that can expertly manipulate Ki. By focusing her energies in the centre of her back, she focuses them directly on the emotional centres of her energy, thus allowing her to draw out her hidden potential, the Super Saiyan form, with ease.

The Universe 7 Saiyans were strong, yes, but they were brutal and savage. They did not have the gentle spirit required to access their deeper potential, so no matter how strong/angry they got, they wouldn't have been able to turn SS easily. People hone in too much on the "gentle" part that Toriyama outlined, and forget the "spirit" part of the equation. Attaining Super Saiyan is very much like attaining enlightenment in that sense.

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Re: The original Super Saiyan revealed!

Post by KBABZ » Mon Dec 18, 2017 8:02 pm

I also like how the "gentle" thing is a clever way to explain why SS was never attained by almost every Saiyan before then despite their desire for fighting and power, and the inherent contradiction required to attain it. We can see that on Namek where Vegeta constantly boasts that only he has the ruthlessness and cold heart to become a Super Saiyan, which is ironically the opposite of what he needed to get it.

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Re: The original Super Saiyan revealed!

Post by Meshack » Tue Dec 19, 2017 4:31 pm

KBABZ wrote:I also like how the "gentle" thing is a clever way to explain why SS was never attained by almost every Saiyan before then despite their desire for fighting and power, and the inherent contradiction required to attain it. We can see that on Namek where Vegeta constantly boasts that only he has the ruthlessness and cold heart to become a Super Saiyan, which is ironically the opposite of what he needed to get it.
Yup, yup. But he later achieved it because of his calmness of evilness.

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Re: The original Super Saiyan revealed!

Post by KBABZ » Tue Dec 19, 2017 8:20 pm

Meshack wrote:Yup, yup. But he later achieved it because of his calmness of evilness.
Yeah, I remember in Kai Vegeta said that his trigger was out of pure frustration of not being able to achieve the form in the first place! I think the calmness comes from the planet he was on at the time, plus he wouldn't have the apparent stress of serving Frieza. Or something.

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Re: The original Super Saiyan revealed!

Post by Meshack » Tue Dec 19, 2017 8:36 pm

KBABZ wrote:
Meshack wrote:Yup, yup. But he later achieved it because of his calmness of evilness.
Yeah, I remember in Kai Vegeta said that his trigger was out of pure frustration of not being able to achieve the form in the first place! I think the calmness comes from the planet he was on at the time, plus he wouldn't have the apparent stress of serving Frieza. Or something.
Well, the manga nevertheless suggested that Vegeta left earth. He said himself when he transformed that his heart was "...calm and still. Still and pure. However, it was purely evil." He achieved it because of his hatred towards himself

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Re: The original Super Saiyan revealed!

Post by KBABZ » Tue Dec 19, 2017 8:54 pm

Meshack wrote:
KBABZ wrote:
Meshack wrote:Yup, yup. But he later achieved it because of his calmness of evilness.
Yeah, I remember in Kai Vegeta said that his trigger was out of pure frustration of not being able to achieve the form in the first place! I think the calmness comes from the planet he was on at the time, plus he wouldn't have the apparent stress of serving Frieza. Or something.
Well, the manga nevertheless suggested that Vegeta left earth. He said himself when he transformed that his heart was "...calm and still. Still and pure. However, it was purely evil." He achieved it because of his hatred towards himself
Ah, I see! Sounds like he might have realized that instead of just thrashing and screaming about it, he needed to be calm and focused about his goals, like when he landed on Earth and was so level-headed besides Nappa.

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Re: The original Super Saiyan revealed!

Post by Jackal puFF » Thu Dec 21, 2017 4:24 pm

I am so excited to hear about the very first super saiyan! I've always wished for Toriyama to shed more light on him and it looks like we're actually going to get a movie about him next year!

I haven't been keeping up with dragonball lately and wow to see how it's back in it's glory is something else.

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