Why is everyone able to put up a fight against anyone now?

[Doctor.]

Has Super really given us anything this egregious though?

Well... yes, kinda. We have future Trunks going toe-to-toe with Goku Black even before his transformation that came out of nowhere and in RoF we had Freeza going toe-to-toe with Goku and Vegeta with the excuse that he trained for 4 months without even as much as a training montage.

[Polyphase Avatron]

Has Super really given us anything this egregious though?

Well... yes, kinda. We have future Trunks going toe-to-toe with Goku Black even before his transformation that came out of nowhere and in RoF we had Freeza going toe-to-toe with Goku and Vegeta with the excuse that he trained for 4 months without even as much as a training montage.

So if there was a training montage, it would be fine then?

[Doctor.]

Has Super really given us anything this egregious though?

Well... yes, kinda. We have future Trunks going toe-to-toe with Goku Black even before his transformation that came out of nowhere and in RoF we had Freeza going toe-to-toe with Goku and Vegeta with the excuse that he trained for 4 months without even as much as a training montage.

So if there was a training montage, it would be fine then?

In the context of a 90 minute movie? Sure, provided the training was actually something creative and believable enough to raise his battle power (that's what Dragon Ball basically does with its training arcs anyway: it shows you the premise of the training and how it will be done, then it either cuts to a montage or just cuts to the end result). It wouldn't be the best alternative, but it would be acceptable. Movies have less time so they have to improvise, training montages usually do the job.

[Zephyr]

Super might not have any situation strictly as bad as the example I used if we tried to use a rating system to classify all the different situations, but the lack of care regarding the explanation of power consistency and the departure from the outlook prevalent in the manga/DB and DBZ is obvious throughout Super. It's fine if people enjoy that, but it's abundantly clear that not bothering to come up with satisfying explanations regarding power consistency can't be considered good writing.

I agree that it's obvious, but I still maintain that there's no way it could have happened any other way, lest there was someone overseeing the series' production who was as into meticulously mapping relative power rankings as the fandom is, vetoing any bit of writing, storyboarding, and animation that didn't properly telegraph the correct feats. To suggest otherwise is to grossly overestimate how important these admittedly-fun logic puzzles are to the people actually creating the stories. Apparently Toyotaro is doing a better job of this? He is a single person, and a superfan, so that wouldn't terribly surprise me.

And I wouldn't go so far as to say that not bothering to explain these problems amounts to "good writing" (unless egregious power inconsistencies were the point), but I don't think it's tantamount to "bad writing" either. I feel like Xeogran's point was more so that by not prioritizing this specific thing (clear and comprehensive and thorough power scale consistency), different things can be prioritized (interesting character moments), and that can be a good thing. That's not to suggest that they're mutually exclusive, but if Toei can only manage one thing (or be bothered to care about only one thing), I'm fine with it being the latter over the former, and I'd argue the latter having more impact on writing quality than the former.

At least in the context of "Roshi should be here relative to all 79 of these other fighters, and the animation of his attacks should conform to this" versus "Roshi knows his place and is using his diverse repertoire of techniques to clear out potentially tricky late game opponents ahead of time, but is still an underdog in way over his head". The former is fandom logic puzzle consistency, and the latter is giving him a narrative purpose for being there, if that makes sense. Does his performance against Frost have some impact on his placement relative to Piccolo, and thus Krillin and Tenshinhan, in the logic puzzle? Possibly, but the story isn't about his relation to them. The narrative flows just the same even if the nitty gritty of the optional puzzle isn't coherent. And I'd love if the logic puzzle was coherent on top of the narrative being coherent, but it's not, and the narrative is more important, because that's the actual work itself, rather than an external fandom exercise.

Moreover, having only feats that telegraph an air-tight consistent relative power scale is no substitute for good writing; if Super's anime didn't have this problem, it wouldn't suddenly have good writing by default.

Has Super really given us anything this egregious though?

Well... yes, kinda. We have future Trunks going toe-to-toe with Goku Black even before his transformation that came out of nowhere and in RoF we had Freeza going toe-to-toe with Goku and Vegeta with the excuse that he trained for 4 months without even as much as a training montage.

I'll concede on the Trunks example. He's supposed to be much weaker than Black's base form, prompting his acquisition of Goku and Vegeta for assistance. Then Black powers up, and he's just fine anyway? Doesn't quite track, as his helplessness was his initial character motivation that sent him to get reinforcements in the first place.

Years later, and I still don't really have a problem with the Freeza thing, particularly in the film. Yeah, he trained for only 4 months, but we have no idea what his training involved. Since it's left ambiguous, it works well enough, I think. I think Super actually screwed the pooch on this one, by not only showing what it entailed, but by showing that it wasn't anything remotely special. I still largely don't have a problem with it, though, as they introduce the notion that Freeza never really trained before, so he's got loads of untapped potential. Regardless, no version of the arc is so beyond the pale that it has Freeza, with no mention of training or anything, just coming back and giving everyone hell, somehow. For me, that's the point where it would negatively impact the writing.

It would be like if Tao Pai Pai showed up, and everyone was just like "oh fuck, it's Tao Pai Pai, get everyone quick!", with no mention of his ki being abnormally large, or him getting stronger, or them even expecting him to be weak, and it all being played completely straight and dire. I mean I'd still personally relish in seeing my boy make a come back, but I wouldn't defend the writing.

[Doctor.]

Yeah, he trained for only 4 months, but we have no idea what his training involved. Since it's left ambiguous, it works well enough, I think. I think Super actually screwed the pooch on this one, by not only showing what it entailed, but by showing that it wasn't anything remotely special. I still largely don't have a problem with it, though, as they introduce the notion that Freeza never really trained before, so he's got loads of untapped potential. Regardless, no version of the arc is so beyond the pale that it has Freeza, with no mention of training or anything, just coming back and giving everyone hell, somehow. For me, that's the point where it would negatively impact the writing.

It would be like if Tao Pai Pai showed up, and everyone was just like "oh fuck, it's Tao Pai Pai, get everyone quick!", with no mention of his ki being abnormally large, or him getting stronger, or them even expecting him to be weak, and it all being played completely straight and dire. I mean I'd still personally relish in seeing my boy make a come back, but I wouldn't defend the writing.

The fact that we have no idea what it involves is the problem. Dragon Ball doesn't do training like that. It may skip through all of the middle portion sometimes, sure, but it introduces the method of training first and then shows the end result. There was no initial part here. You get Freeza saying he'll train and then you cut to him being massively stronger. It's just a vast departure from the way the series has done training in the past and all it really does is communicate to the audience that they couldn't really be bothered to think of a scenario where Freeza coming back to life would pose a sufficient threat to our characters now. So they didn't; they just wrote the scenario anyway, without addressing any of the questions one would raise, so they could get that sweet $$$ that Freeza coming back would bring. I don't have much of a problem with the anime trying to add a bit of depth to his training, I can appreciate the effort at the very least.

As for Freeza never training before, I think that's a load of bull and just a flimsy excuse. We know Freeza's no stranger to fighting, we know that he has had to come up with a way to control his power, he probably had to think of a way to create his lesser forms and, most importantly of all, we know that Cold and Freeza, in some unspecified time in the past, sparred or got into a fight of some kind. Say what you want, but some of these do let us infer that he has trained in some way or another. Even if the plot point didn't contradict previous information, it's such a poor plot point on its own. It completely devalues everything Goku & co have done up to this point and it makes Freeza look dumber. I'm sure you've heard the "If Freeza had done 10 push-ups, then they would have all been doomed" argument before, but as silly as it may sound, it's not really devoid of any merit; it's completely true.

I mean, imagine if #8 came back and he was as strong as Beerus, simply with the excuse that he "never showed his full power." I mean, it doesn't really contradict anything in the manga, but it would still be pretty dumb and make you think why Goku went through all that effort to get stronger and fight off strong threats if other people can just show up after 20 years of being absent and be as strong as him anyway due to some flimsy excuse.

[Zephyr]

The fact that we have no idea what it involves is the problem. Dragon Ball doesn't do training like that. It may skip through all of the middle portion sometimes, sure, but it introduces the method of training first and then shows the end result. There was no initial part here. You get Freeza saying he'll train and then you cut to him being massively stronger. It's just a vast departure from the way the series has done training in the past and all it really does is communicate to the audience that they couldn't really be bothered to think of a scenario where Freeza coming back to life would pose a sufficient threat to our characters now. So they didn't; they just wrote the scenario anyway, without addressing any of the questions one would raise, so they could get that sweet $$$ that Freeza coming back would bring. I don't have much of a problem with the anime trying to add a bit of depth to his training, I can appreciate the effort at the very least.

It's certainly not the conventional approach Dragon Ball takes to training, and I do really wish we would have seen some of what it entailed, because it could have been really interesting to see how Freeza would improve himself. But I don't see much value in speculating why it wasn't shown. Were they incapable of thinking of a plausible scenario? Did they not care? Were they even aware that some people would take issue with it? Who knows?

I don't think the anime really added any depth to his training. On the contrary, they essentially confirmed that it wasn't special. It can no longer be left up to the imagination. The plausibility of it shrank significantly. I don't see "he tortured a henchman" exhibiting more effort on the part of the creators than "who knows?". At least not enough to counterbalance the incredible contraction of plausibility. Keeping it mysterious could serve as a set up for a future plot point. Showing it to be....the same shit he just does to people every day? Now there's something that devalues the struggles Goku and the others had to go through.

As for Freeza never training before, I think that's a load of bull and just a flimsy excuse. We know Freeza's no stranger to fighting, we know that he has had to come up with a way to control his power, he probably had to think of a way to create his lesser forms and, most importantly of all, we know that Cold and Freeza, in some unspecified time in the past, sparred or got into a fight of some kind. Say what you want, but some of these do let us infer that he has trained in some way or another. Even if the plot point didn't contradict previous information, it's such a poor plot point on its own. It completely devalues everything Goku & co have done up to this point and it makes Freeza look dumber. I'm sure you've heard the "If Freeza had done 10 push-ups, then they would have all been doomed" argument before, but as silly as it may sound, it's not really devoid of any merit; it's completely true.

Perhaps "never trained before" is a poor choice of words. He obviously learned how to fight, control his chi, and create the suppressed forms. The take home point, however, is that he never tried to improve himself and increase his strength.

As for Freeza looking dumb, I think that's more par the course. He's notoriously hubristic, and it's served to ironically bite him in the ass several times already. Shouldn't he learn eventually? Absolutely. This film has come to serve as the second part of Super's broad narrative, and Freeza certainly grows as a martial artist after this point. Re-establishing his hubris, after being out of the story for such a long time, so we can then see him grow is fine by me in the big picture.

And yes, I think that argument is pretty silly. It suggests that working out is all one needs to do in order to get significantly stronger, and it's a really reductive view on martial arts training, especially mystical martial arts training. Moreover, what are a few push ups going to do to strain someone like Freeza? You have to push yourself in order to improve and grow, and that would do nothing. He'd probably need to do more just to stagnate, to maintain himself, to stay in shape, let alone improve. He did plenty more than that fighting Goku, and there was never any indication that his maximum strength was increasing.

I mean, imagine if #8 came back and he was as strong as Beerus, simply with the excuse that he "never showed his full power." I mean, it doesn't really contradict anything in the manga, but it would still be pretty dumb and make you think why Goku went through all that effort to get stronger and fight off strong threats if other people can just show up after 20 years of being absent and be as strong as him anyway due to some flimsy excuse.

I don't think the analogy really works. #8 wasn't the biggest baddest dude in the arc he was from. He didn't have a penchant for holding back his true power. And it's not a deliberate character flaw that his hubris leads him to sloth.

Freeza catching up to everyone could have been handled more gracefully, I'll cop to that. I don't think it's nearly as bad as people are making it out to be, though.

[FortuneSSJ]

They probably realized how troublesome things can get when everyone has a power level number above their head, so they threw their calculators out the window and decided to take a shortcut. Fans have been asking for non-saiyans to fight on the frontlines and now they got their wish. Even Roshi is there.

[Asura]

While Super has been horrific in its power scaling and writing regarding that subject, I don't see a problem with the Gohan/Dyspo situation. It was clear to me that Dyspo's strength comes in the form of his speed. As Krillin said, Gohan can win in a 1v1 brawl since Dyspo's movement was much more limited. Had Dyspo been allowed to move freely, he would have destroyed Gohan.

[Boku no Hitto]

The fact that we have no idea what it involves is the problem. Dragon Ball doesn't do training like that. It may skip through all of the middle portion sometimes, sure, but it introduces the method of training first and then shows the end result. There was no initial part here. You get Freeza saying he'll train and then you cut to him being massively stronger.

I can't agree with this. From Super Vegeta and Trunks to Goku and his ssj3, we never see their training. We still don't even know when or how Goku and Vegeta got ssj2! For all we knew it was exclusive to Gohan and the next time we see them go at it, they just had it! The simple fact that until the ToP we never saw ANY of Vegetas first transformation's outside toei showing him blasting some asteroids in Z.

I doubt toriyama even cared about the "how" because after freeza it was all about getting people where they needed to be to progress the story, see piccolo, Gohan or any of the Saiyans including Future Trunks. Cuz let's be honest, that grey area only exists because a lot of people ignore the fact he already had ssj before Gohan died in the manga.

[rereboy]

I agree that it's obvious, but I still maintain that there's no way it could have happened any other way,

There wasn't? There literally wasn't any possibility that professional writers, with their near unlimited imagination being their only true limit, to figure out a way, an explanation to make it much more believable and satisfying how, for example, Roshi is able to keep up in his fights (besides a generic "he trained")? I just can't agree with that, at all.

I'm not talking about having a strick mathematical formula or ratio for power levels or anything of the sort. We never had that in DB/DBZ. I'm talking about the existence of reasonable and satisfying explanations for what we see, and we more often got that in DB/DBZ than not.

I can't agree with this. From Super Vegeta and Trunks to Goku and his ssj3, we never see their training. We still don't even know when or how Goku and Vegeta got ssj2!

Sure, but Goku and Vegeta were already pretty close to it, and they had 7 years to achieve it. And Goku was training while dead in the afterlife, which seemed to be a very important factor in unlocking SSJ3, since the form doesn't even seem to be well suited for a living person from what we see in the series. Even without further details, that's reasonable and satisfying. That's what Super lacks. For example, Freeza getting that strong in such a short time without showing us what he did or any details at all doesn't feel reasonable or satisfying because Freeza got orders of magnitude stronger (bypassing all the levels of power of the cell and buu arc) and because he could have just done basically the same after he was defeated on Namek and thus when he got to Earth he would simply murder everyone. It doesn't feel right at all, it doesn't leave you satisfied, you can basically see an image of the writers thinking of what they wanted and nothing else.

[Totamo]

Yeah, he trained for only 4 months, but we have no idea what his training involved. Since it's left ambiguous, it works well enough, I think. I think Super actually screwed the pooch on this one, by not only showing what it entailed, but by showing that it wasn't anything remotely special. I still largely don't have a problem with it, though, as they introduce the notion that Freeza never really trained before, so he's got loads of untapped potential. Regardless, no version of the arc is so beyond the pale that it has Freeza, with no mention of training or anything, just coming back and giving everyone hell, somehow. For me, that's the point where it would negatively impact the writing.

It would be like if Tao Pai Pai showed up, and everyone was just like "oh fuck, it's Tao Pai Pai, get everyone quick!", with no mention of his ki being abnormally large, or him getting stronger, or them even expecting him to be weak, and it all being played completely straight and dire. I mean I'd still personally relish in seeing my boy make a come back, but I wouldn't defend the writing.

The fact that we have no idea what it involves is the problem. Dragon Ball doesn't do training like that. It may skip through all of the middle portion sometimes, sure, but it introduces the method of training first and then shows the end result. There was no initial part here. You get Freeza saying he'll train and then you cut to him being massively stronger. It's just a vast departure from the way the series has done training in the past and all it really does is communicate to the audience that they couldn't really be bothered to think of a scenario where Freeza coming back to life would pose a sufficient threat to our characters now. So they didn't; they just wrote the scenario anyway, without addressing any of the questions one would raise, so they could get that sweet $$$ that Freeza coming back would bring. I don't have much of a problem with the anime trying to add a bit of depth to his training, I can appreciate the effort at the very least.

As for Freeza never training before, I think that's a load of bull and just a flimsy excuse. We know Freeza's no stranger to fighting, we know that he has had to come up with a way to control his power, he probably had to think of a way to create his lesser forms and, most importantly of all, we know that Cold and Freeza, in some unspecified time in the past, sparred or got into a fight of some kind. Say what you want, but some of these do let us infer that he has trained in some way or another. Even if the plot point didn't contradict previous information, it's such a poor plot point on its own. It completely devalues everything Goku & co have done up to this point and it makes Freeza look dumber. I'm sure you've heard the "If Freeza had done 10 push-ups, then they would have all been doomed" argument before, but as silly as it may sound, it's not really devoid of any merit; it's completely true.

I mean, imagine if #8 came back and he was as strong as Beerus, simply with the excuse that he "never showed his full power." I mean, it doesn't really contradict anything in the manga, but it would still be pretty dumb and make you think why Goku went through all that effort to get stronger and fight off strong threats if other people can just show up after 20 years of being absent and be as strong as him anyway due to some flimsy excuse.

Freeza could not sense ki on namek, that was shown so he obviously had none of that kind of training and his stamina went out when he went full 100% so he obviously had none of that training. I see no other reason other than he has a natural talent for fighting.


Second of all, Freeza could have easily won on namek had he just stop messing around. If people defend that by saying he is arrogant then you can't really get mad at people defending the 4 months by saying he was lazy.

[Totamo]

I agree that it's obvious, but I still maintain that there's no way it could have happened any other way,

There wasn't? There literally wasn't any possibility that professional writers, with their near unlimited imagination being their only true limit, to figure out a way, an explanation to make it much more believable and satisfying how, for example, Roshi is able to keep up in his fights (besides a generic "he trained")? I just can't agree with that, at all.

I'm not talking about having a strick mathematical formula or ratio for power levels or anything of the sort. We never had that in DB/DBZ. I'm talking about the existence of reasonable and satisfying explanations for what we see, and we more often got that in DB/DBZ than not.

I can't agree with this. From Super Vegeta and Trunks to Goku and his ssj3, we never see their training. We still don't even know when or how Goku and Vegeta got ssj2!

Sure, but Goku and Vegeta were already pretty close to it, and they had 7 years to achieve it. And Goku was training while dead in the afterlife, which seemed to be a very important factor in unlocking SSJ3, since the form doesn't even seem to be well suited for a living person from what we see in the series. Even without further details, that's reasonable and satisfying. That's what Super lacks. For example, Freeza getting that strong in such a short time without showing us what he did or any details at all doesn't feel reasonable or satisfying because Freeza got orders of magnitude stronger (bypassing all the levels of power of the cell and buu arc) and because he could have just done basically the same after he was defeated on Namek and thus when he got to Earth he would simply murder everyone. It doesn't feel right at all, it doesn't leave you satisfied, you can basically see an image of the writers thinking of what they wanted and nothing else.

I have spoken to many fans about the humans being useful again and they all say that there was no way the humans could be useful without training aka just make them stronger which would just increase the power over all issue, giving them a powerup which they admit would feel lazy or just ignore it.


They also say have the weak characters fight other weak characters but even they admitted that would feel hollow or just devalue that opponent hence why so many say the Tournament is filled with fodder.


so unless you can give me a better method on how to make the characters so weak they can't even beat Cabba useful, then maybe they should have ignored the characters and just use Goku and Vegeta.


I personally would have loved that.

[Lord Beerus]

I think it's a bit of an exaggeration that "everyone able to put up a fight against anyone now". There are still large chunks of characters, old and new, that still get handily beaten by the obviously much stronger characters. The only time I would really raise the red flag in Super flaying a bit too fast and lost with relative comparisons of strength was when Future Trunks powered up and suddenly managed to fight evenly with Super Saiyan Rose Goku.

[rereboy]

so unless you can give me a better method on how to make the characters

Even if it was indeed impossible to do that, then good writing would be making a good story using what is indeed possible to explain reasonably and satisfactorily. Not using what can't be explained reasonably and satisfactorily.

But what's possible and what's impossible in writing is not measured by what I can do. That's not really how this works. If it worked like that, it would be impossible for me to criticize any movie, book or series because I, obviously, not being a professional writer, wouldn't be able to do a better movie, book or series.

What I can say is that they have a whole established universe filled with possibilities, going from magic, to extraterrestrials, gods, other dimensions, pretty much anything they want to play it, and they are only limited by basically their imaginations. In these conditions, we can't honestly state that a professional writer couldn't come up with admissible explanations.

[Totamo]

so unless you can give me a better method on how to make the characters

Even if it was indeed impossible to do that, then good writing would be making a good story using what is indeed possible to explain reasonably and satisfactorily. Not using what can't be explained reasonably and satisfactorily.

But what's possible and what's impossible in writing is not measured by what I can do. That's not really how this works. If it worked like that, it would be impossible for me to criticize any movie, book or series because I, obviously, not being a professional writer, wouldn't be able to do a better movie, book or series.

What I can say is that they have a whole established universe filled with possibilities, going from magic, to extraterrestrials, gods, other dimensions, pretty much anything they want to play it, and they are only limited by basically their imaginations. In these conditions, we can't honestly state they a professional writer couldn't come up with admissible explanations.

This is a long post for what is basically a no.

[rereboy]

This is a long post for what is basically a no.

No, it's a long post explaining how what you said makes no sense.

But if you really want a suggestion, despite how ridiculous it is to ask of me to do better than the writers before I'm allowed to criticize, the fandom has already speculated some suggestions, like a mystical form similar to SSJ for the humans and that would make several background characters pop from the background in term of relevance. And then the saiyan-human hybrids would be more interesting. They could even develop the idea of every race having the potential to reach a similar state of their own. Or a million other possibilities. Or, you know, just let it stand as "he trained".

[Zephyr]

I agree that it's obvious, but I still maintain that there's no way it could have happened any other way,

There wasn't? There literally wasn't any possibility that professional writers, with their near unlimited imagination being their only true limit, to figure out a way, an explanation to make it much more believable and satisfying how, for example, Roshi is able to keep up in his fights (besides a generic "he trained")? I just can't agree with that, at all.

I'm not talking about having a strick mathematical formula or ratio for power levels or anything of the sort. We never had that in DB/DBZ. I'm talking about the existence of reasonable and satisfying explanations for what we see, and we more often got that in DB/DBZ than not.

Yes, it's obviously logically possible that the writers could provide an explanations for things they aren't. I'm saying that it's unrealistic to expect that the show would be produced in a way that allows for feats to telegraph someone's placement on the power scale in the same way that feats would telegraph characters' placement on the power scale in the original manga. Different creators, different media, and there's a significant difference in time for what creator overlap exists (ie: Toriyama in the 80's/90's vs Toriyama in the 10's). The kind of comprehensive-power-scale-ranking-list (not necessarily numerical in its notation) that the fandom takes great joy in extrapolating from the choreography isn't a priority for the creators when producing said choreography, so, naturally, when they're making a fundamentally different kind of artistic work, these non-prioritized things are seldom going to accidentally come along for the ride. Again, I have trouble reading an overwhelming majority of these complaints as little beyond unrealistic expectations and confused priorities.

The sticking point, if I'm reading right, seems to be how much stronger Roshi got from his training; specifically, that he gained more strength than he should have from training, and specifically, that his performance in these fights serve as clues for how much strength he'd have gained from it. I don't think that matters, like, at all. Remember, this is about the quality of the writing, the story, the narrative. Roshi's specific placement relative to everyone else isn't important to the story that is being told, outside of how, broadly speaking, he's one of the weaker dudes there, but he's pulling his weight regardless. That's the point. He's still in way over his head, but he's doing amazingly in spite of this, because of his experience and bizarre toolset.

This same applies to Krillin pushing back Super Saiyan Blue Goku's Kamehameha: he's in way over his head, but he's being courageous and trying to fight a losing battle, against the clear odds. That he pushed it back a smidgen is incidental to the actual point that he's being brave. Would the meta-franchise's in-universe minutia be more cohesive if he hadn't pushed it back, or they gave a satisfactory explanation for how he pushed it back, within the confines of how Toriyama telegraphed feats through the choreography of his 20 year old comic? Absolutely! But I don't see how that would help the actual story proper in any substantive way. It'd be sweet fanservice, but fanservice is just that. It's not a substitute for quality writing, and its absence isn't a sign of lacking quality writing.

Trunks seems to me to be the only example so far that actually impacts the writing.

----

Completely unrelated, but since it's been brought up, I do occasionally like to imagine things that would allow the weaker humans to catch up to the Saiyans. There are a variety of things I'd find interesting. Kaio-ken is brought up often enough. There are also several characters who can unlock peoples' potentials. Bulma and Gohan could perhaps team up to reverse engineer the mechanisms by which #17 and #18 were able to leap-frog Freeza and Super Saiyans, as otherwise normal humans. Most of these dudes never trained in the Room of Spirit and Time, let alone Bulma's gravity chambers. Metamoran and Potara fusion are both great shortcuts. And, perhaps most importantly, training with Whis would do wonders.

Naturally, most of these are flat-out dangerous for some of these weaker guys to even entertain doing, but it could all gradually be worked up to, the same way Goku and the rest went about it. Training with strong partners seems to yield greater fruit, so that would also accelerate things a bit. Unfortunately, the Saiyans, and to a lesser extent Piccolo, have species-based shortcuts that the humans don't have access to. However, a lot of the aforementioned methods for drastic power increases were never capitalized on by Goku and Vegeta. With some characters taking advantage of some things, with other characters taking advantage of other things, you could have a believably balanced cast.

Everything's already there, if they wanted to utilize characters like Tenshinhan and Piccolo to once again be rivals to Goku, which they indeed were before Vegeta came along. I think it could be a really interesting story to see the four of them all acting as rivals to one another. Tenshinhan still has a chip on his shoulder regarding Vegeta, after all. The only thing we really need is someone interested in telling these kinds of stories, and someone capable of writing a compelling narrative out of it, developing them past the point where Toriyama dropped them.

[Doctor.]

Trunks seems to me to be the only example so far that actually impacts the writing.

I think you're just ignoring the effects some of these scenes have retroactively. Granted, I don't think Roshi being stronger and Kuririn pushing the Kamehameha back are particularly egregious examples either, but I'll play Devil's Advocate for these two examples. Roshi becoming stronger than Tenshinhan and Kuririn (or at least around their strength) undermines his arc in the 22nd tournament, of him passing the torch and being completely outclassed by the time the 23rd tournament rolled around. And Kuririn gaining such a big strength boost and being able to force Goku to turn Super Saiyan and even match him in Blue undermines his efforts throughout the Namek and Cell arcs, since you can just go back and reread those arcs with the feeling in the back of your head that he'll just get incredibly stronger arcs later for no good reason (besides the plot necessitating it, which I don't consider a good enough reason to break the rules of the universe for) and could have been just as strong back then and have way less trouble.

And you can just reply "Well, what about Roshi getting stronger for the 22nd Budokai when it's left clear by the story that he was outclassed by Goku and Tao the arc before? Doesn't that undermine the whole point of Goku going on a journey on his own and getting stronger and Tao being such a badass that he was even stronger than a martial arts legend if Roshi can just catch up to both an arc later? What about Kuririn, Tenshinhan, Yamcha and Chaozu getting much stronger than Goku did when training with Kami in a shorter amount of time? Doesn't that undermine Goku's efforts?" Yes! Yes, it does. Again, I don't really think any of these examples are particularly bad or harmful, but a story needs consistency in order to be engaging; or at least the illusion of consistency needs to be there. Dragon Ball may bend to Toriyama's will, but that doesn't mean that the audience wants to believe that the story can be affected by external factors outside of the universe. Any series, even one as wacky as Dragon Ball, has rules.

I think the worst case of characters completely devaluing other characters' efforts come in the form of Caulifla and Kale. The story necessitates that they are strong enough to pose a threat to Goku. And yet the story has also established beforehand that no Saiyan on U6 knows about Super Saiyan. So the only possible thing to do is have these characters go through the same transformations that took our characters decades of sweat and blood to achieve in mere minutes. It leaves a poor taste in everyone's mouth. Why couldn't they have been Super Saiyan from the start?

[ekrolo2]

I think the worst case of characters completely devaluing other characters' efforts come in the form of Caulifla and Kale. The story necessitates that they are strong enough to pose a threat to Goku. And yet the story has also established beforehand that no Saiyan on U6 knows about Super Saiyan. So the only possible thing to do is have these characters go through the same transformations that took our characters decades of sweat and blood to achieve in mere minutes. It leaves a poor taste in everyone's mouth. Why couldn't they have been Super Saiyan from the start?

I saw a video concerning this very topic recently and it brought up Toriyama's gag mangaka tendencies as a contributing factor to a lot of "shocking" development like these because it prompts him to do so to throw the audience and characters for a loop. I don't know how plausible this is but it doesn't seem overly far fetched to me.

He's also a by the seat of his pants guy so while another writer might say "Lets give U6 people at least some of the golden forms and have God forms be the thing Vegeta contributes to Cabba and the others" Toriyama goes "Man, having Cabba see that there's a Super Saiyan thing out there will really throw him for a loop!".

[Zephyr]

I think you're just ignoring the effects some of these scenes have retroactively. Granted, I don't think Roshi being stronger and Kuririn pushing the Kamehameha back are particularly egregious examples either, but I'll play Devil's Advocate for these two examples. Roshi becoming stronger than Tenshinhan and Kuririn (or at least around their strength) undermines his arc in the 22nd tournament, of him passing the torch and being completely outclassed by the time the 23rd tournament rolled around. And Kuririn gaining such a big strength boost and being able to force Goku to turn Super Saiyan and even match him in Blue undermines his efforts throughout the Namek and Cell arcs, since you can just go back and reread those arcs with the feeling in the back of your head that he'll just get incredibly stronger arcs later for no good reason (besides the plot necessitating it, which I don't consider a good enough reason to break the rules of the universe for) and could have been just as strong back then and have way less trouble.

Besides the Freeza tangent, the conversation didn't really involve the retroactive effects, but rather how the story in which they occur is impacted. At least, the point I'm intending to get across does. Nonetheless, I disagree. What undermines his arc in the 22nd Tenkaichi Budokai arc (and the Piccolo Daimao arc) is him coming out of retirement in the first place. As thrilled as am to see him on the battlefield again (both during RoF and here), it's not presented well. Him fighting again in and of itself isn't a bad thing, but I feel like it should be some kind of extreme last resort, or something like DBZ Movie 2.

His power, on the other hand, rather inconsistently with his coming out of retirement to begin with, essentially reinforces the smartness of his having retired in the first place. I don't see any compelling reason to commit to the idea that he's past, of near, their level, but maybe that's just me. From Goku being frequently worried about him on the battlefield, to him being the only member of their team to just eliminate himself for his own well-being, the broad strokes seem to communicate that he's still far and away the underdog of the team. Moreover, the fact that "he's been training!" and he's still said underdog, reinforces to me that he'd have been left in the dust even if he tried to keep up, maintaining the poignancy of the importance of the next generation.

Regarding the Krillin example, you could just say that as Goku becomes more and more adept and controlling his chi, the more he's able to control the precise output, regardless of form. I mean, there's no way that the Cell and Buu arcs could even realistically function, with characters way more powerful than Freeza (and, hell, Saiyan arc Vegeta) not destroying the planet every time they throw a blast, if they're not getting better and better at controlling themselves. For every big blast carefully shot into space, you have your Big Bang Attacks hitting #19 on the ground and Gotenks blasting Buu.

Re: the Universe 6 Saiyans
Yeah, I'm at a loss there. Goten and Trunks trivialized this long ago, though it wasn't as contrived. All three of them being able to unlock it that easily, yet never having unlocked it before, is really messy. If they were around the same age as those two, it'd be more coherent, but instead they seem like teenagers at the youngest.