I notice 2 things that get blown over every time this topic is discussed one, the lesser of the 2 in my opinion, is that their standing form power level don’t reflect peak power and peak power is what devastates. Regardless of if they power up first or are at base.
Vegeta was around 18,000 fighting Goku but his Galick Gun was concentrated Ki and thus stronger. Some measurements put this attack at 35,000 or 36,000. Meaning their body is producing a lot more Ki, or power, than their so-called “power level”. This is backed by the Kamehameha being stated at a couple points to be a very concentrated Ki measured like it’s user’s rising power level.
This is why the Zenkai ”jumps” aren’t that crazy to me in scale. We aren’t seeing the maximum Ki their bodies can handle almost ever until perhaps Super aside from a few times with Kaio-ken.
That being said we have no word whether Zenkai boosting is incremental based on how much abuse the body took alone or how high it’s thresholds were pushed etc. i.e. if Goku goes Kaio-ken 2x, 10x whatever his body is sustaining that stress and Ki (which the Saiya-jin etc measure in power levels) so when their bodies recover and Zenkai takes effect it’s likely that Zenkai is relative to all those limits that are broken like the multipliers and the sharp bursts that, for all we know, can potentially double or more it’s users “power level”.
Another thing, and this is slightly semantic so I don’t mean to present it as fact by any means but I believe it’s more important, Saiya-jin scouters blow up reading certain power levels, Freeza force scouters are stated as not being useful by Vegeta himself and plenty of characters manipulate the Ki level they are felt at meaning its likely scouters, maybe just at a certain point or ever, are just not reliable sources for such a variable thing.
This is why Scouters aren’t used in Freeza saga, this is why scouters are also never reintroduced (aside from one use on Future Trunks, I believe) even though technology is improved in the show and they could be brought up to speed with the alleged “power levels” from later if they were truly ever useful in the first place aside from a glorified homing GPS.
After Namek I truly think everybody knew these were useless and not just that levels were so big. We don’t even know for certain that the jumps have to be so devastating or massive just to make the enemy stronger in such a way that would be difficult. Who’s to say that a power level of 5,000,000 isn’t insane to somebody with a power level of 4,950,000? Or that a 20,000,000 wouldn’t be ridiculous to a 19,750,000. We have no evidence to suggest that at those levels 50k, 250k whatever doesn’t make a massive difference.
Power scaling is always talked about in the reverse way, like “oh Super has broken scaling every body is 50,00000,0700,000,00,0,00 power level” we just have no evidence of this, no canon anything has ever suggested ludicrous power level measurements and nothing has even backed them EVER being a credible or 100% accurate way to measure that user’s power.
Power levels are archaic measurements used by a few space militia’s who had limited to no understanding of Ki.
I’m not arguing against discussions over who is powerful or anything like that I’m just saying I truly think it’s deeper than just numbers on a machine can offer. Also stating that that being said we don’t know that any power level we ever got was good measure so we don’t know that Zenkai boosting is really broken at any point whether it be Goku’s Ginyu-Freeza Zenkai boost or Super scaling.
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I could end the post there and if you’re done then by all means comment below and discuss but here I’m gonna leave some answers I gave to questions I was asked on the discord in response to my thoughts as I think they’re just as relevant info and may answer questions raised reading my post in advance.
Like I said a little semantic and definitely more educated guess than 100% but I think it’s explicitly dropped for a reason.
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I think, once again, the fact that power levels are introduced by the Saiya-Jin that arrive on earth and denounced by that very same group (well, Vegeta) is just good use of story-telling without actually telling us. They arrived, they had tech they thought was an advantage, it ended up felling them in many ways, they denounce it. Better tech on Namek, also felled, denounced again, end of use.
Point being I think “power levels” as a number measurement are a good discussion FOR Saiyan Saga and Namek Saga but likely not definitive. Furthermore, beyond those sagas “power level” takes on a literal meaning, “how much power they have”.
In conclusion: