So its been many years, are alternate hair colors for Super Saiyan transformations a good or bad idea

[Cursed Lemon]

It wasn't another transformation to unlock another level of absurd power, it was a character who does something as trivial as change the color of his transformation to display his inflated sense of self-worth. It's good visual storytelling.

...How in the world is that different than Broly

[ABED]

It wasn't another transformation to unlock another level of absurd power, it was a character who does something as trivial as change the color of his transformation to display his inflated sense of self-worth. It's good visual storytelling.

...How in the world is that different than Broly

How are they remotely the same? Broly powers up and gets angry and transforms just like every Saiyan but his aura is green for *checks notes* reasons.

Zamasu has such control over himself that he can change the color of his aura and chooses to because he wants something he sees as more divine.

[goku the krump dancer]

I don't think its ever stated or implied that Zamasu picked the pink color for Rose` in the same way Freeza picked Gold for his super form. To me it seemed more like pink was a side effect of the mutation of a God soul being inside a mortal/Saiyan body and Re-Unlocking that level of power. What I think happened upon witnessing the strange color is he took it as a sign of his divinity and ran with it.

[ABED]

Fair enough, I don't recall the dialog exactly but the point stands. It says something about the character more than "I'm mad and I'm powerful" which is what happens to nearly every Saiyan. What special about it? Nothing.

[SupremeKai25]

I don't know if Black literally chose the colour "Rose" (is it even possible to choose the hair colour of a transformation? I'm pretty sure it's all subconscious/biological), but he did choose the name "Super Saiyan Rosé".

I like to believe that the Rosé colour is connected to the petals turned to roses in this scene, when Zamasu finally decided that the ningens must be destroyed:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8V9j5wDXFFE&t=41

[Melee_Sovereign]

Well we're still missing orange and purple. Purple should probably be reserved to a Saiyan who is also a God of Destruction.

[goku the krump dancer]

Fair enough, I don't recall the dialog exactly but the point stands. It says something about the character more than "I'm mad and I'm powerful" which is what happens to nearly every Saiyan. What special about it? Nothing.

I agree with the novelty of it diminishing in that the "Anger" aspect of a Saiyan transformation pretty much hitting its peak with Gohan reaching level 2 in the Cell arc. I think Toriyama knew that though which is why every other instance of a Saiyan transforming has be through training or a special technique (Fusion, God Ritual, etc).

[Kataphrut]

I don't mind them - I prefer the simple designs to something like Super Saiyan 4, if only because they distract less from the action, if that makes sense.

The issue is how they were handled- we got a bunch of them in a relatively short time. At least Ultra Instinct has had a good run- the next powerup, if it does come, should probably be something a little different though.

[Captain Awesome]

I like Super Saiyan God.

I think Blue is a stupid palette swap that should have disappeared a long time ago.

[WittyUsername]

In the case of Broly having green hair, I always thought the idea was that the green hair was a side effect of Paragus’ mind control device, as evident by how he loses the green tint in Movies 10 and 11. Ironically, Broly’s regular Super Saiyan form in Movie 8 has blue/purplish hair. Giving the current version of Broly (and Kale) was clearly just done for iconography, and nothing more.

Anyway, I’m not a fan of the alternate hair colors. It just seems too gimmicky.

[Yosheets]

They were a cool concept in the 2000s. In the 2010s, people were less obsessed with that shit than they used to be.

[UltraInstinctRorikon]

Yellow/Gold Spiky = universal
Green tinted + huge bulkup = Broly

Honestly it's fine when it's kept minimal and just stopping at that point above, but doing essentially red, light blue, primary blue, white, pink....really threw out the novelty of it all.

I would much rather they learn new techniques then new forms at this point.

[Yuli Ban]

It's a bad idea. Hairs aren't supposed to be this carnival/rainbow thing. You can get away with the golden one because it somehow worked, a contrast to the constant black hair. But once you start palette swapping it left and right then it's just festival.

and they don't have to come up with constant new hair styles for the characters,

A pity. I pretty much prefer new hairstyles over recolors. It's really cool to see all kinds and possibilities with the shape of the hair depending on the transformation, but keeping them either black or golden (if it's really necessary to add another color, white is the only one that works, I guess).

If you told anyone 10 years ago we'd have Super Saiyan red, blue, green, pink, silver hair, etc...it would have all sounded ridiculous like someones deviantart or fanfiction from the year 2005.

But who said even after they became a thing they don't sound ridiculous anymore? It was ridiculous back then, it is ridiculous now, will always be ridiculous.

This, and "this" to the OP. Literally. I still am in possession of a shitty fanfic/fancomic/unintentional light novel I myself made way back in the early 2000s that features a Tullece ripoff who transforms into a Super Saiyan with red hair that's more powerful than Super Saiyan 4 Goku. And before that, of which I have no physical evidence, I even had a "godly" Goku transformation that was blue and had weird sparkles; this must've been around 2004 or so (fun factoid, I even inadvertently came up with Super Saiyan 2 by thinking of a 'Super Super Saiyan' well before I learned that was actually a thing in the show as well as Broly being a misunderstood good boi; I really ought to mine this old crapfic to see what else lies in our haunted future).
The point is, "recolored hair" is very much a fanficcy ordeal and people have long since noted it.




Crazy thing is: if Dragon Ball were a full-colored manga, there's no doubt in my mind we'd have had technicolor hair back in the original. The whole point was to show off an easy-to-grasp way to understand that characters had grown stronger, after all, and using white/colorless to simulate gold was an ingeniously lazy choice. But had he been able to make it full color going back to '84, well in all honesty, we might've gotten a blue-haired or red-haired or purple-haired Goku circa the Piccolo Daimao arc, let alone afterwards.

Also, I'll give Broly's hair a pass. At least his blue hair was heavily implied to simply be the gold of Super Saiyan failing to fully come through. And the green tint was likely the lingering after effects of his father's control, hence why when he reached "full power," his hair and aura were fully gold. Way too late in the movie to change the fan reception, but still.


See, the point with visual transformations is that they convey a character has become stronger, grown, or simply changed in some way. Hair color changes are the simplest way to show that off, hence why Toriyama uses them as he loves simplicity. However I can't deny that he may have gone a bit too far with these.

See, what I think should have been done: fold Ultra Instinct into Super Saiyan God. What is UI is now Super Saiyan God. Better yet, have it so that Goku fights Beerus with Ultra Instinct Omen, hinting that he MAY be the Super Saiyan God.
None of the characters who followed Beerus are stronger than he is (at least not confirmed), so there's no need for something above Super Saiyan God in power. Leave it as a sign and expand on classic Super Saiyan and fusion. MAYBE cross UI with Super Saiyan in a way that doesn't intrude on the latter, like a special technique version similar to Kaioken. You could even use UI to justify why Goku can use Kaioken in Super Saiyan. Then, finally at some future point, bust out full-fledged Ultra Instinct as the "true Super Saiyan God," fulfilling the arc. So rather than three new colors (or even four, if you count Rosé), it's cut down to just one, making it feel more special as a result. The story might need to be altered, but GOOD.

This might've even been something close to the intention, considering this concept art for Super Saiyan God

The hair COLOR may be Godly, but the hair STYLE certainly seems like it went elsewhere...

(Another fun factoid: that was the first we had ever publicly seen of Super Saiyan God, and I distinctly remember seeing it as opposed to the constant "Golden Super Saiyan 4" fanart that dominated discussion at the time and verbally going "Uh oh" because I just KNEW people weren't going to like how stripped down it was in comparison).


But in the end, we got multiple new colors, thus multiple new possibilities for merchandise, and in the end, that's all that matters.

[Kaboom]

I guess my short-and-simple answer would be that it's not an intrinsically bad idea by default, but it can very easily be ruined when done carelessly or excessively. Which is definitely what's happened within Super.

[SupremeKai25]

<Large Images Snipped>

Those pics are funny but I'm pretty sure the reaction wasn't so positive when Future Trunks' return or Goku Black were first revealed. It's just that Super genuinely made these cliché ideas work, and so even if Goku Black literally sounds like a DeviantArt OC, Toriyama's genius made him work as an actual character in a way that an amateur fanfic writer wouldn't have been able to. I don't see anything wrong with taking an overused idea and executing it well.

[emperior]

They are a good gimmick, as has been already pointed out, to give easy visual information of a power-up.

I just think that in hindsight they could have avoided introducing Super Saiyan Blue so early as God would have been still felt very powerful in Resurrection F.

Also the whole color thing has been criticized a bit too much by fans. Blue has been the go-to form for the majority of Super, so the whole notion that they keep recoloring hair is just wrong, Toriyama only abused this new tool with the first two movies he wrote, and then re-used it for Rosè and Ultra Instinct (the green of Kale and Broly is a homage by the anime staff to the original Broly from Movie 8 ).

Also, Toyotaro did a very good job when handling Super Saiyan Blue and the different levels of mastery and it seems like he will treat Ultra Instinct in a similar way. This sort of techniques-based escalation for Goku and Vegeta is super interesting and a nice change of pace from the formula introduced in Z ever since Goku transformed into a Super Saiyan. It feels like a nice middle ground between Z/Super and OG DB, as the latter too focused more on techniques but added a visual feats component which unfortunately is hard to convey now where fighters are capable of absurd feats.

[LoganForkHands73]

Oh god, that pre-Goku Black "Evil Goku" fan character has a whole following of his own...



I honestly didn't know recolour transformations were that widespread in pre-2013 fanart and fanfic. I admittedly didn't engage much with the online spheres back then, but I thought most of them were sweaty for overdesigned Super Saiyan 7 abominations and such.

[SupremeKai25]

Design is an important aspect of a character, but motivations and personality are even more important. How many fanfic versions of "Evil Goku" presented this "Evil Goku" as a morally misguided God who genuinely sought to bring peace to the multiverse, and had the mannerisms and elegance of a God?

That's what I thought. That's why Toriyama remains a genius, and amateur fanfic writers remain amateur fanfic writers.

[JulieYBM]

Dragon Ball is fan fiction, too. Everything is basically fan fiction. The distinction as if it is an inherently inferior format is really bothersome. Fan fiction is more often than not better than commercial works and have limitless potential that capitalism otherwise makes impossible.

[ABED]

Dragon Ball is fan fiction, too. Everything is basically fan fiction. The distinction as if it is an inherently inferior format is really bothersome. Fan fiction is more often than not better than commercial works and have limitless potential that capitalism otherwise makes impossible.

That's just NOT true at all. Fan fiction is mostly terrible, and rarely better than original works practically by its nature given that it's an imitation.