Jiren's power as of the Super Hero mvoie - My Take!

[PerhapsTheOtherOne]

So I had a thought about Jiren's power and the seeming retcon of it in Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero.

So for those who aren't aware, Vegeta mentions in the film how Jiren was overwhelmingly strong, then goes on to say that his power wasn't all that different from him and Goku's. He attributes this immense strength advantage to Jiren's power efficiency, how he's fully relaxed in battle until he strikes which makes it hard to predict and hit extremely hard; Vegeta figures that Jiren achieved this style by instinct.

This seems to fly in the face of how overwhelmingly powerful he was presented in the anime (which is the version of events meant to be taken as the precursor to the film), how power centric he was in the absolute scale of his strength in comparison to everyone else.

And you know what? I agree; this does indeed fly in the face of it all. But since we're stuck with this as the most current info, we have to figure out how to make it work with what we knew before.

So I went around digging to see what the anime had to say overall about Jiren's strength, his power, his Ki, etc., to see what they had to say. I think there's enough in there to get a good gauge of how this retcon can be applied and made to make sense with what we thought we knew before.

=

Let's go for the sloppy route first. Whis only compliments Vegeta for understanding the mentality of fully realizing mind and body, only using your strength in the last possible moment to conserve energy and maximize damage. He's basically telling them to not be a bunch of beef-heads obsessed with increasing their power levels and try to get better and making their current power level more effective in pursuit of Ultra Instinct.

The sloppy approach is to treat this moment like Whis is only talking about the general mentality in terms of training, rather than anything about Jiren's power itself; this would preserve the anime's take about Jiren's overwhelming level of power while also giving it some additional nuance. I think this is a decent approach, since it marries the 2 camps without outright contradicting what one medium said over the other.

=

So what's the hard way?

Well, let's say that Vegeta's assessment of Jiren's level of power is accurate, how it wasn't that far off from him and Goku's own ceiling at the time. Now of course, both of them reached a level beyond SSB, Kaioken and Evolved. So even if his actual overall level of power was only a bit beyond this, this would still make Jiren by far an extremely powerful opponent, akin to how Super Saiyan Broly compared to Goku and Vegeta. In fact, I'd say that's the perfect comparison given how Toriyama initially only designed a Super Saiyan Broly to compare to SSB Goku and Vegeta, but both the Broly film and the Tournament of Power escalated way beyond that for the characters.

We could consider the original intent by Toriyama in his initial drafts to be that Jiren and Broly compared to basic SSB Goku and Vegeta was like comparing Super Saiyan to base form.

The anime had some interesting additional notes about how Jiren's power came across. Aside from the usual statements of just how strong he was, there were also interesting comments about how heavy/dense his energy and physical strikes were. I find these rather telling, as they give credence to the idea that Jiren's power is a bit more nuanced than simply being way higher.

Thinking back to Vegeta's comments in the Super Hero movie, how he commented on Jiren's total power efficiency, we could combine that with the "heaviness" of his energy to get a better feel for how an overall level of power not that far off of SSB can still end up in the range of a God of Destruction or even beyond.

Here's my proposition: thanks to his intense training in both body and mind, Jiren learned how to be entirely relaxed with his energy until the moment he struck. But what if this training ended up "hardening" his Ki in a way? If we consider SSB Goku and Vegeta to be like water bottles where they've been focusing on simply adding more water, then Jiren is like freezing that water to turn it into ice. Instead of increasing the total amount of power that he has, maybe what Jiren has done is learned to make his Ki far denser and more concentrated than even the god forms through his training to be instinctually relaxed until the moment he strikes.

The ultimate end result of learning to control one's power, the thing that Toriyama explicitly mentioned as the main reason why Cell Max is still inferior to Broly despite being a similarly berserk monster. So, even if Jiren's energy isn't overly high in terms of quantity, the quality of it is beyond measure and basically allows Jiren to have durability and attack power akin to a God of Destruction even if he wouldn't be as strong as one if he used his energy like Broly.

=

TL;DR

Vegeta's assessment of Jiren's power not being too much bigger than his and Goku's own was a controversial statement made in the DBS: Super Hero film.

If you wanna look at things the sloppy way, you can interpret things as Whis only saying Vegeta was correct about the fighting mentality/style and wasn't confirming his analysis of Jiren's actual power level, thus preserving the legendarily high power level the anime kept hammering into our heads.

If you wanna look at things the hard way, you can interpret it as Jiren's intense training in power efficiency ended up making his energy extremely dense/heavy, allowing it to have the same effect as a much higher "normal" power level.

[ZombieVito]

I initially had a problem with the line but that's because I never had Goku and Vegeta getting stronger during the ToP outside of new transformations.

Once I discarded that the gap wasn't that big by the end. I think I have SSBKK20 Goku and SSBE Vegeta no more than 3 times weaker than Jiren. That may seem big but people really overrate Jiren and have him like dozens of times stronger than UIO or some nonsense like that.

[PerhapsTheOtherOne]

Like I said in the post above, I figure that Toriyama puts Jiren and Broly around the same level that he initially intended, with Super Saiyan Broly being like a SSB multiplied by Super Saiyan and Jiren being similarly as strong.

Whereas Broly gained an additional transformation to increase his raw level of power with a form nearly as strong as SSB on top of Super Saiyan to put him on the level of a God of Destruction, Jiren made his level of Ki far denser and heavier to put his fighting prowess on the level of a God of Destruction.

[theherodjl]

So, it's basically like Jiren has access to a power up in the way that Goku might boost himself with the Kaio-ken, except that the Kaio-ken is an indirect method of improving strength as it is a technique, while Jiren simply draws his power out directly by having learned to concentrate & release it himself. That sounds pretty reasonable, it would be a little too convenient that Jiren would just get gazillions of times stronger than most other beings in his universe...by simply doing more pushups, situps, and drinking greater amounts of juice. Freeza seems to be the only person who can do that, and it should stay like that for the sake of future characters not surpassing everyone with ordinary training.

[PerhapsTheOtherOne]

So, it's basically like Jiren has access to a power up in the way that Goku might boost himself with the Kaio-ken, except that the Kaio-ken is an indirect method of improving strength as it is a technique, while Jiren simply draws his power out directly by having learned to concentrate & release it himself. That sounds pretty reasonable, it would be a little too convenient that Jiren would just get gazillions of times stronger than most other beings in his universe...by simply doing more pushups, situps, and drinking greater amounts of juice. Freeza seems to be the only person who can do that, and it should stay like that for the sake of future characters not surpassing everyone with ordinary training.

Well, he's not the mortal who surpasses a God of Destruction for nothing.

That's in fact a very good way of putting it. It's like he can use a perfected form of Kaioken by instinct without any kind of downside other than needing to maintain his composure.

[ankokudaishogun]

It's worth to note how Jiren wasn't portrayed as some sort of rough heavy hitter like DBS Broly: he was specifically stated AND showed having incredible skill and martial ability.

Plus, him being "not that much" stronger can go ways: we know that being about 20% stronger is already enough to dominate somebody with a comparable martial skill→ki manipulation ability.
Even if he was, let's say, 10% stronger, which would have been enough to put him on a net advantage, his greater ability in ki manipulation would massively increase the effective difference.

Also: Vegeta underselling the difference in power because he's Vegeta and would have a hard time to admit explicitly Jiren was ridiculously stronger than him even without the Ki manipulation. I mean, when everybody was on fumes at the end Jiren was still SENSIBLY stronger than Goku who was also running on fumes, so much he took on Goku, Freeza(also on fumes) and 17(who shouldn't have been on fumes, but I suppose he got damaged?) and they had to ring him out because in THREE they weren't able to defeat him.

In short: Jiren was STRONG but his oppressive power came from his skill not the simple raw power-level.
...opposite to Broly who is mostly raw brute power.

Which also fit how, in the end, nobody was really WORRIED about Broly, they were just surprised he got so strong so fast and improved his skill quite rapidly.

[PerhapsTheOtherOne]

Yeah, I've also been privy to the idea of Vegeta underselling how much of a difference in raw strength there was myself.

[Hugo Boss]

So for those who aren't aware, Vegeta mentions in the film how Jiren was overwhelmingly strong, then goes on to say that his power wasn't all that different from him and Goku's. He attributes this immense strength advantage to Jiren's power efficiency, how he's fully relaxed in battle until he strikes which makes it hard to predict and hit extremely hard; Vegeta figures that Jiren achieved this style by instinct.

Considering this plot point comes originally from Toriyama and we don’t know how extensively he approved the plot points Toyotaro came up himself, I think this is just repeating what Toyotaro did with Goku and Vegeta against Hit and Goku Black respectively. So, they comically regressed to the point they were before the Tournament of Power, where Vegeta used quick bursts of Super Saiyan Blue to gain advantage against Goku Black, or probably even before that, as he is still learning the ability.

Insert Goku Black in Vegeta’s place and you basically has him describing the same experience.

Spoiler:

Black mentions how Vegeta was overwhelmingly strong, then goes on to say that his power wasn't all that different from him. He attributes this immense strength advantage to Vegeta’s power efficiency, how he's fully relaxed in battle until he strikes which makes it hard to predict and hit extremely hard; Black figures that Vegeta achieved this style by instinct.

[ankokudaishogun]

on that note: Vegeta's description of Jiren's ki efficiency is basically a description of (part of) Ultra Instinct.

Which in turn works very well with the portrayal of Jiren compared to Omen in the anime and helps explaining him being so above his own GoD AND ALSO the GoD Royal Battle in the manga: even just Omen makes somebody as strong as a Blue-class fighter stronger than a God without UI(or with a weaker\less complete Omen)

After all, in the anime simple Blue KKx10 was enough to make Beerus go "Oh, shucks".
And the Blue KKx20 class was pretty much implied being the regular power of a GoD.
A de facto Unlimited Omen on warriors able to summon such power is perfectly believable to be unbeatable by a GoD without UI or with a weaker UI.

Which, LOL, reminds me the old theories at the time of the airing that Jiren was using UI himself that's why he was so strong.

As for Manga Jiren: it's useful to recall he's a completely different character with only the barest resemblance to Anime Jiren.

[PerhapsTheOtherOne]

In a certain sense, yeah.

About as close as you can get without actually using the technique itself. In essence, Jiren could fight almost any combatant of that level as well as they could in terms of pure fighting capability.

Which does make his focus on simply punching the sh*t outta people all the more relevant since his style of becoming stronger is centred around utilizing his strength through hitting things.

[Dragon Wukong]

I've been saying for years that Goku and Vegeta hit a plateau and all these 'power gaps' at the god tiers are superficial. We knew that when they gained literally 0 power-ups from being in the hyperbolic time chamber for three years.

It's nice to finally have dialogue that emphasizes this again.

I blame Toei for bringing SSB Kaioken into the fray. All dialogue referencing Ultra Instinct was about how it's not a power-based transformation, even before the Tournament of Power.

Resurrection F: Beerus is someone Goku and Vegeta could beat if they just worked together
Future Trunks Arc: Toriyama's original thought on Fused Zamasu was someone who two SSB's could beat together
Tournament of Power: Obviously there's some intent behind the fact Jiren was always written as someone who Goku and Frieza take down together. Beerus' dialogue in the manga also suggest Goku and Vegeta could've won against Jiren from the start if they coordinated and fought together.

Get to Granolah the Survivor, and even every boost to 'The Strongest' isn't actually an insurmountable goal. It's telling that Goku actually almost wins against Gas by focusing on a previous transformation (with Toyotaro having confirmed earlier that it's still Omen).

As much as the series might try to make it look otherwise, the higher echelons of power have an upper limit, and Goku and Vegeta were already close to that limit back when they achieved Super Saiyan God. I personally believe the only way to potentially circumvent this would be fusion. All matches have mostly been a matter of personal skill, at least in Toriyama's head, clearly.

Anyhow, people still trying to overhype Jiren's strength is funny looking back now when we have no less than 12 characters from Universe 7 now who have surpassed him.

[PerhapsTheOtherOne]

I imagine that, during the production of the SH movie, Toriyama might have been going under the assumption that Cell Max, Broly, and Jiren all occupy a similar range as Gods of Destruction who are all above Goku and Vegeta alone.

[ankokudaishogun]

I blame Toei for bringing SSB Kaioken into the fray. All dialogue referencing Ultra Instinct was about how it's not a power-based transformation, even before the Tournament of Power.

to be fair, Kaiohken in Super has never been a winning move except against Hit. Even then, he broke Goku's body and was barely enough to keep up with Jiren.
Vegeta's equivalent, Blue Evolution, managed to get him on the same level as GoD Toppo, but it only worked to show there wasn't really anywhere they could go by simply increasing their raw battle power
For all purposes and intents, Blue is the limit: they have to go beyond pure power-levels to surpass the GoDs

[Mr Baggins]

I've been saying for years that Goku and Vegeta hit a plateau and all these 'power gaps' at the god tiers are superficial.

Same here. It all makes sense as long as one is paying attention to the medium that Toriyama specifically had heavier involvement with. Nobody at this point should think it's surprising that the movies continue to align more with the manga than the anime.

Anyway, the point of the revelation in Super Hero isn't to "retcon" anything so much as just explain that what appeared to be an enormous rift to Goku/Vegeta at the time was primarily due to Jiren's sheer combat skill and discipline. Super – wonky anime included – has always emphasized those qualities being able to compensate for any raw power gaps even early on. Not exactly rocket science, guys.

Being an unbridled powerhouse is more Broly's schtick.

[Dragon Wukong]

I blame Toei for bringing SSB Kaioken into the fray. All dialogue referencing Ultra Instinct was about how it's not a power-based transformation, even before the Tournament of Power.

to be fair, Kaiohken in Super has never been a winning move except against Hit. Even then, he broke Goku's body and was barely enough to keep up with Jiren.
Vegeta's equivalent, Blue Evolution, managed to get him on the same level as GoD Toppo, but it only worked to show there wasn't really anywhere they could go by simply increasing their raw battle power
For all purposes and intents, Blue is the limit: they have to go beyond pure power-levels to surpass the GoDs

The point isn't whether it's a winning move or not. The point is that Kaioken is a literal multiplier that, no matter what level, would bring Goku far beyond whatever intended level of power Toriyama had in mind for him.

SSBKKx10 should, for all intents and purposes, destroy literally everyone in Dragon Ball Super, Beerus included, especially if one treats Whis' statement in Resurrection 'F' as fact (which, recent material suggests it is.)