Ever since Super's release, people are very quick to dismiss all criticisms about power level inconsistencies. Why?

[Freeza9000]

When Goku turned into SSB and asked Krillin what he would do now, that should have been the point where 18 jumped in and went on about teamwork. But nope, their answer to what Krillin, the technique over raw power guy that we just saw 2 minutes ago, should do now is to try and go head-to-head in a raw power struggle. And there goes that "attempt"

There are times where said strategy isn't enough to grant one a huge advantage over the significantly stronger/faster opponent.

So then how is going head to head against a stronger/faster opponent a more logical option?

I never said it always was, but there are times where any amount of strategy won't be much effective against an opponent that much stronger and faster to the point where a straight up head to head battle may be the best option.

[ekrolo2]

Sometimes it might be better to get the stronger opponent to leave themselves open for a sneak attack. Like what happened in the episode.

You know, one of the larger problems of this subculture of "boil all choreography down to feats --> assign people numbers/tiers/ranks --> logically deduce where they stand relative to others --> logically deduce pre-packaged results for 'versus' match-ups" is that it seems to utterly constrict peoples' ability to think outside the box for fights. No strategy outside of "fight someone lower on the totem pole than you" comes across as a logical move.

People would probably be more open if the gaps weren't incredibly insane. Strategy is nice and all, but it ain't overcoming someone if their raw stats are like a puddle to an ocean. That's basically why people are so hard on it in general when it comes to weaker vs stronger. If it were so helpful, it'd basically be more included in the areas where raw power pretty much has been the most needed aspect. There was a time with Cell when raw power was a lesson to not be enough....but even then it's not like Cell was completely dwarfed as he was for two reasons.

I mean take the Jojo series where people with weaker stands and strategy actually do get really far....though so long as they don't go head to head with someone like Jotaro or Josuke. The minute they do, their raw power is more than enough to decimate a weaker person. Though considering in that series killing a human is easier than a stand, it kinda gives strategists an open attack point while being weaker as humans are fragile.

That really is the crux of the matter here: the series has shown us that raw power beats everything else. The desire to use strategy to beat someone is all well and good but Krillin can be the love child of Paton and Rommel and that'll still accomplish fuck all with a side of jack shit when a guy 20% stronger than him can finger flick him into a literal oblivion of nothingness.

Even with pairs, the issue persists when Goku and Vegeta are literally the only fighters worth a fuck. What's a tag team of 18 and Krillin gonna do to someone of Imperfect Cell's level? If say you had five God level fighters meant to fight people head on and five lower tiered warriors meant to use strategy to make the difference it could work better but as we've already established, everyone but Goku and Vegeta are worthless shit tier.

[Zephyr]

People would probably be more open if the gaps weren't incredibly insane. Strategy is nice and all, but it ain't overcoming someone if their raw stats are like a puddle to an ocean. That's basically why people are so hard on it in general when it comes to weaker vs stronger. If it were so helpful, it'd basically be more included in the areas where raw power pretty much has been the most needed aspect. There was a time with Cell when raw power was a lesson to not be enough....but even then it's not like Cell was completely dwarfed as he was for two reasons.

I mean take the Jojo series where people with weaker stands and strategy actually do get really far....though so long as they don't go head to head with someone like Jotaro or Josuke. The minute they do, their raw power is more than enough to decimate a weaker person. Though considering in that series killing a human is easier than a stand, it kinda gives strategists an open attack point while being weaker as humans are fragile.

But I'm not seeing how that comes into play here. Krillin didn't overpower Goku. He was never going to overpower Goku. The immense gulf between them was explicitly acknowledged. Was his blast budging Goku's for a split second really cause for shouting "inconsistency with the power scale!"? Why? There's no way that anyone could come out of the episode, were they paying attention to everything, and come out with the conclusion that Krillin is anywhere close to as strong as Super Saiyan Blue Goku.

And you can bring up the puddle and ocean comparison, and to an extent I get the comparison. However, these puddles and oceans aren't robots. They're people. They have emotions and feelings. Ki is literally something spiritual. Mood and focus are essential. It doesn't matter how much water you're using if you aren't able to use it effectively. Case in point: Goku was focused solely on Krillin, and #18 was able to kick his blast away.

Again, I think this obsession with feats is constraining creative and critical thinking. It limits the kinds of stories that authors are seemingly allowed to tell. Plenty of stories were told where raw power trumped creative strategy, and that's fine. Now, stories are being told where the opposite turns out true. That's also fine.

Again, these are people, not robots. That hopefully doesn't need to be explained. Sometimes people perform at a task better on some days than others. This hopefully doesn't need to be explained either. Of course, when people are literally watching every episode fishing for feats and statements so that they can further fine tune their battle power lists, that sort of stuff seems to need to be explained, because otherwise, there are holes in what's depicted, and you can't get the same results using the Agreed Upon Method™. I'm not saying that's what always happens, but that's what it's genuinely starting to look like to me, more often than not, as of late.

And yeah, you could harp on Toei's execution for telling the kind of story where strategy and teamwork trump power, but I really don't see how this episode is exemplary of their bad execution.

[dbzfan7]

Sometimes it might be better to get the stronger opponent to leave themselves open for a sneak attack. Like what happened in the episode.

You know, one of the larger problems of this subculture of "boil all choreography down to feats --> assign people numbers/tiers/ranks --> logically deduce where they stand relative to others --> logically deduce pre-packaged results for 'versus' match-ups" is that it seems to utterly constrict peoples' ability to think outside the box for fights. No strategy outside of "fight someone lower on the totem pole than you" comes across as a logical move.

People would probably be more open if the gaps weren't incredibly insane. Strategy is nice and all, but it ain't overcoming someone if their raw stats are like a puddle to an ocean. That's basically why people are so hard on it in general when it comes to weaker vs stronger. If it were so helpful, it'd basically be more included in the areas where raw power pretty much has been the most needed aspect. There was a time with Cell when raw power was a lesson to not be enough....but even then it's not like Cell was completely dwarfed as he was for two reasons.

I mean take the Jojo series where people with weaker stands and strategy actually do get really far....though so long as they don't go head to head with someone like Jotaro or Josuke. The minute they do, their raw power is more than enough to decimate a weaker person. Though considering in that series killing a human is easier than a stand, it kinda gives strategists an open attack point while being weaker as humans are fragile.

That really is the crux of the matter here: the series has shown us that raw power beats everything else. The desire to use strategy to beat someone is all well and good but Krillin can be the love child of Paton and Rommel and that'll still accomplish fuck all with a side of jack shit when a guy 20% stronger than him can finger flick him into a literal oblivion of nothingness.

Even with pairs, the issue persists when Goku and Vegeta are literally the only fighters worth a fuck. What's a tag team of 18 and Krillin gonna do to someone of Imperfect Cell's level? If say you had five God level fighters meant to fight people head on and five lower tiered warriors meant to use strategy to make the difference it could work better but as we've already established, everyone but Goku and Vegeta are worthless shit tier.

It has been a crutch. If strategy of someone a bunch of times weaker was helpful, then it'd have been implemented far more often. Yet most of the time, they can't do anything. The tournament setting is to try and fix that....but even then simply powering up in SSJB level would probably send everyone out of the arena by mere aura alone.

Pretty much. Kinda hard to have strategy when someone can literally take you out before you even think, as their speed is so much higher. We'll see what happens, but Goku, Vegeta, and the meat shields will have to show us something.

People would probably be more open if the gaps weren't incredibly insane. Strategy is nice and all, but it ain't overcoming someone if their raw stats are like a puddle to an ocean. That's basically why people are so hard on it in general when it comes to weaker vs stronger. If it were so helpful, it'd basically be more included in the areas where raw power pretty much has been the most needed aspect. There was a time with Cell when raw power was a lesson to not be enough....but even then it's not like Cell was completely dwarfed as he was for two reasons.

I mean take the Jojo series where people with weaker stands and strategy actually do get really far....though so long as they don't go head to head with someone like Jotaro or Josuke. The minute they do, their raw power is more than enough to decimate a weaker person. Though considering in that series killing a human is easier than a stand, it kinda gives strategists an open attack point while being weaker as humans are fragile.

But I'm not seeing how that comes into play here. Krillin didn't overpower Goku. He was never going to overpower Goku. The immense gulf between them was explicitly acknowledged. Was his blast budging Goku's for a split second really cause for shouting "inconsistency with the power scale!"? Why?

And you can bring up the puddle and ocean comparison, and to an extent I get the comparison. However, these puddles and oceans aren't robots. They're people. They have emotions and feelings. Ki is literally something spiritual. Mood and focus are essential. It doesn't matter how much water you're using if you aren't able to use it effectively.

Again, I think this obsession with feats is constraining creative and critical thinking. It limits the kinds of stories that authors are seemingly allowed to tell. Plenty of stories were told where raw power trumped creative strategy, and that's fine. Now, stories are being told where the opposite turns out true. That's also fine.

Again, these are people, not robots. That hopefully doesn't need to be explained. Sometimes people perform at a task better on some days than others. This hopefully doesn't need to be explained either. Of course, when people are literally watching every episode fishing for feats and statements so that they can further fine tune their battle power lists, that sort of stuff seems to need to be explained, because otherwise, there are holes in what's depicted, and you can't get the same results using the Agreed Upon Method™. I'm not saying that's what always happens, but that's what it's genuinely starting to look like to me, more often than not, as of late.

And yeah, you could harp on Toei's execution for telling the kind of story where strategy and teamwork trump power, but I really don't see how this episode is exemplary of their bad execution.

I'm giving you insight in general, not just to that. I've let my thoughts on that ep be said so I'd be repeating myself at this point.

It really doesn't matter as mindless monsters like Kid Boo can just do fuck all, and them being so powerful is all that really matters. When you can move and react faster than someone else can even think, you don't have much of a chance. You could think of a strategy, but by then you've already been killed/KOed as someone is just that much insanely faster than you.

The problem is they never set up a universe where it was possible. Jojo set up a way so no matter the power gap etc, there is a way which is humans are fragile so no matter the stand, kill them and you can win. Dragon Ball has always shown us that raw stats basically trump 95% of the time. And even when it's not, it's for another form of raw power that wins..see the Genki Dama. It's incredibly difficult to try and shake up said formula, when strategy has not really mattered most of the time unless you are at least comparable to your opponent. I commend them for trying, but I don't see it working.

I repeat I am merely speaking in general of why people are like this. I've explained why for me Toei didn't do a great job, and even altered the episode in "How Super Should have Booked", which only changed a couple things, but kept the core concepts more or less intact. People won't stop thinking about power levels and raw stats, because Dragon Ball has basically beat it into people's head that, that is basically all that matters. If it didn't, then we'd have seen far more times where the highly outclassed were a lot more useful. So trying to adjust over to a possible new meta, is hard without some real good explanation.

[Zephyr]

The problem is they never set up a universe where it was possible. Jojo set up a way so no matter the power gap etc, there is a way which is humans are fragile so no matter the stand, kill them and you can win. Dragon Ball has always shown us that raw stats basically trump 95% of the time. And even when it's not, it's for another form of raw power that wins..see the Genki Dama. It's incredibly difficult to try and shake up said formula, when strategy has not really mattered most of the time unless you are at least comparable to your opponent. I commend them for trying, but I don't see it working.

I repeat I am merely speaking in general of why people are like this. I've explained why for me Toei didn't do a great job, and even altered the episode in "How Super Should have Booked", which only changed a couple things, but kept the core concepts more or less intact. People won't stop thinking about power levels and raw stats, because Dragon Ball has basically beat it into people's head that, that is basically all that matters. If it didn't, then we'd have seen far more times where the highly outclassed were a lot more useful. So trying to adjust over to a possible new meta, is hard without some real good explanation.

They most certainly already set up a universe where it is possible. You even said it yourself: 95% of the time. Assuming that percentage is accurate, for the sake of argument, that's still 5% where it is possible for strategy to beat power.

Remember, Krillin cut off Freeza's tail, and he's nowhere near Freeza's ballpark. Unless we're spinning some wild new headcanon where Freeza's neck is 69.420^666 times more durable than his tail, or that the Kienzan has a battle power higher than over 1 million, strategy could most certainly have trumped power, had they worked it out well enough. The Genki Dama was necessary against someone like Buu, who can regenerate indefinitely, if even the smallest bit of him remains. For someone immortal like that, you could also seal or tame them. Sealing Zamasu would have worked, had it not been for Goku taking the wrong piece of paper. Ranfan vs Namu and Yamcha vs Invisible Man/Suke-san also come immediately to mind, as does the fight against Vegeta (there are points in that fight where the strategy does amount to "get even stronger", but the fight ultimately comes down to Vegeta having his tail cut off and being crushed by a giant gorilla).

And I'm not so sure that Dragon Ball itself is squarely responsible for peoples' thinking being so densely-constricted like this. It certainly bears some of the blame (specifically, two out of ten story arcs and a select category of miscellaneous guidebook minutia), but I think that the decades-long online circlejerks have done infinitely more damage. It was definitely neither Toriyama nor Toei who codified a strict system of interpretation of "feats" and "statements" for the explicit purpose of fleshing out lists. If memory serves, Kunzait has pointed out that obsession over battle powers wasn't a thing in the pre-dub fandom, which you'd think wouldn't be the case were the blame solely, or even mostly, on the series proper for this problem.

I think the argument that "well, if weaker opponents could beat stronger ones with strategy, then we would have seen it" really misses the point that the series is spearheaded by combat-junkie martial artists, who desire nothing more or less than to prove their worth in one-on-one battle. It's why there are tournaments. It's why Goku lets Freeza power up. It's why the Artificial Humans are allowed to be created. It's why Cell reaches perfection. It's why the Cell Games are held. It's why Buu gets released. It's why they take turns fighting Freeza in RoF. The protagonists have personalities such that this sort of approach to combat is discouraged, so of course we're hardly ever going to see it. That this approach isn't applicable to every scenario is even the literal take-home point of this most recent episode.

[PerhapsTheOtherOne]

You know, everything about the setup for the Universal Survival Arc screams of Toriyama and Toei doing their damnedest to subvert all prior expectations about what the franchise means as a shonen fighting series, basically taking all of the "powerscaling" stereotypes that permeated the fandom and specifically crafting a tournament structure that's meant to defy all previous standards and ideas that were thought to be stone-set and immutable.

You know, I wonder......

What exactly else do you guys believe could be done with the current story setup to make things seem more believable, without retroactively changing anything in the series' past?

I mean, to be fair, Super's main audience will likely immensely enjoy the subversion of all expectations and standards and support the show further, but what about you guys here? What do you guys think could be done as of this current point to allow you to suspend your disbelief whilst keeping true to the intent that the storyline is pushing? Bear in mind that the rules ARE different now, as early as RoF. Not just the arc, either, THE MOVIE started this trend of expanded standards that the series works off of now.

[dbzfan7]

The problem is they never set up a universe where it was possible. Jojo set up a way so no matter the power gap etc, there is a way which is humans are fragile so no matter the stand, kill them and you can win. Dragon Ball has always shown us that raw stats basically trump 95% of the time. And even when it's not, it's for another form of raw power that wins..see the Genki Dama. It's incredibly difficult to try and shake up said formula, when strategy has not really mattered most of the time unless you are at least comparable to your opponent. I commend them for trying, but I don't see it working.

I repeat I am merely speaking in general of why people are like this. I've explained why for me Toei didn't do a great job, and even altered the episode in "How Super Should have Booked", which only changed a couple things, but kept the core concepts more or less intact. People won't stop thinking about power levels and raw stats, because Dragon Ball has basically beat it into people's head that, that is basically all that matters. If it didn't, then we'd have seen far more times where the highly outclassed were a lot more useful. So trying to adjust over to a possible new meta, is hard without some real good explanation.

They most certainly already set up a universe where it is possible. You even said it yourself: 95% of the time. Assuming that percentage is accurate, for the sake of argument, that's still 5% where it is possible for strategy to beat power.

Remember, Krillin cut off Freeza's tail, and he's nowhere near Freeza's ballpark. Unless we're spinning some wild new headcanon where Freeza's neck is 69.420^666 times more durable than his tail, or that the Kienzan has a battle power higher than over 1 million, strategy could most certainly have trumped power, had they worked it out well enough. The Genki Dama was necessary against someone like Buu, who can regenerate indefinitely, if even the smallest bit of him remains. For someone immortal like that, you could also seal or tame them. Sealing Zamasu would have worked, had it not been for Goku taking the wrong piece of paper. Ranfan vs Namu and Yamcha vs Invisible Man/Suke-san also come immediately to mind, as does the fight against Vegeta (there are points in that fight where the strategy does amount to "get even stronger", but the fight ultimately comes down to Vegeta having his tail cut off and being crushed by a giant gorilla).

And I'm not so sure that Dragon Ball itself is squarely responsible for peoples' thinking being so densely-constricted like this. It certainly bears some of the blame (specifically, two out of ten story arcs and a select category of miscellaneous guidebook minutia), but I think that the decades-long online circlejerks have done infinitely more damage. It was definitely neither Toriyama nor Toei who codified a strict system of interpretation of "feats" and "statements" for the explicit purpose of fleshing out lists. If memory serves, Kunzait has pointed out that obsession over battle powers wasn't a thing in the pre-dub fandom, which you'd think wouldn't be the case were the blame solely, or even mostly, on the series proper for this problem.

I think the argument that "well, if weaker opponents could beat stronger ones with strategy, then we would have seen it" really misses the point that the series is spearheaded by combat-junkie martial artists, who desire nothing more or less than to prove their worth in one-on-one battle. It's why there are tournaments. It's why Goku lets Freeza power up. It's why the Artificial Humans are allowed to be created. It's why Cell reaches perfection. It's why the Cell Games are held. It's why Buu gets released. It's why they take turns fighting Freeza in RoF. The protagonists have personalities such that this sort of approach to combat is discouraged, so of course we're hardly ever going to see it. That this approach isn't applicable to every scenario is even the literal take-home point of this most recent episode.

The 5 Percent was more because of using raw power in another means to win...basically strategy to form another sense of raw power trumping raw power. Which is Genki Dama essentially.

I agree in some of those cases it helps, but again, the gap is not even comparable beyond Krillin and Freeza, which is really the only one you can make a comparison. For them even, while I do agree the Kienzan is a hell of a technique, it still typically does not work most of the time. Even Goku bashes the technique himself when Freeza uses it on him. It could be used perhaps to help overcome someone stronger in a strategy effort, but the series never treats it as an end all be all that is capable of that. Otherwise the Kienzan strat would be used a lot more, or at least be thought of.

If the story made it more of a case where strategy could trump severe power gaps, people would be on board. It just doesn't. If it did, people would complain that so many characters have basically been made useless. They were made useless because they didn't have the raw power and stats to keep up. The show told us this for years, with constant reminders of people saying how useless they are and wish they couldn't help. We've been told that for so long, that trying to change that without so much as a great training sessions/explanation, contradicts what they did before. It's a bold attempt they're trying to go for, but it'll be a challenge to make some people accept it.

Even with all that, they still make it a firm belief raw stats trump everything. Even when people need to get to their maximum potential, strategy doesn't play a big part. I don't think it misses the point as even when all that happens, you STILL could have strategy of weaker characters mean something. But they don't. You could still have someone try and out think an opponent if you really wanted to. Good writing could make it happen, but they just keep relying on their stats triumph everything idea. Otherwise it'd basically make all the lesser characters complete idiots if their strategy could have made such a huge difference. If it could have, then instead of whining about being useless, they should have tried harder to do something.

[Asura]

What exactly else do you guys believe could be done with the current story setup to make things seem more believable, without retroactively changing anything in the series' past?

I mean, to be fair, Super's main audience will likely immensely enjoy the subversion of all expectations and standards and support the show further, but what about you guys here? What do you guys think could be done as of this current point to allow you to suspend your disbelief whilst keeping true to the intent that the storyline is pushing? Bear in mind that the rules ARE different now, as early as RoF. Not just the arc, either, THE MOVIE started this trend of expanded standards that the series works off of now.

You have two ways of approaching this (that are different from the current approach)

1 - The Power Level Approach. Beerus and Whis actually get involved. The fact that Beerus is leaving everything up to Goku and not showing much care makes absolutely zero sense since he knows if they lose, he'll be destroyed as well. As such, he should still tell Goku to go gather the fighters, but then also tell Whis that it's time for a 40hr bootcamp. Train almost everything you can into them in those 40 hours. Use Whis' staff, use the RoSaT, whatever. Just get those power levels up and get everyone stronger. This raises everyone's power to unknown levels, which allows the writers to literally do anything they want with them under the guise of "they trained with Whis" - just as long as it's not showing them being more powerful than Goku or Vegeta, or anyone they may fight.

2 - The Strategy Approach. This is similar to the approach they're taking now, but they haven't done a very good job at consistently conveying it. We know that most of the fighters are weak in comparison to Goku and Vegeta, but this isn't just some deathmatch 1 on 1 where raw power beats everything, this is a tournament. Teamwork is the name of the game, and if they can spend those 40 hours working as a team and coming up with new techniques and strategies, with the mindset of "We're going to be facing opponents way stronger than us, so we have to use our wits instead of our raw power" then you'll have successfully shown how the cast can be weak in comparison to Goku and Vegeta, yet strong in their own ways that Goku and Vegeta can't be. As I said, it seems like this is what they're currently going for, but doing things like showing Krillin go head to head in a raw power struggle for no reason despite knowing he'll lose, and then having the conversation of "How can Krillin even hold an SSB Kamehameha like that for so long" and blahblahblah creating arguments and leaving fans annoyed. If they do it right, it'll come out beautifully. Right now they started right, but are already faltering, to the point where speed, technique, and strategy will be brought up, yet they'll still have them go head to head in raw power struggles for no reason just to destroy any kind of consistency of a measure of strength.

[Zephyr]

It could be used perhaps to help overcome someone stronger in a strategy effort, but the series never treats it as an end all be all that is capable of that. Otherwise the Kienzan strat would be used a lot more, or at least be thought of.

Well, again, such tactics are generally outright discouraged. Our main heroes don't want their weaker allies butting in with crafty tricks, they want to prove that their dick is the biggest. I'll certainly concede that the characters are idiots for not using this kind of stuff more creatively more often. But again, the kind of stories that Toriyama was telling lent itself to that sort of shit. That's why it worked.

But even then, again, these aren't robots with "raw stats". They're humans with emotions, moods, morale, and a need to focus, wielding spiritual energy. If people are that desperate for excessively-pedantic in-universe explanations for why strategy works sometimes, and it doesn't other times, chalk it up to un-quantifiable variables like that. It's ridiculously simple. But then, of course, this is an internet subculture that absolutely cannot deal in things that aren't quantifiable. That stuff isn't helpful. It doesn't help me tweak my numbers. It doesn't help me figure out who would beat who in an imaginary fantasy fight that will never happen. And I think that's what it really boils down to. We can agree to disagree on that, but that's personally where I'm at with this.

[dbzfan7]

It could be used perhaps to help overcome someone stronger in a strategy effort, but the series never treats it as an end all be all that is capable of that. Otherwise the Kienzan strat would be used a lot more, or at least be thought of.

Well, again, such tactics are generally outright discouraged. Our main heroes don't want their weaker allies butting in with crafty tricks, they want to prove that their dick is the biggest. I'll certainly concede that the characters are idiots for not using this kind of stuff more creatively more often. But again, the kind of stories that Toriyama was telling lent itself to that sort of shit. That's why it worked.

But even then, again, these aren't robots with "raw stats". They're humans with emotions, moods, morale, and a need to focus, wielding spiritual energy. If people are that desperate for excessively-pedantic in-universe explanations for why strategy works sometimes, and it doesn't other times, chalk it up to un-quantifiable variables like that. It's ridiculously simple. But then, of course, this is an internet subculture that absolutely cannot deal in things that aren't quantifiable. That stuff isn't helpful. It doesn't help me tweak my numbers. It doesn't help me figure out who would beat who in an imaginary fantasy fight that will never happen. And I think that's what it really boils down to. We can agree to disagree on that, but that's personally where I'm at with this.

Well yeah there is that for sure no denying it. But there's also being believable and consist in a story too. It'd be like Superman not being able to take down Darkseid because he's too powerful, but then plastic man manages to do it. That'd be incredibly hard to buy as despite stretchy everything being a really viable and practical super power, it's not gonna be effective against a god like Darkseid. It's the same with Batman trying to go fisty cuffs with say, the anti monitor. Dude is one of the greatest planners and stategizers you can get, but good luck against someone so much more powerful than even your strongest heroes.

It becomes harder to buy into a story, when you suddenly want to break your own rules and do something different. It makes things harder to swallow. Dragon Ball has made it clear power pretty much triumphs in practically every case, while strategy is something used more for someone at least on par with another. Even then usually it's another form of raw power beating raw power. It's hard to believe in Krillin using techniques and strategy, when by the time he does, he's already either being knocked out or killed before he could even react. Even his amazing Kienzan means jackshit if his opponent can literally speed blitz him before he even tries to hit them with it, or even when it is out.

[PerhapsTheOtherOne]

I'd say that the biggest factor in increasing the value of skill is the fact that IT'S A BATTLE ROYAL OF THE AGES HOLY SH*T I'M STILL SO EXCITED!

It's gonna be absolutely bonkers, with 80 fighters on a single ring, all with varying abilities, skills, and power levels.

The chaos can be taken advantage of to great effect, and I personally believe that this setup is the one that Toriyama and Toei have in mind in order to address power level inconsistencies. It's their own way of "dismissing all criticisms about power level inconsistencies" by making it so that things are too crazy to keep things consistent in the first place.

Does this excuse the more straight-forward fights in Super's run so far? No. But then, dismissing the power level inconsistencies hasn't been as divisive and vocal as it is now either, has it?

[dbzfan7]

I totally agree a battle royal is a great way to have them involved, as they can be covered by stronger allies, or have the enemies have people on par with them. So this format really works out.

[Asura]

The pieces are certainly set, but that doesn't mean the writers are adept at the rules of Chess.

[Vados_chan]

Because believe it or not not all fans care about or are obsessed with power levels

You should realize that stopped being imprortant during the Android saga when some shmuck created Androids stronger than the Emperors of the Universe and the Legendary Super Saiyan.

[TheMikado]

Because believe it or not not all fans care about or are obsessed with power levels

You should realize that stopped being imprortant during the Android saga when some shmuck created Androids stronger than the Emperors of the Universe and the Legendary Super Saiyan.

Unfortunately For most of the Z era the running theme WAS of the series was POWER. In the same frame as the DB era was adventure. Saying you don't care about consistency in power levels is unfortunately like saying you doesn't care about realistic relationships in a romance anime because it's cartoon designed for kids...

The point it the whole premise wasn't about a great plot or how wonderful a character was the plot literally wrote its self as, Powerful dude shows up, heroes get move powerful through various means to defeat power dude. New powerful dude shows up. Wash rinse repeat. Literally the most basic levels of the Z era are just a measuring stick of power. So much so that he author invented two different power scales, multiple transformations representing increased power states and further "sub transformation" representing incremental power ups. It's literally all about power when you distill it down it's the central theme of Z era Dragonball.

[coola]

There is no point anymore, power levels are even more inconstent then in GT, in almost every episode we would have debate "Why Goku needed Blue against ...?"

[emperior]

There is no point anymore, power levels are even more inconstent then in GT, in almost every episode we would have debate "Why Goku needed Blue against ...?"

There aren't many inconsistencies but there are random power-ups which never get explained much.

[Saturnine]

Welp, assuming Goku can modify his powerlevel in SSj Blue just as he could in FPSSj could solve these inconsistencies.

But Toei is still making the wrong assumption that everyone wants to keep seeing the strongest transformation all the time.

It's the opposite of what they've been doing for the theatrical movies, dragging out fights in inferior forms and only using transformations as a last resort. And then having the fight still be equal. That's not how freaking SSj works, dammit.

[coola]

Not to mention Blue put strain on your body, Goku was in very bad form after tournament, why would he put himself in danger like that?

[Gafonso6]

Not to mention Blue put strain on your body, Goku was in very bad form after tournament, why would he put himself in danger like that?

Goku was in bad form because he used the SSBKKx10 not because he used Blue. Blue putting strain on your body is a manga thing only.