[spoilers] What do you think is the narrative reason for Beerus being kept ahead of Goku?

[RecolorSaiyan]

If you go through DB and DBZ, Goku never stays behind an opponent he lost to/was inferior to for very long. he either surpasses them later in the same story arc or by the next arc/next arcs conclusion. However in Super, we are 5 story arcs post BoG in and goku is still inferior to beerus and the gap is MASSIVE as it takes ssb gogeta to put down broly who "might" be stronger than beerus. You can say he surpassed him with UI but they never definitively said anything and even if he did it was for 1 minute and he didn't use it in the movie and atleast in the manga continuity hasn't been able to access it at all even after Broly story events. So essentially this is like a longer version of what gohan did in the fight with raditz (flashing supreme power but losing it and falling way behind the top fighters)

I enjoy beerus as a character but he basically does nothing except eat, sleep, yell at goku and freak out. I also don't think beerus is needed as a motivating factor for him since goku has always been motivated to get stronger and stronger following the "there will always be someone stronger out there" mindset. Even if goku surpassed Beerus in say the u6 arc, he'd just set his sights on higher beings and new levels of power such as Whis

[Polyphase Avatron]

Because they don't want Goku to seem like he's completely invincible?

[Ssenrof]

If you go through DB and DBZ, Goku never stays behind an opponent he lost to/was inferior to for very long. he either surpasses them later in the same story arc or by the next arc/next arcs conclusion. However in Super, we are 5 story arcs post BoG in and goku is still inferior to beerus and the gap is MASSIVE as it takes ssb gogeta to put down broly who "might" be stronger than beerus. You can say he surpassed him with UI but they never definitively said anything and even if he did it was for 1 minute and he didn't use it in the movie and atleast in the manga continuity hasn't been able to access it at all even after Broly story events. So essentially this is like a longer version of what gohan did in the fight with raditz (flashing supreme power but losing it and falling way behind the top fighters)

I enjoy beerus as a character but he basically does nothing except eat, sleep, yell at goku and freak out. I also don't think beerus is needed as a motivating factor for him since goku has always been motivated to get stronger and stronger following the "there will always be someone stronger out there" mindset. Even if goku surpassed Beerus in say the u6 arc, he'd just set his sights on higher beings and new levels of power such as Whis

Goku has surpassed gods before. So- one can ask what makes Beerus special? Why can’t goku surpass him- when surpassing his local Kami, the grand Kami, and the supreme Kami was trivial.

Part of it is probably author fiat. Toriyama for whatever uncrutible reason has stated that- Goku and Vegeta will never surpass Beerus- probably.

What benefit does this have, why would Toriyama decide this is where Goku stops? Maybe to provide a new type of challenge. Perhaps Goku has to learn that not all challenges can be overcome through power. The god of destruction is the penultimate challenge- beating him will take something beyond might, beyond skill, a supernatural instinct, an ultra instinct.

Beerus is also a good foil for Goku. He basically is Goku, the love of food and strong opponents- mixed with a apathy from eons of a lack of worthy opponents.

Beerus shows us, what would happpen to Goku. What he could become- if he completely let go of his family. If he ever decided to permanently leave, to fully embrace his fighting destiny. And ignore his familial duties.

I think, when Goku surpasses Beerus- it shouldn’t just be a, my battle power is higher... look at my awesome Super Sayain God Super Sayain Blue 3, Kaio-ken x 100. It should be a moment for a transformative fight. Where Goku realizes where his passion for fighting will get him, how destructive his obsession can become.

[Nero<>Akira]

Because Beerus plus the higher ups are the end all be all. they're also gonna be ahead of subsequent antagonists.

[Miracles]

I know most of the DB fandom is so caught up in numbers and "feats" and their fandoms but totally neglect the actual story. Don't forget, even tho Goku is the main character Beerus still has his story too. Goku's sole purpose now is to become Beerus "plaything." Goku is prophesied to give Beerus a challenging fight some time down the line. Remember, Beerus is the one who set Goku on this path, Put Goku and Chi Chi on the flying carpet and let them sing "A whole new world" cause it was Beerus who opened the doors to it for Goku. Goku wouldn't be experiencing anything like he is now if it wasn't for Beerus looking for a competitor.

Like it or not Beerus is the money on the table for Goku in Super.

[BWri]

Because its better for the story for Goku to not be the strongest only after one or a few arcs. Save it for the very end or near it.

[Mister_Popo]

Even if Completed UI Goku surpassed Beerus shortly during that final push against Jiren, which remains a theoretical possibility, this doesn't mean Goku is stronger than Beerus. He only surpassed him very shorty in a form he hasn't truely mastered. And even if Goku masters Completed UI, Beerus can easily made stronger again by giving him Completed UI as well. I've always thought it to be strange Beerus doesn't have Completed UI. It could give him a massive powerboost when a second round comes.

[lancerman]

Because it gives Goku one constant target to strive to instead of just changing the goal with a new villain. The benefit to this is that the primary hook of the villains now isn't that they are stronger than everyone else, but that they provide a compelling narrative reason to challange the characters. I guess the downside is that a lot of villains will be marginalized by some fans as "well yeah but he's not as strong as this one guy who we know is the 'real' strong guy".

[Freezerbaby]

At the end of the movie, Goku flat out states that Broly is probably stronger than beerus, so for the time being, Gogeta is already far stronger than beerus. So I assume and expect that in the next arc he will be surpassed by Goku and Vegeta.

[SaiyanGod117]

To keep them trapped in Universe 7.

[Raphael_Z]

At the end of the movie, Goku flat out states that Broly is probably stronger than beerus, so for the time being, Gogeta is already far stronger than beerus. So I assume and expect that in the next arc he will be surpassed by Goku and Vegeta.

TBH Goku has NEVER seen Beerus fight at full power. Goku can only estimate Beerus' maximum strength and even if Goku fought against him to the death, there's a chance that Beerus might end up unlocking a new power up (or at least Ultra Instinct as well) when pushed to the limit.

I have the feeling that a new Super villain (maybe the Goat guy) will end up Worfing Beerus for maximum hype effect tho.

[Code]

Dragon Ball writers have two major flaws:

1) They don't plan ahead
2) They love over-exaggeration

To illustrate this, let's look at the Namek arc.

Goku went from fighting a strong Saiyan, to fighting even stronger Saiyans, to fighting the RULER OF THE KNOWN UNIVERSE. Notice a little jump there?
From a storytelling perspective, that's insanity. If you expect your story to go on after the current arc, why on earth would you have your protagonist fight the ruler of the universe (and win)? You're just writing yourself into a corner. You don't give yourself any room to grow.

But they can't help themselves. They are addicted to those cheap OMG! moments, where the audience goes "Wooooow" and the characters are standing there with their mouths open.

So what do they do after the Namek arc? They just pull a bigger threat out of their butts, which of course makes no sense, because they had to exaggerate in the previous arc.
Now, apparently, a random scientist from earth can create androids strong enough to rule the universe. Suuuure, why not.

If the Dragon Ball writers actually planned ahead, maybe the order of foes would have looked something like this:
- Android 17/18
- Cell
- Raditz
- Vegeta
- Buu
- Frieza
Of course you would have to adjust the strength of the characters, but from storytelling alone this would make much more sense.


So now... Beerus.
With Beerus they did the same thing they did with Frieza. They needed a new enemy, but they just can't pace themselves. So they went straight to the GOD OF DESTRUCTION.
But hey, this time they actually did plan a tiny bit ahead and had Goku lose. But that just leads to other problems.

Now they can a have somewhat plausible threats for the following arcs, but Beerus becomes this moving goalpost. Goku gets power-up after power-up and is still below Beerus, to the point where logically he used <1% of his power in their battle.

When Goku finally surpassed Beerus with UI, it's the same problem as in the beginning of the Adroid arc. And of course, here comes Broly:

Spoiler:

A random dude, who has been living on an abandoned planet and never fought anyone substantial, is now stronger than the God of Destruction. Because prophecy, whatever.
It's Android 17/18 and over again.

So all in all: The reason is bad writing.
Watching Dragon Ball always reminds me of Michael Scott pulling out a gun in improv class.

[Freezerbaby]

At the end of the movie, Goku flat out states that Broly is probably stronger than beerus, so for the time being, Gogeta is already far stronger than beerus. So I assume and expect that in the next arc he will be surpassed by Goku and Vegeta.

TBH Goku has NEVER seen Beerus fight at full power. Goku can only estimate Beerus' maximum strength and even if Goku fought against him to the death, there's a chance that Beerus might end up unlocking a new power up (or at least Ultra Instinct as well) when pushed to the limit.

I have the feeling that a new Super villain (maybe the Goat guy) will end up Worfing Beerus for maximum hype effect tho.

Not in the anime, but in the manga he definitely saw beerus fighting at full power in the GOD´s exhibiton match.

Anyway, if the writers put that line in the movie, it is because they want you to know that beerus is around broly´s power.

[MKCSTEALTH]

The same reason Goku became a kid in GT. He was the most powerful character at the time, and they needed to find a way to dial him down. Hence why we have characters like Beerus, Whis, GP, and Zeno that are vastly more powerful than Goku was and could be. The only problem is that they don't want to really set Beerus at a given point. They want him to be a movable goal post. So even if we get vague feats like GoD Toppo being defeated by SSBE Vegeta or Goku attaining a form even the GoDs have trouble mastering, we still don't really know how they factor into the grand scheme of the scaling.

[Yuli Ban]

Beerus acts as a milestone. He's the only accurate maypole of power we've gotten in all of Super. That's why he went from using 70% of his power to fight SSG Goku to an ambiguous percentage in the anime retelling to lord knows how little he may actually have used now that we've gone past the Tournament of Power. In 2013, there was no intention to make Son Goku as strong as he's become, so that's why he was able to do so well against Beerus. Watching BoG today and hearing that Beerus used 70% of his full power makes it sound like he should have been surpassed long ago. This is one reason why there was so much controversy about whether SSB was actually stronger than SSG until they brought SSG back in the ToP and confirmed it isn't as strong as Blue— Golden Freeza feared Beerus and couldn't stand up to Blue Goku or Vegeta for very long, but if SSB is stronger than SSG, then surely Golden Freeza should have been at least strong enough to hold his own against Beerus. Yet Freeza still seemed to believe that if Beerus interrupted, his revenge would have been thwarted.

The writers didn't plan on Battle of Gods leading to an entirely new series. It was meant to be a reunion for the fans, a one-shot deal that might get a follow up in 2024 for the 40th anniversary of Dragon Ball. That's why they made Beerus so strong but not so overwhelmingly so.

When it turned out to be a much bigger success than anticipated and a new series was greenlit, they had to retcon Beerus's power.

And here's something critical: from a narrative standpoint, Dragon Ball Super can only properly end with a rematch between Son Goku and Beerus because of the way they set everything up. Goku and Beerus haven't seriously fought since BoG, and due to the strength retcons, this means Beerus was actually thousands, perhaps millions of times stronger than what we were told in the movie. If this is true and the rematch isn't turned into a gag where Goku one-shots Beerus by accident (disproving everything I said and confirming he wasn't lying in BoG), that means the senshi have no true measure for Beerus's strength. All that has been said about X character "possibly being as strong or stronger than Beerus" was just exaggeration. But even that phrase is indicative of Beerus's status as a standard yet to be surpassed. However, there have been far too many changes since BoG for the standard to be easily understood. If Super Saiyan God were still Goku's strongest form and the most he's done was to master it, then the power scaling would be more understandable.

But that's not what happened. Instead, Goku has crossed Super Saiyan God with Super Saiyan to give us Super Saiyan Blue. Then he added kaioken. Then he added kaioken x10 and then kaioken x20. Then Vegeta achieved an evolved form of Super Saiyan Blue that basically amounts to Super Saiyan Blue 2. Then we got Ultra Instinct (which may or may not be a power boost). Kaioken by itself was already a massive leap forward in power.

Let's imagine this is all occurring with a different league of power. Just suspend your disbelief for a moment. That Beerus was searching for someone who has mastered kaioken, and that person is Goku. Beerus and Goku fight, and Goku uses kaioken (which doubles his power). Beerus still defeats Goku, however and Whis claims Beerus didn't use his full power, but we come away thinking Goku is still somewhat comparable.

Then we discover Goku can become a Super Saiyan, which is a 50x boost, and in this timeline, he can use Super Kaioken. This is a 100x boost. Except he can go to kaioken x10 while as a Super Saiyan. This increases his power by 500x. And then he goes kaioken x20, effectively raising his battle power by 1,000x. Vegeta's Super Saiyan 2, in this instance, is equal to Super Kaioken x20 rather than Super Kaioken.

And then we learn Beerus might still be stronger than this. So all of a sudden, we go from Beerus being stronger than Goku x2 to Beerus being stronger than Goku x1,000. More than that: we also have Vegetto to contend with, and he's gone Super Vegetto. This may be as much as a 5,000x boost over base Goku. And even this may only be "roughly matching Beerus-sama".
There's one problem— Goku and Beerus have never fought since their initial encounter! So how do we know Goku didn't surpass him when he went Super Saiyan? We don't.

Back to our timeline. This is where we're at with Super Saiyan God, Super Saiyan Blue, Super Saiyan Kawaii, Goku Blanco, etc.

The only way to rectify this from a storytelling point of view is for Son Goku and Lord Beerus to fight again. Give us an update to that standard. It would also serve as a fitting end to this arc, proving that Goku has surpassed the realm of the GoDs.

[GodVegetto91]

Dragon Ball writers have two major flaws:

1) They don't plan ahead
2) They love over-exaggeration

To illustrate this, let's look at the Namek arc.

Goku went from fighting a strong Saiyan, to fighting even stronger Saiyans, to fighting the RULER OF THE KNOWN UNIVERSE. Notice a little jump there?
From a storytelling perspective, that's insanity. If you expect your story to go on after the current arc, why on earth would you have your protagonist fight the ruler of the universe (and win)? You're just writing yourself into a corner. You don't give yourself any room to grow.

But they can't help themselves. They are addicted to those cheap OMG! moments, where the audience goes "Wooooow" and the characters are standing there with their mouths open.

So what do they do after the Namek arc? They just pull a bigger threat out of their butts, which of course makes no sense, because they had to exaggerate in the previous arc.
Now, apparently, a random scientist from earth can create androids strong enough to rule the universe. Suuuure, why not.

If the Dragon Ball writers actually planned ahead, maybe the order of foes would have looked something like this:
- Android 17/18
- Cell
- Raditz
- Vegeta
- Buu
- Frieza
Of course you would have to adjust the strength of the characters, but from storytelling alone this would make much more sense.


So now... Beerus.
With Beerus they did the same thing they did with Frieza. They needed a new enemy, but they just can't pace themselves. So they went straight to the GOD OF DESTRUCTION.
But hey, this time they actually did plan a tiny bit ahead and had Goku lose. But that just leads to other problems.

Now they can a have somewhat plausible threats for the following arcs, but Beerus becomes this moving goalpost. Goku gets power-up after power-up and is still below Beerus, to the point where logically he used <1% of his power in their battle.

When Goku finally surpassed Beerus with UI, it's the same problem as in the beginning of the Adroid arc. And of course, here comes Broly:

Spoiler:

A random dude, who has been living on an abandoned planet and never fought anyone substantial, is now stronger than the God of Destruction. Because prophecy, whatever.
It's Android 17/18 and over again.

So all in all: The reason is bad writing.
Watching Dragon Ball always reminds me of Michael Scott pulling out a gun in improv class.

Great post. This is exactly what i have always said aswell. That said, i would argue that Beerus is still far stronger than Broly. Broly may have been said to be “perhaps” stronger than Beerus, but so was SSJ Blue Vegito in the manga. It means nothing. Both Jiren and Broly are below Beerus until proven otherwise. AT wants Beerus on top for various reasons. So no matter how powerful a new enemy gets and no matter how much they say he’s the strongest, Beerus will simply be retconned again to stay on top.

Beerus>>>>>>>Broly>>Jiren.

[Miracles]

Super has been very careful with Beerus. They have never given him a limit on his power. Careful to avoid any blunt and direct definite statements on his position. While at the same time, reminding the audience that Beerus is still the man with subtle questionable comparisons to him with great beings such as Vegetto and Broly. On the contrary, it's been good writing concerning Beerus battle power being above Goku. Every arc, the power of villains escalates in order to prepare Goku to fight his prophesied battle with Beerus. Super is being consistent with Beerus. It's really something they should be praised for.

[Lord Beerus]

Beerus acts as the benchmark of strength that Goku can feasibly attain and still remain in the realm of believability. I believe the purpose for Beerus being the moving goalpost of strength that he has become since the Battle Of Gods movie is because neither Toei or Toriyama have really planned out what the end goal is for Goku in his stance in the power hierarchy. While at the same time, they don't want to undermine Beerus' role in show by just having him as another character who just so happens to be weaker than Goku.

[Miracles]

The fact that the fandom keeps using terms like "retcon" or moving "goalpoast" shows that they are not paying attention to the narrative. Super can have Beerus stronger than everybody cause they never gave him definite limits in comparison. You can only say "retcon" or moving goalpost" if they firmly established someone stronger than him when Super never did. So Beerus still being the strongest is not bad writing or a change but a consistent fact.

[shadd21]

Let's be real, it isn't because Beerus is some "benchmark" or "goalpost", it's really because Toei/Toriyama knows that Goku surpassing him would lead to Beerus going the way of every Z fighter who isn't named Goku or Vegeta.