God Ki as a concept.. was the ball dropped?

[PFM18]

God ki is literally just a name. It never mattered.
They screwed this up as soon as Golden Frieza was introduced like someone has already pointed out.

It serves an explanation as to why only now Goku and Vegeta have reached these new heights. These are characters we are familiar with, and need to stay true to the precedent that has been set with that character and the growth we have seen from them. Freeza, there's no precedent for the type of gains we should expect from him, so some kind of fundamental new concept doesn't need to be introduced.

[supersaiyanZero]

it's stupid at how bad it was handled. I have no qualms about characters (even Frieza) being stronger than SSblue.. After the Frieza saga, enemies stronger than Super Saiyan were properly introduced and the power needed to bridge that gap was made very clear and organic (up until the Buu Arc..).

Super introduced it and literally treated it like it was kid goten/trunks turning Super Saiyan. There's never any struggle to push anyone towards blue, it's become the initial transformation that Super Saiyan was towards the second half of Z.

Hell, towards the end of the ToP we had goku and vegeta lose their stamina a million times and they just go right ahead and power up to blue. Yeah, great transformation

Vegeta going SS Blue "Evolution" is still easily the most idiotic, fan service, underwhelming and completely unnecessary, and unclear transformation of the franchise. By far.

[Fizzer]

They really did begin to mess up the concept of god ki as early as Ressurection F.

I feel they could have handled it much better by introducing Blue as an intermediary stage that taps into a little god ki but doesn't actually become a god, so is way above SSJ but way below SSG. Blue would then be the natural progression of what we saw at the end of BoG, when Goku ceased to be a god but was still able to keep fighting for a while because he'd experienced the power.

That way, the true SSG form could have been reintroduced in fight against Hit, when Goku begins to stomp him but is on a time limit.

The other problem is retroactive - why don't Kami, Kaio, Kaioshin, Enma etc have this power?

[BWri]

So as the title says, do you guys, like myself feel like between Toriyama, Toei and Toyotaro (Probably mostly Toei) that due to inconsistent writing that God Ki has been underwhelming/poorly booked (using wrestling terminology) almost to the point of no return?

What I mean is, Neither Red God or Blue God feel even remotely empowering anymore and arguably never have outside of BoG. Upon its introduction God Ki was regarded to as this realm of power so inconceivably powerful that not even Goku and Vegeta at their strongest fused self at the time would be enough to stop someone with access to such Ki.

Since that movie though they've met with various foes each having their fare turn of making SSBlue (The strongest form outside of Ultra Instinct) looking like a complete joke especially in the anime, Freeza, Hit, Kale, Kefla, Android 17, Toppo and Jiren. Granted I have no issue with Blue Goku and Vegeta being challenged ( thats what the story is about) however what I find odd is that they're being trounced by guys who save for Toppo or Jiren have shown no hints of knowing what God KI was letting alone having access to it and now with Broly following suit on that list is there seemingly no way of having the form save face especially considering now that we have Ultra Instinct? I mean at this rate they might as well have called Red God SS4 and Blue God SS5 because they're being pushed to the edge not by fellow God Ki users but by regular chi using mortals.

This has been my problem since RoF as I mention in this old blog post of mine (http://belartscorner.blogspot.com/2015/ ... art-1.html). Toriyama-san spent a whole movie building up god ki and used the very next movie to tear it down. In hindsight that is very Toriyama-like and oddly hilarious.

The good part of god ki is, to get it you have to master ki control. By their very natures, beings with god ki should have an advantage over mortals. This is rarely shown in the show, but maybe its why Goku and Vegeta had seemingly endless stamina compared to everyone else barring the dumb retcon introduced in the Vegeta vs. Hit fight. The other advantage is only other god ki users tend to be able to sense beings with god ki. This is somewhat negated when mortals proficient at reading mortal ki spend a lot of time in the company of gods. Characters like Piccolo, Krillin, Trunks, and Roshi can feel the pressure of god ki and as of the ToP are even able to size those pressures against other godly pressures, effectively gauging them in the vaugest way possible.

Other than that god ki doesn't seem to be all that special. Nearly any gifted fighter can reach the realm of the gods with enough training. Give Krillin 100 - 1000 years and he can get there. That's what Toriyama has taught us in every arc since BoG.

[BWri]

Yeah, I gotta admit, it did kinda fall to the wayside in favour of simply powering up characters in general.

At least Hakai Energy, the special God Ki exclusive to Gods of Destruction and candidates for the position trained in its usage, has some additional properties beyond simple strength enhancement.

Namely, it's ability to nullify Ki attacks without sufficient power behind them and completely erase objects from existence and preventing people from going to Otherworld. If we had more of that kind of stuff for regular God Ki, I imagine it'd go a long way in making it more exciting and less dull.

Way back when, before god ki and BoG were even a thing, a young BWri came up with a concept called Spirit Ki, a type of ki that was much more powerful than mortal ki because it could push right through it. So even a weaker human fighter with a spirit power level of 20 could beat a mortal fighter with a power of 2,000,000. I got the concept from Tien's Kikiho, how it could push back Cell and how it used his life energy. The purpose of the concept was to fix the bloated power levels that existed by the end of Z and have everyone start from a brand new scale. I was hoping that god ki would be that, was disappointed when it wasn't in BoG but still excited because of the introduction of this new scale for Goku and Vegeta at least, but Frieza's 4 months of training gains in RoF ruined all of that. Dang it, Toriyama-san!

not necessarily if it is assumed that if you train the god ki the difference with the regular ki is much more marked but this can take years to be achieved

how many mortals outgrow beerus? maybe just jiren

I think that's the problem though. There's a lot of characters now in this mix. If we take the Beerus that Goku fought in BoG, basically all the heavy hitters from the ToP surpassed him, arguably starting from Android 17. Hell, even Piccolo is about as strong as Vegeta before Whis' training if he's sparring and hanging with a powered up Ultimate Gohan in his fights. He's like one Namekian fusion away from BoG SSG Goku level. Only took Frieza 4 months on his own to reach it. And who knows how Jiren trains or how old he is? At least Hit has his 1000 years of training to fall back on, but everyone else is a huuuuuge stretch.

and part of the multiverse plot is that there would be stronger subjects goku or vegeta, would say that hit has an excuse

Yeah, which is why they should have been stronger and also trained by angels. The fact that no one else had angel training except maybe Toppo and can still do well against gods like Goku and Vegeta is pretty bad. If more characters were trained by angels or GoDs, the story should've pointed that out.

[Tai Lung]

not necessarily if it is assumed that if you train the god ki the difference with the regular ki is much more marked but this can take years to be achieved

how many mortals outgrow beerus? maybe just jiren

I think that's the problem though. There's a lot of characters now in this mix. If we take the Beerus that Goku fought in BoG, basically all the heavy hitters from the ToP surpassed him, arguably starting from Android 17. Hell, even Piccolo is about as strong as Vegeta before Whis' training if he's sparring and hanging with a powered up Ultimate Gohan in his fights. He's like one Namekian fusion away from BoG SSG Goku level. Only took Frieza 4 months on his own to reach it. And who knows how Jiren trains or how old he is? At least Hit has his 1000 years of training to fall back on, but everyone else is a huuuuuge stretch.

and part of the multiverse plot is that there would be stronger subjects goku or vegeta, would say that hit has an excuse

Yeah, which is why they should have been stronger and also trained by angels. The fact that no one else had angel training except maybe Toppo and can still do well against gods like Goku and Vegeta is pretty bad. If more characters were trained by angels or GoDs, the story should've pointed that out.

if 17 was an error although it is weaker than SSB
Piccolo is at SSJ2 level or stronger
Gohan reached the God level with "potential"
Kale and Broly are legendary
hit is more than 1000 years old
dyspo of beerus' race?
it is supposed that frieza is a privileged race due to years of evolution but i understand the problem that has the subject
I consider anilaza to be the maximum weapon of U3 as something interesting and given that many gods saw the fight of toppo vs goku ssb they prepared for that kind of power

I suppose that although Goku had the divine ki, I had declared that he still had things to learn and that I could be overcome by other warriors

[BWri]

if 17 was an error although it is weaker than SSB

In the manga, certainly, but it's not so certain in the anime. He most likely hovers somewhere near SSB, though the show was adamant that we think of them as equals with he and Goku having an even fight and both holding back.

Piccolo is at SSJ2 level or stronger

Same level as Vegeta in BoG. Likely weaker but not far from it. Close enough that he could be a candidate for Whis' training, like Vegeta was.

Gohan reached the God level with "potential"

I don't have much of a problem with this, because Gohan's been ridiculous since forever, but it still does undermine god ki. The Ultimate powerup could be some sort of Kai seed for god ki. I'd be okay with that, even predicted it back in 2016.

Kale and Broly are legendary

This is kind of ridiculous for mortals. It does need some sort of cap because what really would the legendary Super Saiyan have to fight in its natural habitat. At most a Buu level threat. Anything above that is PIS/Power Creep

hit is more than 1000 years old

Makes perfect sense. He should probably be even stronger.

dyspo of beerus' race?

Maybe, but then again I've always thought he was interesting.

it is supposed that frieza is a privileged race due to years of evolution but i understand the problem that has the subject

Yeah, four months is still ridiculous and by himself. He needed a trainer to make this make sense. Should've been Vados, with Champa looking to cause a distraction while he steals the Super Dragon Balls.

I consider anilaza to be the maximum weapon of U3 as something interesting and given that many gods saw the fight of toppo vs goku ssb they prepared for that kind of power

The 3 robots that made up Anilaza seemed way too powerful for such clunky bots though and we still don't know what made them so strong. They seemed to run on mortal ki and not infinite energy like #17 and #18. Them giving even Gohan such a hard time was very difficult for me to take seriously.

I suppose that although Goku had the divine ki, I had declared that he still had things to learn and that I could be overcome by other warriors

Cool concept and they did succeed with this in some ways with the anime, because each fighter brought some unique ability or strategy to the fight. Overall, the other universes should've had fighters as hax as Goku and Vegeta. Its very shortsighted that they were the only ones in 12 universe, barring Toppo, to receive any kind of godly training or god level techniques and characters like Jiren undermine god ki.