"Zenkai" - 全開 or 全快? (Also, questions on origins of the term in Western fandom)

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"Zenkai" - 全開 or 全快? (Also, questions on origins of the term in Western fandom)

Post by Cipher » Sat Mar 25, 2017 5:34 pm

I was doing some kanji practice earlier, and encountered a bit of vocabulary that caused me to question what had been my longstanding understanding of how this particular bit of fan terminology came about. What Japanese term does this hallmark of English-language fan discussion—as in, "Goku received a 'zenkai' boost on Namek"—actually correspond to?

I'd always assumed it was 全開—fully open, or full-throttle—the same phrase that shows up in the title of the first Dragon Ball Z ending, "Tobikiri ZENKAI Power!" (Although the phrase is rendered in romaji in both the title and the song's subtitles, its meaning is fairly unambiguous.) My assumption was that English-speaking fans had appropriated it from its usage in the ending song, referring to the idea that, after a near-death experience, Saiyans receive an increase to their maximum (or "full-force/full-throttle") power.

However, it occurs to me it could also refer to 全快—complete recovery. This seems simultaneously more logical to me and less likely, as the term isn't used in Vegeta's initial explanation of this particular Saiyan ability as he's fighting Zarbon, so it would require a bit of Japanese knowledge to bring into English-language discussion.

That said, fandom historians, which is it? Also, when did this particular bit of lexicon first start showing up in fandom conversations, and what do we have to do to agree never to use it again?

Then again, perhaps it's supposed to be a "last time" (前回) bonus, as in "Wow! Goku's so much stronger than he was last time!", and I've always been completely off the mark.
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Re: "Zenkai" - 全開 or 全快?

Post by Gaffer Tape » Sat Mar 25, 2017 5:49 pm

Why do I get the feeling that the people who use it or introduced it haven't put even a tenth of the amount of the thought into it as you did just now? It was probably more of a, "Wheee, what a cool-sounding Japanese word! Let's use it! Oh, and also, Nozawa sounds like a dying chicken. Faulconer for the win!" :P
Cipher wrote:what do we have to do to agree never to use it again?
I'll sign the petition. I mean, I never use it already and cringe whenever anyone else does, so I guess I don't help all that much. But I'll do whatever I can.
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Re: "Zenkai" - 全開 or 全快?

Post by The gr » Sat Mar 25, 2017 6:09 pm

Gaffer Tape wrote:Why do I get the feeling that the people who use it or introduced it haven't put even a tenth of the amount of the thought into it as you did just now? It was probably more of a, "Wheee, what a cool-sounding Japanese word! Let's use it! Oh, and also, Nozawa sounds like a dying chicken. Faulconer for the win!" :P
Cipher wrote:what do we have to do to agree never to use it again?
I'll sign the petition. I mean, I never use it already and cringe whenever anyone else does, so I guess I don't help all that much. But I'll do whatever I can.
What's wrong with the word zenkai :P , but I got a question, isn't saiya Power,the official name of the ability when Saiyan get a boost from near death experience
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Re: "Zenkai" - 全開 or 全快?

Post by Beek King » Sat Mar 25, 2017 6:12 pm

It's actually 繕階. The Saiyans are actually expert floor repairmen all along.
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Re: "Zenkai" - 全開 or 全快?

Post by RedRibbonSoldier#42 » Sat Mar 25, 2017 6:16 pm

Putting the roumaji "zenkai" into jisho.org gives all of those and also 全会, "whole assembly" which seems unlikely, and 全壊 "complete destruction" which I guess is plausible, being the cause and result of the power up.

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Re: "Zenkai" - 全開 or 全快?

Post by Cipher » Sat Mar 25, 2017 6:17 pm

Gaffer Tape wrote:Why do I get the feeling that the people who use it or introduced it haven't put even a tenth of the amount of the thought into it as you did just now? It was probably more of a, "Wheee, what a cool-sounding Japanese word! Let's use it! Oh, and also, Nozawa sounds like a dying chicken. Faulconer for the win!" :P
I'm fairly certain its usage predates the Faulconer fanbase (though someone correct me if I'm wrong; I'm genuinely curious as to whether this crept up in old newsgroups), but I don't disagree with your central hypothesis.
The gr wrote:What's wrong with the word zenkai, but I got a question, isn't saiya Power,the name of the ability when Saiyan get a boost from near death experience
I mean, my personal issue with it would be its being thrown around when we aren't even sure as a collective fanbase what the word refers to. It's a case where I suspect—maybe—that a bit of Japanese vocabulary was brought into conversations where the rationale was either missing or fairly obtuse, just for the sake of exoticism. Though, and this is genuinely why I made this thread, maybe it really did begin as a fairly reasonable use of that second option, 全快, that some Japanese-speaking fan proposed as a shorthand, and that carried over into Western lexicon. How does the Japanese fanbase refer to this phenomenon? Did we take it from them? I really don't know!

At any rate, no, I'm fairly certain "Saiya-Power" is never once uttered in Toriyama's manga. Off the top of my head, I know it shows up in GT a few times, first used by Baby to refer somewhat ambiguously to what seems to be Saiyan strength as a whole. It might show in up Z Movie 3 as well, if I'm not just getting it mixed up with an infamous "Big Green dub" line.
Beek King wrote:It's actually 繕階. The Saiyans are actually expert floor repairmen all along.
Hey, now. Let's not be so hasty. Maybe it's 禅貝, and the Saiyans are a bunch of enlightened shellfish.
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Re: "Zenkai" - 全開 or 全快?

Post by Gaffer Tape » Sat Mar 25, 2017 6:22 pm

Cipher wrote:
Gaffer Tape wrote:Why do I get the feeling that the people who use it or introduced it haven't put even a tenth of the amount of the thought into it as you did just now? It was probably more of a, "Wheee, what a cool-sounding Japanese word! Let's use it! Oh, and also, Nozawa sounds like a dying chicken. Faulconer for the win!" :P
I'm fairly certain its usage predates the Faulconer fanbase (though someone correct me if I'm wrong; I'm genuinely curious as to whether this crept up in old newsgroups), but I don't disagree with your central hypothesis.
I personally don't recall seeing it prior to the turn of the century, but I could be wrong. But that was meant as well as a broader "people who use it" statement. That I often see the usage as the types who bitch about the Japanese version but still stick to this random Japanese term that fans made up. It's the kind of random Japanese places like the Dragon Ball Wiki throw into their articles despite it having no basis in the actual Japanese version of the franchise. You know, that kind of stuff.
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Re: "Zenkai" - 全開 or 全快?

Post by RedRibbonSoldier#42 » Sat Mar 25, 2017 6:27 pm

Cipher wrote: Hey, now. Let's not be so hasty. Maybe it's 禅貝, and the Saiyans are a bunch of enlightened shellfish.
If we get creative, maybe it's 善界, because they unleash a world of justice upon their foes. (Sounds like a Zamasu power-up)

The homonyms just don't stop.

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Re: "Zenkai" - 全開 or 全快?

Post by Cipher » Sat Mar 25, 2017 6:43 pm

RedRibbonSoldier#42 wrote:The homonyms just don't stop.
In this thread, we learn why languages with limited phonemic variability lend themselves so well to puns.

The question of where this phrase first popped up in Western fandom, and whether any kind of rationalization was attached at the time, still stands.

EDIT --

Probably should have checked this as soon as I first thought to question it, but here's Dragon Ball Wiki's article on the subject, up to Dragon Ball Wiki's usual standards. They go with 全開, so I guess question answered, though I still wonder about its origins. They also call the ability "Saiyan Power," which is largely baseless, other than the fact that it is, I guess, a Saiyan power. Apparently they're drawing from a card in a video-game, which I'm sure would be サイヤパワー/Saiya-Power in Japanese, to answer that earlier question.

The term "zenkai," as applied to this ability, gets questioned on the talk page, and the only defense offered is that it's used in the first ending theme, so ...

(Biggest, eye-rolliest shrug)

EDIT II --

The Japanese Wikipedia article on Saiyans simply says, "瀕死状態から回復することにより戦闘力が大幅に上昇する."

"(Saiyans') battle power increases substantially upon recovering from a moribund state."

Here's an incredibly pedantic Japanese fan page dedicated to cataloging and examining each near-death power-up in the series, and it doesn't refer to them as anything other than "Saiyan power-ups" (in the title), and "the established property of Saiyans receiving a substantial increase in power from recovering from near-death" (red font in the body of the text), using language very similar to the Wikipedia entry.

There's another argument in the Talk page of the English-language Wiki that asserts the ability has to be called something, but, at least as far as Japanese fans seem to be concerned, that apparently doesn't need to be the case.

I'm basically just confirming that the phrase was never a carryover from Japanese fandom (without going so far as to bother a stranger). A search for "サイヤ人 全開" only results in references to this particular Dokkan Battle card (referring to Goku being at full Saiyan strength). A search for "サイヤ人 全快" grabs nothing in particular—a few results that assume I've mistyped the name of that Dokkan Battle card, and a few references to characters' power "fully recovering" in unrelated circumstances.
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Re: "Zenkai" - 全開 or 全快? (Also, questions on origins of the term in Western fandom)

Post by RedRibbonSoldier#42 » Sat Mar 25, 2017 7:21 pm

Since the wiki uses dub and video game terms left and right and assigns random colors to the power up, I slightly question their authority. They might have just seen the word used in the fandom somewhere and just guessed at the origin.

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Re: "Zenkai" - 全開 or 全快? (Also, questions on origins of the term in Western fandom)

Post by Cipher » Sat Mar 25, 2017 7:29 pm

RedRibbonSoldier#42 wrote:Since the wiki uses dub and video game terms left and right and assigns random colors to the power up, I slightly question their authority. They might have just seen the word used in the fandom somewhere and just guessed at the origin.
Yeah, that's about my take on it. I guess I can say with some confidence that anyone who uses the term now, and who has bothered to question its Japanese origins, believes it's the same bit of vocabulary as is present in the first ending.

I still want to see the very first time this phrase was ever offered up as a title for the ability in Western fandom, and what rationale was provided at the time. Like, that is an actual thing that must have happened. It probably even exists on the internet somewhere.

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Re: "Zenkai" - 全開 or 全快? (Also, questions on origins of the term in Western fandom)

Post by RedRibbonSoldier#42 » Sat Mar 25, 2017 7:35 pm

Cipher wrote: same bit of vocabulary as is present in the first ending.
Hey, if the ending writes it only as ZENKAIパワー, we can't completely rule out the Buddhist seafood reading.

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Re: "Zenkai" - 全開 or 全快? (Also, questions on origins of the term in Western fandom)

Post by Cipher » Sat Mar 25, 2017 7:37 pm

RedRibbonSoldier#42 wrote:Hey, if the ending writes it only as ZENKAIパワー, we can't completely rule out the Buddhist seafood reading.
♪"Come out, incredible Buddhist Clam power! Something something, apple-colored alien ..."♫

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Re: "Zenkai" - 全開 or 全快? (Also, questions on origins of the term in Western fandom)

Post by RedRibbonSoldier#42 » Sat Mar 25, 2017 7:50 pm

Cipher wrote:
RedRibbonSoldier#42 wrote:Hey, if the ending writes it only as ZENKAIパワー, we can't completely rule out the Buddhist seafood reading.
♪"Come out, incredible Buddhist Clam power! Something something, apple-colored alien ..."♫
I mean, the rest of the song is nonsense too, so it fits. This is now canon, I'm sure Toriyama says so in some guidebook somewhere.

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Re: "Zenkai" - 全開 or 全快? (Also, questions on origins of the term in Western fandom)

Post by floofychan333 » Sat Mar 25, 2017 7:55 pm

RedRibbonSoldier#42 wrote:
Cipher wrote:
RedRibbonSoldier#42 wrote:Hey, if the ending writes it only as ZENKAIパワー, we can't completely rule out the Buddhist seafood reading.
♪"Come out, incredible Buddhist Clam power! Something something, apple-colored alien ..."♫
I mean, the rest of the song is nonsense too, so it fits. This is now canon, I'm sure Toriyama says so in some guidebook somewhere.
Honestly it is...it's literally a 4-year-old singing a nonsense song.

Also, I wasn't aware that 'Zenkai" isn't an term used by Japanese fans. I would assume we picked it up from fansub tapes in the early days while they were talking about "Vegeta getting a Zenkai after getting beat up by Freeza" or whatever.
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Re: "Zenkai" - 全開 or 全快? (Also, questions on origins of the term in Western fandom)

Post by Cipher » Sat Mar 25, 2017 11:25 pm

I'm not letting this one go. Relevant topic (see Mike's post).

2004 was the very first year I could get any returns on "zenkai boost" in Google. According to that thread, which corroborates my own memories as a little middle-schooler on the internet at the time, the phrase was already popular in 2004, but not so established so as not to receive questions or a little well-deserved vitriol from people like VegettoEX.

So that's pretty late. Looks like Gaffer Tape was right when he said it was a post-turn-of-the-century development. How the hell did it start?

EDIT - Mike has been wondering about this since 2004, and apparently no one knew then either. But people were already convinced it connected to the phrase in the ending song ... somehow (even though, again, that particular "zenkai" is a pretty nonsensical term for the power-up). I'm still not ruling out that somewhere before that, 全快 may have been misconstrued.
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Re: "Zenkai" - 全開 or 全快? (Also, questions on origins of the term in Western fandom)

Post by Jinzoningen MULE » Sat Mar 25, 2017 11:32 pm

It's just a stupid fan term, but one that's basically a part of our sub-culture at this point. It's not worth crusading against.
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Re: "Zenkai" - 全開 or 全快? (Also, questions on origins of the term in Western fandom)

Post by Cipher » Sat Mar 25, 2017 11:38 pm

Jinzoningen MULE wrote:It's just a stupid fan term, but one that's basically a part of our sub-culture at this point. It's not worth crusading against.
I'm not exactly crusading. People are going to continue to use the term.

But aren't you remotely curious about what compels an entire fan culture to suddenly adopt a wholly misappropriated Japanese word for a phenomenon it has nothing to do with? That doesn't just happen. Either there was a first person to decide, for whatever strange reason, that "zenkai" of the ending song should be applied to the power-up, and got others to go along, or a more sensible Japanese homonym was at some point used as a general description and somehow became conflated with the outro.

Wouldn't either be mildly fascinating to pin down? English-speaking Dragon Ball fans didn't just wake up one morning deciding Saiyan near-death power-ups should be called "zenkais," and nothing about the "Tobikiri Zenkai Power!" definition would lead anyone to apply it that way without interaction with the fandom. Some weird piece of sub-sub-sub-subculture history happened around the early 2000s, and it brings together all sorts of things I'm interested in: the internet as a strange game of telephone, the identity politics involved in wanting to further exoticize foreign media, etc.
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Re: "Zenkai" - 全開 or 全快? (Also, questions on origins of the term in Western fandom)

Post by Jinzoningen MULE » Sat Mar 25, 2017 11:42 pm

Cipher wrote:
Jinzoningen MULE wrote:It's just a stupid fan term, but one that's basically a part of our sub-culture at this point. It's not worth crusading against.
I'm not exactly crusading. People are going to continue to use the term.

But aren't you remotely curious about what compels an entire fan culture to suddenly adopt a wholly misappropriated Japanese word for a phenomenon it has nothing to do with? That doesn't just happen. Either there was a first person to decide, for whatever strange reason, that "zenkai" of the ending song should be applied to the power-up, and got others to go along, or a more sensible Japanese homonym was at some point used as a general description and somehow became conflated with the outro.

Wouldn't either be mildly fascinating to pin down?
It's not that I'm uninterested, I already know the answer. Some fan or group of fans thought it sounded cool, misinterpreted what the word meant somehow or another, and it came to mean something else over time. That's a basic phenomena that happens in language, there's really nothing curious about it.
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Re: "Zenkai" - 全開 or 全快? (Also, questions on origins of the term in Western fandom)

Post by Cipher » Sat Mar 25, 2017 11:52 pm

Jinzoningen MULE wrote:It's not that I'm uninterested, I already know the answer. Some fan or group of fans thought it sounded cool, misinterpreted what the word meant somehow or another, and it came to mean something else over time. That's a basic phenomena that happens in language, there's really nothing curious about it.
Right, but somewhere out there there's a first group to have done that, a first documented usage, first explanation that likely went along with it when other fans asked what the hell they were talking about, etc.

Anyway, here's a possible progenitor of the term into the fandom mainstream: Dragon Ball Arena's "Saiyan Levels" page, circa 2003.

I don't know what prompted the site to use the term though. Seems pretty clear from the proper noun "Zenkai Power" that they're pulling it straight from the song. It also seems pretty clear from their referring to "saikyou no senshi" as "final warrior" that the staff's grasp on Japanese was uh ... sub-amateur? "Zenkai Power" in reference to the power-up starts showing up a little more after that page was published, sometimes in the form of a straight-copy paste.

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