Does Babidi's magic work based off personality or power?

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OmegaAlphaDelta123
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Does Babidi's magic work based off personality or power?

Post by OmegaAlphaDelta123 » Thu Aug 04, 2022 11:10 pm

So, I thought this would be an interesting question to ask since as far as I know, we don't get an actual answer to this in the series.

Babidi's mind control spell is said to work on the evil in one's heart and bend them completely to his will. However, Vegeta, with his massive pride was able to resist the spell, which shocked Babidi, implying that Vegeta was the first one to break Babidi's hold on him. Now, there are three possible explanations for this:

1. Vegeta's sheer ego, pride, previous experiences under Freeza's boot and general personality made him uniquely able to resist Babidi's mind control.

2. Babidi's mind control loses it's effectiveness past a certain power threshold. Vegeta was the most powerful being Babidi had mind controlled up to that point and the spell was ineffective at keeping an SSJ2 level fighter under wraps.

3. Vegeta was so hyperfixated on fighting Goku that he was able to override Babidi's orders to carry it out. Babidi's other minions had no such specific desire, only evil in their hearts and were therefore easy to control

Personally, I think option 1 is far more interesting and makes Vegeta's character development mean a lot more besides the fact that there are way too many techniques in Dragon Ball that just don't work if the opponent has a slightly higher power level, but I've seen fan interpretations that subscribe to both theories. We don't really know what any of Babidi's minion's personalities were like before Majinisation, so we don't really have anyone to compare to Pre-Majin Vegeta. Being 'prideful and egotistical' are traits that nearly every Dragon Ball villain has and Vegeta just emphasizes those traits to a ridiculous degree, it's highly likely that beings like Spopovitch and Dabura had a large amount of pride and ego before being Majinised, but that went away afterwards and weren't enough to resist Babidi because they weren't strong enough, physically or mentally. I don't know if say, Cell or Freeza would be able to resist the spell in the same way Vegeta did. Maybe if they were hyperfixated on fighting Gohan or Goku respectively? I also believe that a freshly transformed Super Saiyan, like SSJ Goku on Namek or SSJ2 Gohan in the Cell Games would be vulnerable to Majinisation even if they wouldn't be normally because of the anger in their hearts. You'd think, however, given Freeza's power, infamy and malevolence that Babidi would find it useful to enslave him, despite the out of universe explanation being that he didn't exist yet.

I also don't know why Bibidi or Babidi didn't try and mind control Majin Buu. You'd think that since Buu was extremely evil and a loose cannon, Bibidi would have tried to put him under mind control at some point, but he either never did or tried and failed so had to resort to sealing him away in a ball. There are two possible theories why I think this could be:

1. Buu in his pure form wasn't sentient enough to understand concepts like 'good' or 'evil' and therefore technically had no evil in his heart to control. (This explanation could also work with Fat Buu considering he had no idea the devastation he wrought was bad until Hercule told him so. It is interesting to think about how the spell would work on Super Buu, considering that version of Buu is malevolent and sentient and Bibidi and Babidi never met him in canon.)

2. My second above theory is correct and Pure Buu was simply too powerful to be mind-controlled.

Anyway, I know I'm talking about a power that was only used in one saga, mostly as an excuse to get Goku and Vegeta to have their long fated rematch, but it is fun for me to speculate on the limitations and conditions of unique powers. For some reason, Babidi's Majinization kind of reminds me of Hawkmoth's Evilization Akumas, though I don't know enough about Miraculous Ladybug to know if that's a good comparison.

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DBZAOTA482
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Re: Does Babidi's magic work based off personality or power?

Post by DBZAOTA482 » Sat Aug 06, 2022 8:19 am

Vegeta's personality was definitely what allowed him to resist the Majin charm as he says so himself. None of Babidi's henchmen appeared to be that prideful. Spopovich for example was probably consumed by desire for revenge against Mr. Satan and didn't put up much of a resistance.
fadeddreams5 wrote:
DBZGTKOSDH wrote:... Haven't we already gotten these in GT? Goku dies, the DBs go away, and the Namekian DBs most likely won't be used again because of the Evil Dragons.
Goku didn't die in GT. The show sucked him off so much, it was impossible to keep him in the world of the living, so he ascended beyond mortality.
jjgp1112 wrote: Sat Jul 18, 2020 6:31 am I'm just about done with the concept of reboots and making shows that were products of their time and impactful "new and sexy" and in line with modern tastes and sensibilities. Let stuff stay in their era and give today's kids their own shit to watch.

I always side eye the people who say "Now my kids/today's kids can experience what I did as a child!" Nigga, who gives a fuck about your childhood? You're an adult now and it was at least 15 years ago. Let the kids have their own experience instead of picking at a corpse.

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Koitsukai
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Re: Does Babidi's magic work based off personality or power?

Post by Koitsukai » Sat Aug 06, 2022 3:00 pm

Vegeta was probably the only one who actively seeked to get possessed.
Maybe willingly embracing it let him keep some type of control over himself.

I'd say it's a little bit of everything, with the power level being the least relevant reason.

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