I'm going to get a little nitpickier than I'd like with this, but since the Goku vs. Trunks into Goku vs. Black fights were exactly what locked me into thinking there was a retcon:HeroR wrote:Trunks was also not that strong before he got his own Super Saiyan form. Nothing in the anime showed Trunks being equal to Goku who easily caught his fists when they were both Super Saiyan 2s. And you're using a play sparring match with Goku and Gohan to say that they were even.
You could easily interpret the Trunks sparring match as Goku going light in all three forms, just using them to goad Trunks into further transformations. In fact, that's how I viewed it when I first saw it.
Very shortly afterward, though, while watching Goku fight Black as a Super Saiyan 2, Trunks says, "Why isn't Goku going all out? He displayed more power against me." I take this to mean Super Saiyan 3, but either way, Trunks is stating in no uncertain terms that at some point during their sparring match, Goku displayed more power than he's currently using as a Super Saiyan 2 against Black.
So if Goku's Super Saiyan forms really are around the level Super Saiyan God was in its introductory arc:
Goku would have to be screwing around with Trunks (fine), but then also ... screwing around with Black? While going Super Saiyan 2 for some reason (and remaining weaker than he was by the end of his sparring match with Trunks)? He just likes transforming visually against villains, but only using a thousandth of the power that particular form could have?
And then I was like, "Oh. Literally everything since the Universe 6 arc started makes more sense if the Super Saiyan levels are the same as they've always been." And since I think the intentional "two-base" theory is way too specific to go without mention, and since we haven't seen evidence of a super-strong base form since, my take is there was a retcon. Which, coincidentally, also matches the route Toyotaro explicitly chose to take in the manga for one reason or another.




