Dragon Ball Super Strength Discussion Thread

[Bullza]

So under the assumption that there's just one Base that's inbetween Super Saiyan 3 Gotenks and Super Saiyan God, going through the series I was wondering how many fights involving Goku and Vegeta and their Base and regular Super Saiyan forms does it fit for.

1. Goku vs Frieza - Fits fine.

2. Goku vs Botamo - Fits fine.

3. Goku vs Frost - Fits fine it'd just mean Frost was stronger than a trained Frieza.

4. Vegeta vs Cabba - Fits fine.

5. Vegeta vs Magetta - Fits fine.

6. Goku vs Hit - Fits fine.

7. Goku vs Monaka-Beerus - Fits fine.

8. Vegeta vs Super Saiyan 3 Gotenks - Fits fine

9. Goku vs Trunks - Debatable, but it could fit I guess, Trunks was pretty impressive even going by Beerus and Whis' own words too.

10. Goku vs Zamasu - Fits fine as Zamasu was supposed to be a prodigy amongst his kind.

11. Goku vs Gohan 1 - This one is questionable because Goku should be far stronger than Gohan.

12. Goku vs Bergamo - Fits fine but it would mean Bergamo was far stronger than his brothers but that's not impossible.

13. Goku vs Toppo - Fits fine.

14. Goku vs Krillin - Goku would have to be holding back here, at the very least he was when in Blue anyway.

15. Goku vs Buu - He kept up with a faster Buu just fine. Was hurt and "lost" but he didn't seem to be taking the fight too seriously.

15. Goku vs Android 17 - For now fits fine because Android 17 could actually be above Gotenks.

16. Goku vs Roshi - Odd that Roshi could do so well, powered up with sorcery or not.

17. Goku vs Gohan 2 - Again a bit odd considering just Base Goku already should have been around Ultimate Gohan level (from the Buu saga) anyway.

18. Goku vs Golden Frieza - Fits fine.

19. Goku vs Universe 9 fighters - Debatable. He held his own just fine and they others aren't particularly weak, plus they ganged up on and he couldn't feel they're Ki.

20. Goku vs Caulifla - Fits fine.

21. Goku vs Kale - Fits fine.

So for the most part the majority it fits with just fine, there's a few questionable fights mainly with Gohan but it ain't too many. It even fits with End of Z and him fighting Uub maybe.

[omaro34]

How strong do you guys think these new Namekians will be? Any predictions or speculations?

Here are my speculations:

1) Both are weaker than Piccolo which would lead to them fusing with each other, hence creating a formidable foe for Piccolo.

2) Both are far stronger and will tell Piccolo about quicker ways of getting stronger, like the Book of legends. Why did they wait so long to reveal them if they aren't going to play a role in this tournament? They must be Champa's Trump card in case things go south.

[LowRyder2005]

So under the assumption that there's just one Base that's inbetween Super Saiyan 3 Gotenks and Super Saiyan God, going through the series I was wondering how many fights involving Goku and Vegeta and their Base and regular Super Saiyan forms does it fit for.

It's not Gohan's fight with Goku as much Gohan's entire mini-character arc that basically disproves the assumption. Well, that, and some basic questions inherent to the series' world-building: a.k.a. how can everyone and their mother suddenly multiplying dozens/ hundreds of times their battle power by doing nothing new (Piccolo, Krillin [?], BASE Gohan, #18 or even Good Buu since even by heavily downplaying their feats they should be at the very least in the same ballpark of the lower forms of Goku).

Thing is: Gotenks' fight is clearly an outlier at this point. I don't think that there's much worth in trying to make it fit with everything else. The base form showed there was still conceived with ROF in mind. I mean, the argument sounds kinda like "how can Spider-Man beat Firelord and lose against people like Rhino, Doctor Octopus, Venom, Scorpion? Could they all be as strong as a Galactus' heralds?". No, they aren't. Mistakes and writers going back on what was previously established may get in the way of coherent storytelling. It's the nature of the beast.

I'll stress this again, though: if you follow characters' words, statements and feats religiously you already end up with Gohan being at bare minimum some dozens of times stronger than Ultimate Gohan and overall weaker than the same Ultimate Gohan at the same effin' time (same goes for Piccolo and Goku: try to pinpoint Piccolo's power following the implications about Gohan's status in relation to his counterpart from the Buu saga).

[Bullza]

how can everyone and their mother suddenly multiplying dozens/ hundreds of times their battle power by doing nothing new

Well it wouldn't be that they were tons stronger than before. It'd just be that Goku was not fighting seriously against them. It'd be like his fights with Botamo and Frost.

By all accounts they should be stronger than Super Saiyan 3 Gotenks because Enraged Super Saiyan 2 Vegeta was (at least in the manga) and their Base forms surpassed that level.

I'd have said that maybe they'd have retconned his power but then there was the recent episodes with Frieza where it still seemed as though Base Goku and Final Form Frieza were equals, Goku survived being hit by the Hakai energy and he kept up with Golden Frieza.

Could Krillin or Piccolo or Buu do the same? I dunno, doesn't seem that likely.

[LowRyder2005]

Yeah, but then we'd have to argue Goku is behaving irrationally. Again, Goku vs. Gohan is the biggest offender. Goku turns Super Saiyan to power up and then powers down to some one millionth of his full power?

When you try to put everything in perspective between what's established in Super and what happened right before it you'd initially get something like this:

--- DBZ ----
Piccolo: probably weaker than base Gotenks (?)
Base Gotenks: 0.25
SS3 Gotenks: 100
Ultimate Gohan from Z: 150

--- DBS ---
Base Goku: 120
Super Saiyan Goku: 135
Super Saiyan Gohan: 130 or 135
Super Saiyan 2 Gohan: 140 (either he or DBS Super Saiyan Gohan is weaker than Ultimate Gohan from Z)
Piccolo: 140 or 150
Ultimate Gohan from ep. 99: stronger than Piccolo (DBS)

In short, Piccolo becomes hundreds of times stronger. Then there's the problem on how to make Buu fit on this. He should be stronger than base Goku, so am I supposed to believe he became massively stronger off-screen as well? And #18, who blatantly outperformed base Goku recently? Let's say I want to spare me a headache and that I forget about them for now.
We note that we'd also be scratching the official multipliers. Okay, nobody cared about those. Then we note we'd also be talking about some different multipliers for Goku and Gohan which also - very conventiently - happen to be different than Gotenks' but just around the same in relation to each other. Okay, so Goku and Gohan have super-tiny (around *1.1, for fun and luz) custom multipliers by coincidence; Gotenks gets some hundreds of times stronger than his base form and is still a scrub. Should've asked Super's Piccolo for miraculous training tips... probably.

Think we've solved everything? ... The big turnabout is that, yup, not even this framework can work for an entirely different reason. Super Saiyan 2 is stated to make you "many tens of times stronger than base" and it was said to our very Goku. In short? we have just ventured into some contradictory territory already. Because if Super Saiyan 2 is at least twenty tens times stronger than base and Ultimate Gohan (Z) was just around 1.5 of Gotenks (Z) it's impossible for Super Saiyan 2 Gohan (Super) to be weaker than Ultimate Gohan (Z). And yet, that's just what the major plot point involving Gohan was all about.

Welp, not to toot my own horn, but I think I may try to find out what kind of overwhelmingly contrived and counter-intuitive scenario can account for every implication in Super when I have some time to waste (you'd probably have to bring up very peculiar arguments like "Super Saiyan is *1.1, Super Saiyan 2 is *20" to begin, and other hogwash involving the plot direction around ep. 95 or all the way back to the Buu saga); needless to say it'll probably be very far from what the authors have in mind nowadays.

[avasatu]

Gohan did something mysterious off screen with Piccolo in between the time Piccolo said he was going to train him to go well beyond where he was at the time of the discussion (just post-Gohan re-unlocking Ultimate) and the time Gohan fought Goku, and it let him to gain a drastic power up. You have to accept that.

I personally think it's best to count Gotenks as more of a gag character in Super, as I believe he's being portrayed, thereby eliminating all feats involving him, This allows you to conclude that base Goku is around Fat Buu level. It's just easier and makes more sense, and makes the entire power scale more plausible.

Why Fat Buu? Drugged Basil <~ Fat Buu, and Bergamo is implied to be a little stronger. I say a little because that's the only way he could fight relative to his brothers in the ToP fight. In particular, if you assume the drug wasn't a huge boost (say, not even two times), which I don't believe it was based on Basil's two fights with Buu, then it makes Bergamo's ToP showing even more reconcilable. In the exhibition fight, base Goku's punches hurt Bergamo pretty badly before he uses them to power up, and Goku (to me) is portrayed to be not holding back in base. This puts base Goku slightly below or equal to Bergamo, and thus in the region of Buu, unless you believe Bergamo is well above Buu, which, again, isn't consistent with his showing in the ToP, as I delineated above.

Only times I can definitely say base Goku has been holding back any real power thus far in the series are possibly when he fights Krillin, and most definitely when he fights Roshi, unless that sorcery is one heck of an amp. Scaling life is a lot easier these days with my new mindset!


Also...if Ultimate is a multiplier, and that's not set in stone, but IF it is, then SSB >= 50,000 * Base. Something I worked out today (all imprecise calculations are low balls in favor of keeping the multiplier as low as possible, so keep that in mind. That is to say, I'm not wanking this up to 50k, I'm squashing it down.):

SS3 Goku mentions he's not sure if he's strong enough to beat Fat Buu. Goku mentions with similar language that he's not sure post Z-Sword Gohan (likely referring to SS2) can beat Fat Buu. I will take this to mean that SS2 Gohan ~ SS3 Goku ~ Fat Buu, from Buu arc.

Piccolo mentions he believes that trained base Gotenks can perhaps beat suppressed Super Buu, a statement backed up by (the unreliable) Trunks, but backed up nonetheless. Suppressed Super Buu was at least Fat Buu level, according to Piccolo's reaction to his transformation. For simplicity, we say base Gotenks (post Rosat) ~ Fat Buu.

SS3 Gotenks ~ Super Buu. Gotenks is actually a little weaker, backed up by a statement and a feat, but the difference is marginal in the grand scheme of this calculation.

Putting all of this together implies that Ultimate Gohan ~ 50,000* base Gohan. Here I am using the headcanon that Ultimate Gohan ~ 1.25 * Super Buu. We know he's not twice as strong since Buutenks ~ 2*Super Buu if you assume Buu's absorption is addition (backed up by Buu when he mentions merely having Gotenks' power in addition to his own and Piccolo's), so this means Gohan is about 1.25-1.5 * Super Buu. Take your pick based on how you view the show. I've been low balling the my work thus far, so I'll choose 1.25. Plus it leads us to a nice healthy 50k multiplier, by pure coincidence.

Now, again, assuming Ultimate is indeed a multiplier, and that that multiplier is constant through time (two big but reasonable ifs), if base Goku ~ base Gohan during their latest fight, which I believe the show was portraying, then if full power Ultimate Gohan survives a hit from KK SSB Goku, and KK is only used to amplify MAXIMUM power (backed up by King Kai in DBZ and the fact that Gohan wanted Goku at full power), then Ultimate Gohan in Super has to be relative to a large percentage of 100% SSB at worst. This is also backed up by Toshio's latest power ranking. If we low ball SSB to be equal to Ultimate Gohan, it must be ~ 50,000 * base.

My personal headcanon is that Gohan is more like 50-75% of SSB, but that's purely opinion. Lots of low balling in my calculations; it could be much higher, but it's always safe to find a minimum rather than an average or maximum. Anyway, hope you enjoyed, don't mind if you didn't. Take it or leave it!

[Marlowe89]

Base Goku isn't stronger than Gotenks, nor was he portrayed to be stronger than Gotenks in the literal dozens of episodes that have aired since Copy Vegeta. Seriously, there have been way too many blatant, not even ambiguous examples clearly demonstrating this and we've gone over them too many times to count; yet it seems that whenever people are confronted with this evidence they're more inclined to keep clutching on to really old episodes that obviously don't mesh with the current narrative at all. Why? Why not just adopt the simplest and most straightforward answer conveyed repeatedly in the show instead?

To put this in perspective even further -- one of the show's writers (specifically Toshio) has emphasized repeatedly that his viewpoint of the power-scale is only his personal opinion based on what he's been informed of and even at one point said that only Toriyama knows how strong these characters are supposed to be. Toriyama works closely with Toyotaro, and the manga almost certainly doesn't have base Goku/Vegeta that high at all. So why even continue with such an assumption when there are so many counter examples against it?

It's just plain counter-intuitive at this point, really.

[Dragonballgod19]

Base Goku isn't stronger than Gotenks, nor was he portrayed to be stronger than Gotenks in the literal dozens of episodes that have aired since Copy Vegeta. Seriously, there have been way too many blatant, not even ambiguous examples clearly demonstrating this and we've gone over them too many times to count; yet it seems that whenever people are confronted with this evidence they're more inclined to keep clutching on to really old episodes that obviously don't mesh with the current narrative at all. Why? Why not just adopt the simplest and most straightforward answer conveyed repeatedly in the show instead?

To put this in perspective even further -- one of the show's writers (specifically Toshio) has emphasized repeatedly that his viewpoint of the power-scale is only his personal opinion based on what he's been informed of and even at one point said that only Toriyama knows how strong these characters are supposed to be. Toriyama works closely with Toyotaro, and the manga almost certainly doesn't have base Goku/Vegeta that high at all. So why even continue with such an assumption when there are so many counter examples against it?

It's just plain counter-intuitive at this point, really.

The copy vegeta is questionable because one it's not filler because goku makes a reference to copy vegeta in the future trunks arc and two how is base vegeta that strong and has people ever thought to think what if 18 got stronger we really did see her train or is this fanbase that stupid.

[Bulma's Foot Masseur]

I like how we keep hearing that SSJB Goku is indubitably "holding back" with every single use regardless of effort shown, yet somehow the same people believe holding back in Base is impossible.

If SSJ2 Vegeta has the capacity to be stronger than SSJ3 Goku/Gotenks, I see no reason why post-Whis-training Base Vegeta can't. The problem with Saiyan Beyond God as a temporary power-up is that it leaves the strength of one's Base ambiguous so viewers can decide which of the two bases they're currently in, but it leaves SSJ1/2/3 on an unambiguous weak tier below pretty much every other character when we know that that contrast between Goku and Vegeta's current respective forms doesn't exist.

[RandomGuy96]

Gotenks is probably just really weak now. Super seems to be under the impression that power atrophies incredibly quickly without training (see Gohan's pathetic showing in the ROF arc).

[Doctor.]

Gotenks is probably just really weak now. Super seems to be under the impression that power atrophies incredibly quickly without training (see Gohan's pathetic showing in the ROF arc).

If Trunks and Goten could barely hold off a random wild snake in episode 1 of Super, and they haven't been training since, maybe SS3 Gotenks can stand up to Raditz now.

[Marlowe89]

I like how we keep hearing that SSJB Goku is indubitably "holding back" with every single use regardless of effort shown, yet somehow the same people believe holding back in Base is impossible.

Maybe because that's exactly what the show implies?

In almost every questionable instance of Goku using Blue against an opponent, the dialogue flat-out alludes to him holding back. By contrast, in those specific instances of him using base or Super Saiyan against Gohan, in the tournament, etc., the dialogue either alludes to him not holding back in base or something else in the scene makes that impossible (such as Goku's legs giving out and collapsing right from under him after a prolonged period, or Goku going Super Saiyan to remedy a tough situation he was previously established to have a lot of difficulty with). It's not hard to analyze the context of these situations.

The likely authorial explanation is that the writers tend to use Blue excessively because it's a popular form and presumably increases viewership in their minds, even in circumstances where that doesn't make much sense.

[Lord Beerus]

Gotenks is probably just really weak now. Super seems to be under the impression that power atrophies incredibly quickly without training (see Gohan's pathetic showing in the ROF arc).

If Trunks and Goten could barely hold off a random wild snake in episode 1 of Super, and they haven't been training since, maybe SS3 Gotenks can stand up to Raditz now.

Not to mention in the ROF arc the best they could do against Tagoma was headbutting him in the groin, which while it severely hurt him, he quickly recovered like nothing happened. Then they immediately defused after that attack, which was really weird, and makes me think that Goten and Trunks have gotten so weak from slaking off since the Majin Boo arc they can't even maintain being fused for the for more than a few moments.

[LowRyder2005]

Gohan did something mysterious off screen with Piccolo in between the time Piccolo said he was going to train him to go well beyond where he was at the time of the discussion (just post-Gohan re-unlocking Ultimate) and the time Gohan fought Goku, and it let him to gain a drastic power up. You have to accept that.

<snip>

My personal headcanon is that Gohan is more like 50-75% of SSB, but that's purely opinion. Lots of low balling in my calculations; it could be much higher, but it's always safe to find a minimum rather than an average or maximum. Anyway, hope you enjoyed, don't mind if you didn't. Take it or leave it!

Was it an answer to my post? I don't really grasp if the analysis solves the rather obvious contradiction of base/SS/SS2 Gohan being portrayed as both stronger (power-scaling) and weaker (through statements) up until ep. 95, because that's the obvious wrinkle in Super's narrative and what makes the stronger-than-Gotenks-base impossible to reconcile.

We don't know what the training with Piccolo did for Gohan, but even wanting to give it a lot of emphasis (and it jars with Trunks' assertion of the base Gohan he saw not possessing the same "brimming power" of Cell Games' Gohan, by the way, which happens after), it didn't make him stronger than Ultimate Gohan from Z for the simple reason of Goku remembering Gohan's peak, while calling the Gohan he saw at the exhibition "worse than what he remembered".

Again, all it takes is some extremely simple calculations to see that the show's implications do not logically follow; it's not a matter of this or that plot device being miraculous for this or that character, but objective contradictions within the show's feats or the statements.

Gotenks is probably just really weak now. Super seems to be under the impression that power atrophies incredibly quickly without training (see Gohan's pathetic showing in the ROF arc).

I tried to have Gotenks regress, once, but you'd literally have to make Goten or Trunks weaker than, dunno, the Earthlings the to make things fit (if multiplying their power hundreds or thousands of times can't even scratch base Goku) with no one mentioning the fact.
And there'd be still some another problems: in the U6 arc Vegeta indirectly implies that while Trunks and Gotenks were weak unfused, Gotenks was still pretty strong. I also suppose the underlying assertion was that he'd have probably secured himself a place in the tournament, since that's what their argument is about -- which, at that point, featured Piccolo and Mr. Buu. Which probably means some form of Gotenks needs at least to be stronger than one of them.

Super Saiyan Goten and Trunks should be weaker than the base Saiyans, however, if they're still equalish. Super Saiyan kid Trunks can't damage base future Trunks.

So yeah, I'd say the argument of Gotenks becoming complete weaksauce even for Z standards looks quite dubious. Gotenks might be weaker, obviously, but I don't think the intention of anyone on the writing's team was warrant such an involution.

The copy vegeta is questionable because one it's not filler because goku makes a reference to copy vegeta in the future trunks arc and two how is base vegeta that strong and has people ever thought to think what if 18 got stronger we really did see her train or is this fanbase that stupid.

I've seen this argument many times and don't get at all what it's supposed to prove. It's obvious that the Copy Water arc happened in the show... and? What's the point? Does the fact that "it happened" stops the thing from being a plothole or will it automatically remove the possibility that this or that was retconned in the following arcs?

[Bullza]

Yeah, but then we'd have to argue Goku is behaving irrationally. Again, Goku vs. Gohan is the biggest offender. Goku turns Super Saiyan to power up and then powers down to some one millionth of his full power?

Well he'd just be matching Gohan's power in the same form. He'd power up to Super Saiyan but it would still be suppressed. I suppose it'd be similar to how in the manga Future Trunks matched Goku with their Super Saiyan 2 power but he was still suppressing himself.

In short, Piccolo becomes hundreds of times stronger. Then there's the problem on how to make Buu fit on this. He should be stronger than base Goku, so am I supposed to believe he became massively stronger off-screen as well? And #18, who blatantly outperformed base Goku recently?

Well Goku would just be suppressing himself to his opponents level so they wouldn't have to be hundreds of times stronger. Fit Buu would be around as strong as he was in Z and Goku would just be suppressing himself down to that level, after all he was keeping up with him just fine.

He did just that when he fought Frost in the manga (and likely the anime) so why can't he do that with other people?

they're more inclined to keep clutching on to really old episodes that obviously don't mesh with the current narrative at all.

They're not old though. It was only a couple months ago where we had an episode where Base Goku and Final Form Frieza punched each other in the gut and hurt each other equally like back in the Resurrection F saga.

He survived being hit by Sidra's Hakai energy which Goku said had amazing energy whereas before Beerus beat Enraged Super Saiyan 2 Vegeta by simply poking him. He even restricted it a little and Golden Frieza struggled to restrict it all the way.

Then he kept pace with Golden Frieza's speed. So he's still clearly very powerful.

[PerhapsTheOtherOne]

If we want to really scrunch things down, we could put Goku and Vegeta as exactly as strong as SS3 Gotenks back when Copy-Vegeta fought him, potentially even a little bit below him, and maybe a slight bit above him currently. Vegeta, though not thrilled about SS3 Gotenks's chances against Copy-Vegeta, still seemed to believe that Gotenks could've defeated Copy-Vegeta. It might be like with Super Buu years back, where Gotenks could've potentially killed him, but he never had much of a chance in the end.

As welll, base Goku and Final Form Freeza are relatively even right now, and yet SSB Goku is equal to Golden Freeza when he used to be inferior beforehand with relatively even base forms. I'd say this is a good indication that SSB itself is what got stronger, and not just Goku and Vegeta powering up overall.

We could also downplay how strong Gotenks really is. Maybe his SS form would've been able to handle Fat Buu, but not an enraged Fat Buu on the level of the old SS3 Goku. Perhaps his SS2 form would be equal to SS3 Goku back then, thus putting SS3 Gotenks at only 4 times stronger than SS3 Goku, and in turn Super Buu and Ultimate Gohan wouldn't be as ridiculously strong as well.

It'd certainly make it easier to swallow the likes of Gohan, Piccolo, and Slim Buu having surpassed that range if SS3 Gotenks is only around 4 times stronger than the old SS3 Goku.

[LowRyder2005]

Well he'd just be matching Gohan's power in the same form. He'd power up to Super Saiyan but it would still be suppressed. I suppose it'd be similar to how in the manga Future Trunks matched Goku with their Super Saiyan 2 power but he was still suppressing himself.

I guess I didn't word it well enough: for that to work you'd need Goku to power up to 100 and then, while still in Super Saiyan form, to power down to x/100. It makes Goku acting irrationally since he could have just powered down in base form already. That's why you can only rely on some "Goku sometimes behaves irrationally" and not a simple "Goku may hold back". Then again, a more appropriate question would be: was that the writer's intent? The answer should obviously be "no". The writer made Goku power up in that scene because Goku was arguably meant to do just that: power up beyond his base.

Well Goku would just be suppressing himself to his opponents level so they wouldn't have to be hundreds of times stronger. Fit Buu would be around as strong as he was in Z and Goku would just be suppressing himself down to that level, after all he was keeping up with him just fine.

He did just that when he fought Frost in the manga (and likely the anime) so why can't he do that with other people?

Granted, the others're not as much of literal contradictions as the implications about Gohan - which is what literally cracks the case - but it still sounds kinda hard to believe that Goku is stronger than Good Buu (when Good Buu can has shown to be much, much more resilient) or even #18 by now. The guy should comfortably be above them even by using a tiny fraction of his base power.

[PerhapsTheOtherOne]

Well he'd just be matching Gohan's power in the same form. He'd power up to Super Saiyan but it would still be suppressed. I suppose it'd be similar to how in the manga Future Trunks matched Goku with their Super Saiyan 2 power but he was still suppressing himself.

I guess I didn't word it well enough: for that to work you'd need Goku to power up to 100 and then, while still in Super Saiyan form, to power down to x/100. It doesn't make any logical sense, because Goku could have just powered down in base form already. That's why you can only rely on some "Goku sometimes behaves completely irrationally" and not a simple "Goku may hold back".

Well Goku would just be suppressing himself to his opponents level so they wouldn't have to be hundreds of times stronger. Fit Buu would be around as strong as he was in Z and Goku would just be suppressing himself down to that level, after all he was keeping up with him just fine.

He did just that when he fought Frost in the manga (and likely the anime) so why can't he do that with other people?

Granted, the others not as much of literal contradictions as the implications about Gohan - which is what literally cracks the case - but it still sounds kinda hard to believe that Goku is stronger than Good Buu (when Good Buu can has shown to be much, much more resilient) and even #18 (who apparently can easily lift more than Goku) by now. The guy should comfortably be above them even by using a tiny fraction of his base power.

For the first scenario, I always personally saw it as Goku being suppressed in base form, then turning SS from THAT. After all, immediately following that episode, he showed an interest in sparring with KRILLIN as a SS, a guy who we KNOW wasn't up to snuff with a weaker base Saiyan like Gohan. He just likes to power up into a SS when he trains and spars, it seems, so it was always fine for me that he used less power than his full base form, and I'm one of the guys who always argues for a strong base.

As for Majin Buu, his resilience has always bellied everyone else, to the point that he kept going when ULTIMATE GOHAN was knocked out in one hit. No problem for me, personally, when he can take hits better than others. And with 18, I always saw it as Tupper's weight-shifting being better when he's consciously attempting to keep an opponent down like when he restrained Goku and kept increasing his weight compared to when he thought he had 18 down for the count, then he got surprised and was thrown off.

Again, all of this is just my personal reasoning. Because I enjoy these episodes a lot, I don't find as much problems with them even upon further analysis where others do.

[Loputousu]

The two base theory was confirmed beyond a shadow of a doubt in ep 101.

Android 18 > Base Goku (since Goku could not lift the weight guy but 18 could)

But 18 = her Android saga self since she never trained.

Base Vegeta = Base Goku >>> SSJ3 Gotenks >>>>>>>> 18 > Base Goku

Only way to reconcile this is with the two base theory.

SBG Vegeta = SBG Goku >>> SSJ3 Gotenks >>>>>>>> 18 > Base Goku

[ZombieVito]

Gotenks is probably just really weak now. Super seems to be under the impression that power atrophies incredibly quickly without training (see Gohan's pathetic showing in the ROF arc).

Gohan's regression was stated though.

No where in his 3 appearances has it even been implied Gotenks got weaker.