Dragon Ball Super Strength Discussion Thread

[TheMikado]

I think out of everything in Super, Copy-Vegeta, SSJ Rage Trunks and Android 17 bother me the most for some reason. I'm actually semi-ok with Golden Frieza, Ribrianne, Caulifla and Berserker Kale...

I don't have a problem with Copy Vegeta because it was really just a monster that took all of Vegeta's power. Trunks is bothersome but yeah in particular Android 17 is the one that is the most weird.

If we're supposed to believe that since the Cell Games saga he's trained and so now he's about as strong as Super Saiyan Blue Goku then with that rate of improvement wouldn't he have beaten Buu easily if he'd shown up in the Buu saga? Would he have been the strongest being on Earth at the start of Super? Couldn't he have even possibly have beaten Golden Frieza when he showed up on Earth?

I remember that Geekdom101 brought up an interesting point similar to this with regards to the Future Trunks Arc and the current Universal Survival Arc, that being the existence of individuals like Toppo and Jiren in Future Trunks's timeline when Goku Black and Future Zamasu were on their quest to destroy all Mortals.

This is an issue of writing things after establishing one thing prior and not knowing the potential ramifications. Geekdom101 basically made a video discussing the possibility of the Pride Troopers in the Future Trunks timeline learning of Goku Black. Him and Future Zamasu killed ALL of the gods in that timeline, which would mean Universe 11 as well. Knowing that Toppo and Jiren were approaching the level of a God of Destruction in the main timeline and surely stronger than Goku Black before he returned to the main timeline and became stronger, they wondered how Goku Black could've achieved what he did in killing off the gods.

Most likely, Toriyama and the other writers didn't think these ramifications through when making the next arc. The same could be said of Android 17's power boost.

Forget the Gods, how did he manage to kill off all the ningen (Mortals). IF we have a character out there that has SSBxKKx20xSpirtBomb Goku being ineffective, how in the world did Black manage to not get annihilated????

Look Toriyama lived with his choices. Frieza was the strongest being in the universe (naturally born anyway). Every major enemy that followed wasn't some entity that happened to be hanging out on the fringes of the universe. Even Dabura was from the demon realm. Rather than ignoring what he had written literally years ago, the information the characters stated held true right until the end, unless otherwise stated. That's how we know this isn't Toriyama's best work, because it doesn't have his classic MO of building on the previous arcs and the gains and expectations made there.

[Sandubadear]

I remember that Geekdom101 brought up an interesting point similar to this with regards to the Future Trunks Arc and the current Universal Survival Arc, that being the existence of individuals like Toppo and Jiren in Future Trunks's timeline when Goku Black and Future Zamasu were on their quest to destroy all Mortals.

This is an issue of writing things after establishing one thing prior and not knowing the potential ramifications. Geekdom101 basically made a video discussing the possibility of the Pride Troopers in the Future Trunks timeline learning of Goku Black. Him and Future Zamasu killed ALL of the gods in that timeline, which would mean Universe 11 as well. Knowing that Toppo and Jiren were approaching the level of a God of Destruction in the main timeline and surely stronger than Goku Black before he returned to the main timeline and became stronger, they wondered how Goku Black could've achieved what he did in killing off the gods.

Most likely, Toriyama and the other writers didn't think these ramifications through when making the next arc. The same could be said of Android 17's power boost.

Kaioshins don't live in the same planet as the God of destruction. Toppo is probably being trained in Vermod's planet, so Black could have just teleported to the Kaioshin planet, killed Kai making Vermod also die, then quickly teleported to another universe before Toppo and Jiren even understood what was going on.

Forget the Gods, how did he manage to kill off all the ningen (Mortals). IF we have a character out there that has SSBxKKx20xSpirtBomb Goku being ineffective, how in the world did Black manage to not get annihilated????

Look Toriyama lived with his choices. Frieza was the strongest being in the universe (naturally born anyway). Every major enemy that followed wasn't some entity that happened to be hanging out on the fringes of the universe. Even Dabura was from the demon realm. Rather than ignoring what he had written literally years ago, the information the characters stated held true right until the end, unless otherwise stated. That's how we know this isn't Toriyama's best work, because it doesn't have his classic MO of building on the previous arcs and the gains and expectations made there.

Nowhere it's said Black had already killed all the mortals in the other universes. He only started attacking after Trunks fought Dabura, and even after a whole year he still hasn't killed all earthlings, and how many years do you think it would take them to kill everyone in 12 universes?

[LowRyder2005]

Exactly. There are times when they do train very hard to achieve the power that they have and then there's also time when they're just flat out given power. Goku drank a bit of magical power and all of a sudden he gained more power than he ever had from hard work. Same thing with Krillin training hard throughout the whole series, trained with Roshi, Korin and Kami on top of all his own training to get to a power level of 1,500 and then Guru touched his head for a few seconds and now his power level is 13,000.

They get as strong as the story needs them to be.

This is absolutely true per se, but worded like this I feel it could devolve into a slight misrepresentation. Except for part of the very early journey of Goku, which is justified, the journey which'd ultimately make him the strongest individual on Earth, each and every character became as strong "as needed" was because of some plot device that told you "this new thing just does this". Not because they were "randomly" training (off screen, also) and reappearing at convenient times. There was a narrative justification 99% of the time because powering up had to follow the rules of drama. You never had a horribly weak character doing the same thing he did yesterday with abnormally different results: in the case of the secondary characters retracing Goku's steps, they were always under a new sensei and/or training with stronger partners.
Toriyama understood the basics of narrative progression enough to also set some walls characters ultimately wouldn't surpass -- this is especially true by the end of the series with the Buu arc: Piccolo probably trains routinely and doesn't get much stronger, Goku and Vegeta train like madmen (stated in their fight), Goku with free access to every heroic martial artist in the entire history of his entire universe and six years and yet they are just somewhat about Gohan from the Cell Game (if not for yet another drastic transformation). I could literally go through the entire series and I wouldn't find myself losing my suspension of disbelief. "Battle of Gods" steps up the game with the relatively old formula of some new teachers that were always at the spot in the pecking order of the entire universe, and obviously nobody had problems with that.

I seriously doubt anyone in Super is really intended to be massively above their original selves in general like what happened from Z to Z arc (when they would get dozens or hundreds of times stronger than before, again, because of some plot device): they literally just float in a vacuum where they do get stronger, but without the hierarchies changing at all.
Moreover, except maybe for the fact that Goku and Vegeta are sensing God ki and the obvious case of Freeza and #17 (which have a new plot device factoring in the plot; some relatively Toriyama-esque outtanowhere like "they had never trained before", but a plot device nevertheless) you could literally have Goku's base getting marginally stronger, other characters get weaker and there's no issue in the series that wouldn't otherwise be present all the same (see, PIS & CIS whenever base Goku warms up against a far stronger opponent). It definitely feels like more natural than thinking that, say, a possessed Roshi can become strong enough to survive anything more than a mean look from the base Goku who trains with the strongest god in the universe, millions of times stronger than anything else (etc.) -- notwithstanding the possible issues with the older series' consistency.

The equivalent of some bits of Super injected in Z would amount to something like: "We're days away from the Cell Game. Goku emerges from the Room of Spirit and Time. Yajirobei makes a sudden appearance! He says he's been training on his own to confront Cell! He spars with Goku without being killed, Goku saying 'wow, Yajirobei, you became much stronger!". The internet then goes "hey, do you guy think he can he beat Namek Freeza?".

[gofishus]

Exactly. There are times when they do train very hard to achieve the power that they have and then there's also time when they're just flat out given power. Goku drank a bit of magical power and all of a sudden he gained more power than he ever had from hard work. Same thing with Krillin training hard throughout the whole series, trained with Roshi, Korin and Kami on top of all his own training to get to a power level of 1,500 and then Guru touched his head for a few seconds and now his power level is 13,000.

They get as strong as the story needs them to be.

This is absolutely true per se, but worded like this I feel it could devolve into a slight misrepresentation. Except for part of the very early journey of Goku, which is justified, the journey which'd ultimately make him the strongest individual on Earth, each and every character became as strong "as needed" was because of some plot device that told you "this new thing just does this". Not because they were "randomly" training (off screen, also) and reappearing at convenient times. There was a narrative justification 99% of the time because powering up had to follow the rules of drama. You never had a horribly weak character doing the same thing he did yesterday with abnormally different results: in the case of the secondary characters retracing Goku's steps, they were always under a new sensei and/or training with stronger partners.
Toriyama understood the basics of narrative progression enough to also set some walls characters ultimately wouldn't surpass -- this is especially true by the end of the series with the Buu arc: Piccolo probably trains routinely and doesn't get much stronger, Goku and Vegeta train like madmen (stated in their fight), Goku with free access to every heroic martial artist in the entire history of his entire universe and six years and yet they are just somewhat about Gohan from the Cell Game (if not for yet another drastic transformation). I could literally go through the entire series and I wouldn't find myself losing my suspension of disbelief. "Battle of Gods" steps up the game with the relatively old formula of some new teachers that were always at the spot in the pecking order of the entire universe, and obviously nobody had problems with that.

I seriously doubt anyone in Super is really intended to be massively above their original selves in general like what happened from Z to Z arc (when they would get dozens or hundreds of times stronger than before, again, because of some plot device): they literally just float in a vacuum where they do get stronger, but without the hierarchies changing at all.
Moreover, except maybe for the fact that Goku and Vegeta are sensing God ki and the obvious case of Freeza and #17 (which have a new plot device factoring in the plot; some relatively Toriyama-esque outtanowhere like "they had never trained before", but a plot device nevertheless) you could literally have Goku's base getting marginally stronger, other characters get weaker and there's no issue in the series that wouldn't otherwise be present all the same (see, PIS & CIS whenever base Goku warms up against a far stronger opponent). It definitely feels like more natural than thinking that, say, a possessed Roshi can become strong enough to survive anything more than a mean look from the base Goku who trains with the strongest god in the universe, millions of times stronger than anything else (etc.) -- notwithstanding the possible issues with the older series' consistency.

The equivalent of some bits of Super injected in Z would amount to something like: "We're days away from the Cell Game. Goku emerges from the Room of Spirit and Time. Yajirobei makes a sudden appearance! He says he's been training on his own to confront Cell! He spars with Goku without being killed, Goku saying 'wow, Yajirobei, you became much stronger!". The internet then goes "hey, do you guy think he can he beat Namek Freeza?".

If we had Super injected into Z, Master Roshi would have Mafuba'd Cell before anyone else had a chance, and Android 17 would have shown up out of nowhere and annihilated Buu. Super's power scaling issues makes GT's look very minor.

[Super Saiyan Turlast x4]

I was just sitting around thinking about the levels of the various Hakaishin and this thought came to mind: is it possible that Super Saiyan Blue Kaio-Ken Goku is strong enough to go up against any of the Hakaishin?

This comes down to opinion since we don't know much about them. I'm just wondering if they're all so far above Goku that he wouldn't be able to give any of them a good fight.

[Animelover5487]

I was just sitting around thinking about the levels of the various Hakaishin and this thought came to mind: is it possible that Super Saiyan Blue Kaio-Ken Goku is strong enough to go up against any of the Hakaishin?

This comes down to opinion since we don't know much about them. I'm just wondering if they're all so far above Goku that he wouldn't be able to give any of them a good fight.

He can probably hold his own against Sidra based off Golden Freeza breaking his Hakai energy. Not sure about the other Hakaishin though.

[Bullza]

So how strong do you think Tagoma was in comparison to Buu and the Trio De Dangers?

[LowRyder2005]

Good Buu ~ SS2 Gohan (Cell Game) > SS Gohan (Cell Game) > SS Gohan (Exhibition Matches) >= SS Gohan (U6 vs. U7) > SS Gohan (ROF, post-Senzu) > Tagoma > Piccolo (ROF; tired and weighted)

Buu waves his hand to say hello and kills Tagoma. I personally have Tagoma stronger than the Trio, but it's anyone's guess.

[Super Saiyan Turlast x4]

Not sure. Super Saiyan Gohan dominated Tagoma with ease and a stronger Super Saiyan Gohan overpowered Lavenda.

I don't see Tagoma beating any of the Trio.

[Bullza]

Shouldn't Gohan have been far stronger in Resurrection F than in the Cell Games if his Base form was stronger than Piccolo?

[ZombieVito]

So how strong do you think Tagoma was in comparison to Buu and the Trio De Dangers?

I'll add some characters for context.

Boo >> SS Goku [Boo] >> Tagoma >>> 18 > Trio De Dangers.

[Hugo Boss]

Shouldn't Gohan have been far stronger in Resurrection F than in the Cell Games if his Base form was stronger than Piccolo?

I’m not very sure about Piccolo, but Gohan could barely use SS in that movie. In Cell Games he was a SS2.

[mikey4111]

Was he able to hurt Goku SSB? When did you see it? When was this shown? Do not make up lies

'' Gohan has achieved a power that rivals that of Goku. '' Yes, with the Goku SSJ2.

Why, conveniently, does that mean that Gohan rivals Blue? it means absolutely nothing.
Gohan asked Goku to use ALL OF HIS POWER, this includes the Kaioken. Goku has never been '' forced to use ''.

And Freeza clearly had to restrain himself from killing Gohan on this EP. Your superiority is indisputable

When the narrator stated that Gohan's power rivaled Goku's, they were showing a clip of Gohan fighting ssjb.

Gohan also clearly stated that he was playing along with Freeza's plan so idk what you're talking about.

Why are you desperately denying that Gohan is in the God realm despite the narrator's comment, despite Gohan clearly fending off ssjb, and despite Gohan managing to fend off Golden Freeza even while not fighting his hardest because he was going along with the plan? Didn't Toshio also say that Gohan's power rivaled 17, someone who is also in the God realm? There's more evidence for than against.

Again, this does not prove ANYTHING. The narrator has not specified that Gohan rivals Goku Blue, that's just convenient for you.
The clip could be displayed from any moment of the fight while the narrator was speaking.

It was too implicit to take as a fact.

Gohan followed Freeza's strategy, but Freeza himself said that he would have killed Gohan if the Saiyan had not realized it.
Kuririn reinforced this by saying that Freeza could actually have betrayed the team if Gohan continued to fight.

This only indicates that Gohan simulated that knockout, but not the faces of pain or the scratches on the body.

Only the fact that Freeza does not want to defeat Gohan already proves that he was holding back, which completely nullifies the fact that Gohan had swapped punches with him.
That is, it is useless to use this battle as a base (in the case of Gohan only).

17 is not God level. 17 = Gohan was just the opinion of Toshio, does not represent anything (he is just a screenwriter, does not mean that this is valid for the series)

Did you not watch 17 fight Goku? LMAO He’s obviously God level and Goku even said he would be a problem if he was an enemy still.

[gofishus]

When the narrator stated that Gohan's power rivaled Goku's, they were showing a clip of Gohan fighting ssjb.

Gohan also clearly stated that he was playing along with Freeza's plan so idk what you're talking about.

Why are you desperately denying that Gohan is in the God realm despite the narrator's comment, despite Gohan clearly fending off ssjb, and despite Gohan managing to fend off Golden Freeza even while not fighting his hardest because he was going along with the plan? Didn't Toshio also say that Gohan's power rivaled 17, someone who is also in the God realm? There's more evidence for than against.

Again, this does not prove ANYTHING. The narrator has not specified that Gohan rivals Goku Blue, that's just convenient for you.
The clip could be displayed from any moment of the fight while the narrator was speaking.

It was too implicit to take as a fact.

Gohan followed Freeza's strategy, but Freeza himself said that he would have killed Gohan if the Saiyan had not realized it.
Kuririn reinforced this by saying that Freeza could actually have betrayed the team if Gohan continued to fight.

This only indicates that Gohan simulated that knockout, but not the faces of pain or the scratches on the body.

Only the fact that Freeza does not want to defeat Gohan already proves that he was holding back, which completely nullifies the fact that Gohan had swapped punches with him.
That is, it is useless to use this battle as a base (in the case of Gohan only).

17 is not God level. 17 = Gohan was just the opinion of Toshio, does not represent anything (he is just a screenwriter, does not mean that this is valid for the series)

Did you not watch 17 fight Goku? LMAO He’s obviously God level and Goku even said he would be a problem if he was an enemy still.

I don't think its obvious at all.

[mikey4111]

Again, this does not prove ANYTHING. The narrator has not specified that Gohan rivals Goku Blue, that's just convenient for you.
The clip could be displayed from any moment of the fight while the narrator was speaking.

It was too implicit to take as a fact.

Gohan followed Freeza's strategy, but Freeza himself said that he would have killed Gohan if the Saiyan had not realized it.
Kuririn reinforced this by saying that Freeza could actually have betrayed the team if Gohan continued to fight.

This only indicates that Gohan simulated that knockout, but not the faces of pain or the scratches on the body.

Only the fact that Freeza does not want to defeat Gohan already proves that he was holding back, which completely nullifies the fact that Gohan had swapped punches with him.
That is, it is useless to use this battle as a base (in the case of Gohan only).

17 is not God level. 17 = Gohan was just the opinion of Toshio, does not represent anything (he is just a screenwriter, does not mean that this is valid for the series)

Did you not watch 17 fight Goku? LMAO He’s obviously God level and Goku even said he would be a problem if he was an enemy still.

I don't think its obvious at all.

He fought SSB Goku easily and it was stated he would be a problem if he was an enemy. And for him to be a problem to Goku then he must have god ki, if not then he wouldn’t be a problem at all. Do you get it now?

[MisteryOne]

Did you not watch 17 fight Goku? LMAO He’s obviously God level and Goku even said he would be a problem if he was an enemy still.

I don't think its obvious at all.

He fought SSB Goku easily and it was stated he would be a problem if he was an enemy. And for him to be a problem to Goku then he must havegod ki, if not then he wouldn’t be a problem at all. Do you get it now?

Being god tier =/= having God ki. Hell, 17 is an Android...

[PerhapsTheOtherOne]

I don't think its obvious at all.

He fought SSB Goku easily and it was stated he would be a problem if he was an enemy. And for him to be a problem to Goku then he must havegod ki, if not then he wouldn’t be a problem at all. Do you get it now?

Being god tier =/= having God ki. Hell, 17 is an Android...

Don't forget Freeza and Hit! Those guys are easily on the level of gods like SSB, yet they aren't users of God Ki.

Heck, 17's Ki isn't even the normal kind, but an artificial version that's infinite and can't be sensed, PERIOD.

[Super Saiyan Turlast x4]

Kaioshin has God Chi and he's like the biggest weakest bitch ever.

[TheOne]

I figured this was the place to post this.

Do you guys think the power scaling in Super would be more accurate if we didn't have the Cell and Buu arc?

Even at the beginning of Super things seemed odd. When Goku turned SS, Beerus wasn't impressed at all. I can't remember which transformation it was, but he made a comment about how he's able to see him strong enough to defeat Frieza.

We all know just how strong SSJ Goku was when he first fought Beerus. He was miles ahead of Frieza at that point. The gap was huge. This led to two ways of thinking for me:

1) Beerus is just so powerful, that any power scaling in that range just all looks the same to him. They're just that far behind him that the gap while big to us, is small to him. This was my first assumption and my "head canon"

2) They scaled back everyone's power for the sake of the show. Which kinda backfired since Goku clashing at SSG with Beerus almost destroyed the universe, and now he's gone beyond that and things are not that way anymore.

So basically, do you guys think that Super started in the proper time frame, or would it fit better at an earlier stage of the series power wise?

[avasatu]

Base Goku >>> Frieza by that point. The manga implies that SS Goku can at least fight Kid Buu at the beginning of Super. Heck, SS Goku DID beat Frieza on Namek...

Beerus is egging Goku on to draw out Goku's full power.