Why are certain trained humans so very weak in DBZ?

[Dark Vegeta-Sama]

He might have freakish power for a human, but no human can ever stand up to a Saiyan.

Well, that depends. Say, Buu saga Tenshinhan or Kuririn vs. Raditz.

Well, I meant the Super Saiyans specifically.

Or, at least, the level of strength set by the Saiyans in the Buu saga.

[Professor Daravon]

And, as I pointed out, your explanation is based on nothing except an assumption that Videl could break Kuririn's neck -- and that isn't based on anything either.

Nothing except for, you know, basic human physiology. Are you saying the Krillin is immune to the effects of a severe blow to the neck just because he trained with Roshi?

No, I'm saying Videl is incapable of delivering a severe blow to the neck. Kuririn is in all likelihood many thousands of times stronger than Videl. It seems quite improbable that she could inflict any sort of damage on him, whether he dodged her attacks or not.

There are no definite answers, but it is quite possible to make reasonable estimates, which is what I did in the rest of my post that you disregarded. Since you assert that I "admit to being a Videl fan," I wonder whether you actually read my post in the first place. I made no such admission. My point of view isn't based on which characters I like or dislike, it's based on what we see in the anime.

I did read your post, and I disagree with it.

Anyway, I just watched some of the 25th Budokai episodes, and from what I can tell, Spopovitch was a fuckload stronger than Videl the whole time. In the first episode of the fight, where it seems like Videl has the advantage, Spopovitch doesn't really do anything; he doesn't even attack until near the end of the episode when Videl is already pretty warn down. He just takes the hits and keeps getting back up, but never attacks initially. He toys with her by letting her beat him down several times and believe that she can actually win. Some of the various characters' dialogue pretty much verifies this, as Gohan says at one point that Spopovitch knew he could beat Videl the whole time and was toying with her. Also, Krillin makes a statement about how "Spopovitch's energy beam wasn't all that strong" but afterward Vegeta makes it clear that Spopovitch was purposely holding back so that he wouldn't kill her, as he'd be disqualified that way.

So yeah, you might say you're forming opinions based on what we see in the anime, but so am I. Unless we're watching two different shows here, Spopovitch has some serious power given to him by Babidi. Weaker than Raditz he is not.

I just watched some of the fight myself and I don't really see anything that discredits what I said before. Videl clearly has the upper hand early on. You can say he was just toying with her if you want, but he looks pretty annoyed with her, not like someone who's just screwing around and having fun. Gohan also observes that she's completely above him during the first part of the fight. Spopovitch only begins taking control of the fight when Videl gets worn out. You contend that he was just taking it to mess with her, but that's really not what it looks like, to me at least. When Videl gets tired and he starts beating her up, when he is quite clearly toying with her, he's got a pretty big grin. Prior to that, he just looks really irritated. There's no reason to think he's just toying with her the entire time unless you already think he's super strong, and in that case it becomes circular logic -- he's toying with her because he can, and we know he can because he's toying with her. You need something else to go on.

The fact that he holds back with his kikoha really doesn't prove anything. The level of strength of the average human is pretty well established. The level attainable without taking advantage of ki is also pretty well established. Videl only just learned about the existence of ki a few days prior and still only has a rudimentary grasp over how to use it; we can thus assume that she is, by Z Senshi standards, extraordinarily weak. Given all this information, it's entirely reasonable to assume that even Goku or Tenshinhan circa the 22nd Tenkaichi Budokai, who both had extensive experience with ki control and had both been training much longer than Videl had, could probably take her apart without a ton of trouble. Thus if your only evidence is that Spopovitch's kikoha wasn't at full power, you can just as convincingly make the argument that he's as strong as Goku and Tenshinhan as you can that he's as strong as or stronger than Raditz.

Still, in my own opinion, he would likely defeat Krillin in battle, if not due to having a higher power than him, then at least because of his infinite stamina. I don't know how high Krillin's power level is in the Buu saga, but it's probably not even close to being on par with Freeza, for example. If Babidi uses magic that is powerful enough to create Majin Buu, who is infinitely more powerful than Freeza, then surely he can at least bring a human's power to the absolutely highest possible limits that the human body can withstand.

We don't know how strong Kuririn is, but it is widely accepted that he's the strongest human. He certainly believes it to be true, and Yamucha says it as well. It seems unlikely that some random human could come along who's stronger than Kuririn and no one would mention it. Kuririn himself doesn't seem to think much of Spopovitch; granted, he knows that he has Goku's, Gohan's, Piccolo's, Number 18's, and probably even Vegeta's protection and thus nothing to worry about, but it's odd that he wouldn't be at all alarmed to stumble upon some nobody who's stronger than he is. I think it's extremely unlikely that Spopovitch could last any longer against Kuririn than he could against any of the other Z Senshi.

Your point about Babidi's magic is noted, but you're also talking about two distinctly different spells. In one case, Bibidi conjures up a being of unimaginable power; in the other, Babidi simply uses magic to take control of the evil in someone's heart and bestow upon them a couple new perks. When you start from scratch, you write your own rules, but when you take over an existing person, you only have so much to work with. I would contend that there is no "highest possible limit" for the human body. That would seem antithetical to the show's theme of constant self-improvement, that you can only keep getting stronger for so long until you hit some ceiling, at which point you've reached the limit for your species. Any one individual's potential is a product of his training and experience, not his species. Babidi's magic might help Spopovitch reach his full potential, but that is not a one size fits all level that any human can reach but no human can transcend. Spopovitch's limit should be different from Kuririn's, which should be different from Yamucha's, Tenshinhan's, Videl's, Mr. Satan's, etc. Really, I don't think there's any particular rule against a human reaching the same level of strength as a Saiya-jin; the problem for humans is that they grow stronger at a much slower rate than Saiya-jin do and don't have access to the same instantaneous powerups (Oozaru and Super Saiya-jin) that the Saiya-jin have. I don't think there's a highest possible limit for the human body any more than there is for the Saiya-jin body or the Namek body or Freeza's body or whoever else, though. Just my take on it.

[Drunken Master]

Spopovitch was playing with Videl, he was obviously holding back his powers, to enjoy himself and was caught by surprise. That's why his neck was broken. Hold back too much, and underestimate your opponent, and you'll regret it. So people are saying that Spopovitch, who got a pretty nice powerup, isn't as strong as the usual Freeza henchmen? Let's look at Pui Pui. He grew up on a planet with 10x gravity, meaning he was probably around the lower marking of saiyan strength. He got a powerup, and was one of Bab's right hand men, with Dabura. I'm not saying Pui Pui was a powerhouse, but he was at least around Ginyu Force level of power, I mean...would Vegeta even play around with him, if he wasn't decently strong? I don't think so, I'm pretty sure Vegeta would have been angry to waste his time against something incredibly weak, and would have probably killed him with one blast.

[Professor Daravon]

Spopovitch was playing with Videl, he was obviously holding back his powers, to enjoy himself and was caught by surprise. That's why his neck was broken. Hold back too much, and underestimate your opponent, and you'll regret it. So people are saying that Spopovitch, who got a pretty nice powerup, isn't as strong as the usual Freeza henchmen? Let's look at Pui Pui. He grew up on a planet with 10x gravity, meaning he was probably around the lower marking of saiyan strength. He got a powerup, and was one of Bab's right hand men, with Dabura. I'm not saying Pui Pui was a powerhouse, but he was at least around Ginyu Force level of power, I mean...would Vegeta even play around with him, if he wasn't decently strong? I don't think so, I'm pretty sure Vegeta would have been angry to waste his time against something incredibly weak, and would have probably killed him with one blast.

But now you're making a baseless assumption about Pui Pui's original level. The fact that his home planet's gravity is 10G suggests that he is at least as strong as a weak Saiya-jin, but it doesn't mandate that he must be that strong -- or are we to assume that Freeza's home planet was on the order of 1,000,000G? Does that mean Freeza grew up on the surface of a white dwarf star? For that matter, how is it that Goku and Gohan, growing up on Earth, achieve such great strength? Clearly there's a lot more to it than the planet's gravity. Pui Pui could have started off as strong as Raditz or stronger than Freeza -- we have no way of knowing what his original level was, so it's impossible to gauge how much he gained from the Majin powerup.

[Xyex]

Oi, a few things to cover here too. (I really shouldn't skip coming here for a day or two at a time. ._.)

I can't find a decent pic of Jessica in super high tension mode, but here's the hero:

The Hero is the only character that gets a hair effect in DQ8 in High Tension mode. EVERYONE else just gets a purple glow. That's it.

Well that's the interesting thing, isn't it? If you excuse Pan with "1/4 Saiyajin's can't go SSJ" you still can't excuse Bra - but one way that Toriyama could squeeze out of that was to make her into a stereotypical teenage girl.

Except for the fact that Toriyama didn't make Bra into anything. Toei did. Toriyama didn't tell Toei what to do with the characters at the start of GT, he just gave them some very basic direction with the plot.

So yeah, you might say you're forming opinions based on what we see in the anime, but so am I. Unless we're watching two different shows here, Spopovitch has some serious power given to him by Babidi. Weaker than Raditz he is not.

So, you're saying that at this point, Videl could take out King Piccolo? Lets look at Dragonball, shall we? During the Red Ribbon arc Goku got his ass kicked by Tao, no? But was Tao as powerful as Raditz? No. There were several instances of Goku or others not even having a chance against their opponent.

To say that Spoppovitch must be as strong as Raditz to prevent Videl from even having a chance against him is completely absurd. At the most Videl is as phsycially powerful as Roshi when she fights Spoppovitch. Which means if he's as powerful as Tao then you get the exact same battle as we saw in the series.

You seem to be experiencing the same 'power wash-out effect' that I see a lot of people suffer from. You don't need a massive difference in power to completely outclass someone. Less than a hundred points seperated Goku and Tao when they first fought each other.

Spopovitch is insanely powerful by human standards. That's all we know, and that's all that I've been saying basically. You are free to disagree, but my opinion stands.

And since when was a power level of maybe 200 not insanely powerful compared to a race with an average power of 5?

Still, in my own opinion, he would likely defeat Krillin in battle, if not due to having a higher power than him, then at least because of his infinite stamina. I don't know how high Krillin's power level is in the Buu saga, but it's probably not even close to being on par with Freeza, for example.

Well, we know the following. Krillin is stronger than Yamcha. Yamcha was mistaken for Goku by Dr. Gero based on his power at the start of the Android saga. Even with Krillin's 7 year break from serious fighting and training he's still likely in the hundred thousands somewhere. Spoppovitch wouldn't last five seconds against any of the other enemies to have appeared during Z save for Yamu.

If Babidi uses magic that is powerful enough to create Majin Buu, who is infinitely more powerful than Freeza, then surely he can at least bring a human's power to the absolutely highest possible limits that the human body can withstand.

Bibidi did that, not Babidi. And also, lets not forget, Buu was a complete and utter accident.

Let's look at Pui Pui. He grew up on a planet with 10x gravity, meaning he was probably around the lower marking of saiyan strength.

The fact that Babidi took Pui Pui tells me that he was likely the most powerful member of his race. The fact he took only Pui Pui tells me he was likely to his race as Vegeta and Goku are theirs, waaaay beyond them. Nothing says that Pui Pui couldn't have had a power of a million when Babidi found him.

[Dragon Ball Daisuki]

I'd just like to say that Videl took a hit from fucking Broli and got back up.

Now I know some of you are going to cry foul and say "It's just a movie, Daisuki! It doesn't count!" But I feel obligated to remind such ones that the reason Movies are considered non-canon is due to the sequence of events, not the subject matter. For instance, all that's known of Bardock is that he defied Freeza just before Planet Vegeta's termination. But because the other events in the TV Special do not directly contradict any information presented in the manga, we generally accept it as canon. I'll repeat that, for those in the cheap seats: where Movies do not contradict canon material, we honor them.

That being said, I'm not entirely sure where this leaves Videl, but suffice it to say she's not in the 100's. As far as I can remember, she never displayed any sort of ki aura when she flew, and that seemed to be a staple around the early Freeza arc (if I recall correctly), so my general estimate is that she has a power somewhere between 1,000 and 10,000... ish.

[Anonymous Friend]

The way I see it, no matter how much training you receive with regards to fighting, strength, speed and stamina if you haven't had substantial Ki training you really can't get that far.

Although Videl is somewhat of a fighting prodigy and even manages to let to control her ki and learn to fly very quickly that's all she has learned to do. If she had learned how to use ki increase fighting strength, raise her power level and improve offence and defenses, then maybe she could stand some sort of chance.

Basically, anyone that has learned to focus their ki to perform a external discharges already has a enormous advantage over someone who has not.

Quick question: How do the devises used to determine power levels work? Do they detect the active amount of ki in your body or overall fighting capabilities?

[Drunken Master]

I'm pretty sure Babidi had more Pui Pui looking henchmen around, they showed them when they were releasing Yakon or whatever. And Goku and Vegeta are only waaaay beyond because they cheat. They almost die too many times, come back, and also train in gravity. I'm sure if Raditz did all that, he'd be a super saiyan as well.

Also Babidi picked Yamu and Spoppovitch over every other human, does that mean they were the strongest of there race? Even if you use "it's because he picked two, not one" it still suggests that he knew they would be strong, strong enough to get a ton of energy from strong fighters.

[Rocketman]

Also Babidi picked Yamu and Spoppovitch over every other human, does that mean they were the strongest of there race? Even if you use "it's because he picked two, not one" it still suggests that he knew they would be strong, strong enough to get a ton of energy from strong fighters.

Babidi wasn't expecting insanely strong fighters like the Super Saiyans. Remember when he reads the energy they took from Gohan, he says something like "wow, wish I hadn't killed them, they could've told me how they killed so many people so fast".

[Drunken Master]

Yes, but that's SSj2 strength, we're talking way below that. When I mean strong, I mean saiyan- early namek saga strong.

[testing223]

Pity that Spopovitch's beatdown of Videl was much more chilling and evil than anything that followed in the series.

He could've been the peak villain at that point..

[Dragon Ball Daisuki]

Drunken Master --->

What occurs to me is that humans in general are an overall benevolent race with capacity for compassion, faith and camaraderie. There are, however, those few humans who can't be reasoned with, related to, or loved, because they are so far gone. They have no natural affection. They just want to watch the world burn. Spopovitch and Yamu are likely in that group.

So no, Spopovitch obviously wasn't the strongest human per se, but it's entirely possible that he and Yamu are the strongest corruptible humans, or at least AMONG the strongest humans, but with hearts that had the most POTENTIAL for corruption.

We know from the anime (I'm not 100% on the manga) that Spopovitch lost a match to Mr. Satan -- likely in the first round -- so he must have considerable strength.

Mr. Satan is the strongest human in the world, disregarding Yamucha, Kuririn and Tenshinhan (sorta), which means he's a lot stronger than any of the contestants of previous tournaments, including guys like Chappa and Akkuman, guys with powers above 100. I won't try and guess how much power ol' Satan has, but let's just say it exceeds 150.

So yeah, Spopovitch and Yamu were some of those extra-strong humans that show up at the Tenka-ichi Budoukai from time to time -- but not the strongest! -- but got approached by Babidi and recieved increases that probably put them in the tens of thousands. I guess the interesting thing in this is that Babidi's selection of these guys over Mr. Satan means that the old badger is actually fairly good at heart -- he couldn't be corrupted, or at least to the extent to satisfy Babidi's needs. But Spopovitch and Yamu could.

[Drunken Master]

Good point Dragon Ball Daisuki, forgot about that point. That's also true for Pui Pui as well. I'm sure not all of that race was evil. Dabura is the only one exempt from that.

[mAcChaos]

Satan with over 150 power? I wouldn't put him above Roshi...

[Tyro]

Roshi? I wouldn't put him above beginning of Dragonball Goku.

[Teclo]

Oi, a few things to cover here too. (I really shouldn't skip coming here for a day or two at a time. ._.)

I can't find a decent pic of Jessica in super high tension mode, but here's the hero:

The Hero is the only character that gets a hair effect in DQ8 in High Tension mode. EVERYONE else just gets a purple glow. That's it.

Well you're sort of right and I'm sort of right... Her hair doesn't distinctly stand out or anything but it has a sort of floatiness to it. The main thing, apart from the glow, is that her eyes do the evil-looking SSJ thing. All said, my point still stands; Toriyama drew his Goku-like hero going "SSJ" in the same way he did the Saiyajin males going SSJ and he came up with a female equivalent for Jessica. It was just how one would expect a woman to look if she were to power up and go SSJ so I don't see why it took him until DQVIII to come to terms with it.

Well that's the interesting thing, isn't it? If you excuse Pan with "1/4 Saiyajin's can't go SSJ" you still can't excuse Bra - but one way that Toriyama could squeeze out of that was to make her into a stereotypical teenage girl.

Except for the fact that Toriyama didn't make Bra into anything. Toei did. Toriyama didn't tell Toei what to do with the characters at the start of GT, he just gave them some very basic direction with the plot.

Well Toriyama's contribution to GT is uncertain but whatever it is, it's underplayed as much as possible by many fans. Given that the only powerful female we'd seen so far (outside of the movies) was a cyborg and that the only female Saiyajin we'd seen was in Bardock special, it's easy to see that there's a huge bias in favour of men being the powerful fighters. Whether Toei made Bra turn out that way independantly or at the behest of Toriyama is quite a moot point - when you look at the history of DB and the way that most of the female characters turned out, there's no reason to believe that Bra would have turned out much differently anyway.

Roshi? I wouldn't put him above beginning of Dragonball Goku.

According to the Daizenshuu (which I am personally a little sceptical of) Goku's power level at the start of DB was merely 10. Roshi reached as high as about 137 and would arguably have been a little higher around the time he beat Goku while disguised as Jackie Chun since he uncharacteristically trained before that event.

[Xyex]

That being said, I'm not entirely sure where this leaves Videl, but suffice it to say she's not in the 100's. As far as I can remember, she never displayed any sort of ki aura when she flew, and that seemed to be a staple around the early Freeza arc (if I recall correctly), so my general estimate is that she has a power somewhere between 1,000 and 10,000... ish.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, what? One to ten thousand? She's almost as strong as Raditz to stronger than Nappa? See, this is what I'm talking about with the power wash-out stuff. People assume you need massive numbers to do anything. There is no way in hell that she's over 130. Peroid. At her introduction she was, at best, twice as strong as Krillin when he was first introduced. Seeing as she trained a lot less, and a lot less extremely, than he did... there's no way she was even as strong as Krillin was at the 22nd Budokai.

Also Babidi picked Yamu and Spoppovitch over every other human, does that mean they were the strongest of there race? Even if you use "it's because he picked two, not one" it still suggests that he knew they would be strong, strong enough to get a ton of energy from strong fighters.

You're forgetting that Babidi was utterly clueless about the powers on Earth. It's been about 300 years since Dabura scouted the planet for noteable powers. At that time I think Mutiato was still around, and the most powerful Human, likely weaker than Roshi.

I won't try and guess how much power ol' Satan has, but let's just say it exceeds 150.

*blink* Hercule is, at best, 50. If that. I'd be more likely to range him in the area of 20 or 30.

Well you're sort of right and I'm sort of right... Her hair doesn't distinctly stand out or anything but it has a sort of floatiness to it. The main thing, apart from the glow, is that her eyes do the evil-looking SSJ thing. All said, my point still stands; Toriyama drew his Goku-like hero going "SSJ" in the same way he did the Saiyajin males going SSJ and he came up with a female equivalent for Jessica. It was just how one would expect a woman to look if she were to power up and go SSJ so I don't see why it took him until DQVIII to come to terms with it.

She gets an angry expression, sure. But... it's not really any different than the expression she gets when low on HP or under a negative status. And there's no change to her hair, at all, other than the glow making it look lighter. It's already been confirmed completely by the developes that *nothing* changes on anyone except the Hero, so this is all just grasping at straws for a point. There is no 'SSJ' look there. Hell, not even for the Hero. He gets spikey hair, nothing more. No yellow anywhere, no muscle mass, nada, just spikey hair. If that's all it takes then 95% of anime/anime based characters are SSJs. >.>

[Rocketman]

That being said, I'm not entirely sure where this leaves Videl, but suffice it to say she's not in the 100's. As far as I can remember, she never displayed any sort of ki aura when she flew, and that seemed to be a staple around the early Freeza arc (if I recall correctly), so my general estimate is that she has a power somewhere between 1,000 and 10,000... ish.

10,000?! Are you mad? You honestly think Videl could crush Nappa and challenge Saiyan Saga Vegeta? She's a regular human with one week of ki training, how the hell could she possibly be 10,000?!

[Kaboom]

Rocketman to the rescue, here to slap some common sense into the fanboy masses! :D

[Teclo]

She gets an angry expression, sure. But... it's not really any different than the expression she gets when low on HP or under a negative status. And there's no change to her hair, at all, other than the glow making it look lighter. It's already been confirmed completely by the developes that *nothing* changes on anyone except the Hero, so this is all just grasping at straws for a point. There is no 'SSJ' look there. Hell, not even for the Hero. He gets spikey hair, nothing more. No yellow anywhere, no muscle mass, nada, just spikey hair. If that's all it takes then 95% of anime/anime based characters are SSJs. >.>

95% of anime isn't drawn by the man who invented SSJ though, is it? And the heroes of anime may often have spiky hair but the key thing here is that the hero's hair goes spiky after he powers up and become super powered.

Anyway, it's not just spiky hair for the hero. He gets the same eyes as a SSJ and the change is particularly highlighted because he normally has the same eyes as non-SSJ Goku or Gohan. The aura may be a different colour but it's still a glowing aura, the exact same eyes as a SSJ and spiky hair and all brought on by powering up and reaching a state of "high tension". IIRC Angelo's hair also lifts up in a way similar to Trunks' when he goes SSJ. Toriyama obviously wasn't going to make it identical to SSJ because that would just "break the fourth wall" and detract from the DQ setting but he made it as close as possible without it being a direct copy so it remained a nod to fans rather than making Dragon Quest Z instead.

As for Jessica's eyes - they're not merely squinty like they are when she's injured. They're the exact same as SSJ eyes and when you consider this is the same artist that did the SSJ eyes it doesn't take a genius to figure out the link. I repeat again; you make your character power up several times in a row, they reach a special state after a while, become much more powerful and change their appearance to one very similar to a SSJ - and the designer was Akira Toriyama. Oh but it's a purple aura rather than a yellow one and Jessica's ponytails don't burst out and change into Goku-esque spiky hair. Silly me, it's totally different.

Even if that somehow doesn't convince you, ask yourself: Toriyama said he didn't know how a female SSJ would look. Well what could he possibly have meant? If he was referring to their often longer hair. what about SSJ3? i.e. he already drew a SSJ with long hair. If he meant the eyes then why wouldn't they have the same evil eyes as a male SSJ? The eyes he gave Jessica and not entirely dissimilar to #18's eyes. There really isn't anything that he would have been confused over; there's nothing that would be different for a female going SSJ. The Jessica thing is just the icing on the cake really.