Goku's kaioken is the worst thing ever for dragonball series

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Goku's kaioken is the worst thing ever for dragonball series

Post by FiReFTW » Thu Dec 06, 2018 12:53 pm

Do you agree?

I'm not talking specifically about the Kaioken technique attack, its incredibly cool and awesome.

I'm talking about the amount of multipliers that are stacked on it already, its completely out of the top.

If the kaioken was limited to a single 2x increase it would be much better than now when we have 10x or 20x kaioken, thats beyond ridicilous.

Here are the main reasons why its problematic in my opinion

1. First of all its beyond ridicilous that he multiplies his force by 20 times and then starts beating the opponent that was slightly stronger than him before... that would be logical if he used a Kaioken times 2, or times 3 at most.
But seriously, using Kaioken times 20? Do people even realize the massive that is a 20 times power, speed etc increase? I know its just an anime but if it was at least SOMEWHAT believable and realistic, if the opponent was slightly stronger than him and Goku used a 20 times kaioken, he would have obliterated the opponent with a single punch and completely break his body in half.
The worst is that he used kaioken as a super saiyan blue, if they would leave it in normal state fine (alltho that presents problems in itself) but they had to bring it in his super saiyan blue form aswell, extremely poor writing, and it never happened in the manga either so why would they do it? Instead of doing a stronger version of blue? It would be much smarter.

2.It makes other multipliers also feel extremely dumb.
If Kaioken was limited to 2 times or 3 times at most, then we could say super saiyan is a 10 times multiplier, which would be insane in its own right, a 10 times increase in strenght and speed is INSANE, imagine being able to lift 250pounds and being able to lift 2500pounds, the strenght increase is uncomprehendable, the 2500lbs guy would one punch KO the 250lbs guy with little effort, or possibly kill him with a single punch.

But now since we have 20 times kaioken already, super saiyan at default has to be higher, so now we have these unofficial multipliers that super saiyan is 50 times normal state which is completely overdone and ridicilous, and apparently super saiyan 2 is 100 times, while super saiyan 3 is 400 times??? Why would the super saiyan 3 not remain a 2 times multiplier compared to SSJ2, just like SSJ is to SSJ2? Are the numbers not ridicilous enough already?

So think about it, a SSJ2 is a 2 times multiplier from SSJ, and the difference in power is INSANE, so why does a SSJ need to be a 50 times multiplier from base? Its just because kaioken is limiting it so it can't be less, but its quite silly.

So now some people are discussing how super saiyan blue is like 4000 times multiplier, and gogeta from the new movie is like a 40.000 times multiplier... these numbers are just ridicilous and completely out of proportion.

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Re: Goku's kaioken is the worst thing ever for dragonball series

Post by WittyUsername » Thu Dec 06, 2018 2:03 pm

I do wish that Toei didn’t decide to randomly bring back the Kaioken. If Goku is able to multiply his power as a SSJB by 20, not only does it make it difficult to believe that Vegeta could be a genuine rival for him, but it also made it seem difficult to accept that Goku would want to fuse with Vegeta in order to beat Zamasu when he barely used the Kaioken during the Future Trunks arc.

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Re: Goku's kaioken is the worst thing ever for dragonball series

Post by shadowfox87 » Thu Dec 06, 2018 2:33 pm

It's kind of one of the reasons why you won't see Kaioken in the manga or the DBS Broly movie. Regardless of how strong Goku becomes, he can always stack on top of it using Kaioken which makes it very difficult for Vegeta to catch up. In the anime, Goku used Kaioken for a second to kick Merged Zamasu and it did actually do damage. In the manga, Goku uses a Completed SSB form where he is able to keep the full power of SSB constant and defeat Merged Zamasu. Vegeta was able to use the same form later and fight Beerus with it. Then, we see a SSB Evolution variant in the manga without the twinkling stars from Vegeta. The light blue aura surrounded by dark blue aura which is again seen in the DBS Broly movie - used by both Goku and Vegeta. It allows them to keep in pace with each other. Kaioken is power on loan and it should have consequences. While I do think the double aura was cool in the anime, it's just not consistent with Toriyama's draft.
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Re: Goku's kaioken is the worst thing ever for dragonball series

Post by BlueBasilisk » Thu Dec 06, 2018 2:37 pm

The mistake was making the next villian after Vegeta thousands of times stronger than him. All of the power creep issues flowed from that.

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Re: Goku's kaioken is the worst thing ever for dragonball series

Post by MKCSTEALTH » Thu Dec 06, 2018 3:06 pm

I mean if that's the case, then the Super Saiyan multipliers should be gone too. The multipliers are vague but from the story perspective it's "enough to handle the next big bad and look cool"

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Re: Goku's kaioken is the worst thing ever for dragonball series

Post by Rakurai » Thu Dec 06, 2018 4:45 pm

Worst thing for DB? No. Worst thing for DBSuper? One of them.

Look at what it did to the Goku-Vegeta dynamic. Both are supposed to be at the same level of progression, but it left Vegeta in the dust for a good chunk of the series until it gave Vegeta a randomass Blue variant that was forced and felt extremely shallow, a means to damage control the inflated powerscaling and 'catch' him up artificially. Also affixing numerical multipliers to anything in the series nowadays is dangerous because it becomes hard to interpret just exactly how strong x2 or x20 is supposed to be in comparison to the enemy. When the portrayal becomes inconsistent between writers, then it makes the series look bad and sloppy as a whole. It's the same trap Toriyama fell into when he thought SSJ should be x50 multiplier but in his head it felt like x10.
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Re: Goku's kaioken is the worst thing ever for dragonball series

Post by Lord Beerus » Thu Dec 06, 2018 5:23 pm

Kaioken, and it's respective multipliers, was created in response to Toriyama realising he made the antagonists to fucking powerful for it to seem believe for Goku to beat them without some kind of ace up his sleeve.

It's Power Creep 101.

Personally, I'm happy that the Kaioken made a comeback in the anime. It's sudden disappearance from the plot has always bugged me. It's a free boost in strength and speed. Stack that shit on top of any SSJ transformation, and you're at an automatic advantage in battle.

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Re: Goku's kaioken is the worst thing ever for dragonball series

Post by WittyUsername » Thu Dec 06, 2018 5:26 pm

Lord Beerus wrote:Kaioken, and it's respective multipliers, was created in response to Toriyama realising he made the antagonists to fucking powerful for it to seem believe for Goku to beat them without some kind of ace up his sleeve.

It's Power Creep 101.

Personally, I'm happy that the Kaioken made a comeback in the anime. It's sudden disappearance from the plot has always bugged me. It's a free boost in strength and speed. Stack that shit on top of any SSJ transformation, and you're at an automatic advantage in battle.
It sure would’ve come in handy against Cell and Buu...

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Re: Goku's kaioken is the worst thing ever for dragonball series

Post by Lord Beerus » Thu Dec 06, 2018 5:40 pm

WittyUsername wrote:
Lord Beerus wrote:Kaioken, and it's respective multipliers, was created in response to Toriyama realising he made the antagonists to fucking powerful for it to seem believe for Goku to beat them without some kind of ace up his sleeve.

It's Power Creep 101.

Personally, I'm happy that the Kaioken made a comeback in the anime. It's sudden disappearance from the plot has always bugged me. It's a free boost in strength and speed. Stack that shit on top of any SSJ transformation, and you're at an automatic advantage in battle.
It sure would’ve come in handy against Cell and Buu...
Or the Androids.

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Re: Goku's kaioken is the worst thing ever for dragonball series

Post by ekrolo2 » Thu Dec 06, 2018 5:41 pm

Lord Beerus wrote:
WittyUsername wrote:
Lord Beerus wrote:Kaioken, and it's respective multipliers, was created in response to Toriyama realising he made the antagonists to fucking powerful for it to seem believe for Goku to beat them without some kind of ace up his sleeve.

It's Power Creep 101.

Personally, I'm happy that the Kaioken made a comeback in the anime. It's sudden disappearance from the plot has always bugged me. It's a free boost in strength and speed. Stack that shit on top of any SSJ transformation, and you're at an automatic advantage in battle.
It sure would’ve come in handy against Cell and Buu...
Or the Androids.
Or for Cell to use against the good guys.
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Re: Goku's kaioken is the worst thing ever for dragonball series

Post by Shaddy » Thu Dec 06, 2018 5:45 pm

Goku's kaioken is the worst thing ever for dragonball series-
I agree! The nature of having to constantly raise bars for both the heroes and villains lends itself to very repetitive storytelling and samey battles rather than something creative! You make a good p-
-because the POWERSCALING and NUMBERS don't make sense
...ah...well.

EDIT: okay I'm changing my signature, it makes everything I say on these topics look preachy and overdramatic.

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Re: Goku's kaioken is the worst thing ever for dragonball series

Post by Lord Beerus » Thu Dec 06, 2018 5:58 pm

ekrolo2 wrote:
Lord Beerus wrote:
WittyUsername wrote:
It sure would’ve come in handy against Cell and Buu...
Or the Androids.
Or for Cell to use against the good guys.
What's even more unforgivable is how Tenshinhan, Chaozu, Yamcha and Piccolo don't learn the Kaioken (or the Genki Dama for that matter). It's made even more jarring by the fact that all four of them reached King Kai's planet quicker than Goku did and even states that all four of them went through even tougher training than Goku did.

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Re: Goku's kaioken is the worst thing ever for dragonball series

Post by superfan2024 » Thu Dec 06, 2018 7:01 pm

shadowfox87 wrote:It's kind of one of the reasons why you won't see Kaioken in the manga or the DBS Broly movie. Regardless of how strong Goku becomes, he can always stack on top of it using Kaioken which makes it very difficult for Vegeta to catch up. In the anime, Goku used Kaioken for a second to kick Merged Zamasu and it did actually do damage. In the manga, Goku uses a Completed SSB form where he is able to keep the full power of SSB constant and defeat Merged Zamasu. Vegeta was able to use the same form later and fight Beerus with it. Then, we see a SSB Evolution variant in the manga without the twinkling stars from Vegeta. The light blue aura surrounded by dark blue aura which is again seen in the DBS Broly movie - used by both Goku and Vegeta. It allows them to keep in pace with each other. Kaioken is power on loan and it should have consequences. While I do think the double aura was cool in the anime, it's just not consistent with Toriyama's draft.
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Re: Goku's kaioken is the worst thing ever for dragonball series

Post by Tavarano » Fri Dec 07, 2018 1:03 am

I wouldn't single out kaioken for power scaling issues, there were many others things, and super saiyan was easily worse as kaioken had big drawbacks. My problem with kaioken is that Toei put great effort into showing the effects of it at x3 with Goku's massive body and all the details showing the pain and damage it causes to user, it truly felt like a very risky, last-ditch effort, so Toriyama ruined the concept by watering it down.
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Re: Goku's kaioken is the worst thing ever for dragonball series

Post by Marlowe89 » Fri Dec 07, 2018 2:07 am

Kaioken's presence in Super is bad for many reasons. Power scaling is one of them, but that's actually the least concerning.

It's supposed to enforce a risk-reward dynamic, but never establishes any tension or consequence beyond a few random shallow muscle spasm scenes that leave no impact on the story or even Goku's moment-to-moment struggles. Its drawbacks are basically forgotten altogether by the Universe Survival arc. It "raises the stakes" only through artificial means, rendering its role practically redundant as Goku's very own 'Get Out of Jail Free' card. You could make a similar case for Saiyan transformations, but... Kaioken wasn't supposed to function like a transformation, so it's just pointless, empty fan schlock in the end.

It also thoroughly shat all over the progression of Goku and Vegeta's rivalry to the point of inducing some exclusive "catch-up" form for Vegeta out of nowhere with little foreshadowing to compensate, but others have already touched on that.

It had a purpose in the original manga, and even there it was only moderately beneficial. Now it's the Dragon Ball equivalent of that washed up rock musician in his 60's who won't shut the fuck up about his exaggerated tales of coke and hookers; the ultimate nostalgia hook to remind you of the GOOD OL' DAYS but never actually contributes anything worthwhile.
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Re: Goku's kaioken is the worst thing ever for dragonball series

Post by SupremeKai25 » Fri Dec 07, 2018 2:08 am

The Kaio-ken is an OP ability, that much is clear, but Goku shouldn't be the only one to have it. It's a shame that the producers didn't have the balls to give Kaio-ken to Goku Black too. I mean, why shouldn't he have that ability? Zamasu was a North Kai, and he already had the Instant Transmission technique that was taught to Goku by the Yardrat species. I suppose that Super Saiyan Rosé Kaio-ken would have simply been unstoppable (Black didn't even need the Kaio-ken to stomp effortlessly his opponents), but at least they could have adressed the fact that Black hadn't unlocked Kaio-ken yet or something like that.

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Re: Goku's kaioken is the worst thing ever for dragonball series

Post by wolflonnie » Fri Dec 07, 2018 3:30 am

SupremeKai25 wrote:The Kaio-ken is an OP ability, that much is clear, but Goku shouldn't be the only one to have it. It's a shame that the producers didn't have the balls to give Kaio-ken to Goku Black too. I mean, why shouldn't he have that ability? Zamasu was a North Kai, and he already had the Instant Transmission technique that was taught to Goku by the Yardrat species. I suppose that Super Saiyan Rosé Kaio-ken would have simply been unstoppable (Black didn't even need the Kaio-ken to stomp effortlessly his opponents), but at least they could have adressed the fact that Black hadn't unlocked Kaio-ken yet or something like that.
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Re: Goku's kaioken is the worst thing ever for dragonball series

Post by Regarder » Fri Dec 07, 2018 4:13 am

As others have said; Kaioken was clearly flawed from the start, because it hurting your body is too random to write consistently when you have a character who can always take more and more punishment. It's an essentially abitrary drawback. Goku just gets used to the damage it's supposed to cause because he's so powerful. It worked in the battle of Vegeta because it had the consequence of Goku being completely wrecked and unable to move, but after that it just became Goku's max power until it was phased out for Super Saiyan.

The only way to have Kaioken feel like a real gamble type move and not just an easy stacking multiplier technique would be if the multiplication boost only lasted for a certain amount of time and for an equal amount of time afterwards it divided the power you started the Kaioken from by the same number as the multiplier, so you could double your power for a whole minute but then after that your power would be capped at half normal for a whole minute. Want to go as far as 10x what you are now? Then in penance your regular power is temporarily /10 what you are now for an equivalent time. That's a lot more straightforwards and tactical than it just being dangerous to your body. You could get deeper into energy debt if you weren't careful.

When Toriyama conveniently forgot about the technique it was for the best. They brought it back in Super for fanservice. If they wanted to bring it back they should have said something about how it worked differently with god ki and worked more similar to how I described in the above paragraph. That's the one way to have it still be a desperation move and not a random level of powerup on top of an existing transformation with only the vaguest idea of a drawback.

I really don't see why Vegeta can't have picked up the principle behind the technique by this point either way.

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Re: Goku's kaioken is the worst thing ever for dragonball series

Post by Kataphrut » Fri Dec 07, 2018 4:51 am

This is a real thread of 'OOF' takes.

"Kaioken is OP". OOF.

"Kaioken ruins power scaling". DOUBLE OOF.

"Kaioken diminishes Vegeta and Goku's rivalry dynamic". TRIPLE OOF WITH A SIDE OOF FRIES.

In my opinion, Kaioken brought a cool risk vs reward aspect that was lost when Super Saiyan became the dominant powerup. The thing is, it was around for the heyday of when you were expected to think about numbers in relation to power. Back then, you knew what times 3 and 4 meant and the tension was over whether the multiplying strain was worth the energy boost. Of course like everything it got blown to absurd proportions on the Namek saga, bringing x10 and x20 into the mix. Super Saiyan marked the point where numbers stopped being considered- yes, it's apparently got a 50 times multiplier, but that has never been brought up in the show and might as well be imaginary. That attitude continued into Super, where the big gimmick of the main forms is a) their power can't be sensed and b) they're much more variable in power thanks to ki control. In other words, you're not supposed to think about the numbers because they're all over the place. You just sit back and enjoy the fight.

So I can see why bringing Kaioken back in Super would upset the spreadsheet crowd. Introducing numbered multipliers to a form like SSB is like mixing oil and water almost. But the counter argument is screw you, Kaioken Blue is awesome. It looks unique, has a creative explanation (which also helpfully explains why it never came back after Super Saiyan) and they did a reasonable job of balancing the drawbacks. Not quite as good as the Saiyan saga did, which gave us one of the most thrilling battles of the series because you could really see how Goku was pushing himself to keep up, but not awful. They had a whole episode dedicated to the fallout after it's use in the U6 tournament, it only shows up once in Future Trunks as a desperation gambit, and when the Tournament of Power starts using it more regularly, it's at least more believable than in Namek, where he goes from x4 being an enormous strain to being able to use up to x10 with zero drawback in the space of about a week.

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Re: Goku's kaioken is the worst thing ever for dragonball series

Post by BWri » Fri Dec 07, 2018 8:46 am

Lord Beerus wrote:
ekrolo2 wrote:
Lord Beerus wrote: Or the Androids.
Or for Cell to use against the good guys.
What's even more unforgivable is how Tenshinhan, Chaozu, Yamcha and Piccolo don't learn the Kaioken (or the Genki Dama for that matter). It's made even more jarring by the fact that all four of them reached King Kai's planet quicker than Goku did and even states that all four of them went through even tougher training than Goku did.
The worst sin in the series IMO. It undermines those characters for the rest of Z and Super.
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