Krillin > Tenshinhan challenge

[Geridos]

Spoiler:

Krillin
He became Master Roshi's apprentice with the impure motive of becoming good at martial arts and becoming popular with girls. He is now a fine martial artist who fights to protect the Earth from the Saiyans and Frieza. Unlike Goku and Tienshinhan, he is supposed to be an ordinary human being, but his strength is at superhuman level. He is Goku's best friend. By the way, the dots on his forehead are from after acupuncture.

This book was released just before Gohan and the others faced Freeza on Namek. It has interesting tidbits about the characters at that point. Here is a direct comparison between Tenshinhan who isn't an ordinary human and Krillin who is an ordinary human. Tenshinan isn't an Earthling and he isn't included in the "Krillin being the strongest earthling".

[Kaboom]

Tenshinhan not being an "ordinary" Earthling — which is a given, what with the whole third eye thing — doesn't mean he's not still an Earthling regardless and taken into account when Kuririn is labeled the strongest one.

[Geridos]

Tenshinhan not being an "ordinary" Earthling — which is a given, what with the whole third eye thing — doesn't mean he's not still an Earthling regardless and taken into account when Kuririn is labeled the strongest one.

That's like saying Krillin > Gohan because Gohan isn't a complete Earthling.

[Kaboom]

No it's not. Gohan is consistently and distinctly labeled as as a half-and-half Earthling-Saiyan hybrid, as something that's a major part of his character and role in the story. Tenshinhan, on the other hand, is never treated as anything other than an Earthling with a particular quirk. Even the original Daizenshuu tidbit that attributed his third eye to some distant alien ancestry still categorized him as an Earthling anyway.

[Zephyr]

I wouldn't call Kuririn an ordinary human being either. He has no nose, yet he's perfectly capable of smelling!

[Koitsukai]

I don't think saying Ten isn't an ordinary human, necessarily, means he must not be a human. Just not an ordinary one.

[MasenkoHA]

If if helps Tenshinhan fans, Ten is probably the strongest Dragon Ball character that doesn’t benefit from alien genetics or given a handout power up

[TobyS]

Yeah Guidebooks saying Ten has alien ancestry but still saying he's an earthling, and Yamcha/Toriyama/Guidebooks saying Kuririn is the strongest human should be the end of it.

You just have to imagine that Kuririn had a massive lead from the Guru power up, and have his stopping training very late into the post Cell 7 year gap, and then resumes for the rest of the series to keep him above Ten.
Doesn't mean Ten couldn't pull ahead after whenever that last statement was made. (The TOP?) or after the series ends.
And Ten could still "win in a fight" with Kikoho and stuff even if he's stayed weaker in pure strength forever. Whatever floats your boat.

[Kid Buu]

If if helps Tenshinhan fans, Ten is probably the strongest Dragon Ball character that doesn’t benefit from alien genetics or given a handout power up

Does Yamcha get a silver medal in this race?

[Skar]

Yamcha is technically the strongest normal human without any mutations since Tien has a third eye and Krillin has no nose.

[MasenkoHA]

Yeah Guidebooks saying Ten has alien ancestry but still saying he's an earthling, and Yamcha/Toriyama/Guidebooks saying Kuririn is the strongest human should be the end of it.

You just have to imagine that Kuririn had a massive lead from the Guru power up, and have his stopping training very late into the post Cell 7 year gap, and then resumes for the rest of the series to keep him above Ten.
Doesn't mean Ten couldn't pull ahead after whenever that last statement was made. (The TOP?) or after the series ends.
And Ten could still "win in a fight" with Kikoho and stuff even if he's stayed weaker in pure strength forever. Whatever floats your boat.

That was always my assumption that the power up from The Grand Elder put Krillin way ahead of the other earthlings up to that point it was confirmed Tenshinhan was stronger than Krillin when Bulma was detecting battle powers to find the Z warriors

It doesn’t help the anime added the fight with Ginyus on Kaio’s planet making it seem like Kaio’s training put them way above Krillin and Gohan after their Grand Elder power ups when in reality they probably weren’t much stronger than Goku when he came back to fight the Saiyans.

[WittyUsername]

I always hated this idea that Tenshinhan has to have alien genetics just because he has a third eye. Why does every fantastical thing about the Dragon Ball world have to circle back to aliens? Are Oolong, Puar and Pilaf aliens too?

[Yuji]

I always hated this idea that Tenshinhan has to have alien genetics just because he has a third eye. Why does every fantastical thing about the Dragon Ball world have to circle back to aliens? Are Oolong, Puar and Pilaf aliens too?

Nowadays it all circles back to demons.

[BernardoCairo]

Kuririn suddenly being stronger than Tenshinhan never made any sense. It's hard to believe.
Tenshinhan was always one or two steps ahead of him, trains harder and knows more techniques than any other Z fighter pretry much. He also has more impressive feats.
Kuririn had his potential unlocked in Namek by another person and that's about it.

[Zephyr]

Kuririn suddenly being stronger than Tenshinhan never made any sense. It's hard to believe.
Tenshinhan was always one or two steps ahead of him, trains harder and knows more techniques than any other Z fighter pretry much. He also has more impressive feats.
Kuririn had his potential unlocked in Namek by another person and that's about it.

I agree with this. But, make sense or not, that seems to be the consistent official position. And I think I understand why it is, to an extent.

I think it's likely a symptom of the revolving door of main cast members, and Tenshinhan naturally making his inevitable exit. After their deaths in the Saiyan arc, the human/Earthling warriors not named Kuririn are pretty largely abandoned as characters. Like I said in another recent thread about Tenshinhan:

Toriyama only juggles so many main cast members at a time. There are always new strong guys getting added to the cast rather than keeping the same consistent stable, so it kind of turns into a revolving door of companions and rivals for Goku. I think Gaffer Tape made the point in one of his Saiyan arc videos that Tenshinhan and Chaozu were basically replaced by Piccolo and Gohan, and I can definitely see that.

Then there is what I observed in the Unpopular Opinions Thread last year:

Tenshinhan is the only one who says "I want to test myself" and later does not end up testing himself before getting cold feet (and it does make him look like a hypocrite who is all talk, which was either not Toriyama's intention and is thus incredibly sloppy on his part, or was his intention and makes for a far more egregious 'character assassination' than what happened with cheater!Yamcha earlier in the arc; this would be kind of funny, given Ten's previous goal of being an assassin).

Putting these together: Toriyama's only going to bother focusing on so many main characters at a time. With their deaths in the Saiyan arc, I think he stopped caring so much about Yamcha, Tenshinhan, and Chaozu, such that whatever bits of characterization he threw at them weren't as well thought out or meaningful as the stuff he wrote for other characters. Yamcha, demonstrably the more faithful partner in his relationship with Bulma, being framed as a cheater also feels like a casualty of this.

These characters are still around, but the story isn't really about them in any meaningful way, anymore. Especially given how exhausted and burnt out Toriyama was by the time he was writing the Boo arc, he probably wasn't putting any thought into how well Tenshinhan should logically stack up against Kuririn, when he was writing Yamcha's conversation with Marron. But what was written is what was written, and that's what gets reproduced in supplementary material. So, it is what it is.

Kuririn is officially stronger than Tenshinhan, even if he arguably shouldn't be. We can debate the specifics of the Grand Elder's power-up vs. Kaio's training, and all kinds of other things, but I doubt any of that was on Toriyama's mind when he was writing and drawing Chapter 439.

[Hugo Boss]

That may be the official stance, but Super has introduced some nuances that complicate the idea of Krillin being definitively stronger than Tenshinhan.

When they each fought Goku, neither Krillin nor Tenshinhan was the one who could actually parry him, it was Roshi. Tenshinhan even lost to Roshi in direct combat, while Krillin performed well against Goku, but more due to clever tournament tactics than raw power.

On the other hand, Tenshinhan’s Shin Kikoho was strong enough to hold off Cell for a while, and it would probably work just as well against Krillin or Roshi if he landed a hit. So rather than a clear-cut ranking, it seems more like a rock-paper-scissors scenario where their strengths lie in different areas. I doubt we’ll ever get a totally definitive answer.

[Koitsukai]

What's odd about all of this is that, while Krilin is stated in and out-of-universe to be the strongest earthling, and Tenshinhan has never been said to be an alien in the actual material, in the last 2 arcs, it was not the pachinko ball who got called into action but the taller pachinko ball.

In the Cell arc, Krilin was given a different role, trying to stop the androids with technology. While, the dude that managed to overpower the big bad for a moment was Tenshinhan, something so far nobody had been able to do.
Then the Buu arc comes along, and Tenshinhan is the one that is still giving his best vs Buutenks. Now with not as much luck, but still, for that final stand Toriyama went with Tenshinhan and chose to have Krilin be eaten many chapters ago.
It's certainly strange that he builds up one character with statements and another one with actions.

To me, is still difficult to accept that Krilin could pull out an attack more dangerous than the Shin Kikoho, an attack that I imagine could leave Android 18 badly injured. And more so when the author never even let a scenario like that occur.

[WittyUsername]

A bit of a tangent, but I’ve always liked to imagine what it would’ve been like if Goku used the Potara to fuse with Ten instead of Vegeta. I never understood why Goku was about to fuse with Mr. Satan instead of just having Dende heal Tenshinhan, unless we’re supposed to assume that Super Boo’s kick killed him.

[MasenkoHA]

A bit of a tangent, but I’ve always liked to imagine what it would’ve been like if Goku used the Potara to fuse with Ten instead of Vegeta. I never understood why Goku was about to fuse with Mr. Satan instead of just having Dende heal Tenshinhan, unless we’re supposed to assume that Super Boo’s kick killed him.

Toriyama might have forgotten about Dende’s healing powers in the 4 years of real time between writing the Freeza arc and the Boo arc

[ZombieVito]

If if helps Tenshinhan fans, Ten is probably the strongest Dragon Ball character that doesn’t benefit from alien genetics or given a handout power up

Does Yamcha get a silver medal in this race?

No Tenshinhan does. Roshi managed to surpass him as seen in the ToP arc when they fought.