Why scaling matters

[Gokube]

Power levels don't matter. Numbers don't matter. But scaling matters.

The reason a lot of Super falls flat is because Dragon Ball isn't just an anime about breaking limits and reaching new heights of power to overcome threats, but it's about HOW they get there. Modern Dragon Ball is like watching Rocky, but instead of a new method with a new trainer and new inspiration to go to-to-toe with the champ, Rocky just does the same stuff he was doing at the beginning of the movie and suddenly leaps ahead in ability.

Dragon Ball and Z too had instances of unconvincing leaps in power but nothing anywhere near as egregious as Super. All Super does is make Goku and Vegeta look like chumps for striving and struggling with new methods of self-improvement for everyone else to just catch up off screen with no new stimulus.


Dragon Ball and Z weren't perfect, but we had:

Grandpa Gohan basic training.
Oozaru
Master Roshi's training
Climbing Korin's Tower
Korin's training
3 years in the wilderness
King Piccolo wishes for youth
Potential unlocked (or zenkai retroactively) through the super holy water

Piccolo Jr. created to be stronger
Popo's training in an environment where oxygen is thin
Kami's training in an environment where oxygen is thin
Goku is an from a special warrior alien race and his brother has been conquering planets whilst Goku was fighting on a relatively weak Earth

Gohan's hybrid hidden power
Run Snake Way
Earthlings training with Popo but ALSO together (advantage over Goku)

10Gs training
Kaioken
Vegeta is an elite born with an exceptional strength for an already exceptional race
Kaioken X 3
Kaioken X 4
Vegeta has never truly been tested. He is exceptionally strong in the universe and any time he'd face an issue conquering a world, he'd just turn oozaru. Goku showed him what was possible and Freeza needing him alive meant he kept getting zenkais on Namek. Saiyans don't have access to senzu beans, so usually, when facing a tough enough opponent to harm them that badly, they would just die

Guru unlocks potential
100Gs training
More zenkais. Saiyans are not historically pushed to zenkais whilst already being this strong. They'd just die. They don't usually face Freeza's best men head on. They are getting an initial huge power increase because this is only the beginning of true Saiyan potential

Piccolo becomes a fused being
Freeza's second form
Freeza's third form
Freeza's true form
Vegeta "cheat" zenkai (not as effective as a real beat down and can only be exploited once imo)

Goku's zenkais push him even further thanks to 100Gs and Kaioken pushing his body to experience higher levels than it "should"
Freeza 50% power
Kaioken X 10
Kaioken X 20
Super Saiyan
Freeza 100% power
Mecha Freeza
Super Saiyan from the future
Goku has been training for a year and a half
3 years sparring and now Piccolo is a fused being so his gains are massively increased. He's not just Piccolo anymore

300Gs
Androids made to defeat these fighters with their data and DNA

Super Saiyan Vegeta
Stronger androids
Cell made from the greatest fighters' DNA
Piccolo fused with Kami
Semi-Perfect Cell
A year inside a room with 10Gs and wildly swinging temperatures

Ascended Super Saiyan Vegeta/Trunks
Perfect Cell
A year inside a room with 10Gs, wildly swinging temperatures, whilst staying in ssj 24/7 AND sparring with the character with the most potential continuously

Another year in the ROSAT
Super Saiyan Two/Gohan's hidden power
Cell's zenkai
7 years of Otherworld training with no need to eat or sleep, no aging, a god who can summon any training equipment and all the greatest sparring partners to ever live
Goten and Trunks grew up around mastered ssjs, ssj2s and a super Namek. Can use ssj as easily as breathing. Vegeta trains Trunks and Trunks trains Goten through "play fighting" and they're both hybrids

King of the Demon Realm
Majin Vegeta
Super Saiyan 2 Goku
Majin Boo
Super Saiyan 3 Goku. He claims the form chugs energy in the living world, so it's safe to assume attaining this form was also greatly helped by being dead
Fusion
Super Boo
ROSAT to get any help they can
Super Saiyan Two and Three Gotenks. Ssj3 drains the fusion time instead of stamina. This is just how the magical nature of fusion allows the boys to achieve the unnatural level of ssj3, much like Goku needed unnatural circumstances

Z Sword training
Elder Kai unlocks the potential of Gohan and takes it beyond its limit. He is now also an adult

Potara fusion


In Super we have:

God ritual
Goku and Vegeta train with an angel

Everyone else catches up by doing non-specific things with no access to any new stimulus whatsoever and usually without even having a consistent sparring partner. They "just trained".

Even something like Freeza naturally, with no training, being at 120,000,000. Well, it does make sense for him to have immense potential in that case, but what did he DO to unlock it? Arnold Schwarzenegger has greater muscle building potential than me, but he still needs to do something challenging for him. If I lifted weights at my max and consistently increased them, whilst Arnie never went beyond 50lbs, he'd remain where he started. Goku trained at 100Gs when he was at like, 20,000 maybe. So Freeza would walk into that gravity chamber and go 'I can barely feel anything'. He needs stimulus for the level he's at. What is Piccolo doing on Earth, by himself, that's equivalent to Angel training?

When Raditz arrived and blew Dragon Ball out of the water, it made sense and was shocking. The basics Goku learnt from Earth though were fundamental and he quickly grew through the ranks. Super makes no sense. Vegeta acts like a wise master compared to Cabba's green amateur. However if Cabba had arrived a year earlier, before Whis' training, all the experience of Z Vegeta would be crushed as Cabba sneezes him out of existence, if base Goku = Godku is supposed to be believed. Really? Everyone in the tournament of power would crush Boohan? Every other universe is just casually stronger than the evil of time immemorial who terrorised Universe 7? Why? That just falls completely flat and undermines Z entirely.

[Koitsukai]

That's a good rundown of every single power up in the franchise.

I, overall, agree. It applies to Daima, too, with Vegeta unlocking a form that Goku needed 7 years in the afterlife to get. And with Goku getting an even stronger form in just one year.
There's also that meme of Krilin failing to make Perfect Cell flinch and then Cop Krilin kicking Cell Max in the mouth with much more impact.

However, some things should be said. The anime is the one that treats everybody like above God tier, or at least creates that sense due to so many writers doing their own thing in non-main arc episodes, and then abiding to the Tori-notes for the main arcs.
The manga is much more conservative, even by the Moro arc, for the goons to be able to do something they needed to be powered up, greatly, by Moro.

- Of course, Gohan's growth cannot be excused, the whole hybrids > saiyans is taken to the extreme. Training on his own and with Piccolo for a while did wonders for him, putting him almost on par with his father, by the ToP.

- Trunks, though, in the manga remains a regular high-end Z fighter; in the anime he is SSB level with his weird new SS form.

- Piccolo and the others are treated as regular fighters in the manga; while in the anime, Piccolo is schooling Buu arc Ultimate Gohan.

- 17 being an android is a Be-As-Strong-As-The-Author-Pleases card. So, I don't really see the issue. But the manga doesn't go to town with him like the anime did.

[dbgtFO]

Hahaha yeah
Just imagine instead of Beerus making an appearance in Battle of Gods, Cabba shows up instead, having somehow found a way to travel between universes.
Confronts Goku and Vegeta just like Raditz did to Goku and Piccolo way back when and can crush their full power forms just as easily, in BASE form.
Then informs them he's like 20 years old at best and is pretty sure there's another Saiyan stronger than him.

[Hugo Boss]

That’s exactly why the whole Base Cabba stomping SS4 Gogeta meme exists. It highlights how absurd it would be if we blindly scaled Super’s characters without any context.

When Cabba was introduced, he was just portrayed as a decently talented Saiyan, not some legendary prodigy who could challenge the major threats from Z, much less top-tier fusions. Super’s scaling often needs to be taken in-universe and case-by-case, not applied retroactively across the entire franchise.

[SupremeKai25]

Hahaha yeah
Just imagine instead of Beerus making an appearance in Battle of Gods, Cabba shows up instead, having somehow found a way to travel between universes.
Confronts Goku and Vegeta just like Raditz did to Goku and Piccolo way back when and can crush their full power forms just as easily, in BASE form.
Then informs them he's like 20 years old at best and is pretty sure there's another Saiyan stronger than him.

You can quite literally make this exact same argument for Buu saga Goten vs. Namek Freeza.

For that matter, popular memes also exist about Goten vs. Namek Freeza. Cabba is certainly not the only one who gets this treatment.

[GokuHater]

Odern Dragon Ball and the original series both have some nearly impossible and illogical leaps of strength. What does help however is if we see these leaps justified.
I feel the viewer is more likely to "forgive" the absurd of the power level if the training to achieve it was cool, believable and most of all fun to watch/read.

I think I am not alone when I say Master Roshi's train ing and Popo/Kami training are some of the best training arcs we saw and the effect is greatly more satisfying thanks to this.

On the other hand we have stuff like characters firing Kamehamehas to the ocean repeatedly or the idea of Zenkai Boosts which can work, if you stop thinking about it but make it absurd of a power leap from Vegeta Saiyan Saga strength to be on the level of first form Freeza, with whom he never stood a chance his entire life.

Super didn't surely start the trend with treating training and achieving new heights like fodder but also certainly didn't help with some of the most obscure explanations about characters getting new strength (going to RoSaT for 3 years which feels like a walk in the park, training for 4 months and suddenly being able to be as strong as gods, conveniently finding a RoSaT dimension and training for 10 years).

But to be fair, when Super does it right, it does it right. There's a reason the episode contains Goku and Veggie training at Whis is that popular during the most probably lowest of Super's existence.

[Vegeta th3 4th]

When Cabba was introduced, he was just portrayed as a decently talented Saiyan, not some legendary prodigy who could challenge the major threats from Z...

He was able to hold his own against a Vegeta who had been through hell and back for DECADES, on top of training with an actual angel for a few months. Prodigy isn't a strong enough word to describe him.

[Hugo Boss]

When Cabba was introduced, he was just portrayed as a decently talented Saiyan, not some legendary prodigy who could challenge the major threats from Z...

He was able to hold his own against a Vegeta who had been through hell and back for DECADES, on top of training with an actual angel for a few months. Prodigy isn't a strong enough word to describe him.

The idea that he could have actually threatened Vegeta if he’d shown up a year earlier (before Whis’ training) kind of breaks the whole logic of Dragon Ball power scale. It’s one thing to be gifted like Broly or Kale, but saying Cabba would stomp Freeza, Cell, Boo, and even fusions just because he’s from U6 feels like a stretch. Ordinary talent doesn’t erase decades of experience and absurdly high battle stakes.

[Vegeta th3 4th]

The idea that he could have actually threatened Vegeta if he’d shown up a year earlier (before Whis’ training) kind of breaks the whole logic of Dragon Ball power scale.

Most of Super breaks the logic of Dragon Ball. I don't know if the writers were that uninformed about Dragon Ball, or if they were just trying to get a reaction out of people. Then there was the lack of common conventions of good storytelling, such as paying off build up. Resurrection F, U6 tournament, and the Zamasu arcs were all build up and hype with ZERO pay off at the end.

[Koitsukai]

I think the issue was the disconnect between the writers that had Goku oneshot Z at times, and those following the same steps as the manga.
When the main arc lands, he is no longer that OP. He is usually portrayed similarly to what the manga does, with some minor upgrades (like using SS3 in the anime against Trunks vs needing SSG in the manga). But still, one would think his base form would've been enough if we take into account Base Vegeta tanking SS3 Gotenks.

Given that we have the manga to go by, as well, we can conclude that Toriyama never intended (in his DBS notes, not in the movies that were meant as standalone products) to have Goku oneshot Z.

About Cabba, I don't think it's a problem to have him stronger than the Buu arc SS, I mean, what did people expect? a Zarbon level fighter? he might be scrawny and young, but he is still part of the Sadala Elite forces and is on the brink of SS. Also, they evolved without a tail, meaning they probably had that ohzaru boost built in already.
What would be the point of introducing fodder? U6 saiyans have their own experiences, anyway, they have a much stronger Freeza, too.
He is still light years away from the God forms.
Cabba showing up a year or two prior wouldn’t change a thing. He would still need SS to survive, and even if he unlocks it, Buu arc SS2 Vegeta is beyond his capacities.

The fandom taking everything at face value, like it's the retelling of real events and not the fictional product of several people with different ideas, doesn't help either. But with a little bit of common sense, we can weed out the outliers that don't reflect the main intentions. Outliers that didn’t get carried over to the actual arcs, anyway.

[Vegeta th3 4th]

About Cabba, I don't think it's a problem to have him stronger than the Buu arc SS, I mean, what did people expect? a Zarbon level fighter? he might be scrawny and young...

That's the problem right here: he's a stick figure. If you're not going to spend the time explaining why someone is strong, at the very least you could make them look strong. They might've been able to get away with doing neither if he wasn't a Saiyan, the problem was that he is, and we know how Saiyans work. Frost for example was weak, but he used poison to even the playing field. We didn't have much backstory on Hit, but he had that timeskip ability. Botomo was another character who wasn't strong, but he couldn't be hurt due to his biological nature. Maggenta was made from metal. Cabba is strong...because ? They actually did a good job justifying the others holding their own against our team, but they completely dropped the ball with Cabba. Instead of Cabba, why not just introduce Kale instead with her Berserk form ?

[Koitsukai]

About Cabba, I don't think it's a problem to have him stronger than the Buu arc SS, I mean, what did people expect? a Zarbon level fighter? he might be scrawny and young...

That's the problem right here: he's a stick figure. If you're not going to spend the time explaining why someone is strong, at the very least you could make them look strong. They might've been able to get away with doing neither if he wasn't a Saiyan, the problem was that he is, and we know how Saiyans work. Frost for example was weak, but he used poison to even the playing field. We didn't have much backstory on Hit, but he had that timeskip ability. Botomo was another character who wasn't strong, but he couldn't be hurt due to his biological nature. Maggenta was made from metal. Cabba is strong...because ? They actually did a good job justifying the others holding their own against our team, but they completely dropped the ball with Cabba. Instead of Cabba, why not just introduce Kale instead with her Berserk form ?

Well, that's your problem, then. I have no quarrels with scrawny yet strong characters, and he is not that strong either, he wouldn't survive the Buu arc... shit, he probably wouldn't survive the last portion of the Cell arc either, not until the ToP at least, when he gets SS2. In fact, he needs to unlock SS just to survive the androids.
Vegeta was a little shit when introduced and was a powerhouse, it's not until he unlocks SS that he starts developing muscles. Freeza's strongest form was a Roswell alien. Majin Buu wasn't that threatening either, he was Brando in his late 70s.
Zeno, the top authority is a baby. SSG is also leaner. UI in the manga is also depicted as less bulkier and that's the pinnacle of martial arts.

Toriyama often played with the contrast of strong characters looking scrawny or harmless.

And we don't know much about how the U6 saiyans work, they have no tails, their biology clearly is slightly different than the U7 saiyans. That's already a good enough excuse to not dwell on them looking scrawny while being powerful.
It's clearly a U6 Saiyan trait, because not even as SS2 they have bulkier physiques. And LSS Kale's muscles are nowhere near those of the U7 Brolys at their strongest. She's huge but not thaaat huge.

[Vegeta th3 4th]

I have no quarrels with scrawny yet strong characters.

Neither do I, it just didn't work with Cabba.

He is not that strong either, he wouldn't survive the Buu arc... shit, he probably wouldn't survive the last portion of the Cell arc either.

He was holding his own against a Vegeta who had been training with an angel. It's just another example of the current writers failing to think things through.

Vegeta was a little shit when introduced and was a powerhouse.

Vegeta was not a stick figure though, and what he lacked in physical appearance, he made up for it in self confidence, brutality, and intelligence. Cabba has none of that. He's just a bad character in every aspect, be it from a design perspective or characterization.

Toriyama often played with the contrast of strong characters looking scrawny or harmless.

Just because it works for certain characters doesn't mean it works for everyone.

We don't know much about how the U6 saiyans work, they have no tails, their biology clearly is slightly different than the U7 saiyans. That's already a good enough excuse to not dwell on them looking scrawny while being powerful.

There's never a good excuse for bad writing/designs.

[Koitsukai]

He was holding his own against a Vegeta who had been training with an angel. It's just another example of the current writers failing to think things through.

Training with an angel doesn’t make lower forms vastly stronger. Cabba still can't handle SSB.
Manga Trunks, said to be only stronger than SS2 Kid Gohan, fights Goku evenly in equal forms, it’s god forms that matter after angel training, not base or SS forms. That level of power scaling only begins during the Moro arc.

Cabba fighting base Vegeta isn’t much different from facing Buu arc Vegeta, the Black arc itself supports that when Future Trunks is reintroduced.

You seem to believe that angel training boosts all forms massively, but the series later discredits that belief. I get the confusion, given how the anime handled things, but that only happens in non-official arc episodes, which is an elegant way of saying "outside of bullshit filler episodes with developments that are dropped when the actual stories take place."
So, relying on episodes with developments that not even the anime itself deems relevant enough to include in the main arcs, just to discredit the overarching narrative, comes off as disingenuous.

[Vegeta th3 4th]

Relying on episodes with developments that not even the anime itself deems relevant enough to include in the main arcs, just to discredit the overarching narrative, comes off as disingenuous.

That show had no idea what it was doing, as the rules were changing and contradicting each other seemingly every other episode. Remember how in one episode Vegeta had no power left after taking down Toppo, only to be able to fully power up the very next episode ? That was basically the norm in Super. There was clearly no guidebook that the writers had to follow, as it seemed like everyone was just doing their own thing without any attention to what came before or what would come after. I've been re-watching DB & Z recently (I'm at the Ginyu fight now) and the writing never went off the rails the way it did on Super.

[super michael]

He was holding his own against a Vegeta who had been training with an angel. It's just another example of the current writers failing to think things through.

Training with an angel doesn’t make lower forms vastly stronger. Cabba still can't handle SSB.
Manga Trunks, said to be only stronger than SS2 Kid Gohan, fights Goku evenly in equal forms, it’s god forms that matter after angel training, not base or SS forms. That level of power scaling only begins during the Moro arc.

Cabba fighting base Vegeta isn’t much different from facing Buu arc Vegeta, the Black arc itself supports that when Future Trunks is reintroduced.

You seem to believe that angel training boosts all forms massively, but the series later discredits that belief. I get the confusion, given how the anime handled things, but that only happens in non-official arc episodes, which is an elegant way of saying "outside of bullshit filler episodes with developments that are dropped when the actual stories take place."
So, relying on episodes with developments that not even the anime itself deems relevant enough to include in the main arcs, just to discredit the overarching narrative, comes off as disingenuous.

Goku and Vegeta training with a Angel made their base from stronger than the Z fighters in RoF.
Freeza in his 1st form could beat the entire Z fighters, except Goku and Vegeta. Freeza needed his final form to challenge Base Goku and Base Vegeta.

So training with a Angel does increase their Base form and other transformation. Base Cabba is stronger than Final Form Freeza at least.

Base Copy Vegeta beat SSJ3 Gotenks like he was nothing.

[super michael]

Hahaha yeah
Just imagine instead of Beerus making an appearance in Battle of Gods, Cabba shows up instead, having somehow found a way to travel between universes.
Confronts Goku and Vegeta just like Raditz did to Goku and Piccolo way back when and can crush their full power forms just as easily, in BASE form.
Then informs them he's like 20 years old at best and is pretty sure there's another Saiyan stronger than him.

You can quite literally make this exact same argument for Buu saga Goten vs. Namek Freeza.

For that matter, popular memes also exist about Goten vs. Namek Freeza. Cabba is certainly not the only one who gets this treatment.

Goten was born from Super Saiyan parent, plus we know it is possible for Saiyan to be born with a high power level. We also know that hybrid Saiyan has more potential than pure blooded Saiyan.

Goten trained with Chi Chi, who is great at hand to hand combat. Her fighting style resembles Master Roshi Turtle Style. Goten also trained with Trunks and even sparred against each other, then later he trained with Gohan.
Then later Goten trained in the ROSAT with Trunks. They trained as individuals and as a fusion.


What training did Cabba do again? Yet he surpassed RoF Freeza and everyone on earth excluding Goku and Vegeta.
What training did Freeza do again? Just beating Tagoma who is a Zarbon tier fighter, yet he surpassed everyone including Goku and Vegeta SSB form.
What training did Kuririn do again? Just training in the gym, yet he surpassed SSJ3 Gotenks


Cabba being slim isn't a bad thing, but he has zero muscle which is bad. So him training doesn't give him muscle, that is very lazy. Even transforming doesn't give him muscles. Imagine if he gained SSG, what would he look like.

[Gokube]

Toriyama clearly changed his mind about Goku absorbing the power of ssjg into his base when the series went past the movies, but his notes didn't inform the anime writers. I refuse to believe that little bug who was hard to hit in the TOP etc, who were a threat to Goku in base, is stronger than Boohan.

Basil was also a threat to Goku. The same Basil who got battered by Mr Boo, before Boo had done any training (his training is ludicrous) and this was a powered up Basil. How can Basil lose to Mr Boo but be a threat to a godly base+++ Goku?

17's gains are funny when you think about it because not only is the 'he's been training since Cell' non specific and provides no clarity on what stimulus he could possibly get by himself, on Earth, considering how strong he already is, but when you think about it logically, it throws other things into chaos. When someone starts training, he'd get his newbie gains. With no new Gods and training methods like Goku got to make huge new leaps later in his life, 17's biggest gains should be at the START of his Earth training. So he had 7 years of that before Boo arrived. So why didn't a ssjg tier 17 show up and crush Boo into nothing?

[Koitsukai]

Goku and Vegeta training with a Angel made their base from stronger than the Z fighters in RoF.
Freeza in his 1st form could beat the entire Z fighters, except Goku and Vegeta. Freeza needed his final form to challenge Base Goku and Base Vegeta.

So training with a Angel does increase their Base form and other transformation. Base Cabba is stronger than Final Form Freeza at least.

Base Copy Vegeta beat SSJ3 Gotenks like he was nothing.

RoF Piccolo struggled with a guy said to be above Zarbon. RoF is a big mess that makes no sense at all. Besides, they were conceived as standalone features, Goku never absorbs SSG in the manga, and does and doesn't in the anime, depending on the source of the episode, (if it was from a Toei exclusive mini arc, he does; if it was Toriyama exclusive arc he does not).
The RoF feats can also be explained by The God Beyond Base, a god ki-fueled state only seen in filler episodes, in RoF and never again.

Base Trunks does not surpass RoF Freeza, yet he fights evenly with a Black arc Goku. The GBB had been dropped by that time, those feats were due to that hybrid state.
Cabba needed SS2 to survive Freeza in the ToP, even though they both had grown stronger. He should be eating Freeza's heart with a 100x boost on top of already being stronger, don't you agree? Base Cabba is not touching RoF Freeza.
In the manga, Caulifla, even stronger than Cabba, needs SS to fight ToP Freeza.
Gokube just brought up another example from the ToP, discrediting the notion that the filler episodes set the tone for the entire show across every medium.

It’s extremely obtuse to put more weight on the early developments than on the later ones, especially when the latter explicitly override them. Treating early or filler content as gospel is just cherry-picking.

It’s not a retelling of actual events, therefore we can, and probably must, weed out the outliers, since it isn’t a anime-only discussion, the entire show needs to be included, and the manga has been scale-cheking the movies, just like the main arcs have been scale-checking the filler episodes of the anime.

Not everything counts, we already did that shit with DBZ, we don't pretend Goku arrived in two spaceships to Earth, right? even though filler episodes imply so.

Even Toei values the main arcs more than their own filler, yet some fans will do the opposite and kid themselves into thinking literally everybody can oneshot Buuhan because it supports the notion that DBS doesn't make sense. DBS only makes sense when viewed as a whole, not just through anime filler.

[Hugo Boss]

The idea that he could have actually threatened Vegeta if he’d shown up a year earlier (before Whis’ training) kind of breaks the whole logic of Dragon Ball power scale.

Most of Super breaks the logic of Dragon Ball. I don't know if the writers were that uninformed about Dragon Ball, or if they were just trying to get a reaction out of people. Then there was the lack of common conventions of good storytelling, such as paying off build up. Resurrection F, U6 tournament, and the Zamasu arcs were all build up and hype with ZERO pay off at the end.

I totally get what you’re saying. Super definitely struggles with consistency in both power scaling and storytelling structure. But I think the real issue is a narrative disconnect between Super arcs and original manga and even within Super arcs themselves. For example, in the Champa arc, Goku and Vegeta’s base forms are treated like they’re below Final Form Frost (who shouldn’t be stronger than Namek Freeza), which just doesn’t track with where they were at RoF.

The episodes occasionally “reset” the power scale for tension, then jump back to god-tier feats a few episodes later. It creates this weird Schrödinger’s Dragon Ball effect, where a character’s power depends entirely on what the story needs in the moment, even if that means contradicting prior stakes or training payoffs.