Dragon Ball Super Strength Discussion Thread

[GreatSaiyaman123]

Doesn't matter. That's a pedantic argument.

Beerus assessed base Goku and thought he didn't measure up to Frieza; that much is clear-cut, and I don't really care if people still have a problem with it. If he's still not stronger than Frieza by the time of the movie, there's more than sufficient reason to doubt his SS3 form being stronger than Gohan at his peak.

As others in this thread have been telling you, it's more likely that Gohan just got weaker over time. It doesn't make any sense that he would slack off for all this time and only suddenly experience a drastic decrease in power at some point between BoG and RF.

Also, this doesn't even contradict the stuff you keep bringing up about Goku being the best by Super's continuity. Of course he's the best! Gohan didn't water his garden.

That just means SSJ3 Goku and Ultimate Gohan were closer than base Goku and 100% Freeza.

Toriyama saying he chose the time when everyone was at their best throws a wrench on all that. Garden watered or not, he was still at the top of his game until Pan was born.

In the Buu saga, it made clear when Goku and Vegeta surpassed Cell Games Gohan, previous strongest character, only when both fully powered up in SSJ2. BoG treats Goku as the strongest without any mention of surpassing the strongest of the previous saga.

I don't know which is the definitive version but Toriyama wrote the entire script for BoG movie. Gotenks and Gohan losing power since the Buu saga fits with how Gohan lost power between the Cell and Buu sagas by slacking off. It still applied to RoF a year later since Gohan needed SSJ against a henchmen that Piccolo struggled against implying base Gohan couldn't have won.

Gotenks was only shown using SSJ3 in anime or manga exclusive scenes. The next time we see him appear in something we know Toriyama wrote was Super Hero where they were so rusty they messed up on the fusion. It's consistent with their EoZ depiction of losing interest in training and forced to join the tournament which is only a year or two after EoZ.

To be fair, Gohan and Gotenks are never acknowledged to be stronger than Goku in the Boo Saga either.

Gohan still having his Ultimate form, wearing his Gi under his normal clothes, and Toriyama saying he chose to place BoG in a time when everybody would be at "MAX strength" really doesn't feel like he was considering Gohan to be rusty at the time. It wasn't until RoF that he considered having Gohan lose power.

Even in the Boo Saga, there's an argument to be made that Gohan didn't lose power from lack of training itself, he just couldn't tap into his anger anymore. I think something similar happened in RoF - Gohan's base power is more or less the same (His SSJ form is still far above Piccolo), but he lost Ultimate and can barely go SSJ.

Don't want to derail this, but the Freeza-Goku quote from BoG has been scrutinized like if we were trying to make sense of newly discovered centuries-old texts found on an Egyptian wall.
If that line was even conceived it's because Akira thought it was true.

And I think it works as a boundary for the characters, a baseline to see where they are at that moment in time. Since we don't usually get many of those, I'd cherish it instead of doubting it, because then we would be dragonballsplaining dragonball to its very author.

Toriyama thought a lot of things. He also wrote that "[Base] Gohan is the strongest" in the RoF script and that Glorio is stronger than Kaioshin in Daima. He wasn't a lore-heavy guy and admittedly didn't give much of a damn - He forgot SSJ2 was even a thing!

Anyway, haven't you said before something about Piccolo being stronger than Kaioshin and/or Kaioshin only being stronger than 1st form Freeza?

[Mr Baggins]

That just means SSJ3 Goku and Ultimate Gohan were closer than base Goku and 100% Freeza.

Again, this is pedantic at best and mathematically inconceivable at worst. If there's any wiggle room at all, it's almost too small for the assumption you're wanting to rely on.

Utterly massive difference between SS3 Goku and Ultimate Gohan in the Buu arc. Like, there's practically no comparison. You're given a direct measuring stick in Super Buu, a form Goku didn't even want to touch that was completely curbstomped by Gohan. Hell, SS Gotenks – who is far beneath SS3 Gotenks, who in turn is weaker than Ultimate Gohan – is stronger than SS3 Goku.

What you suggest is doubtful, and that's being generous. I won't claim it's impossible outright, but it's a stretch.

Toriyama saying he chose the time when everyone was at their best throws a wrench on all that. Garden watered or not, he was still at the top of his game until Pan was born.

You're also taking this statement wildly out of context. Toriyama was explaining why a story centered on Goku wasn't set after EoZ. The translation you're quoting doesn't even have him saying that literally every character was at their best, instead using words like "almost". Gohan barely fights in this movie.

Even the probability of Toriyama just forgetting Gohan's peak strength is higher than Goku leapfrogging ahead of it with SS3. Or, more likely, Gohan's reduction in power that becomes a recurring element in DBS simply got its start here.

[dbgtFO]

Toriyama never said that.
That was a comment left by whoever was formatting the interview.
You can tell by the other ridiculous level of blatant posturing this statement is.
It's textbook marketing strategy, not a reasonable statement.

It was a Q&A with the man himself.

Out of all your characters, which one is the most (blank)?
Cool: Goku
“I think it’s Goku.” The always pure strongest in the universe. Goku is #1 after all!

I don’t see any posturing here. He’s just highlighting a very simple logic of a very simple story - the MC is the strongest. Gohan was only the strongest when he was trying to be the MC.

Yes and the guy who interviewed him or whoever formatted the Q&A for publishing put in their own comments after certain statements.
Look at the quotation marks of that answer.
It's the same in some other answers: Toriyama gives his answer -> the writer comments on that answer, look at the answer given, when Toriyama names wanting Bulma as a parent.
The writer states [Toriyama] would be a genius too.
It's not comments left by AT, it's just the writer with their own little comments, nothing more.

Sure Goku is the strongesr by BoG, that's fine.

[Mr Baggins]

Another thing I forgot to mention is that Vegeta pre rage boost had better performance against Beerus than Gohan. Guy held his own for a few seconds and even dodged a few of Beerus's punches without immediately going lights-out. Gohan accomplishes jack shit and then gets oneshot.

It beggars belief that Gohan wasn't considerably weaker by that point. It beggars belief that he'd become a full-blown scholar in all the years between the Buu arc and BoG only to just suddenly lose all his power within a year, shortly before RF.

It was obviously a gradual process of getting rustier, like how getting rusty actually works.

[PerhapsTheOtherOne]

Another thing I forgot to mention is that Vegeta pre rage boost had better performance against Beerus than Gohan. Guy held his own for a few seconds and even dodged a few of Beerus's punches without immediately going lights-out. Gohan accomplishes jack shit and then gets oneshot.

It beggars belief that Gohan wasn't considerably weaker by that point. It beggars belief that he'd become a full-blown scholar in all the years between the Buu arc and BoG only to just suddenly lose all his power within a year, shortly before RF.

It was obviously a gradual process of getting rustier, like how getting rusty actually works.

To be fair, Vegeta is both a better fighter AND Beerus seemed to take a particular liking to giving him a hard time given his history with him and his father.

I could buy that Beerus just wanted to beat up Vegeta a bit more personally than just curb-stomping him outright.

[Skar]

To be fair, Gohan and Gotenks are never acknowledged to be stronger than Goku in the Boo Saga either.

Well it did seem clear. Goku didn't think him and Vegeta would stand a chance against base Super Buu without fusion while Gotenks was close to fighting him one on one and Gohan was even stronger.

Gohan still having his Ultimate form, wearing his Gi under his normal clothes, and Toriyama saying he chose to place BoG in a time when everybody would be at "MAX strength" really doesn't feel like he was considering Gohan to be rusty at the time. It wasn't until RoF that he considered having Gohan lose power.

Even in the Boo Saga, there's an argument to be made that Gohan didn't lose power from lack of training itself, he just couldn't tap into his anger anymore. I think something similar happened in RoF - Gohan's base power is more or less the same (His SSJ form is still far above Piccolo), but he lost Ultimate and can barely go SSJ.

Like others have said I don't think that quote meant literally everyone is at their peak power at the time of BoG. It's about why he chose that time period because most characters are as strong as they'll get before the ending then becoming too old or retiring. It still doesn't make sense that he remains at full power for four years and then a sudden drop one year later. A gradual decline over five years seems more likely.

We don't know how much power he lost in RoF but he wasn't sure he could turn SSJ. He was still able to transform at will in the Buu saga so he might've been even more rusty in RoF.

[Koitsukai]

Anyway, haven't you said before something about Piccolo being stronger than Kaioshin and/or Kaioshin only being stronger than 1st form Freeza?

The latter is a stretch on my part, yeah, trying to make sense of things, finding other explanations.
Now, the former to me was a red herring, a way to hype a character, making us think he is just another guy that is better than our boys because of power, when in actuality he is better, plain and simple. He is god, the god of gods. And later on, it turns out god can't even lift.

I always saw that scene that way because, whether I'm right or wrong, there's enough evidence for me to build a case, even if it's weak, while I can't see how the Goku-Freeza quote would be eligible for a second narrative reading. The BoG quote to me seems as straightforward as possible. It is never debunked, it is only disputed by us not agreeing with it.

Even if it doesn't really fit 100% with Z, it is the new black, just like Goku being stronger than Gohan is also the new black, when it was not the case before, but we go along with it anyway and try to see how it came to be. The "did Goku get way stronger or Gohan way weaker?" debate.

It's not that I don't agree that Shin is stronger than Piccolo, I'm on the fence, I guess, but that I'm not convinced the scene was meant to convey that. It was meant to convey much more: that Piccolo, god, is an inferior being.

[Hugo Boss]

Even if it doesn't really fit 100% with Z, it is the new black, just like Goku being stronger than Gohan is also the new black, when it was not the case before, but we go along with it anyway and try to see how it came to be. The "did Goku get way stronger or Gohan way weaker?" debate.

I think this sums up well how I perceive Toriyama’s handling of powerscalling in general in modern era. He doesn’t have a chart of which character had a “X” form that surpasses “Y” in any given situation. The most egregious example is Piccolo being bullied by one of Freeza’s henchmen, despite having far surpassed Freeza from back then, and a few months later giving trouble to a Freeza counterpart.

[GreatSaiyaman123]

There's a lot of beating around the bush with these arguments. Yeah, Goku trains a lot, and Toriyama doesn't care about power scaling or how strong characters should be, but Goku has to be exactly the same as his Boo Saga level because... It would be inconsistent? Even though we're saying Toriyama doesn't care?

[Skar]

Even if it doesn't really fit 100% with Z, it is the new black, just like Goku being stronger than Gohan is also the new black, when it was not the case before, but we go along with it anyway and try to see how it came to be. The "did Goku get way stronger or Gohan way weaker?" debate.

Well it could be both at the same time. Goku getting stronger while Gotenks and Gohan slacked off and lost power. It's unclear how much stronger Goku was by BoG. In the seven years of training in Other World, I think most of his powerup came from unlocking new transformations. In the Buu saga, it was only confirmed he surpassed CG Gohan when he fully powered up in SSJ2 implying that it wasn't clear from his base and SSJ. If you go by SSJ2 being 2x then his base less than doubled in seven years.

In the four years between Buu saga and BoG, he had a job and occasional trained so I think he wouldn't have gained as much as his time chamber and Other World training. He used SSJ3 once in the ToP and said it still drained energy. He either never trained hard enough to overcome it after the Buu saga or it wasn't possible to master like other forms.

[Mr Baggins]

He doesn’t have a chart of which character had a “X” form that surpasses “Y” in any given situation.

While this is true, I would maintain that Toriyama (or to a lesser extent, Toyotaro) was about as consistent as you can/should expect a long-running comic author to reasonably be. These are all artists at the end of the day; not even the best among them are going to get everything perfectly right at all times.

No one is infallible, and nothing has flawless internal consistency. But it's definitely not at Toei levels of nonsense, and we have more than enough information to deduce the Saiyans weren't randomly getting these enormous unstated boosts off the panel.

[Hugo Boss]

There's a lot of beating around the bush with these arguments. Yeah, Goku trains a lot, and Toriyama doesn't care about power scaling or how strong characters should be, but Goku has to be exactly the same as his Boo Saga level because... It would be inconsistent? Even though we're saying Toriyama doesn't care?

It’s not that Goku has to be exactly as strong, but that there was originally such a big difference between his strength and Gohan’s that the narrative doesn’t imply Goku made such a huge leap in power at his first fight against Beerus. This Goku’s ranking among the Saiyans was implied since he defeated Boo and not something he accomplished after those years of training. Similar situation of when he defeated Piccolo and Raditz came a few years later.

I would maintain that Toriyama (or to a lesser extent, Toyotaro) was about as consistent as you can/should expect a long-running comic author to reasonably be. These are all artists at the end of the day; not even the best among them are going to get everything perfectly right at all times.

No one is infallible, and nothing has flawless internal consistency. But it's definitely not at Toei levels of nonsense, and we have more than enough information to deduce the Saiyans weren't randomly getting these enormous unstated boosts off the panel.

I agree on this take, but I’m actually suggesting Toriyama probably didn’t consider Gohan was stronger than Goku as far as he remembered. There are hints of this in BoG and Super, and his comments about Gohan during Super Hero promos, which for me are signs of Toriyama finally recognizing that Gohan should be stronger than he was portraying him in the 2013-2015 movies. This doesn’t make Toriyama less consistent than other writers at Toei, it’s just that even the man himself won’t remember perfectly all the rankings he established a few decades ago in the manga. I’m okay with it.

[Koitsukai]

Akira introduced some contradicting elements in BoG. He set a ceiling for Goku's base form while having his FP surpass Gohan's (by training sporadically and with no sparring partner). It's contradictory because it isn't the proper recipe for huge power growth.
And it cannot work without Gohan becoming weaker, because the gap was too big and Goku isn't really training with Merus now, is he?

What's clear, taking into account how Gohan ends up being in RoF and how well he performs in BoG, is that Gohan's power drop rate is bigger than Goku's growth rate. So both must be true. If Gohan can regain his Ultimate power in a short period of time, then it'd make sense that he could lose it in a short period of time, too.

And here's where the Freeza comment further complicates things: it makes Goku surpassing Gohan harder to justify. Without it, we could simply assume Goku had already surpassed him before BoG, and now he’s just struggling to keep the crown.

To sum up, it feels like Toriyama really wanted Freeza to remain relevant through that comment, even if that meant complicating the logic behind who's the strongest. Perhaps in relation to the Freeza movie that was released two years later?

[Kaboom]

Don't forget that the Battle of Gods movie was originally written and even animated with Super Saiyan Gohan, not Ultimate Gohan, and they just recolored his hair and aura for his short "fight" with Beerus in the 11th hour. The movie also didn't let Gotenks use Super Saiyan 3, either.

No need to give Goku any big power increases when you can just conveniently omit the things that made other characters stronger than him in the first place.

[The Dark Knight]

Don't forget that the Battle of Gods movie was originally written and even animated with Super Saiyan Gohan, not Ultimate Gohan, and they just recolored his hair and aura for his short "fight" with Beerus in the 11th hour. The movie also didn't let Gotenks use Super Saiyan 3, either.

No need to give Goku any big power increases when you can just conveniently omit the things that made other characters stronger than him in the first place.

Wrath of the Dragon and GT also downplayed Gohan and Gotenks' power in favor of elevating Goku's. Daima had the right idea by just not including them at all in the story.

[GreatSaiyaman123]

It’s not that Goku has to be exactly as strong, but that there was originally such a big difference between his strength and Gohan’s that the narrative doesn’t imply Goku made such a huge leap in power at his first fight against Beerus. This Goku’s ranking among the Saiyans was implied since he defeated Boo and not something he accomplished after those years of training. Similar situation of when he defeated Piccolo and Raditz came a few years later.

What this leads me to think is that Toriyama didn’t view the gap as particularly big when he revisited the series in the 2010s. He’s starting off from a different status quo than the one we were left with in the Boo Saga.

Even during the Kid Boo fight Gohan and Gotenks are being conveniently ignored, to a point Vegeta says they’ll all die if the Genki Dama fails.

Don't forget that the Battle of Gods movie was originally written and even animated with Super Saiyan Gohan, not Ultimate Gohan, and they just recolored his hair and aura for his short "fight" with Beerus in the 11th hour. The movie also didn't let Gotenks use Super Saiyan 3, either.

Can’t forget something that’s not true. It was never in the script, and in the end it’s the final product that matters.

And I know we all prefer to pretend the movie is the real deal, but Toriyama was behind a lot of the changes in DBS. Including Gohan never using SSJ.

Most likely the script never specified what form Gohan used vs Beerus and the writers assumed he’d be a SSJ because of the ritual until Toriyama saw the trailer and corrected that.

[Mr Baggins]

A different status quo? The status quo hasn't changed since the Androids/Cell, my guy.

Every time the Saiyans grew significantly stronger after Frieza, it was either by obtaining additional transformations or improving upon the current ones (i.e. Super Saiyan) independently with new training methods. There's a reason the series was constantly introducing new forms or new variants of existing forms as a tool to demonstrate the fruits of their training.

Then, Super took that a step further by establishing the Saiyans can't use the zenkai method reliably anymore because they've reached their natural limit. Toriyama took it a step further by suggesting the Saiyans reached their natural peak after the Buu arc, then introducing a whole new technique that would become Ultra Instinct.

And even when they do get pretty big general/base boosts later in the Super manga, the plot goes out of its way to show it's for entirely special reasons. In Vegeta's case, it's when the Yardrat trained him on better ki control. In Goku's case, it's when he learned to use Ultra Instinct in all lower forms including base. If there's anything that would lend to the assumption that a stronger Goku was fighting a very strong Uub during the tournament in EoZ, it's expressly this. Super Hero had Vegeta trying to rethink their whole approach to fighting!

People need to stop presupposing all these mysterious offscreen gargantuan increases in power from doing pushups or whatever when the actual narrative flat-out says that's not even happening. The entire point of their growth throughout Super is that they have to find other methods to get stronger now. They can't rely on the same old pre-Namek song and dance anymore. Old-fashioned training will help them stay sharp and MAYBE provide marginal (read: small) gains to their base power, but that's it.

So much of this stuff is fairly straightforward.

[QuakingStar]

Don't forget that the Battle of Gods movie was originally written and even animated with Super Saiyan Gohan, not Ultimate Gohan, and they just recolored his hair and aura for his short "fight" with Beerus in the 11th hour. The movie also didn't let Gotenks use Super Saiyan 3, either.

No need to give Goku any big power increases when you can just conveniently omit the things that made other characters stronger than him in the first place.

Wrath of the Dragon and GT also downplayed Gohan and Gotenks' power in favor of elevating Goku's. Daima had the right idea by just not including them at all in the story.

Some GT guidebook refers to Gohan as never having stopped training or something for GT, and they treat Ultimate as simply his new base form and not a transformation. On the other hand there was an interview where they said by the time of the Shadow Dragon Saga Gohan is back to being an Ultimate Warrior again and they just didn't get to show him getting back to that. He goes SS on top which reinforces that they treat Ultimate as simply his new base form in GT. Which means base GT Chibi Goku is stronger than a stronger version of Ultimate Gohan.

[Grimlock]

And I know we all prefer to pretend the movie is the real deal,

So it became convenient now to ignore Toriyama content, huh? That's... something, I guess.

but Toriyama was behind a lot of the changes in DBS. Including Gohan never using SSJ.

Care to provide a few sources?

[GreatSaiyaman123]

A different status quo? The status quo hasn't changed since the Androids/Cell, my guy.

I was just pointing out how SSJ3 Goku is top dog. That's a different power hierarchy from the one in the Boo Saga, regardless of whether Goku got stronger or Gohan got weaker. I wasn't making a comment on Toriyama changing his mind about how power gains work.

But since you mentioned it, Daima throws all this logic in the bin. The characters are as strong as they're needed to be and "they trained" is enough of an excuse. Even in Super, while Goku and Vegeta were capped out, we had people like 17, Gohan and Freeza catching up with basic training. Hell, Beerus keeps getting stronger than Goku without doing anything at all!

No idea why you're bringing Zenkais since that's a completely separate thing from training. And Goku made quite an improvement in the Rosat with basic SSJ during the Cell Saga. He didn't unlock a new form to fight Cell.

Special training/forms are only really needed to make real advancement to the plot; such as letting Goku reach the level of Beerus, Zamasu or Jiren. Ultimate Gohan (At least his DBZ power) is never a relevant power measure in any way throughout Dragon Ball Super and Toriyama just didn't feel he had to give Goku anything new to make him stronger than Gohan. It's just how things should be.

So it became convenient now to ignore Toriyama content, huh? That's... something, I guess.

Care to provide a few sources?

Is Dragon Ball Super not Toriyama content?

He himself asked the movies to be remade, and things such as SSJG being near Beerus' full power or the original lore behind SSJG are clearly not canon anymore. It's been over 10 years, let it go. I know the movie is better, but if you compare the theatrical cut, the extended cut and the anime it's clear the anime mostly just adds things that didn't fit in the movie's runtime.

They explain that incorporating the theatrical films Battle of Gods and Resurrection ‘F’ into the new television series was Toriyama’s idea, and was part of introducing the characters Beerus and Whis, who the producers deemed essential to the story, to children who may not have already seen the movies.