Why are Beast and ''Ultra Instinct'' the same color?

[angeldreamZ004]

I can tell you haven't read the Granola arc, because that's exactly what they're building towards.

I've read that arc recently and all there is at best is Goku trying to adapt UI to his other forms, which was just a temporary thing in that arc as near the climax Black / White hair UI already becomes central again and remains that way until the very last chapters of the manga where he keeps using UI with no sign of prioritizing SSJ or reaching any new golden haired form. Can happen in the future, but so far nothing.

The design is barely any different; you have to look at it under a certain light from a certain angle to see it. He changed the eyes I guess...and one of the lines on Goku's left arm...maybe ? You can tell from Goku's slim body and the boot straps that he took his original SsjG design and changed it slightly; this is not a new design from the ground up.

Design and artwork are different, in terms of design it's indeed barely different aside from the eyes and hair color, but in regards to the art, i didn't really need to do any effort to notice the differences, I can tell that if you try placing one over the other you'll face a lot of conflicting details, the chest being one of them, and it's not much, but more volume was added to both arms with them also having more lines to make them feel defined like the arms of SSJB in the middle. These and more details are all examples of redraw or traced artwork (which I do think it's lazy but it's not the same as just taking the same pre-existing artwork and changing a few details, which can pretty much be called as a edit)

I don't really see how you can undermine the ''Ultimate' form when the form itself was never anything more than a quick excuse for Toriyama to make Gohan stronger while lampooning the process of training to achieve new power. It's such a forgettable form that the thing was mostly forgotten about outside of the video games until the Tournament of Power arc in the cartoon.

I actually have doubts if Toriyama ever considered it a transformation back then in the original manga, it was always ambiguous enough to me.
As for it being forgotten, it was brought back in all versions of Battle of Gods / Beerus arc, which I don't know if it was Toriyama's idea given how in the initial trailer for the movie Gohan uses SSJ and the art he did doesn't indicate very well as he follows as EoZ-like design. But Toriyama definitely abandoned it around the time of Fukkatsu no F as Gohan even gets his normal Goku-like eyes again. After that the return was indeed only in the ToP, but it's interesting to note how Toyotaro always has him in that form (until Super Hero came out and changed that) while Toei kept the Vegeta-like eyes for him in his base form.

[The Dark Knight]

I've read that arc recently and all there is at best is Goku trying to adapt UI to his other forms, which was just a temporary thing in that arc...

I know it was temporary; I think they are setting the stage for the regular Ssj to take central stage again later on by having Goku perfect this method of combining UI with his most mastered form, which would be Ssj1. If memory serves me right (it rarely does ), Goku was able to combine UI with SsjG or SsjB, but for whatever reason it didn't work. This will likely result in him figuring out that the only Ssj form UI is compatible with is Ssj1.

[JulieYBM]

Goku's left arm and the clothing are different, to say nothing of the facial expression. He probably just referenced his own art to do the same pose again because it easily shows the details of the design in full, thus making it easier for it to be referenced for the animation character designer.

The design is barely any different; you have to look at it under a certain light from a certain angle to see it. He changed the eyes I guess...and one of the lines on Goku's left arm...maybe ? You can tell from Goku's slim body and the boot straps that he took his original SsjG design and changed it slightly; this is not a new design from the ground up.

It's still a different illustration that he had to spend time making. Everything from the lines in the books, the length and width of the boots, the lines in the clothing, the lengths of the sleeves and the shapes and lengths of Goku's muscles are different. Unless the printing process radically altered the lines and finer details of the Ultra Instinct drawing somehow, these are definitely different illustrations.

As for it being forgotten, it was brought back in all versions of Battle of Gods / Beerus arc, which I don't know if it was Toriyama's idea given how in the initial trailer for the movie Gohan uses SSJ and the art he did doesn't indicate very well as he follows as EoZ-like design. But Toriyama definitely abandoned it around the time of Fukkatsu no F as Gohan even gets his normal Goku-like eyes again. After that the return was indeed only in the ToP, but it's interesting to note how Toyotaro always has him in that form (until Super Hero came out and changed that) while Toei kept the Vegeta-like eyes for him in his base form.

In the trailer and the poster for Battle of Gods, Gohan is in his typical Super Saiyan form. The shots of Ultimate Gohan in the movie proper are redrawn and recolored with zero mention given that Gohan is using his Ultimate form. The name isn't even referred to again until the Tournament of Power arc, where it's finally given an actual in-episode/film identity.

[angeldreamZ004]

Spoiler:

I know it was temporary; I think they are setting the stage for the regular Ssj to take central stage again later on by having Goku perfect this method of combining UI with his most mastered form, which would be Ssj1. If memory serves me right (it rarely does ), Goku was able to combine UI with SsjG or SsjB, but for whatever reason it didn't work. This will likely result in him figuring out that the only Ssj form UI is compatible with is Ssj1.

Goku in that entire arc revolves around the idea of experimenting with UI in order to find the version of it that would be perfect for him, which is something Whis told him to do at the beginning and later when he's teleporting Gas. That's why we see Goku using like 4 different versions of UI in that arc, Combining with his base form, SSJG and Blue being one of them (he doesn't combine it with SSJ1, though he does use the form). It does work, but he has to forget about it due to Granolah's superiority and only by touching vital points leads to him having a seizure. Then near the end of the arc he gets "True Ultra Instinct" which he initially starts with black hair. When he uses the white hair form in the ending of the Super Hero arc, it's already the evolution of that new version of UI.

I think the only hint for him discovering that SSJ1 + UI would be perfect for him is when Vegeta says that UI seems to work more accurately when combined with SSJ forms, though he says that prior to any subsequent uses of UI in the arc, and for some reason he only says it when Goku is using SSJG lol, I think it's more likely that what he meant was that UI worked better with any transformation in general in response to Goku trying to use it in his base form, which previously led to them wasting a senzu bean.

Spoiler:

In the trailer and the poster for Battle of Gods, Gohan is in his typical Super Saiyan form. The shots of Ultimate Gohan in the movie proper are redrawn and recolored with zero mention given that Gohan is using his Ultimate form. The name isn't even referred to again until the Tournament of Power arc, where it's finally given an actual in-episode/film identity.

Which is why I think it was very likely Toei's idea, and Toyotaro kept it for the manga as Gohan is seen in his Ultimate form as well. Toriyama though specifically had Gohan with his base form design for Fukkatsu no 'F', with no sign of Ultimate.
Given how the Super arcs were made from Toriyama's outlines, I believe he never specified how exactly Gohan was supposed to work in those arcs, so in the ToP we get two different interpretations of Gohan, Toei goes for the "Losing and Regaining access to Ultimate" route, while Toyotaro went for the "Permanent Ultimate" route, as we also see that in the Moro arc.
It took Super Hero for Toriyama to show what exactly was his view on that, and it proved to be just like the way Toei viewed it from the Zamasu arc onwards (base -> SSJ1/2 -> Ultimate)

[Grimlock]

I wouldn't be surprised if Toei pushed for Ultimate being a transformation and Toriyama just went along (twice, counting Movie 14). On one side, Toriyama was pushed to include Gohan due to Shueisha (Akyo Iyoku), on the other side, there's Toei wanting Ultimate being a transformation because they treat it as such since Movie 13.

[PhantomSaiyan]

I actually have doubts if Toriyama ever considered it a transformation back then in the original manga, it was always ambiguous enough to me.

I think he never intended for it to be a transformation based on the eye detail:

Since his first appearence up until the Old Kai ritual, Gohan's eyes were always drawn like Goku, not fully closed, with that little bit of blank space left at the bottom, ever since he got Ultimate, his eyes were drawn with fully closed lines.

And he kept that detail even in the last chapter post timeskip, where Gohan had no reason to be transformed

[angeldreamZ004]

Spoiler:

I wouldn't be surprised if Toei pushed for Ultimate being a transformation and Toriyama just went along (twice, counting Movie 14). On one side, Toriyama was pushed to include Gohan due to Shueisha (Akyo Iyoku), on the other side, there's Toei wanting Ultimate being a transformation because they treat it as such since Movie 13.

And for some reason it doesn't work that way in the anime series, as seen in the latest episodes of the Z anime and GT as a whole where they keep the same eye design for him. There's also Daima, where Toriyama was asked to design Gohan but to this day the art was never unveiled so we don't know how it looks. In the entire show aside from the flashbacks, Gohan is only seen in that shot with all the other characters and he doesn't have the Goku-like eyes, but we don't know if it's his bade form or Ultimate.

Spoiler:

I think he never intended for it to be a transformation based on the eye detail:

Since his first appearence up until the Old Kai ritual, Gohan's eyes were always drawn like Goku, not fully closed, with that little bit of blank space left at the bottom, ever since he got Ultimate, his eyes were drawn with fully closed lines.

And he kept that detail even in the last chapter post timeskip, where Gohan had no reason to be transformed

Yep due to how Toriyama ended the manga without showing more of that it ended confusing Toei I believe, they treat it like a transformation in Z Movie 13 like Grimlock said, but in the latest Z anime filler and GT they keep the same design, and in GT he goes SSJ. I made a more in-depth post about that in this thread (One of the images unfortunately not working)

[Grimlock]

The reason is probably that Toriyama intended for Ultimate to be a permanent state in the beginning, though that's also questionable because Gohan keeps some features of the form while also displaying his base form characteristics at the same time after he is resurrected.

Dragon Ball GT is another can of worms I prefer to avoid when it comes to this matter. It's impossible to know what's going on there, for all we know, Super Saiyan 2 makes more appearances than just a cameo, but without confirmation, we will never know.

[kiarasuraru]

I have memories of people thinking for years and years that Ultimate, Mystic considering the times, was a permanent upgrade and pretty much just Gohan's new default base form. I particularly remember how people used to bring up how on EoZ Gohan's eyes were fully lined-up.
I even remember how common the assumption was Gohan was, even on EoZ, the strongest character in the series still thanks to that.
There was GT but everyone kinda just went "lol silly Toei" at that. Easy to ignore and dismiss and kind of in the background considering Gohan really didn't do much at all on it overall.
It was not until BoG dropped and that minor shitstorm over Gohan being Super Saiyan in the poster happened, which they fixed, just for Gohan to go Super Saiyan in the movie anyway, that cracks started to form around that common sense of the time. And unlike GT, Gohan falling off and dropping off being so on your face and happening so many times actually did make people pay attention to it and wonder what was going on.

[Kaboom]

I have memories of people thinking for years and years that Ultimate, Mystic considering the times, was a permanent upgrade and pretty much just Gohan's new default base form.

I mean, that is pretty obviously what the deal is in the original manga version of things before any middling midquels happened, and even GT just seemed to give him Super Saiyan back on top of it. Nobody's under any obligation to let the subpar modern-era spinoffs retroactively change that if they don't want to. Especially when treating it as an on-off "alternate transformation" that he can lose the capacity to do was ostensibly just done for the sake of circuitous character regression to turn into faux character growth.

Seriously, I cannot possibly undersell the value of treating the original material and the modern stuff as completely separate, compartmentalized things when it comes to topics like this.

[Zebra]

Ultimate was a permanent transformation in the original manga. It wasn't something that Gohan turned on-and-off like Super Saiyan, but it clearly wasn't his normal form. It was a permanent transformation that replaced his base.

I did a quick Google search for the Toriyama illustrations of said forms and near as I can tell, they're actually not the same color.

We've never seen Toriyama's illustration of Beast.

They're pretty much the same color. No difference whatsoever in the digitally colored manga.

[JulieYBM]

I have memories of people thinking for years and years that Ultimate, Mystic considering the times, was a permanent upgrade and pretty much just Gohan's new default base form. I particularly remember how people used to bring up how on EoZ Gohan's eyes were fully lined-up.
I even remember how common the assumption was Gohan was, even on EoZ, the strongest character in the series still thanks to that.
There was GT but everyone kinda just went "lol silly Toei" at that. Easy to ignore and dismiss and kind of in the background considering Gohan really didn't do much at all on it overall.
It was not until BoG dropped and that minor shitstorm over Gohan being Super Saiyan in the poster happened, which they fixed, just for Gohan to go Super Saiyan in the movie anyway, that cracks started to form around that common sense of the time. And unlike GT, Gohan falling off and dropping off being so on your face and happening so many times actually did make people pay attention to it and wonder what was going on.

It's less 'common sense' cracking and more that during the production of the film the decision was reached by the parties involved with producing the series wanted to keep all transformations available for use at all time, so just as Goku and Vegeta got to use Super Saiyan, 2, 3, and God post-Fukkatsu no F, Gohan was able to use his Ultimate Gohan separately from the Super Saiyan forms.

It probably isn't the decision that I, me, a grown woman with matured taste as a connoisseur of the arts, would make. That being said, I understand even just the practical uses of maintaining the several forms beyond just the capitalist greed of it all: these forms are—for lack of a better word—'iconic', so keeping those first three Super Saiyan forms—forms that have existed for thirty-plus years—in regular rotation gives the Cocomelon adults their nostalgia, lets you sell those forms to kids, and also means that writers can show different 'gears' for the characters to display their different strenghths. Director Nagamine did this pretty well with his approach to Super Saiyan God and Super Saiyan God Super Saiyan in Dragon Ball Super: Broly, casting Super Saiyan God as form that specialized in techniques—like Goku's paralysis thingy.

Personally, I'd probably just fold forms into base forms each time a new one was properly mastered. Super Saiyan Blue Hair & Pronouns becoming Goku's new base form ceiling once he mastered Ultra Instinct would keep us to just one transformation per fight, with wiggle room for beginning to unlock a new form. Which is to say, there would temporarily be a second, less controllable transformation for desperate moments.

Of course, I'm not writing the series so...lmao

[Cipher]

I have memories of people thinking for years and years that Ultimate, Mystic considering the times, was a permanent upgrade and pretty much just Gohan's new default base form. I particularly remember how people used to bring up how on EoZ Gohan's eyes were fully lined-up.
I even remember how common the assumption was Gohan was, even on EoZ, the strongest character in the series still thanks to that.
There was GT but everyone kinda just went "lol silly Toei" at that. Easy to ignore and dismiss and kind of in the background considering Gohan really didn't do much at all on it overall.
It was not until BoG dropped and that minor shitstorm over Gohan being Super Saiyan in the poster happened, which they fixed, just for Gohan to go Super Saiyan in the movie anyway, that cracks started to form around that common sense of the time. And unlike GT, Gohan falling off and dropping off being so on your face and happening so many times actually did make people pay attention to it and wonder what was going on.

I mean, I think this was the intent in the original manga, in no uncertain terms. Sequel material has pushed the need to have more transformation stages to facilitate action scenes, and recontextualized it, which is fine too--no harm there--but just taking the original manga unto itself, it seems pretty obvious this was meant to be Gohan's normal base power moving forward.

To this day, if you asked me who the strongest character is at the end of the original Dragon Ball, without pulling in GT, Super, or Daima, I'd still say Gohan. It's fine that they take their own route with it, but it doesn't change what the original series does.

Re: Thread: There's enough to make them visually distinct still, but I do think it's one of the bigger Toriyama design missteps of the revival era that they wound up using similar color schemes, when color schemes were the big thing differentiating the same era's new forms.