Weekly Jump battle powers and whatnot

[Herms]

----Notice:This old thread is part of my series of guides. To avoid necro-posting, please post any comments you have in the sticky thread for my guides, rather than here. Thanks!----

So lately I’ve been taking advantage of the fact that Mandarake, center for anime and all other weirdness, is right on my train route from my dorm to campus. Mandarake has this one store that sells old issues of Jump and other manga magazines for ridiculously cheap prices (about 2-6 dollars on average, even for issues over 10 years old), and I’ve been picking up old Jump issues with various special Toriyama stuff. So far I’ve bought the issue that contains the Toriyama one-shot Bubul of Majin Village, and the first chapter of his 3-part Tokimecha, both of which have yet to be reprinted in any Toriyama shorts collection, as well as the issue of Jump where the picture of the Piccolo+Kuririn fusion appears. I’ll cover those later, but today I’ll just do this battle power thing, since I think it’ll take the least work.

So on Japanese Wikipedia, I’ve seen a few references to special issues of Weekly Jump and V-Jump that contained some battle power charts, and that these were the source for the one in Daizenshuu 7. Wikipedia didn’t give a specific issue number for the Weekly Jump issue, only saying that it was in 1989, so I didn’t have much luck finding it (they gave a specific number for the V-Jump one, but I’ve been unable to find it so far). Then today I bought the 1989 double issue of Jump (which celebrates Jump’s 21st anniversary, and contains the chapter with Goku and Vegeta’s beam struggle), the one that Daizenshuu 1 said had a thing called “Jump Heroes Retsuden” (retsuden meaning “biography”, or so I thought). As I mentioned in my timeline evaluation thread, I thought that this issue might contain the Weekly Jump interview with Goku that Daizenshuu 7’s timeline mentions. However, it seems that the “Jump Heroes Retsuden” is simply the cover of the issue (which says “The V Road of Glory! A Never-Ending Jump Heroes Retsuden!!”), which shows a parade of Jump heroes, with Goku and Gohan at the front. I guess the idea is that this line-up shows the all the different Jump heroes throughout history, and is thus a sort of biography of Jump hero-dom, or something, though I’m still trying to see if there’s some alternative definition of retsuden that would fit this cover better (the first kanji in it means line or row, and the second to transmit or go along, so I can see how that could be applied to this parade of characters). So the search to find out just what in the sam-hill that entry in the Daizenshuu 7 timeline means continues…

So anyway, to finally get to the main topic (or thereabouts), though that issue of Jump didn’t contain the Goku interview I was hoping it might, by pure chance it did contain the feature on battle powers that Wikipedia mentioned. It is in the form of a pull-out poster type thing. On the front side it has a short DB quiz (what’s the name of the fighting race that lives on Planet Vegeta: a) Seiya-jin b) Salad-jin c) Saiya-jin), and on the back side it has the battle power thing. There’s another foldout poster too, advertising the Jump Anime Carnival, which was where the Toriyama anime “Kosuke-sama” premiered. On one side it has a picture of Toriyama and the other manga artists who attended, all wearing American football uniforms and smiling like lunatics. Fun stuff.

The battle power thing is called “Final Warriors-Great Collection!! Cards”. The introduction is in the form of Bulma with her scouter, saying that each of the characters is given a number indicating their strength, and a symbol showing what martial arts school they’re from (there’s the Turtle school, Crane school, Demon school, God school, Kaio school, and Planet school, for Saiyans). It actually never refers to these numbers are sentou-ryoku/“battle powers”, but rather their daitai no sentou-nouryoku “approximate battle ability”. With the exception of Kame-sennin, all the numbers for characters featured in the Daizenshuu 7 battle power list match the numbers given there. This issue came out in July 1989, while Daizenshuu 7 didn’t come out until February 1996, so it seems that this was a source for the Daizenshuu 7 list, or they share the same source. The game DBZ: Kyoushuu Saiya-jin (1990) and DBZ: Super Saiya-jin Densetsu (1992) also use many of the same battle powers that were on this list and later in Daizenshuu 7.

Son Gohan: over 2,800
In Daizenshuu 7 his BP for the battle with the Saiyans is given as simply “2,800”, with no “over”.

Son Goku (15 years old): 180
The same as Daiz 7's entry for Goku during his fight with Tenshinhan.

Son Goku (18 years old): 910
This would be him at the 23rd Tenkaichi Budoukai. It's way higher than the 416 that Raditz originally read him as, but lower than Goku's Kamehameha during the Raditz fight ("924 and rising") so maybe that's what they were basing it off of.

Son Goku (24 years old): over 8,000
In Daiz 7 the "over" part is missing.

Kami: 220
This one's unique to this chart. I'd thought Kami was supposed to be stronger than Daimao.

Piccolo Daimao: 260
Piccolo Daimao/Ma Junior: 3,500
Raditz: 1,500
Nappa: 4,000
All the same as Daiz 7.

Vegeta: Impossible to Measure
It notes that “his strength is unfathomable…!!”. This was all printed while the Vegeta fight was still going on.

Chi Chi: 130
The Japanese Wikipedia page for Chi Chi says that the V-Jump special has Chi Chi as 137, noting that she's on par with Kame-sennin.

Chaozu: 610
Tenshinhan: 1,830
Yajirobe: 970
Kuririn: 1,770
Yamcha: 1,480
Yajirobe's BP is the only one not in Daiz 7. These would all be from during the fight against Vegeta and Nappa.

Tao Pai Pai: 210
Cyborg Tao Pai Pai, to be exact. The Japanese Wikipedia page for Tao Pai Pai said until recently that the V-Jump special issue pegged regular Tao Pai Pai as 110, regular Cyborg Tao Pai Pai as 125, and the Super Dodon-pa as 210. Here it has 210 as Cyborg Tao Pai Pai's regular power.

Tsuru-sennin: 120
Same as Daiz 7.

Kame-sennin (Muten Roshi): 180
In Daiz 7 it's "139", taken from when Bulma scouts everyone's power after converting Raditz's scouter (keep in mind that 139 is supposed to be his BP at the 22nd TB; he powered up from training for the tournament, so he was weaker at the 21st TB). The text says that "he fires the original Kamehameha", so maybe this is supposed to be his Kamehameha's power?

Karin: 190
Mister Popo: 1,030
Kaio: 3,500
All unique to this chart. This would put Kaio as being equal to Piccolo during the fight with Nappa. Popo's BP is...quite high.

[Chuquita]

Wow at Mr. Popo's numbers.


Nice to see what Chi-Chi's BP is; I like how Vegeta's is "impossible to measure". XD

[jda95]

Yay, Chi-Chi is actually pretty strong!

And yes, Popo is a beast.

[Bussani]

Wow, Chichi's pretty strong. Rocketman will be happy to hear that, I think. I wonder how Videl would measure up.

Kaio's power level seems a bit low. Goku sparred with him (for like, one panel in the manga) and Kaio seemed to be knocking him around, yet soon after Goku's power level is up at 8,000 without even using Kaioken. I guess Goku does power up crazily fast.

[Herms]

Well, Kaio is supposed to be weaker than Nappa.

[Bussani]

Well, Kaio is supposed to be weaker than Nappa.

That's a good point. I guess Goku must have advanced a lot between that panel and finishing his training. I mean, he did go from like 400-1,000 up to 8,000+, so he could have been at any level during that panel.

[Adamant]

Kami: 220
This one's unique to this chart. I'd thought Kami was supposed to be stronger than Daimao.

Not only that, but stronger than Popo too. What the hell, guide people?

[rereboy]

Kami: 220
This one's unique to this chart. I'd thought Kami was supposed to be stronger than Daimao.

Not only that, but stronger than Popo too. What the hell, guide people?

Well Piccolo jr beat Kami at the budokai tournament, so he at least is stronger than kami.

And Mr. Popo beat with no effort at all Goku who killed Daimao (who had been turned young again by the Dragon Balls and so was more powerfull at the time than he should be).

[Adamant]

Junior is stronger, yes, but it was outright stated that God was stronger than everyone else at the point he was introduced.

Goku: Is God stronger than you?
Popo: Yes. Much much more strong.

It's RIGHT THERE, guide writers.

[Herms]

Technically Popo originally only says that Kami is "greater" (motto erai) than him, but the implication is that he's stronger.

I guess they just had a thing for Popo.

[RoarkVegeta]

Popo is beast.

[Super Ghost Kamikaze]

Pecking order.

[Tenshinhan-san]

Guides and BP lists rarely specify wheter they're talking about base powerlevels, maximum powerlevels or powerlevels during a specific attack.

I think it's very well possible, since Popo is a magical being (I think he is probably a djinn/jini/however you wanna spell it), his BP is always the same, or at it's max if you will. While Kami in his non combative state is 'just' at 220, but can raise his BP in to levels even higher than Popo's if necessary.

It isn't far-fetched when you think that at the beginning of Z, Piccolo is at 322, but is able to raise it up to 1440+.

[Dayspring]

Remember that these are listed as being daitai no sento-nouryoku (approximate battle ability) instead of just sento-ryoku (battle power). In other words, it's a rough estimation of skill, not an exact guide for reading power or strength. Since Kami is freakishly old and also a member of the ryuzoku (meaning not a warrior), it makes sense for his fighting skill to be so low and for Popo's to be so high. Meanwhile this also explains why Vegeta's is incalculable (when we already know his BP is 18,000) and why Radditz has a one-time contradictory number of 1,500. It also explains why Nappa's is so friggin' low (...although his Dai7 bio just fucks things up by stating his BP is in the 4,000s).

GREAT find, Herms! This info invaluable.

I wonder if the early-model scouters (the one's that blew up easily) actually read Battle Ability instead of Battle Power.

EDIT: The fact that BP is strength only in regards to fighting may also explain why Kiris are so low; they're just reading energy, not fighting strength or ability. Meanwhile it would also explain why the SEG's switch from BP to "Strength" when regarding SSJ multipliers.

In other words, Goku's SSJ strength = 3,000 Kiris. While his SSJ2 would indeed read at 6,000 and SSJ3 at 24,000, his base form won't be 60 (1/50th of 3,000), as Kiris are not BPs.

[Super Ghost Kamikaze]

Since Kami is freakishly old and also a member of the ryuzoku (meaning not a warrior), it makes sense for his fighting skill to be so low and for Popo's to be so high.

Kami seemed to do fairly well in the Budokai.

[Dayspring]

Since Kami is freakishly old and also a member of the ryuzoku (meaning not a warrior), it makes sense for his fighting skill to be so low and for Popo's to be so high.

Kami seemed to do fairly well in the Budokai.

Which just further proves my point. If his skill is so low, then he'd need a high BP in order to do well.

Basically what I'm saying is that BAs and BPs are two separate things. Think of it in terms of weight and strength; while I may weigh more than my opponent, and while my weight influences my strength, it's still greatly possible that my opponent is stronger than me.

[Super Ghost Kamikaze]

Since Kami is freakishly old and also a member of the ryuzoku (meaning not a warrior), it makes sense for his fighting skill to be so low and for Popo's to be so high.

Kami seemed to do fairly well in the Budokai.

Which just further proves my point. If his skill is so low, then he'd need a high BP in order to do well.

Basically what I'm saying is that BAs and BPs are two separate things. Think of it in terms of weight and strength; while I may weigh more than my opponent, and while my weight influences my strength, it's still greatly possible that my opponent is stronger than me.

I get what you're saying, but it's just not what ended up happening in the manga. His clumsy act was just that, an act. When he got serious, he became Mr. Concentrated Kung-Fu Awesome fairly easily, with what I'd assume is proper fighting technique by the fact that he looks awesome doing it.

[Dayspring]

Kami seemed to do fairly well in the Budokai.

Which just further proves my point. If his skill is so low, then he'd need a high BP in order to do well.

Basically what I'm saying is that BAs and BPs are two separate things. Think of it in terms of weight and strength; while I may weigh more than my opponent, and while my weight influences my strength, it's still greatly possible that my opponent is stronger than me.

I get what you're saying, but it's just not what ended up happening in the manga. His clumsy act was just that, an act. When he got serious, he became Mr. Concentrated Kung-Fu Awesome fairly easily, with what I'd assume is proper fighting technique by the fact that he looks awesome doing it.

That's because he does have a fairly high fighting technique of 220. My point is that he's not a weakling with a low technique. His technique is greater than 22nd Budokai Goku and Tenshinhan's, and he has an unknown strength greater than Popo's. Meanwhile Popo is the opposite of Kami in that he has a decent strength and great technique, which is why Popo's BA reads as being about 5x greater than Kami's when Kami is supposed to be the stronger fighter.

In other words, Popo is a weaker, but more talented fighter than Kami. These BAs are only measuring basic talent, not strengths nor how strengths affect that talent.

[Tenshinhan-san]

Aren't we overanalyzing a bit and BA and BP, powerlevel etc. are all references to the same thing?

Don't get me wrong there definitely is a thing like skill level and vast differences between them which explains why not necessarily the fighter with the highest powerlevel wins a fight but rather the more skilled or smarter one, but I'm just saying that maybe that aren't the above listed numbers.

[JulieYBM]

In other words, Goku's SSJ strength = 3,000 Kiris. While his SSJ2 would indeed read at 6,000 and SSJ3 at 24,000, his base form won't be 60 (1/50th of 3,000), as Kiris are not BPs.

Ah, if only there was a kiri converter...