Were Battle Powers Really Important?

[.:PoetikaL:.]

I've been pondering about this for quite sometime, and I also had listened to the most recent podcast.

Back in Dragonball, it seemed that it was all about being cunning and very skillful while fighting villains. Tenkaichi Budokai's were never one-sided and there were challenges. Then when Raditz came in DBZ, the battle powers started coming in, and they just got outrageously huge very quickly, like when Kuririn shot a ki blast through Vegeta, and with zenkai... his power boosted up pretty high. Even though towards the end battle powers were gone in a sense, you could still imagine what they could be.

So my question is this: Were BP's important to put into the series, or wasn't it necessary.

[Kaboom]

They were a good method of demonstrating just how much raw power a lot of guys out there in the universe were packing.

[VegettoEX]

I know we got into it a little bit on the podcast, but I'll expand upon my thoughts a little bit.

Fandom has destroyed my desire to be involved with most discussions about the topic, but I think I can take a step back and partially-objectively discuss the concept.

For where Toriyama was in the series... it made sense to introduce them. We are thrust into no longer just a "global" view of the Dragon World (if we ever really had one), but suddenly a universal view. Big-time. Space. Travel. Technology. It made complete sense to have what was up until this point a "spiritual" sorta concept be taken in the technological direction.

Like we discussed on the podcast, it also shows just how different our heroes were from the rest of the universe. They *all* needed to rely on scouters for just about everything... determining combat strength, finding people, communicating... How about the Earthlings? Nope, we can telepathically talk to each other when we need to, we can sense where someone (or groups of someones) are, etc.

It creates a thoroughly interesting dynamic between the groups, even if only in a supporting way. It's just one more thing Toriyama added to the story that sets everyone apart from each other.

Did it get out of hand? Did it get obnoxious? Did it get drilled into us far too much? Certainly in the TV version, but even in the manga it got to be a little much.

[Amigo Ten]

They were important for showing exactly how ridiculously strong people were getting. Without numerical values, would anyone even speculate, let alone believe, that the Goku had gotten hundreds of thousands times stronger between the fight with Raditz and the fight with Freeza?

[Kendamu]

I haven't listened to the podcast just yet, but I'll throw down my idea.

Battle Powers always seemed like something that was written to be flawed from the beginning. Raditz died because he relied on his Scouter too much. Vegeta warned Nappa not to rely on his Scouter. Then Vegeta trained himself not to need a Scouter at all. During the Namek arc we see at least one Namek and Vegeta destroying Scouters at different points to cause a bit of chaos amongst Freeza's guys and take away a major advantage and valuable resource. Finally, when Trunks shows up, the Scouters are used one more time to show how useless they really are before Trunks kills everyone.

The next guys to use any sort of numbers or statistical data to judge the strength of the Earthlings were the Jinzouningen. Even though nothing concrete was shown like BPs were, it was apparent pretty quickly that their data was off and, as Vegeta said, "You can't reduce Saiyans to mere numbers."

While the numbers do help us with some strength readings, for the most part they were written to be something inaccurate that the bad guys relied upon too much. Ultimately, relying on those numbers lead to their downfall.

[Bussani]

Even before the concept of battle powers themselves were introduced, there were still times when a character was just far more powerful than another. I feel sorry for King Chappa. Goku destroyed him both times they met in the preliminaries.

I think skill and power are quite linked in Dragon Ball, at least for the Earthlings. It's always more than about brute strength. Controlling your ki to bring out your full potential in a fight is more than just brute force, it takes concentration and skill too. It probably becomes less obvious the further into the story you get though.

[Herms]

As Kunzait is always saying, battle powers really served as a weakness for Freeza and co. more than anything else. Freeza and co. are shown time and time again to rely on their scouters too much, and many of them die because of it.

They were important for showing exactly how ridiculously strong people were getting. Without numerical values, would anyone even speculate, let alone believe, that the Goku had gotten hundreds of thousands times stronger between the fight with Raditz and the fight with Freeza?

But really, if there's no way to tell that Goku has gotten that much stronger (as opposed to simply "stronger") without those numbers, in what sense is he that strong? I mean, you can't look at Goku fighting Recoome and co. and tell just from that that he's ten or so times as strong as he was when he fought Vegeta. You can infer that he's a lot stronger because he's easily beating people who beat Vegeta, but is there any visible change in the way he fights that indicates that he's stronger than before?

If you watch Goku fight Yamcha and the beginning of the series, and then watch Goku fight Piccolo at the 23rd Tenkaichi Budoukai, you can easily tell that Goku has gotten stronger: he can fire massive ki attacks, fly, and do all sorts of things he couldn't before. But if you compare Goku vs. Vegeta to Goku vs. Recoome, is there any difference? So I think that's one major function of battle powers and similiar systems in other series, which I never quite got around to talking about on the podcast: essentially, battle powers are a lazy shortcut to build up characters as being strong when you've run out of ways to actually show that they are.

Did it get out of hand? Did it get obnoxious? Did it get drilled into us far too much? Certainly in the TV version, but even in the manga it got to be a little much.

There's hardly any extra battle powers in the anime, so I'm not sure what you mean.

[VegettoEX]

There's hardly any extra battle powers in the anime, so I'm not sure what you mean.

Not more actual numbers, but more mentions of the concept.

[Herms]

Not more actual numbers, but more mentions of the concept.

Really? I can't say I've ever noticed much of a difference in that regard.

[VegettoEX]

Really? I can't say I've ever noticed much of a difference in that regard.

I definitely noticed it going through for the "Manga Review of Awesomeness" for the podcast. Extra padding in the TV series really drags out mentions of the concept far too much.

I'd next like to argue just how terrible the build-up for "OMG IS HE SUPER SAIYA-JIN OR NOT?!?" was just as ridiculous .

[JulieYBM]

Herms hits it on the head, really. Toriyama was likely running out of ways to show just how powerful Gokû was getting, and numbers were the way. Now, looking back, Toriyama could have probably had Gokû kicking people through the planet, quickly racing over to where they'd pop out on the other side, and kick them back through, but that might have been a little exessive for the planet to handle.

[Shoryuken]

Naaah..

Battle powers is now new concept, Kinikuman had it, Yuyu Hakusho had it, so perhaps Toriyama wanted to follow the trend?

[The Tori-bot]

Naaah..

Battle powers is now new concept, Kinikuman had it, Yuyu Hakusho had it, so perhaps Toriyama wanted to follow the trend?

YuYu Hakusho didn't start until combat strengths were long phased-out.

[Shoryuken]

Naaah..

Battle powers is now new concept, Kinikuman had it, Yuyu Hakusho had it, so perhaps Toriyama wanted to follow the trend?

YuYu Hakusho didn't start until combat strengths were long phased-out.

Yuyu Hakusho started in 1990 whereas Volume 20 of Dragon Ball was out in Japan at that point, just when battle powers where getting popular in the franchise.

[The Tori-bot]

Naaah..

Battle powers is now new concept, Kinikuman had it, Yuyu Hakusho had it, so perhaps Toriyama wanted to follow the trend?

YuYu Hakusho didn't start until combat strengths were long phased-out.

Yuyu Hakusho started in 1990 whereas Volume 20 of Dragon Ball was out in Japan at that point, just when battle powers where getting popular in the franchise.

The point still stands that there was no "trend" to follow at the time (at least with YYH).

The anime started in 1992, shaddup.

[Herms]

Yuyu Hakusho started in 1990 whereas Volume 20 of Dragon Ball was out in Japan at that point, just when battle powers where getting popular in the franchise.

That may be true, but youkai ranks and youryoku measurements weren't introduced into Yu Yu Hakusho until battle powers had long dropped out of DragonBall. For comparision purposes, when Trunks first showed up to fight Freeza (the very last we hear of battle powers), Yu Yu Hakusho was only up to where Yusuke fights Rando.

[rereboy]

Power levels were also used in Dragon Ball as a way to tell us just how good the fighters were getting at controlling their ki.

For example, when Goku fights Raditz he has a power level of a few hundreds in his relaxed state but he can power up to almost 1000.

However, when Goku shows up to fight Nappa and Vegeta, his relaxed state reads as a 5000 but he could raise it to above 8000.

Later, when Goku was fighting the ginyu force, his relaxed state still reads as 5000 but he can increase it a lot more than 8000, which shows us that he can, in this moment, control his ki even better, since the difference between his relaxed state and his battle state is much greater.

Later still, we get a read of Future Trunks` relaxed state when he fought Freeza. His relaxed state only read as 5, the same level as any other average earthling, despite him being a SSJ.
Goku is presumably able to do the same since their power and abilities are similar by that point.

This shows us how much the ki control has improved throughout the storyline.

[ShinRogafuken]

The problem I have in battle powers, and this is one of the reasons that I actually stopped like DBZ so much, is that its dumb for SSJ Goku and Freeza to have powers in the millions when Freeza and then King Piccolo is only what? Over 200?

The battle power system got stupid because if somebody with a power level of over 200 could cause huge damage then having a power level in the millions and not being able to do that much more in all honesty.

Plus the animation can't really show it well.

[Acid_Reign]

Battle Powers were really just a way of quantifying Ki, which up until then was a very abstract concept. I personally liked them, but I think Toriyama should have taken them more seriously/used them more sparingly instead of just arbitrarily adding zeroes to readings every time a character needed to become more menacing than another.

[Milton]

Battle Powers were simply just another part of the series that had shown up at exactly the right moment for exactly the right purpose. Quite frankly, they're but a drop in the bucket to me now when it comes to the grand scheme of things in Dragonball.

Think about it this way: zanzoken was, at some point, an integrated part of the series. Goku learned it, it helped him through many battles and then he met Mr. Popo ("Hiiiiii..."), where it had zero effect. After that, it suddenly went away, never to be heard from again (with the exception of GT, but let's PLEASE not go there). Battle Powers are, to me, like zanzoken: a convenient plot device used in some form for the series.

It wasn't always like that, however, and I feel it's important to note this as well. Most of us scratch our heads as to why people are so obsessed with "power levels" that they simply must pour over reference guides, websites, the TV series, the video games, and of course, their ass (for all those "WTF?" levels out there).
The simple fact is, when Dragon Ball Z began in the US around 1997, that was our main starting point in the series. So not only were we introduced to a whole cast of characters we never met before and a major plot twist without any build-up, we're also introduced to something else: power levels. As new viewers to the series, we are told from the get-go that Goku is a fighter, Yamucha is a baseball player, Piccolo is some evil guy that hates Goku, and that every person in this show has a certain power level.

This fact is solidified when Goku and Piccolo fly off to fight Raditz. In the manga, Piccolo tells Goku that their target has a "queer device that identifies how strong you are" (or something to that effect). However, the Ocean dub has Piccolo say very clearly, "He has some sort of device that lets him know our location and our power levels." It can be argued that this line of dialoge suggests to new viewers that power levels are just another part of the entire series, and are therefore an integral part of this story. I believe that because of this, American fans are/were simply more hung up on power levels than fans elsewhere in the world.

Basically, battle powers simply shouldn't matter that much in the series, in my honest opinion. There's so much more to focus your attention on in Dragonball that they seem so worthless to me. Just my (long, overblown) 2 cents.