Post
by Deep Thought » Wed May 09, 2012 4:14 pm
I think that Goku would be affected by the Devilmite Beam. I have this belief because I think that Goku became mildly corrupted over time, most prominently when he became a Super Sayajin, which I believe mediated the gap between his teachings on Earth (aka respect life, only use force when necessary, etc) and his primal Sayajin instincts. This might be a shady proposition but there's a lot of evidence to support it, particularly when it comes to Goku's willingness to kill.
- Goku wanting to finish Freeza off for good. He states this much to Trunks and we can pretty much assume that he'd stay true to his word. You could argue that this was the only thing that could be done to Freeza at this point, but Goku could just beaten him and his father to a pulp and allowed them to retreat, no harm done.
- When Android 20 and 19 destroy portions of the city, Goku yells "FOLLOW US!!!! WE'LL TEAR YOU TO PIECES!!!!". Awfully violent for someone who has no inclination towards murder, don't you think? It could have been out of anger, but Goku was still at his peak in anger against Vegeta and Nappa, both of whom had just murdered his friends, and he let them both live.
- Goku, rather hypocritically, telling Gohan to kill Cell and to not let him live long enough to do anything desperate.
- Goku killing Yakon. Some can argue that he's a monster, but he was capable of cognitive functions and rational thought, so I don't buy that.
- Goku killing Chibi Buu, although I might concede on this one since he didn't really have a choice.
I think that by becoming a Super Sayajin, Goku embraced a little bit of his Sayajin heritage, which he tried to distance himself from as much as possible. There is his insistence to be called "Goku," his renouncement of his brother (He literally says "I have no brother!" when Raditz makes his savagery known), and of course his behavior. Goku goes excessively out of his way to spare EVERYONE prior to becoming a Super Sayajin; Nappa (Goku just wounds him with the Kaioken, and he expressly tells Vegeta and Nappa to go home after that), Vegeta, Recoome (only knocks him out, expresses outrage when Vegeta obliterates him), Butta (same), Jeice (expresses outrage when Vegeta kills him), Captain Ginyu (Vegeta was about to crush frog-Ginyu but Goku talked him out of it), and Freeza. I think that Goku made a conscious effort not to succumb to murder, but I think the battle on Namek fundamentally changed him. There is him becoming a Super Sayajin, and him blasting Freeza. Remember, it wasn't until a year later that it was revealed that Freeza was still alive. That's an entire year where Goku needed to come to grips with the fact that he committed murder. I think that in that year, due to the influence of Super Sayajin, he desensitized himself to the murder, which would be easy to do when everyone, including God of the Cosmos, told him to murder Freeza before he powered up.
So, yes, the Devilmite Beam would affect Goku because he has the capacity to commit murder and murder is wrong.
Two points that I want to address. First point is that if Goku isn't pure than he can't ride Kinto'un and therefor Gohan can't either because, if anything, Gohan as a Super Sayajin 2 was even more violent-minded than Goku as a Super Sayajin. But with Gohan, we see more effort from him to distance himself from what he was in that transformation, hence his unwillingness to transform into it. By relegating his Super Sayajin 2 persona into a wholly separate compartment of his psyche, like a split personality, he maintained his purity. Goku, obviously, did no such thing.
Second point, why did Goku spare good Buu then? While I think that Goku became desensitized to murder, it would only be by a very small margin, just enough to taint his purity so that it changes from, say, "100% pure to "99%" pure. IF he has the capacity to commit murder, it's only as a very last resort, not a common occurrence. With that said, Goku's mentality pertaining to good Buu was absolutely correct; he is completely innocuous. Killing him would be like murdering an innocent person, and, like I said, I don't think Goku became comparable to his antithesis, Vegeta; a borderline-sociopathic person with a continuous urge to murder who became slightly purer over time.
