Why do people care about power levels?

[Lozjudai]

I mean what is the point thinking about power levels? The point on the power levels was to show how villains depended and underestimated our heroes which lead to their defeat so what is the point to think about them?

[TheBlackPaladin]

There isn't much of a point, for the exact reason you noted. However, I suppose what attracted people to the concept is that there was a (theoretically) identifiable way of putting an exact, quantifiable, calculable value on just how powerful the characters were, rather than just comparing them in general terms.

However, as DBZ Abridged Vegeta so accurately put it..."Power levels are bull***t."

[Blade]

Why do Doctor Who fans discuss the Time War? Or Star Wars fans discuss midi-chlorians? Or Star Trek fans discuss how Voyager ruined the Borg? Or practically any fan of anything discuss 'canon'?

Because the in-universe aspects of the narrative are often why people love the show in the first place. In the same way that an academic may write a thesis on homo eroticism in Tolkien's 'Lord of The Rings', fans will always dissect, theorise and look for the answers from the plot to satisfy whatever questions they may have. Each fan's attachment to a story may be different, and some may seek answers from it that others do not, but whatever it is that people want to debate about Dragonball, I think it's best that any notions of elitism are left to one-side and we as a community learn to live and let live.

The notion of 'Power Levels' have captured the imagination of the Dragonball fandom since day one, whilst perhaps not of dramatic importance to the plot, the concept has stood the test of time in its important to the fandom.

[Herms]

@Blade: I think the question is, why do many fans treat power levels as if they were a reliable and comprehensive way of measuring a character's strength, when the series itself constantly goes out of its way to show that they are neither of those things, and that characters who think that they are die quickly? It's as if a significant chunk of fandom was convinced that Mister Satan really did defeat Cell and Boo.

[Ajay]

I have no idea why people care nor why they take it so seriously.

Heck, I saw a damn post that brought in real world mathematics and physics equations into determining something involving power levels.

I didn't know whether to laugh at the stupidity of it or cringe and cry at the thought of someone thinking so hard about numbers in a fucking cartoon.

[penguintruth]

They want to pretend things in DB follow some kind of logical sense.

Even though the point of power levels is that they really don't.

[Rocketman]

Because sperglords like numbers.

[TheGmGoken]

Heck, I saw a damn post that brought in real world mathematics and physics equations into determining something involving power levels.

I didn't know whether to laugh at the stupidity of it or cringe and cry at the thought of someone thinking so hard about numbers in a fucking cartoon.

Oh my Kami I hate those Math post! They're so much numbers yet I'm sure Toriyama was just throwing out random numbers to be honest. I like the new Power Level system though(Introdouced in Bog). Goku is 6. Birsu is 10. Whis is 15. Simple. Why fans do power levels beyond Namek Arc is just un needed and I laugh most of the time.

[Blade]

@Blade: I think the question is, why do many fans treat power levels as if they were a reliable and comprehensive way of measuring a character's strength, when the series itself constantly goes out of its way to show that they are neither of those things, and that characters who think that they are die quickly? It's as if a significant chunk of random was convinced that Mister Satan really did defeat Cell and Boo.

I don't think the series ever went out of its way to show that power levels were not a comprehensive measurement of strength, but rather that the means by which the antagonists measured them (scouters) were inaccurate and superfluous when faced with people who have the capacity to raise and lower their power at will and detect strength purely by sense. The intentions of characters to intentionally deceive the antagonists by disguising the extent of their power doesn't mean that a hypothetical reading of them taken at their maximum is any less valid or accurate.

I mean, at more or less every moment in the series a given character always has a strength ceiling, a maximum power, which they can raise through further training - that's more or less a constant companion to the plot of Dragonball Z. Simply because a numerical value isn't ascribed to these powers all the way through the series doesn't mean that those powers, even in the lurid moments of the Buu arc, cannot exist within the numerical scale of 'power levels' that is established earlier in the show.

I mean sure, you can drop the 'power level' aspect from a given strength debate, but the DNA of the argument is more-or-less the same in that to determine that one character is stronger than another there needs to be a point of reference, which the show itself incorporates constantly within the narrative. 'Power Levels' are simply the established in-universe numerical scaling, which have been expanded upon in multiple wider official publications. The interplay in parity in strength between the protagonists and antagonists is more or less central to plot of Dragonball Z, so why wouldn't that be something that fans would want to debate?

[Kakarot88]

Yeah how do people even "calculate" battle power beyond Namek?

[TheGmGoken]

Yeah how do people even "calculate" battle power beyond Namek?

Throwing out random ass numbers that they think make "sense". Hell before BoG people was having Base Goku > Freeza. Pretty sure for base Goku they use numbers higher than 12 million but lower than 120 million. And then say "Well base Goku < Freeza" so it makes sense!

[Polyphase Avatron]

People like making up numbers

[VegettoEX]

It's definitely something that I have VERY LITTLE care for, but it's obviously important to a lot of folks. For American fans specifically, I think a lot of it has to do with how they were introduced to the series, and more specifically, WHERE in the series they were introduced.

For fans introduced via the original syndication broadcast, we had two years of new episodes followed by repeats followed by new episodes followed by repeats and repeats and repeats and repeats of what is literally the ONLY part of the series that even HAS battle powers / power levels. It was bombarded upon us time and time again. I think you either grew to love them or grew to resent them. Probably no in-between!

For the fans introduced via Cartoon Network, you had those same 53 episodes repeated for a while followed-up by a little bit more into the rest of the Freeza arc... again, the ONLY part of the series that even HAS them. So this stuff continued to get rammed down your throat if this is all you were watching.

While I don't care about them, I think it's important to let people discuss what they care about, and I sometimes do also wonder myself the "why". I had Kaboom come on the podcast a long while back to very quickly discuss that (looks like it was Episode #0205), and if I remember correctly, his perspective (at least at the time) was that it was a fun puzzle to put together in artistic ways. You have to fudge things and - to quote Mr. Gunn - "make it work". I can see the fun in that. I don't get anything out of it myself, but I can understand those who might.

[kei17]

They should stop caring about it because you can stuff your head with dreams if you have it be empty.

[El Diabeetus]

They should stop caring about it because you can stuff your head with dreams if you have it be empty.

I agree! And nice Cha-La-Head-Cha-La reference Kei.

[DarkPrince_92]

Because boredom. I once looked into it, then I joined Kanzenshuu... never again, can't do it to myself.

[Tyro]

Because they like other parts of the series that you may not find as interesting?

[Son_Gohan]

I believe people simply like being expressive or argumentative, and power levels happen to offer a convenient medium that fulfills some aspect of their psyche closely associated to what drew them to DragonBall in the first place. It’s personally not something I would indulge in; it only becomes a bother when someone cannot separate themselves from their numbers or how it may develop into a fixed way of thinking about Ki in general and percolate into other discussions.

Ki should be viewed as something dynamic and assigning a number to a character can misrepresent its nature since that only captures a particular moment in time and would not account for how it could change drastically the very next second and throughout a battle. The over-emphasis it places also takes away from the finer details that factor into a fight’s course; where it’s not simply the guy with the bigger number wins.

[KentalSSJ6]

The movies didn't help either to be honest. I can see how people think Base Goku > 100% Freeza with Fusion Reborn. Gohan one shots Freeza in base form and we know Goku's base form was stronger than Gohan's. So, people assume if so and so can one shot this guy, then a guy stronger than so and so can do it too.

Then theres Cooler's Revenge. My my, BIG case of Goku bloating there. If you take Cooler's Final Form power level from V-Jump scan seriously, then at SSJ, Goku would have had at the least, a power level of 500 million. I'm not sure how many years Cooler's Revenge takes place after Goku returns to earth (I have it happen somewhere during the 3 years training for the androids), but it would imply since Goku got back to earth, he got 3.5 times stronger.

I highly doubt he would make gains like that on Yardrat and when his sparring partners were Piccolo and Gohan, nearly quadrupling in power just seems a little ridiculous.

[Gaffer Tape]

I do think it's because people enjoy having a simple, definitive way of organizing things, and you can't get much simpler than numbers. They're easy to memorize and make categorization easy as well. For Toriyama, it was an easy, and occasionally cheap, way of quickly demonstrating how strong someone was without having to be creative about it. But people are drawn to such statistics. Sports cards, for example, have long since been an outlet for kids to memorize such things. For fans of RPGs, such as myself, there was indeed a bit of an allure to battle powers for that reason. I just think they have much more use and interest in something like a video game. In a story, it usually ends up feeling both limiting and unwieldy.