Why do You Care About Power?

[Analytical Delusion]

I think it's important to have some sort of consistency in how the DB universe works. In segments that have large comedy/gag elements it might be a fool's errand to attempt to figure things out, but by and large, from say the Piccolo Daimao arc through the end of the Cell Games, I think things are mostly consistent.

In a manga with fighting and training as its backdrop, when there isn't consistency in power, it requires too much suspension of disbelief, and can disengage me as a viewer. That being said, I don't think precise power levels, gaps, differences, etc. are incredibly important for me. But unless there is a relatively clear chain of power, inconsistency thereof distracts from the story IMO.

[DoomieDoomie911]

I find power level discussions to be pointless and futile. Seriously, why do people even care?

I find they can be fun if people are open to actual discussion and show some decent respect to others during said discussion instead of trying to measure out egos and whose better at the maths then others. I remember weighing in on a VS match in the All purpose VS thread a while back. It was 23rd Budokai Goku vs the Teen Titans, I said goku would blow through the guys with ease, have trouble with star fire and then hit a brick wall with Raven's magic. Almost instantly someone responded "No, Goku just punches their heads off before they can even blink." and that really set the tone for the whole debate. I made my case with Raven (Was pretty solid IMO.), backed it up with facts and feats but they wouldn't see anything other then Goku punching their heads off and winning as the ending. Even though such behavior and tactics really go against his character in my opinion...it sounded more like they were describing Akuma then Goku. It's that kind of stuff that makes me try my very best to stay away from the in universe forums.

I think power level discussion and VS matches can be really fun if everyone is just open minded to other viewpoints in the discussion but it's all set in it's ways so that's not really possible...oh well. I think it's odd some take power levels so seriously when the show stopped doing so ages ago.

Yeah, any kind of discussion/debate (be it political, religious, etc.) can be fun and enlightening if handled well. Unfortunately, though, this is the internet; it's not exactly the best place to have intelligent, civilized discussion.

[VegettoEX]

I find power level discussions to be pointless and futile. Seriously, why do people even care?

That's the exact question being asked. If you don't really have anything to contribute beyond this non-statement, I'm not sure why you made a post in the first place.

[ABED]

Yeah, any kind of discussion/debate (be it political, religious, etc.) can be fun and enlightening if handled well. Unfortunately, though, this is the internet; it's not exactly the best place to have intelligent, civilized discussion.

Debates aren't even the best place to have them, often times. I'm not immune to it, the internet often brings out the worst in people. Things you wouldn't say in the light of day to someone's face are usually what you get. A good piece of advice that I hear often is it's a good idea to write stuff down that bothers you so you can get it out, then put it in a drawer for at least a day. Unfortunately, on the internet, we write as quickly as the thoughts come to us, which is a recipe for disaster. The worst are comment sections without moderators to try to keep the peace. I like a good exchange of ideas even about trivial matters, but policing myself is difficult sometimes.

Why do i care about power? It's interesting to see the powers escalate, but it can be a let down when all you do is hear about how powerful a character is, instead of being shown. I feel like after Freeza, it's harder to dramatize how powerful the characters get since Freeza in his first form could destroy planets with his finger and the powers only go up from that point on exponentially.

[irreality]

I think it's important to have some sort of consistency in how the DB universe works. In segments that have large comedy/gag elements it might be a fool's errand to attempt to figure things out, but by and large, from say the Piccolo Daimao arc through the end of the Cell Games, I think things are mostly consistent.

I'm not sure what people mean by consistent?

For example (please bear with me, I'm going by memory here, don't nitpick unless I'm off by like an order of magnitude):

Radditz power level is around 1000. Neither Piccolo or Goku topped 400. Even fighting together, they were not match for Radditz. But they are able to be clever, hold him down through surprise, and use a focused Ki attack to defeat a much higher ki opponent. Piccolo was able to defeat both Goku and Radditz with Goku's help. Gohan's burst of power might have weakened Radditz a bit, but there is no reason to believe that Goku holding Radditz tail wouldn't also have allowed Piccolo to defeat him. So it shows that clever fighting skill, surprise attacks, emotional bursts, collaboration, physical weak points, and well-designed Ki techniques can give you an edge over an opponent with twice (or three times) your power.

So… what is "Consistent"? To analyze fighting powers and feats, and decide the higher one must always win, or to say that situational modifiers are a consistent element in battle.

I mean, if we want consistency: Goku often is weakend by lack of food. This is explicitly shown in DB even in the Piccolo Daimao arc. Vegeta on Namek barely ate and slept for a week, and although he caught a nap, he isn't really shown eating at all, despite battling many times. Was his power suppressed for those fights? I think they gave him a senzu (which is the equivalent of like 10 regular days of food, I think), so that would have helped, but maybe not enough? Can we accurately gauge his power during Namek based on that?

What about attacks like the Kienzan, who despite being thrown by Krillin, who is not very strong, can cut off Freeza's tail? If Freeza was properly distracted, could Krillin have killed him?

To me, taking all those factors into consideration is consistent, instead of relying solely on power levels. To others, they see a clear "chain of power" that needs to be followed, and if it isn't, it isn't consistent.

Also, things like the multipliers are just numbers Toriyama tossed around to sort of make the math work out -- Goku should be about 50x stronger in SSJ form than in base form since kaioken x20 was not enough. That doesn't mean every SSJ is always 50x stronger than whatever their base form is at the moment. Maybe SSJ is x2.5 stronger than whatever the highest ki you can obtain by any means is -- so Vegeta had to train a lot longer in "Base form" to get SSJ since he can't do Kaioken. Maybe SSJ is 50x stronger than whatever your power level was when you first transformed, but it doesn't scale linearly with increases. Maybe SSJ is approximately 50X stronger than Goku in his base form in Namek (say that number is 5 million, as a placeholder), but that value is relatively stable, regardless of the character that unlocks the transformation. So base goku at 100k would got to 5 million, but base trunks at 50k would go to 4.8 million or something.

I mean, there are tons of ways to make math "consistent" without contradicting anything in the manga. But debates rarely take these sorts of approaches. It can't be inconsistent when we have so little information about the rules, or the rules are so situation dependent. That is why I often find the discussions boring or dogmatic -- because they don't venture into non-linear formulas, and otherwise just talking about numbers just gets a bit absurd.

[Kiyza]

I don't want to seem like a mini-mod here, but to members who are actually using this thread to discuss power in a meta sense -- in terms of how it eschews skill, or what you see as internally consistent -- can I ask that we move the focus away from that and maybe start topics about those issues elsewhere? There was a similar thread in the in-universe section (I believe it's still going on) where a member asked a similar question to mine, about why it matters to members why characters can destroy certain celestial bodies, and it, ironically, got run over by people arguing about whether or not Dragon Ball characters can destroy certain celestial bodies.

I really felt like I was going to be poking a hornet's nest by just asking this question, so I'm pleasantly surprised that it's stayed civil so far. Thanks for all of the feedback! A few specific points I want to address, though...

As opposed to something like a voice actor debate, or even ye olden dub vs. sub debate, I get the feeling people think they can be "right" about strength debates. It somehow feels more "objective" and so the ruffled feathers, indignant responses, and poor attitudes stem from "but I already showed you my math; how can you even debate me?"

Lots of arguments, including dub vs. sub, always felt like this religious doctrine that's trying to be spread and upheld. At the same time, even the most crazy religious people understand that other people have other religions (they don't LIKE that fact, but they know it to be true). That's not the case with "but my math". It's taken to this obscene degree where there's never a conversation. It's always hands-over-ears YAP YAP YAP YAPPING back and forth. I have yet to see a really interesting, engaging, fun, enlightening conversation come about from a strength debate. Not even here. I'm not sure if that means we can't do our job properly as moderators, of if it means the discussion type is inherently incapable of being what I would personally want it to be.

As for the underlying "WHY" behind it all, I asked Kaboom that very question back on Episode #0205 of our podcast. He gave me a really interesting answer: from his perspective, it's about solving a puzzle. There are all these pieces on the board, and you have SOME of the information, and by piecing things together, maybe you can reveal what's missing.

I get that. I totally do. I think that's super cool. I'm not convinced, however, that multiple people can have that conversation with each other without there being a verbal decapitation and a forum ban.

Personally, I get zero satisfaction out of having those discussions. OK, maybe that's not entirely true, but it takes all of about two or three responses before I just give up and wonder why I've wasted my time. I think there's so much more that you can learn about the series and the characters you love so much by going the complete opposite way and looking out-of-universe... which is precisely why Kanzenshuu has become what it is.

Yeah, I remember that episode of the podcast. I thought that insight into it was pretty interesting myself, but I also don't think that Kaboom speaks for all fans. I'm sure the hows and whys of this are multifaceted.

I think one thing that needs to be noted is that "interesting, engaging, and enlightening" is subjective. I think most people who partake in these discussions do find them at least interesting and engaging. Why else would they come back to them? I've certainly been enlightened once or twice, at least in the form of shedding new light on information. Without these types, I wouldn't understand a few esoteric physics principles, like the notion that you need to exceed a planet's gravitational binding energy in order to destroy it. While I don't see much of a point in arguing which Ginyu members are stronger than which outside of the whole puzzle-solving thing Kaboom explained, it's not it's all of the "who can beat who?" variety, even if most are geared toward that. It just depends on the nature of the discussion. And hey, if "who can beat who?" is one person's cup of tea, so be it.

Because a large part of the series focus on that aspect, power, fighting, battling, measuring the power of the opponent and being surprised for five minutes, landing a super awesome blow and realizing four seconds later when the dust clears that he's unfazed. I don't think anyone can deny or pretend that the fighting aspect of the series makes up a huge part of it.

Just like everything, it's a matter of opinion. Some people like debating which version of the series is better, the manga or the anime. Others like to debate dub vs sub. Other go even further and debate about which releases of the manga and anime are better and why. That's fine. We like to debate about which character is stronger than the other, it's what the series keeps doing constantly.

I won't say that discussions don't get out of hand though, they do. But so do other discussions. Shitty people exist everywhere, not only in strength discussions.

Oh, don't get me wrong here. I'm not especially concerned about the antagonistic nature of these discussions by themselves, but rather, what causes them to be so antagonistic. The root cause of the defensiveness I see. I understand the dub Vs sub, and anime Vs manga discussions because those are arguments more about which is the "correct" version of the series, and I can see why people would get upset over that. Mr. EX had a point with the religion analogy, and I think it applies equally, if not more so, to this part of the fandom, because for many, it's about which version is the true version of Dragon Ball, or which version should be considered acceptable. Back when I joined the site, I remember dubs Vs subs took the place of power levels now with the amount of people arguing about it and putting down other members, though it's long since simmered down. I still think people who get bent out of shape about how other people choose to enjoy a series really need to calm down, though.

Why do you care about character relationships? Why do you care about voice acting? Why do you care about home releases? Why do you care about aspect ratios? Why do you care about the music? Why do you care about animation? Etc, etc.

I feel like these are all questions I could be asking just the same, but I also feel like I already have the answers to all of them. Things like home releases keep the series readily and legally accessible. Aspect ratios were (and probably still are) a big deal because they affected the presentation of the series by cropping things. Voice acting, music, and animation quality are intrinsic aspects of any animated series, and to ask about this is a bit like asking why you want good actors and cinematography in a movie, which I think is self-explanatory. When those are better, the finished products are better. Maybe there's something to be said with regards to character relationships, but then again, that's not something I see people pitching a fit over like everything else you just listed.

Character's levels of power, though? I don't think that's something that directly affects the quality of the series, outside of perhaps plot holes, as others have pointed out.

My point is, I don't get why this is even a question. Power is a huge part of the series, like all the things I mentioned, of course people are gonna care about it. Sure, there are people that get obsessed with this, but this happens with everything. People here get obsessed with the animation, with the music, with the aspect ratios, with plot-points, with voice acting, even with freaking grain on the image, to equally absurb levels as well, and ironically, they are usually the ones that act snobish on "the kids" that talk about "powuh levels" (and I find this part of the fandom more disgusting than the assholes that will treat their opinions as undeniable facts & then say bad things about your mom). They will right huge articles about why Bardock isn't portrayed correctly in a 10-page extra chapter, but god forbit anyone to complain about SSGSS Goku getting hurt by a weak beam*, who the hell cares about power levels?! Who the hell cares about consistency in the story?!

Alright, let me just point this out right now. I'm not someone who makes fun of others for caring about power levels. I don't get on a high horse about how much more "sophisticated" or whatever it is to argue about things like aspect ratios instead, because I don't think it is.

What I'm asking here his why people care so much about power in particular, and perhaps more importantly, why it's so much more prolific than the other types of arguments I've seen. I'm also interested in what it is that makes people get defensive about this particular aspect of the series. I can more easily understand things like getting defensive over the Dragon Box's superior aspect ratio or whatever because that's more about upholding the original presentation of the series, and I don't think it's too terribly anal when you have scenes on Orange Bricks where characters' heads are chopped off because the top and bottom of the frame were removed. But I'd rather not start any debates about this old topic. It's been beaten to death and the horse is a zombie now.

And the problem is, people forget that this is a series for kids about fighting. People have grown up, so they don't want to see Goku fighting bad guys & get stronger, they want to see his relationship with his sons & Vegeta, how the characters spend their time, etc. But this isn't what Dragon Ball mainly is about.

I think it's kind of boxing Dragon Ball in to say that it's about fighting above all else, especially when it started out as a comedy series first and an action series second. Fighting in the series is as much of a focus as it is a backdrop, and what would the series be if it didn't have engaging characters? It's difficult to make a series interesting when all there is to it is fighting, and I don't think Dragon Ball would be the phenomenon it is today if it eschewed those elements and focused completely on fighting.

I find they can be fun if people are open to actual discussion and show some decent respect to others during said discussion instead of trying to measure out egos and whose better at the maths then others. I remember weighing in on a VS match in the All purpose VS thread a while back. It was 23rd Budokai Goku vs the Teen Titans, I said goku would blow through the guys with ease, have trouble with star fire and then hit a brick wall with Raven's magic. Almost instantly someone responded "No, Goku just punches their heads off before they can even blink." and that really set the tone for the whole debate. I made my case with Raven (Was pretty solid IMO.), backed it up with facts and feats but they wouldn't see anything other then Goku punching their heads off and winning as the ending. Even though such behavior and tactics really go against his character in my opinion...it sounded more like they were describing Akuma then Goku. It's that kind of stuff that makes me try my very best to stay away from the in universe forums.

I think power level discussion and VS matches can be really fun if everyone is just open minded to other viewpoints in the discussion but it's all set in it's ways so that's not really possible...oh well. I think it's odd some take power levels so seriously when the show stopped doing so ages ago.

I agree on this point. Like I mentioned at the top at of the thread, these kinds of "who would beat who?" arguments are things I get into with friends on occasion, though I don't think it's right to call them arguments as much as discussions with a good bit of humor thrown in there for good measure. I don't think that so many people would be strongly opposed to them or looked down on them if there weren't these rigid, inflexible, and arguably invisible rules to these types of debates. Rules that seem to vary from person to person, no less. I'm more befuddled by the absolute obsession with them.

[Caulifor]

I think it's important to have some sort of consistency in how the DB universe works. In segments that have large comedy/gag elements it might be a fool's errand to attempt to figure things out, but by and large, from say the Piccolo Daimao arc through the end of the Cell Games, I think things are mostly consistent.

I'm not sure what people mean by consistent?
[...]

Sure, if the power gap isn't extremely huge, tactics, team ups and whatnot usually could make a difference. But that sort of thing kind of stopped the more powerful the characters became. Goku, Piccolo and Gohan could defeat Raditz in a non-conventional way, but all of them could somehow reach the 1000s (Goku with his Kamehameha got to 900, Piccolo's Makankosappo was 1100 and Gohan reached 1300). Look at the very next big fight in that same Arc. Tenshinhan, Chaozu, Kuririn, Piccolo and Gohan could not even get close to defeating Nappa. That's because their power gap was much bigger. And later on, with the likes of Reacoom and Freeza, things got even harder. From that point on, the usual way things could be settled was with a 1 on 1 fight between two beings with similar power.

Again, I'll use the example of Piccolo vs Shisami. That one is one of the most inconsistent fights I can think of, or would you argue otherwise? Sure it wasn't a hard bout for Piccolo, but it still demanded much more of him than it should have. in my opinion, Piccolo vs Shisami should have been similar to the "fight" between Perfect Cell and Kuririn after the former transformed for the first time. Piccolo is supposed to be stronger than Artificial Human #17 by now, and #17 was several times stronger than Freeza's 100%, which was thousands of times stronger than Zarbon or Dodoria. So either Shisami was much, much stronger than Freeza, meaning they didn't actually need to resurrect Freeza after all, or Toriyama forgot how strong Piccolo was supposed to be. And both of those possibilities seem pretty bad in my book.

And for me that's where consistency lies. When the powers are so wrong they don't make sense within the story itself.

[irreality]

Again, I'll use the example of Piccolo vs Shisami. That one is one of the most inconsistent fights I can think of, or would you argue otherwise? Sure it wasn't a hard bout for Piccolo, but it still demanded much more of him than it should have. in my opinion, Piccolo vs Shisami should have been similar to the "fight" between Perfect Cell and Kuririn after the former transformed for the first time. Piccolo is supposed to be stronger than Artificial Human #17 by now, and #17 was several times stronger than Freeza's 100%, which was thousands of times stronger than Zarbon or Dodoria. So either Shisami was much, much stronger than Freeza, meaning they didn't actually need to resurrect Freeza after all, or Toriyama forgot how strong Piccolo was supposed to be. And both of those possibilities seem pretty bad in my book..

I probably would argue that there are ways to explain things (there are too many causal links in this "explanation" to tackle them all), but I don't want to deviate anymore from the purpose of the thread.

I would say I care about power as a challenge to make this battle consistent in my head, and start analyzing ways the political structure of Freeza's army might influence their decisions and powers, or how Piccolo's endurance scales compared to other characters. I care about power insofar as it adds richness to a battle scene to square it away with what we already know about the world. I don't care about power in order to make an org chart of who is more powerful than who, to the point that none of our characters can ever have an interesting bout against anyone other than Beerus or Whis.

[DoomieDoomie911]

I find power level discussions to be pointless and futile. Seriously, why do people even care?

That's the exact question being asked. If you don't really have anything to contribute beyond this non-statement, I'm not sure why you made a post in the first place.

That last sentence was a bit redundant. Sorry.

[Zephyr]

Again, I'll use the example of Piccolo vs Shisami. That one is one of the most inconsistent fights I can think of, or would you argue otherwise? Sure it wasn't a hard bout for Piccolo, but it still demanded much more of him than it should have. in my opinion, Piccolo vs Shisami should have been similar to the "fight" between Perfect Cell and Kuririn after the former transformed for the first time. Piccolo is supposed to be stronger than Artificial Human #17 by now, and #17 was several times stronger than Freeza's 100%, which was thousands of times stronger than Zarbon or Dodoria. So either Shisami was much, much stronger than Freeza, meaning they didn't actually need to resurrect Freeza after all, or Toriyama forgot how strong Piccolo was supposed to be. And both of those possibilities seem pretty bad in my book.

And for me that's where consistency lies. When the powers are so wrong they don't make sense within the story itself.

I think this fight is one of the more telling examples of how frustrating these discussions can be, and why they are such. There are plenty of in-universe explanations that you've left out. For instance, the one I personally adhere to is a mixture of Shisami got stronger (Freeza's strength likely makes him an incredible training partner), Gohan jumped in when he didn't need to (guy's already rusty when it comes to fighting in plenty of other ways), and Piccolo was mentally exhausted/unfocused after having to fight in a manner he generally doesn't (that is, essentially trying to stomp on ants without killing them). That's just one of many ways to explain it however, and it may not even be the most logical. My point here is that while yes, the series is about fighting, there is more to fighting than just power. You can be as powerful as you want, and yet still lack any and all skills to be able to use that power in any sort of pragmatic fashion on the battlefield.

Now, I'll agree that this is something that definitely should have been explained in the film itself, as it's obviously raised quite a number of eyebrows. However, the obstinate refusal of so many folks to use those very same logic puzzle skills that encompass these sorts of discussions to actually make sense of it, is an understandably disheartening attitude to see around here in the volume that its seen. They've likely already been doing that exact same sort of exercise with the already existent material for close to a decade.

Why are characters, who ought to be several upon several tiers above people who ought to be able to causally destroy a planet, fighting each other all out and not accidentally destroying the planet they're on? Why is the latter half of the Buu arc in general such a massively heated headache? How do we attempt to reconcile half of the crap that characters do with the real world's laws of physics that we're using as a means to calculate and predict potential feats? How does Tao Pai Pai's pillar feat factor into any of this? How does Goku going to the moon factor into any of this? These are all things that fans, who desire an internally consistent world to be pulled from Toriyama's works, need to tackle at some point or another, and many have done exactly that.

Fans have developed their own rigid, strict systems for how characters are allowed to increase power, by how much, in how much time, etc. I think that's part of the appeal of these power discussions for many. They've spent the time calculating and constructing their own worlds from within Toriyama's world, and they wish to compare and contrast. That's all fine and dandy.

Unfortunately, the people producing new material likely don't bother with this degree of pedantry (it hardly seems like they ever did), so there are discrepancies between these fan developed systems and material released after their creation. To be honest, it might not even matter if they did. There are still many strength related topics that different camps of incredibly detail-and-minutia-oriented fans disagree about, and very heatedly at that. It seems like a matter of people being attached to their own carefully, meticulously crafted headcanons, to the point where they get incredibly defensive about it. Some fans are so absorbed in their own interpretation, of something that was never written to be incredibly internally consistent in the first place, that it prevents them from having the necessary degree of flexibility to accept alternate interpretations, be it from other fans or from the producers of the franchise themselves.

[Sayo-chan]

It's not at all different than discussing any concept in a series. People don't magically become hotheaded only in strength discussions. Back on the old Nsider forums (Nintendo's now defunct official forum), people would go at each other's throats about who was gonna be in Brawl. Whenever someone said Sonic was gonna be in the game, from nothing more than an arbitrary whim, people snapped. Hell, I remember people getting pissy on the Kirby board when people would say Kirby was a more fleshed out character than Meta Knight. If power wasn't an integral part of the series, hardly anyone would discuss it, but as it stands, it's one of the main draws. That said, it's not at all limited to Dragon Ball, DC and Marvel are just as guilty, if not more so. Do you see people discussing power in a series like Army Men: Sarges Heroes? No. People often do this with real people too, especially on boxing forums. It's all over the place, it's a partial draw to sports in general, and why people obsess over athletes, despite plenty of them being convicted rapists or things alike; such as Mike Tyson. People often have a lack of empathy in regards to what others find interesting, which is why there's often times so many communication breakdowns, especially in politics.

Do I care about power? Sometimes. I find it fun to manipulate the numbers and see what I can come up with. These numbers are more often than not deciding factors in who wins a fight, which is integral to the plot. When the world in question is haphazardly built upon this sort of a foundation, why would it all be weird for these discussions to be commonplace?

1. There is no such "sheer" skill. There is obviously willpower, maybe instinct, but combat isn't the place for calculations. Your skill comes from your strength. I'd wager to say that your overall ability is almost always below your natural "strength" and limited by your training.

Boys' "battle" stories are full of fables of overcoming stronger enemies through "resolve" and willpower, by the way. Check out things inspired by Dragon Ball for this trope.

2.As Doctor said, the story halfway-revolves around this logic; it is, of course, so full of holes, it's impossible to ignore these discussions.

3. Power "debates" don't "happen" to tend toward unininformed, "opinioniated" drivel; they are specifically a product of FUNimation's marketing of Dragon Ball (Z) as animated WWE.

Only made worse with the Budokai (literally: "Tournament") video games and their ilk.

I. It depends entirely on how you're quantifying the term skill. Sheer means to be unmitigated, which as an adjective, is describing what's being quantified. Words mean different things under different contexts. If Kimberly exclaimed that her tour bus crashing was "an absolute disaster", the adjective in question, is subject to Kimberly's own inference. How did she come to her conclusion? Through her own analysis of the situation, using the evidence at hand (the crash itself) with her own compass of reasoning. It may not be an "absolute" disaster as far as her life goes, or concerning her career, but it is concerning the upcoming concerts. This is the subjectivity of semantics.

Now, willpower. This is basically someone's deliberation over their will, yes? Willpower or self-control is often the exact opposite of instinctual behavior, because the former is what controls the latter. If willpower is deliberation, then how exactly would combat not be the place for calculations, under that bill? Combat is subject to time, place and people. Not everything is reactionary, sometimes calculating is paramount to the situation.

As far as skill depending on strength, that entirely depends on how you're defining strength. Obviously someone so weak they can't lift a butterfly is not going to be effective in combat. However, that doesn't imply someone massive is automatically going to win a fight. There's plenty of guys that're built like bricks, but less talented than Broly when it comes to fighting. The two somewhat depend on each other, sure, but one doesn't directly come from the other. Now, your wager is fairly vague. It doesn't really make too much sense either. How exactly would ability be quantified in a way that it can be compared with... whatever you mean by strength? And how would that at all be limited by training? Wouldn't the existence of prodigies invalidate the latter portion of the claim?

III. Fans from around the world delve into these discussions just as much as FUNi fans do. I also don't understand why you're quoting happen or opinionated.

[Analytical Delusion]

I'm not sure what people mean by consistent?

So… what is "Consistent"? To analyze fighting powers and feats, and decide the higher one must always win, or to say that situational modifiers are a consistent element in battle.

To me, taking all those factors into consideration is consistent, instead of relying solely on power levels. To others, they see a clear "chain of power" that needs to be followed, and if it isn't, it isn't consistent.

I mean, there are tons of ways to make math "consistent" without contradicting anything in the manga. But debates rarely take these sorts of approaches. It can't be inconsistent when we have so little information about the rules, or the rules are so situation dependent. That is why I often find the discussions boring or dogmatic -- because they don't venture into non-linear formulas, and otherwise just talking about numbers just gets a bit absurd.

I agree that we don't know the rules, or whether any actually exist. I prefer to throw numbers out entirely a lot of the time. What does concern me though, is when statements are made all over the place (like with a lot of the Goten/Trunks/Gotenks stuff, or with regards to Gohan/Piccolo/Shisami in RoF). So I don't mind when my preconceived notions of fight logic are contradicted (it's AT's universe, so we have to adapt), but when guys are all over the place, and there are statements/feats that seem to be incompatible with one another (I've given up on analyzing those portions of the Buu Saga and RoF, but if someone else wants to get into it I'd be happy to read), it's just a tough sell for me

[irreality]

I agree that we don't know the rules, or whether any actually exist. I prefer to throw numbers out entirely a lot of the time. What does concern me though, is when statements are made all over the place (like with a lot of the Goten/Trunks/Gotenks stuff, or with regards to Gohan/Piccolo/Shisami in RoF). So I don't mind when my preconceived notions of fight logic are contradicted (it's AT's universe, so we have to adapt), but when guys are all over the place, and there are statements/feats that seem to be incompatible with one another (I've given up on analyzing those portions of the Buu Saga and RoF, but if someone else wants to get into it I'd be happy to read), it's just a tough sell for me

For me it is more like: analyzing powers are interesting from an academic perspective and coming up with wild fridge logic theories (and I love coming up with theories), but I don't let it get in the way of enjoying good character or story moments. If the story calls for a good fight against a henchmen as a dramatic midpoint in the story, or it if is a good character development interaction to have a character be defeated at a certain point, I'm not going to argue that no way that could have happened because of a feat that happened 20 episodes ago. The story is more important than consistency in power levels.

This is true in many sci-fi stories, too. I love when a scifi story has good science -- needlessly bad science for no reason takes me out of the story. But sometimes the plot demands a specific deviation in science, because sci fi is about using scientific concepts to tell an illustrative story, not to use a story to explain science. Similarly, Dragon Ball is not a story used to show a bunch of cool fights, in my mind. It is a story that uses fighting and training as vehicles to explore this universe and its characters.

[DBZGTKOSDH]

This is precisely the kind of comment I reference in my initial post here. It's stand-offish, defensive-from-the-start, and quite frankly, a disgustingly rude way to initiate a conversation.

This drives certain people away from the conversation in the first place ("why would I even bother talking to this person?"), and the people that DO stick around for it have no choice but to go in as equally full-force in their defensiveness if they even remotely want to be heard and acknowledged.

Not my cup of tea, that's for sure.

Seriously now? How exactly is saying that the manga is consistent disgustingly rude? I really haven't spotted any inconsistency, but I'm a human & I may be wrong so... please enlighten me on this?

The manga *isn't* consistent about power differences. People treat this so seriously and mathematically -- that there can only be one right answer, but that is not true. The manga and the anime often show power fluctuating with everything from how much someone has eaten, whether they are tired, what attack they are using, whether they are injured, whether they are distracted, the gravity level, skill, spells, and most importantly, emotions. That is why they destroyed all the scouters on a meta level -- because it isn't helpful to the story told to focus on them on a quantative level like that.

That's not what I'm talking about. Of course battle powers aren't everything, and many people fail realize this, which is why you will see in the VS thread mindless responses like "Goku stomps" instead of analizing their skills & way of thinking. I'm talking about when two fighters just fight without any special techniques or conditions. In the brief time the battle power numbers were featured in the manga (and I'm talking about the numbers we only saw in the manga), they established how stronger must someone be in order to be stronger, faster, and more durable that the other and the rest of the series was consistent with that. You don't see characters with a stated x2 difference fighting evenly, unless if one of them is holding back, or if you are watching the anime. But when one fighter is a lot stronger than the other, he can move so fast that the other can't see him, he will be completely unfazed by the other's attacks, and he will be strong enough to kill him with a single hit, and the manga has showed us how stronger in numbers someone must be in order to do all these.

And the reason they stopped using scouters wasn't because the numbers were useless, it's because the Z fighters could alter their battle powers, and the scouters were to slow to catch the change, which lead to poor judgment of the opponent. For example, Jheese thought that Goku had a BP of 5.000, he was getting his ass kicked, and he couldn't tell what was going on. And there is also the fact that they were using something even better in the rest of the series: ki sensing.

Alright, let me just point this out right now. I'm not someone who makes fun of others for caring about power levels. I don't get on a high horse about how much more "sophisticated" or whatever it is to argue about things like aspect ratios instead, because I don't think it is.

It wasn't directed to you, and I honestly didn't have you in my mind. Sorry if you were offended by this.

And ultimately, it is all a matter of opinion -- it is the interpretation of a story. Yes, it is a series about fighting. But it is not a game of "War (card game)", where you are simply seeing whose number is bigger to see who wins. Dragonball is a story about how characters are affected as a result of fighting and training. "Shonen Jump" is all about showing series that present "friendship, effort, and victory" -- and so is Dragon Ball. When people are interested in the relationships between characters it is not just because they grew up. It is because it is one of the important bits of Dragon Ball -- how enemies can become friends, and how rivals are motivation for doing better. When people are interested in the skill, determination, and emotions of a fighter, it is because they know effort is part of the fight. And yes, they are also interested in who wins, because fighting is part of it. But it is not the only part of it.

I think it's kind of boxing Dragon Ball in to say that it's about fighting above all else, especially when it started out as a comedy series first and an action series second. Fighting in the series is as much of a focus as it is a backdrop, and what would the series be if it didn't have engaging characters? It's difficult to make a series interesting when all there is to it is fighting, and I don't think Dragon Ball would be the phenomenon it is today if it eschewed those elements and focused completely on fighting.

I'm not saying that fighting is everything in the series, and I also care about almost every other aspect of the series. But fighting is a huge part of it.

[voltlunok]

This is precisely the kind of comment I reference in my initial post here. It's stand-offish, defensive-from-the-start, and quite frankly, a disgustingly rude way to initiate a conversation.

This drives certain people away from the conversation in the first place ("why would I even bother talking to this person?"), and the people that DO stick around for it have no choice but to go in as equally full-force in their defensiveness if they even remotely want to be heard and acknowledged.

Not my cup of tea, that's for sure.

Seriously now? How exactly is saying that the manga is consistent disgustingly rude? I really haven't spotted any inconsistency, but I'm a human & I may be wrong so... please enlighten me on this?

He's not saying that you stating the manga to be consistent is rude, he's talking about...

The manga is consistent with power differences (prove me wrong)

That little part right at the end where you put up your dukes and go "PROVE ME WRONG...if you can!" it is rude, it is stand-offish and it is defensive of your view right out of the gate. You aren't asking for conversation you're asking for people to line up and challenge your mentality like a boxer defending his title. No one wants to talk to someone like that because it's clear they're set in their mind set and you won't be open to other points of view.

[RandomGuy96]

I think one of things that has always fascinated me was the "who is the strongest Buu?" debate, and I've always fallen into the camp that the original Buu is that; all the other forms are watered down by other factors or absorptions or whatever. Thematically, it makes sense because he's the final enemy and why would he be a threat if he was weaker than the last form?

He's a threat because, one, everyone strong enough to kill him is out cold by the time he appears due to the struggle against his stronger previous form, and two, Goku and Vegeta repeatedly refuse using all the easy ways to kill him. Thematically, the whole point of the final battle is that Goku and Vegeta care more about making "points" than defending the Earth. This is all explicitly spelled out, especially when Elder Kaioshin calls out Goku and Vegeta for being idiots when they reject the first two options for easily defeating Boo (fusing into Vegetto, and just fighting together).

But of course, without fail, any time that topic comes up, somebody comes in with their math and Goku's or Vegeta's exact wording right down to mouth flaps and syllables that based on such and such, Genuine Buu is "so obviously" not the strongest. And it feels like any enjoyment that comes out of the arc is sucked out when that happens

No one needs to bring up math or exact wording. Goku literally says, in completely unambiguous terms, that he is no match for Evil Boo, and that the only way for him and Vegeta to win is to fuse. So when Evil Boo actually confronts them, they're backed into a corner, and forced to rip out Mr. Boo's pod, resulting in Pure Boo. Goku then says that they accomplished their mission of weakening Boo, later says that he can defeat Pure Boo, and says that they don't need to use fusion. He then proves this by fighting on par with Pure Boo and dealing major damage to him several times, but he runs out of stamina thanks to SS3's flaws before he can finish him off.

The whole last quarter of the story is built around Pure Boo being much weaker than the previous Boos, or else he wouldn't have a reason to exist. Since Goku, who was fighting on par with this Boo, could have easily destroyed Evil Boo, if Pure Boo was supposed to be the strongest. Thus negating the need to rip out Mr. Boo's pod. The story cannot work otherwise, which is why it goes out of its way to show over and over again that Pure Boo is one of the weakest Boos.

Anyway...

Why do you care so much about the relative strengths of characters? Why do you care so much about power levels, or battle powers, or whatever you prefer to call them? Why is power important to you?

I agree somewhat with Kaboom's puzzle metaphor. For most of the characters, just figuring out their relative strengths is a fun little side-thing that doesn't really matter. No different than nitpicky conversations about the characters' birth dates, heights, or hobbies, except more relevant. For others, however... well, see above. Since this is a story based almost entirely around fighting, and strength has been explicitly stated as the most important aspect of winning a battle since at least the 21st Budokai, having an idea of everyone's strength is vital to understanding how and why they act the way they do. It's very much relevant as a story element, and no one bats an eye when discussing other parts of the story.

For instance, if Goku and Pure Boo are weaker than Evil Boo and Gotenks...
-Goku is a guy with serious flaws but a fundamentally admirable goal (passing the torch, then saving the world from Buu when absolutely no back-up plan exists, then killing him in a way that makes a point when a back-up plan does exist)
-Gotenks is a cosmically powerful warrior who still screws up sometimes because he's a kid (e.g. defusing a few seconds before he could engage fat Boo)
-Pure Boo is the result of Goku's plan to weaken Boo succeeding (and "Buff" Boo is the result of Boo's absorption of South Kaioshin working like other absorptions, except for the one which was specifically noted to be special; that being Dai Kaioshin's absorption)
-Evil Boo is a terrifying foe who was mere seconds away from winning, before Vegeta got lucky and saved the day.

If Pure Boo and Goku are somehow stronger than Evil Boo and Gotenks...
-Goku is a suicidal psychopath who tried to destroy the Earth and repeatedly lied about everything for literally no reason
-Evil Boo was a dumbass who was five seconds away from getting his ass beat before Vegeta came along and ruined everything
-Gotenks was going to fail against Boo either way regardless of what his personality flaws were, and has the worst friends ever who won't let him use the ROSAT even though he's too weak to fight Buu.
-Pure Boo is an inexplicably powerful ass-pull who contradicts the previous established logic of Boo's forms, and serves no narrative purpose (also, he arbitrarily makes himself appear weaker than he actually is, inconsistently, for no reason).
-Also, everyone's like that guy from Memento, and they can't remember what happened a few minutes ago.

Another, smaller example. How strong was Raditz? According to pretty much every official source, his battle power was 1,500, greater than Gohan's enraged headbutt attack (1,307), and Piccolo's piercing beam (1,330-1,440). If you don't know how strong Raditz is (or only saw the Viz translation which said his battle power was 1,200), this would just look like him getting overpowered. If you do know how strong he is, it instead looks like that Gohan landed a lucky off-guard hit that did a disproportionate amount of damage, and Piccolo's attack had special properties (perhaps due to it concentrating its power into a point, kinda like the Kienzan), meaning they defeated him despite being inferior in power. It changes things a bit. Another, even smaller example: if Piccolo panicked and surrendered to Kaioshin because he was an unknown factor with power much greater than his (Piccolo's), that obviously paints a different picture than if Piccolo surrendered despite being stronger than him, and was panicking for a different reason.

As for why some people such as myself put numbers to those strengths... I think I just have an obsession with putting a number on everything. It makes things look neater and more detailed. I do the same thing when reading A Song of Ice and Fire, for example, trying to figure out relative army strengths. Knowing that Stannis has 1,200 men-at-arms, 1,300 mixed infantry, 2,500 peasants with sharpened sticks, and no cavalry, is better for me than just knowing that he has an army that's somewhat larger than the Bolton vanguard, but inferior in quality. Huh, that might explain my involvement in the height conundrum thread...

I want to direct this toward people who are a part of this subsection of the fandom. Why do you care about this in particular? Is it maybe fueled, as I saw one person suspect not long ago, by a rivalry with other fandoms and a desire to pass the levels of strength represented in them?

I, personally, don't care too much about that. I do participate in vs forums, mind, but that's usually for historical armies vs historical armies (WW2 US Army > WW2 German Army, 1242 western Europe > Mongol invasion force, WW2 IJN > RN, everybody except other Arab countries > Iraq, etc.), which I find to be more interesting than fictional characters from one franchise vs fictional characters from another (I do that occasionally too... just almost never with Dragon Ball). The only reason I can see for why one would really want to know how strong DB characters are relative to characters from other franchises, is if they were writing a fan fiction or something. But in that case, most characters who are powerful enough to throw down with DB characters are sufficiently inconsistent enough that you could make them however strong you want for the purposes of the story.

I don't write fan fiction. Unless you count making up what-if stories in my head while playing the video games.

Do you maybe live vicariously through the characters constantly improving and getting stronger? I'm interested in whatever insight you can give.

That might have something to do with it for some people. Not really living through a character per se, but wanting their favorite character to be "cooler", which generally involves arguing that they're stronger than they're shown to be. I notice this happening a lot for fans of Goku, Tenshinhan, and Piccolo, who are all pretty unambiguously stated to be weaker than characters A, B, and C, yet still have tons of fans arguing that they're secretly stronger than A, B, and C, and everything that said otherwise was just lying. I guess it's comforting for some people to imagine that their favorite character totally could kick this other character's ass, even if that never happens or has a chance of happening in official media. I can see the appeal of that, kinda; knowing that Krillin became stronger than the Ginyu Force (going by his official battle power after fighting Recoome in Weekly Jump, as well as Vegeta's comments on his usefulness vs 1st form Freeza) makes me feel satisfied for some reason.

I'm not usually letting inconsistencies affect my enjoyment (I love GT, and I think this says a lot about it), but when I see inconsistencies in the story, of course I'm gonna talk about them, be it the number of wishes the DBs have, or the power differences some characters should have. The manga is consistent with power differences (prove me wrong), and it makes clear how strong someone has to be in order not just to damage, but to even affect someone. You can't say "In my opinion, Kame-sennin would give SS Goku a good fight because he is a great martial artist, and I don't care about power levels like the kids there". You can have an opinion, but you can also be factually wrong, and that's one reason why I think people don't like these discussions.

I notice that some people use "I don't really like power/strength discussions" as code for "I'm going to assume this, and no amount of facts are going to change my mind, because I'm better than the kids who bring up those facts".

[irreality]

And the reason they stopped using scouters wasn't because the numbers were useless, it's because the Z fighters could alter their battle powers, and the scouters were to slow to catch the change, which lead to poor judgment of the opponent. For example, Jheese thought that Goku had a BP of 5.000, he was getting his ass kicked, and he couldn't tell what was going on. And there is also the fact that they were using something even better in the rest of the series: ki sensing.

That is an in-universe reason, not an out-of-universe reason. There is no reason scouters can't work exactly the same way as "ki-sensing" just with numbers instead of "feeling". If knowing quantative powers was good for the plot, they would still have them (e.g. give one to Bulma so normals can follow along with the plot like they did in the Saiyan saga). But they don't. Because, as you said, power levels aren't static. People can be stronger or less strong based on circumstances (such as charging an attack, strong emotion, etc) as well as just raw power. And any "baselines" established by scouters in the Namek saga aren't necessarily helpful. Sometimes people who are 2x or 3x less powerful get bursts of ki, or have a good battle strategy, or just get lucky with an attack and win. It is more nuanced than that, and I think that is the takeway point.

[DBZGTKOSDH]

That is an in-universe reason, not an out-of-universe reason. There is no reason scouters can't work exactly the same way as "ki-sensing" just with numbers instead of "feeling". If knowing quantative powers was good for the plot, they would still have them (e.g. give one to Bulma so normals can follow along with the plot like they did in the Saiyan saga). But they don't. Because, as you said, power levels aren't static. People can be stronger or less strong based on circumstances (such as charging an attack, strong emotion, etc) as well as just raw power.

From what I recall, Toriyama said that he abandoned the scouters because knowing the numbers would spoil the winner of the fight.

Ki-sensing was better because it was faster. Scouters are machines, and they can't monitor instantneous changes of power. But ki-sensing works with the human brain, so if you are skillful enough, you can see instantneous changes of power. That was the problem with the scouters, they couldn't read the maximum power of the opponent when he was holding back, so the user of the scouter was letting his guard down. We stopped getting numbers, but we still got statements like "his power is on another dimension", or "the gap in powers is big/small", and we've seen battles being decided just by that, like why no one else but Goku & Gohan didn't fight Cell, or why Piccolo didn't fight Kaioshin.

Sometimes people who are 2x or 3x less powerful get bursts of ki, or have a good battle strategy, or just get lucky with an attack and win. It is more nuanced than that, and I think that is the takeway point.

Yeah, sometimes the fighters have weak-spots (like Hildegarn), techniques that greatly amplify their power (like Makankosappo), they win with teamwork (like everyone vs Pure Boo), or they are at a disadvantageous position (like when Goku was having a heart attack). But I'm not talking about the end result, I'm talking about hand-to-hand combat. SS2 Vegeta can't have an even fight with SS3 Goku in Boo arc, because he isn't strong enough. That's not an opinion, that's a fact, like Shenlong having limits in his powers is a fact, and like Bulma being Vegeta's wife is a fact.

[irreality]

SS2 Vegeta can't have an even fight with SS3 Goku in Boo arc, because he isn't strong enough. That's not an opinion, that's a fact.

But it never happened! I'd grant you "not even" but that doesn't translate into "not interesting", "not contentious", "not potentially exciting or could have an unexpected ending". How can it be a fact if it is not in the manga? What are the circumstances of the fight? Are they both fighting all out? Are Ki attacks not allowed? Can Vegeta stall for time? How much time do they have before Goku goes to heaven (if dead) or until his power is just depleted in one go (if alive)? All these are factors in the fight. No fight is just "oh, they are both on a completely even playing field with absolutely no modifiers."

This is the stuff I don't find interesting about power level discussions -- saying: X will beat Y, it is a fact (even if we have never seen it on screen).

I'd rather say: Well, Goku is much stronger in SSJ3 than Vegeta SSJ2 in the Buu arc (that is indeed a fact). But, there are downsides to SSJ3. Could Vegeta exploit those to have a chance at beating Goku? Goku is likely not as invested in the fight as Vegeta might be, too. Could that affect their fighting? Can Vegeta distract him somehow in the fight or vice versa? Is SSJ3 relatively new for Goku and maybe he hasn't mastered the form? etc. When the discussions lead into something *more* about the series, then I think it is interesting.

[Caulifor]

There are plenty of in-universe explanations that you've left out. For instance, the one I personally adhere to is a mixture of Shisami got stronger (Freeza's strength likely makes him an incredible training partner), Gohan jumped in when he didn't need to (guy's already rusty when it comes to fighting in plenty of other ways), and Piccolo was mentally exhausted/unfocused after having to fight in a manner he generally doesn't (that is, essentially trying to stomp on ants without killing them). That's just one of many ways to explain it however, and it may not even be the most logical. My point here is that while yes, the series is about fighting, there is more to fighting than just power. You can be as powerful as you want, and yet still lack any and all skills to be able to use that power in any sort of pragmatic fashion on the battlefield.

You see, that's something I don't get sometimes. All the explanations you listed make no sense for me, because the difference between Piccolo and someone like Shisami (who's supposed to be around Zarbon's power) is so huge that no amount of fatigue would balance the two. And, well, the training with Freeza might make sense within the logic that Freeza himself could become millions of times stronger in 4 months, but that one is also a power boost that compeltely breaks consistency for me. It doesn't matter that the movie "justifies" it, the justification is horrible and lazy, screaming "just roll with it because we wanted to bring this popular villain back".

I know higher battle power does not equal victory in a battle, that is completely fine to me. I am not one of those fans who obsess over battle power, I wanna make this clear. However, I do think the overall power of a chacarter is important to the plot of this particular series, and battle powers give us an idea of where exactly character X is compared to character Y. Piccolo is supposed to be what, higher than 5 million at least? While Shisami might be between 30,000 and 100,000. So for me it doesn't matter what happened before the fight, Piccolo would be able to defeat Shisami without even looking at him. For Piccolo, there is not much of a difference between Shisami and the other soldiers, as they are all thousands and thousands of times weaker than him.

But hey, as I said, we're talking about a movie where Freeza, who was defeated by the weakest version of SSJ Goku, managed to become stronger than SSGSS Goku in 4 months. Nothing makes sense, power-wise.