PerhapsTheOtherOne wrote:I'm sure the intent of BoG and Rof was that Goku and Vegeta would be at SSG's level in all forms.
However, down the line, the newer arcs introduced new characters and brought back older characters to fight alongside our two god-level heroes, Goku and Vegeta. Thus, we came to a conundrum on how to rectify all of this together. Was everyone at god-level? Was god-power a second state that had to be accessed separately? Was there a retcon?
We had a vague idea of where Goku and Vegeta stood, being stronger than their Buu Saga selves, and also that there were beings from other universes able to match this level of power, and in turn stronger members of the old cast that weren't quite as strong as Goku and Vegeta were still relevant against such foes.
The first arc of the anime really messed things up in terms of statements and intent, but it's my belief that the current intent has changed so as to accommodate the old cast whilst still keeping the gains of Goku and Vegeta relevant, mainly by being ambiguous about it currently. They're stronger than their maximum strength at the end of the previous series, before End of Z, but are being treated as not at the level of gods besides going SSB.
Yeah, Toei and Toriyama did this rather inelegantly. They made things vague and I believe unconsciously shortened the power scale. I think the new scale is 1 - 1000 as opposed to 1 - 1,000,000,000,000 like it was in Z (I include the BoG movie into that too). That way weaker characters can push stronger characters reasonably, unlike Z where even a two digit percentile increase was enough to be pretty much invincible vs. weaker fighters. It doesn't help that the manga works on a different ruleset than the anime. Manga Piccolo and Frost are comparable and somewhere in between base and SSJ Goku in power, but in the anime the case can be made that both are god tier. All in all, I don't mind this vague style as long as we know who is strong in relation to other people. I'd like to know how Piccolo compares to 17 now, but beyond that, I'd like to know the details of how these characters caught up so fast. I think it'd make for some compelling characterization too.
Luckily, RoF was unclear enough about these standings that theories could be made to fit the ambiguity.
We do have certain tidbits that help to somewhat clarify things, like being able to defeat the likes of a high-tier Buu Saga character such as SS3 Gotenks, high-tier characters like Gohan and Majin Buu still being relevant, and Future Trunks making similar gains to Goku and Vegeta besides god forms such that he could spar with SS Present Trunks without issue.
RoF was complete trash, and most of the inconsistencies stem from things that it introduced. If it were removed then DBS flows a lot more smoothly. If not for that snazzy Z-fighters vs Frieza soldiers and the one-inch punch scenes, I'd pretend that movie never existed. I do pretend that it doesn't exist in the anime and so them not having Saiyan Beyond God powers in base afterwards makes more sense to me.
A lot of people disagree, but I'm sticking with the assertion that Goku and Vegeta's base strength ranges from Ultimate Gohan's level to base Vegetto's level. They hold back a lot in their fights, and this tier of strength in base isn't completely insurmountable by the likes of characters like Majin Buu, Gohan, etc.
I don't think their base is god tier either, but it is plot convenient tier which lets base Goku do things like fight against a Hit who just thrashed an SSB Vegeta. I also don't think the transformation multipliers are nearly as high as they used to be. I think the fandom needs to forget 50x, 100x, and 400x SSJ multipliers. If you do that, then some of this stuff isn't as egregious. It balances the show better, so I don't mind it, and there's some decent in-universe implications that this could be the case.
Big fan of the characters of Dragon Ball, all of them, especially formerly prominent sub-characters. -__-
