Why do people 'cap out' the humans? A long rant/essay

[DBZGTKOSDH]

Tenshinhan was stronger than base Future Trunks in Movie 9, since Trunks had to go Super Saiyan to beat him. For me, it's Tenshinhan > Kuririn > Yamcha > Chaozu. By Cell arc, I don't think there is a very big difference between the first 3, but with Chaozu was very weaker than them. Tenshinhan though should be very stronger than Kuririn & Yamcha from Boo arc, since he continued his training, unlike the others. But I don't believe they ever managed to reach any of the Super Saiyans in the end.

[Nex Carnifex]

My pretty much only thing I don't like about Dragonball, and conversly what I do like about Bleach is that smaller characters should get opponents to fight as well. Toriyama never did this though. I wish Babidi had sent his regular troops to attack earth while people were in his ship and you got to see 18 and Yamcha etc cutting them up but alas.

The problem is the only relevant character in Dragon Ball is the one who's the strongest atm because all their powers are so uneven and massive it would be ridiculous to just even them out. If there were weaker characters for them to fight the strongest dude could just kill them in an instant unless he stood by and watched which they do a lot in Dragon Ball anyway.

[Piccolo Daimao]

I think he confused DB with Naruto there.

Never even read Naruto. Not past the first few volumes, anyway.

@Daimao

I think it would have worked better if he was weaker before hand, actually. It was foreshadowed back in the Freeza saga, and I think should have been a bigger boost than 3 years of mountain training. He gets around a 100x increase from those 3 years of ordinary training and yet his hyped up merge with Kami only doubles his power (depending on personal estimations)? Seems like it would work better if it was the other way around.

Maybe. I guess I just don't bother to think all that much about it, since Toriyama already jumped well past "ridiculous".

Tenshinhan was stronger than base Future Trunks in Movie 9, since Trunks had to go Super Saiyan to beat him.

Trunks was obviously holding back.

[DBZGTKOSDH]

I think he confused DB with Naruto there.

Never even read Naruto. Not past the first few volumes, anyway.

This happened in the very first volume.

Tenshinhan was stronger than base Future Trunks in Movie 9, since Trunks had to go Super Saiyan to beat him.

Trunks was obviously holding back.

Same with Tenshinhan, until Tenshinhan went serious. And then Trunks went Super Saiyan.

[Piccolo Daimao]

I think he confused DB with Naruto there.

Never even read Naruto. Not past the first few volumes, anyway.

This happened in the very first volume.

Did it? I don't recall. Either way, I'm pretty sure I didn't mix it up with that, since I can barely even remember what happened in it (ninja schools, sexy naked ninjutsu, some emo kid).

Tenshinhan was stronger than base Future Trunks in Movie 9, since Trunks had to go Super Saiyan to beat him.

Trunks was obviously holding back.

Same with Tenshinhan, until Tenshinhan went serious. And then Trunks went Super Saiyan.

No, I disagree. But I'm not going to bother getting into this now.

[DBZGTKOSDH]

No, I disagree. But I'm not going to bother getting into this now.

That's the feeling it gives to me, at least.

[Piccolo Daimao]

No, I disagree. But I'm not going to bother getting into this now.

That's the feeling it gives to me, at least.

Well, movies and shit. My opinion is basically that Trunks was holding back, like how Gokuu held back on Kuririn at the 22nd TB (even though Kuririn explicitly told him not to), and transformed into a Super Saiyan to give the audience a good show.

[Fox666]

I think it would have worked better if he was weaker before hand, actually. It was foreshadowed back in the Freeza saga, and I think should have been a bigger boost than 3 years of mountain training. He gets around a 100x increase from those 3 years of ordinary training and yet his hyped up merge with Kami only doubles his power (depending on personal estimations)? Seems like it would work better if it was the other way around.

Well, it wasn't just "mountain training", he had Super Saiyan Goku as a sparring partnet, which is something.

[Michsi]

I think the humans deserve more credit than they get from the majority of the fandome, but it's true that they got left behind in the latter arcs when the powers got to planet busting levels. Toriyama didn't really shy away from making it pretty evident that they couldn't keep up by having the characters themselves admit to this more than once. Personally, I think the Freeza saga was the final turning point for them, when he just didn't give them any great role in that arc and it was too late to have them catch up afterwards.


As for Piccolo's case, maybe it's because I pay almost no attention whatsoever to power levels numbers and stuff, but I really don't see how his increase in power is any harder to explain than others. I mean, he trained with a super saiyan, he was battle and power obsessed and plot always determines power. It's like one of main rules of DB. It's pretty much the same case with the humans.

[Fox666]

To be fair, Piccolo always increased his power drastically through training.

[Bussani]

I don't see how they could even keep up with the base Saiyans. They got left behind really early on, and this was before they started getting the insane boosts from recovering from near death. Goku went from 90,000 to 3,000,000 in one boost, and the humans have nothing like that available to them. Sure, it's not impossible, but it seems very unlikely.

Yeah, I do agree. I don't normally like to get into numbers, but I will for one example. Tenshinhan in the Saiyan arc probably had a battle power of 3,000, tops, right? Probably less. Even if we take into account that he trained with Kaio for longer than Goku, and even if we assume that he grew in strength twice as fast as Goku did, that still wouldn't be enough to surpass first form Freeza. Three years of regular training after that? Well, Kaio did say this:

Chapter: 211 (DBZ 17), P2.4
Kaio: “Training here on this planet with me for 158 days…is as valuable as you training several thousand years on Earth.”

It's stuff like this that makes it hard for people to believe that they'd continue making such incredible progress after mastering Kaio's training. Taking all this into account, I can definitely understand why people have the opinion that they were so left behind. My suspension of disbelief is able to go a bit further and assume that they might have been able to at least get themselves into the same league as Goku's regular form by the arrival of the androids, but I feel that I'm being incredibly generous there. If I were being only a little generous instead, I'd probably be okay with them surpassing first form Freeza, but not much else.

[Saiga]

@DBZGTKOSDH

But movies aren't good evidence for anything. The power levels are always a little screwed up in movies.

@Daimao

I'm pretty sure they're talking about Naruto learning the Kage Bunshin and "surpassing" his mentor Iruka in the first chapter. But just because he beat up Mizuki (that bad teacher in case you don't remember) doesn't mean he surpassed Iruka - hell, he still seems to be lagging behind the other Genin afterwards.

@Fox666

I know, but for Piccolo to be the only one to make that kind of increase seems stupid to me. If Goku then trained with the super strong Piccolo in his base form, would he suddenly skyrocket to near-Super Saiyan strength in his base form?

@Michsi

Yeah, I know plot determines power. But it's always a lot better when the increases are plausible. I don't want to bring up power levels when we don't know any of Piccolo's later ones, but I just want to use this as an example:

Piccolo v Freeza: 1,000,000+ (We at least know he's over the 1,000,000 mark, but not how much higher. I place him around 1,400,000 personally, so around half Goku's power)
Goku v Freeza: 3,000,000 (this one we actually know)
SS Goku: 150,000,000 (likewise)
Piccolo v #20: 100,000,000+ (total guess, but to be compared to a Super Saiyan I'd put him at least this high)

I think somewhere around a 100 fold increase in battle power would be a fairly safe estimation to make, and it seems weird for him to get such giant growth but be the only one to do so.

@Bussani

Tenshinhan's Jump battle power was given as 1830, so yeah, he's a fair bit behind. If you consider Kurilin's 75,000 V-Jump battle power as canon, then I'd say he would definitely be able to surpass Ginyu after ward, but I don't see the other humans being capable of that through the regular training they go through in story. If they used the RoSaT and gravity training, then they'd have a chance.

[mattymoron]

I don't think there's any reason to believe that the humans COULDN'T attain massive levels of power, but it's just more that they DIDN'T. Once you get into enemies that required a transformation to be beaten, there was literally no reason for them to continue trying to keep up, because they'd always be at base level.

Plus Saiyan physiology gives them an advantage, as their bodies are designed to function on a planet with...10x higher gravity? Higher gravity, at any rate.

I love the human characters, and I wish they'd continued to play a major part in the series. I just think that once Super Saiyan was introduced, there was no way for them to compete with someone who could multiply his power fifty-fold in an instant.

With the exception of Tien. He just. Kept on keepin' on. He was able to....get Buu's attention, if nothing else, which I think proves he had managed to at least surpass the level of First Form Freeza, much less Ginyu.

The way I see it is Transformed Saiyans > Piccolo >> Base Saiyans > Tien >> Krillin >> Yamcha > Chaozu.

[Saiga]

I think people are making too much out of Tenshinhan's Boo saga cameo. He didn't do anything.

If it wasn't for the Saiyans getting massive boosts like Goku's huge near death boost, then I'd say it might be possible for the humans to keep up with their base forms (but still lagging behind, like how Goku schooled Tenshinhan at the 23rd Budokai). But really... what have they got that can keep up with Goku getting a 33x increase from his near death recovery? That's almost as much as a boost as the Super Saiyan form, and it's permanent!

[Michsi]

Nope, it's still doesn't seem ridiculous to me, not when I have something like Goten and Trunks being Ssj or everything that is Gotenks or Tenshinhan and co. surpassing Radditz in less than one year, when they weaker than Piccolo Daimao, with Kami's training.

[Saiga]

Nope, it's still doesn't seem ridiculous to me, not when I have something like Goten and Trunks being Ssj or everything that is Gotenks or Tenshinhan and co. surpassing Radditz in less than one year, when they weaker than Piccolo Daimao, with Kami's training.

Tenshinhan and co became less than 10x stronger. It's an entirely different thing.

[Michsi]

Nope, it's still doesn't seem ridiculous to me, not when I have something like Goten and Trunks being Ssj or everything that is Gotenks or Tenshinhan and co. surpassing Radditz in less than one year, when they weaker than Piccolo Daimao, with Kami's training.

Tenshinhan and co became less than 10x stronger. It's an entirely different thing.

Well, not to me. Especially considering how much Goku gained in strength with the same training, training partners or not. To me it's simple. Traing with a ssj, with ssj Goku, was just that beneficial.

[Saiga]

Well, not to me. Especially considering how much Goku gained in strength with the same training, training partners or not. To me it's simple. Traing with a ssj, with ssj Goku, was just that beneficial.

So if base Goku trained with Piccolo for 3 years after that, he'd now be as strong as a Super Saiyan in just his base form?

[Rostir]

So a near death human after given a Senzu bean doesn't increase in power level at all?

[Saiga]

So a near death human after given a Senzu bean doesn't increase in power level at all?

That's different. That's part of Saiyan biology. Piccolo has only made that kind of increase that one time, and was previously behind Goku and Vegeta.