Herms wrote:I think it's just part of the new approach Toriyama is taking with these things. It may not quite jive with traditional views of how Super Saiyan transformations work, but I think it's actually got a fairly consistent internal logic.
See, fans have gotten used to the idea of the different Super Saiyan forms working like multipliers, so that if regular Goku's X, then as a Super Saiyan he'll be 50X, then 100X as Super Saiyan 2, then 400X for SSj3. That's how the guidebooks described them, and while not all fans got behind those specific numbers, it's been pretty standard to think of the forms as working basically along those lines. A given transformation will make somebody Y times stronger, and the only way for a regular Super Saiyan character to be stronger than a Super Saiyan 2/3 character is if that character's base form is way,
way stronger than the other guy's. And even if someone like Vegetto is vastly stronger as an ordinary Super Saiyan than Goku or Gotenks are as Super Saiyan 3s, he'd be even more ridiculously powerful as a Super Saiyan 3 himself. The higher Super Saiyan forms may burn through stamina faster, but overall they're huge improvements on regular Super Saiyan, and there will always be big gaps between the different forms.
...That was the standard view anyway, but it seems Toriyama doesn't see things that way, at least not anymore. BoG presents pissed-off regular Super Saiyan Vegeta as flat-out stronger than Goku, making him
presumably stronger than even SSj3 Goku. Then after absorbing the power of Super Saiyan God, Goku holds his own against Beerus much better than he did before as a SSj3. Becoming a regular Super Saiyan again seems to give him a boost, but not really make him
that much stronger, since he still can't manage to turn the tables against Beerus.
In an interview after BoG's release, Toriyama clarified that from now on Goku will just stick to mastering his regular form and ordinary Super Saiyan, and probably won't bother with Super Saiyan 2 or 3 anymore since they sap too much strength. This of course makes little sense under the traditional view that Super Saiyan 2 is X times as stronger as regular Super Saiyan, and SSj3 is Y times as powerful as SSj2. With that way of thinking of things, 2 and 3 will always put you way above regular Super Saiyan. Who cares about a little lost stamina if you can now beat the other guy in a punch or two? But Toriyama's view these days is that 2 and 3 are just fancy "variations" on Super Saiyan, and that mastering one's regular form and ordinary Super Saiyan is the real way to the top. We've now learned that apparently Goku won't even be transforming into a Super Saiyan at all in the upcoming movie, which may very well be the ultimate expression of this new "basic is best" attitude.
So, long story short, even if it seems awfully inconsistent with the main series and guidebooks, the new movies and Toriyama's recent interviews are fairly consistent in the idea that the boundary between the different Super Saiyan forms and a Saiyan's regular forms is a bit fuzzy. At first a character might train to obtain higher and higher Super Saiyan forms, but in the long run if they train enough they apparently won't need to rely on the any fancy higher forms, and in the end if they train even
more they might not need Super Saiyan at all. It sure seems like the same idea behind Gohan's Kaioshin power-up, but while Gohan got the quickie fast track to that advanced Super Saiyan-free state, Goku's gradually getting there through years of training (with some help from the power of Super Saiyan God). On the flipside, we might rationalize Gohan's new-found need to go Super Saiyan again as proof that lack of training has caused him to slide from his enlightened "Ultimate" state back to being a regular dope who needs to rely on transformations again.
As for Vegeta? Well, if Gohan can go beyond the need for Super Saiyan thanks to a quickie power-up, and Goku can train to the point where he can manage with just regular Super Saiyan and not bother with 2 or 3, then it's surely not
totally nonsensical to think that anger could push Vegeta straight to the point of not needing Super Saiyan 3 either. Back in the Cell Games, Gohan's anger made him jump straight to Super Saiyan 2, while Goku and Vegeta only reached that point through a few years of training. On the same principle, in BoG anger makes Vegeta go straight to a point where he doesn't need the higher Super Saiyan forms, and can utilize power beyond Super Saiyan 3 while still just an ordinary Super Saiyan. It doesn't seem to be permanent, just as Gohan didn't quite master Super Saiyan 2 even after the Cell Games. Meanwhile, Goku achieves a more permanent form of the same state by absorbing the power of Super Saiyan God and training afterwards, similar to how following the Cell Games both Goku and Vegeta trained to the point where they could become Super Saiyan 2 whenever they wanted.
OK, so what about that x50/x100/x400 stuff? Well, it can still be true, but only up to a point. Strict multipliers like that can be how things work for Saiyans who are just starting out, only reaching these forms for the first time. That's typically how things were for most of the main series, with only Gohan surpassing them thanks to his Kaioshin power-up. Then with these new movies, Goku and Vegeta are finally to the point where they can go beyond traditional SSj3 power as just an ordinary Super Saiyan, or even just in their base state. So the old multipliers don't apply anymore.
Makes sense? Maybe? Well, that's what I've got.
.(By the Way, did Old Kai do anything during that ritual or only the mediation of Gohan was enough to do that?)
Even if they skipped that, the talk about surpassing limits comes before any possible contradiction with Gohan.