Rocketman wrote:Piccolo Daimao wrote:He thinks that Zarbon's bluffing when he says that he can transform, only to subsequently get his ass handed to him. He was also severely injured and was about to finish off Ginyu in Goku's body, when a better plan would've been to lure him into swapping bodies back with Goku, who wouldn't have an injured body and would've been able to help in the fight against Freeza. Yes, I know, Vegeta beating up Ginyu in Goku's body resulted in Goku's Zenkai and everything turned out fine in the end, but Vegeta didn't know that.
See, I don't think that's a fair assessment, because it's given from a perspective both out-of-universe and with the benefit of hindsight. Vegeta had known Zarbon for roughly thirty years and had never heard of him having a transformation, it's not arrogant and boneheaded at all for him to react with disbelief.
Likewise, it's easy for you to Monday morning quarterback the Ginyu situation, because you know everything about Ginyu's body change ability. Vegeta doesn't. He didn't even know Ginyu
could change bodies, much less that it's reversible/can be used more than once/can be intercepted or tricked/etc.
I think it
is a fair assessment. Zarbon confidenty claims that he can transform, even giving details that he doesn't become unnecessarily large like the Saiyans' Oozaru, and yet Vegeta arrogantly laughs it off as a bluff without even considering the possibility that it could be true. Yes, he's known Zarbon for roughly 30 years, but Zarbon was higher-ranking than him and part of Freeza's main elite circle, so obviously Vegeta wouldn't have known everything about him.
And judging by the quote below, he knew, even before Zarbon, that there were some aliens that could transform. I know that he doesn't explicitly say "transformation", but it's still relevant in that he's talking about Freeza's transformation. "To not deplete their energy" still means that the relaxed form you may see in them in first is weaker than their true or "battle" form. Out-of-universe, I know that this was a while after Zarbon's transformation, but even still, I believe it's relevant when talking about whether or not (or how much) Vegeta differed between the Freeza and Cell arcs.
Strength Checker wrote:Chapter: 296 (DBZ 102), P1.3-4
Vegeta: “Among aliens, there are sometimes guys who change their appearance as the need arises…For things like camouflage, or to not deplete their energy…”
Freeza: “In my case it’s different…It’s because my power is too excessive, so that even I can’t properly control it…”
I'll give you the Ginyu argument, though.
Rocketman wrote:Piccolo Daimao wrote:Not to mention that he wasn't even winning against first-form Freeza in the first place. He was at a disadvantage, being winded after his short grapple with Freeza, yet he still went ahead and confidently told Freeza to transform.
I just don't see the confidence in "You might as well transform now". He doesn't look confident, he's not smiling, and when Freeza powered up earlier he already realized Freeza was stronger than him.
Same thing with #19 to a point, because if Vegeta didn't get there until after 19 sucked up the Kamehameha, then he's at least somewhat justified in confirming the energy drain.
I'm not saying Vegeta's totally blameless, but I don't think it's fair to condemn him for stuff he can't possibly know.
It's true that he wasn't smiling, but we do see afterwards that he asserts that Freeza's bluffing and that he won't change that much. After seeing how much strength Zarbon gained and the beating he got, it's beyond stupid to assume that the even stronger Freeza, "won't change that much". Even if Freeza didn't grow in power by as much as he did, he was still stronger than Freeza in just his first-form, and any transformation, even if it was by one unit, would've still kept his lead. It wasn't assured that Vegeta, Gohan and Kuririn could all defeat Freeza together; Vegeta just assumed that they could and took the relaxed approach of letting Freeza transform before he'd even tried teaming up with Gohan and Kuririn to kill him before he could do so. Or maybe it was just some stupid, boneheaded curiosity of seeing Freeza's transformed state.
The #19 scenario is no different. He'd been watching the fight all along, at least long enough to see #19 sap the ki out of Goku, yet he still stupidly let #19 grab him and absorb his ki, and not even try to shake him off (which he could do easily) and preferred to riskily dick around by ripping his arms off with his feet and taunting him by saying,
"Don't let go now!" And then he made the bullshit excuse of saying that he wanted to "confirm". Out-of-universe, I think this was a Toriyama goof-up likely due to him forgetting that Vegeta had already seen the Androids' absorbing ability, but in-universe, it can be put down to more of Vegeta's over-confidence.
You can make all the excuses you like, but it doesn't excuse the fact that Cell arc Vegeta is basically the same as Freeza arc Vegeta, only more arrogant due to Super Saiyan. So, if he became even more arrogant than before from becoming a Super Saiyan, doing the same against Freeza, his most hated enemy and previous strongest in the universe, would most certainly mean he'd want to do what Goku did: let him reach 100%, beat him up, and then proudly rub it in his face that he was the strongest warrior in the universe, having finally fulfilled the legend that Freeza had been so afraid of and denied for so long, before killing him.
In fact, just for ironic (or not; people often get the meaning of that word wrong) hilarity, I'd wager that it's even possible that, since transforming into a Super Saiyan for the first time affected Goku so much that he was almost like a different person
* (angrily yelling at Gohan when he didn't fly off with Piccolo,
"Don't talk back, boy! Do what your father says!", letting Freeza reach 100 & so he could beat him at his strongest, saying he was satisfied that he'd been humiliated, rubbing it in his face that he was defeated by a mere Saiyan), it may boost Vegeta's arrogance so much that he'd end up toying with Freeza for so long that he'd forget about the crumbling planet and it would explode, leaving Freeza as the winner.
*Also, this is later supported in the Cell arc when Vegeta himself tells #19 before they fight that when he (or just Saiyans in general) becomes a Super Saiyan, he (or they) enter a certain ecstatic state.
