Zebra wrote: Wed Oct 07, 2026 5:25 amIt's clearly a reference to when Ultimate Gohan turned Beast the first time, though.
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He's not Ultimate right when he closes his eyes, but he looks to be turning Ultimate as the wind's flowing around him. By the time he opens his eyes, he should be Ultimate. It's basically the same facial expression as when he first turned Beast on top of the outlined eyes.
I mean, yes, Gohan turning into Beast for the second time is going to look pretty similar to Gohan turning Beast for the first time. He is turning into Beast, after all. A character making an angry face both times he transforms into a state based on anger makes sense.
Again, I can understand if you think the reason he's got enclosed/fully-outlined eyes in panel 6 is that he's Ultimate there for a single panel. But Beast also has enclosed eyes. This is the problem: normal Gohan has black hair with, as of now, a single bang, meaning Ultimate no longer has any unique visual characteristics or features that could be pointed to in a zoomed-in panel where his hair is flowing. It shares those with his normal state and with Beast, the two states bookending that page. How then could the presence, or absence, of Ultimate on that page be remotely clear?
Now, as a result of having its design language split between normal and Beast, it does certainly
look like a middle stage between them, and I think that's the main thing giving room for the "Beast is rooted in Ultimate" interpretation. That's certainly why the two panels in question have as much in common as they do. But trying to infer lore connections between forms in DB, especially forms in modern DB, based solely on design language, is very shaky.
See:
- this very thread, wondering why Ultra Instinct and Beast have the same or similar hair colors
- Daima's Super Saiyan 4 looking kinda like a mix of GT's Super Saiyan 4 with Super Saiyan God
- Ultra Instinct's concept art basically being a recolor of Super Saiyan God's concept art
- Golden Freeza and "Super Saiyan Rage" Trunks having similarly shaped auras as Super Saiyan Blue
You give me the time, and I could cook up interpretations of the relevant stories that makes in-universe sense of each of these sets of design similarities; I've been cooking up headcanons here for over 16 years.
Design similarities are too often coincidental, and given the lack of any other supporting evidence for a connection remaining at this point, I'm firmly leaning on the side of "it's a coincidence that Ultimate looks like a middle stage between normal Gohan and Beast". Nobody's forcing you to adopt that view, but I'm really not sure what else we could say here that isn't just repeating past points.
To be clear, I think it would be cool if Beast was rooted in Ultimate, partly because it would make Gohan's talk about a better Ultimate state in the Super anime's ToP recruitment episodes function sort of retroactively as foreshadowing for the form. Them being connected certainly wouldn't break anything. But Toriyama not bringing Ultimate up at all in describing what Beast is paints the picture of him having an entirely different transformation direction in mind (which I think is also cool). If and how these forms might relate to each other is definitely a question I'd have loved to see him answer, were he still with us.
She/Her 
