Not seeing Final Form - good idea?

[coola]

What if Super Goku used his brain for once, and didn't let one of potential future enemies achieve final form? I think it would be interesting idea, it would also gave fans chance to speculate what last form would look like

[MasenkoHA]

The entire M.O of Goku is to test his strength and abilities which means fighting his opponents at their best.


I swear some of you don't want Dragon Ball to be Dragon Ball

[SupremeKai25]

I agree, I also think that the Eagles should have just flown the Hobbits to Mordor. It seems like a lot of trouble could have been avoided that way.

[Koitsukai]

Not really, no.

It would be so boring to have every arc be 30 episodes shorter.

The Namek arc ending right after Goku lands on Namek, by episode 70. No SS, no consequences after going against the greatest threat ever.
The Android arc ending before Vegeta even unlocks SS because they destroyed the lab.
The Buu arc ending before SS3 is even pulled out of Toriyama's ass.

I mean, if you're not interested in character development, and only in seeing something just be done with, sure, that might be a good idea. Also, if you want to have non-pragmatic characters be pragmatic and do what they would never do, it could also be a good idea.

[WittyUsername]

The characters do make an effort to try and stop Cell from achieving his Perfect Form, so there’s that. Their efforts of course end up being for nothing, because Vegeta is the one person who refuses to be pragmatic in that situation.

[Majin Buu]

While it tends to result from the characters not being pragmatic, it would nonetheless be a major anti-climax if we never saw Freeza's final form, or Perfect Cell, or the original Buu.

You can argue that it should have happened in a less "frustrating" way, but for it to not happen at all just wouldn't be satisfying if you've already established that said villain has stronger forms.

[MasenkoHA]

The characters do make an effort to try and stop Cell from achieving his Perfect Form, so there’s that. Their efforts of course end up being for nothing, because Vegeta is the one person who refuses to be pragmatic in that situation.

You know it's funny because Goku doesn't give an opinion one way or the other on Cell achieving his final form. Bulma, Krillin, and Trunks are the ones making the effort to stop Cell from reaching his perfect form.

And it actually would be interesting to see if Goku was in Vegeta's shoes in that one instance. This isn't like letting Freeza power up to 100 percent or giving Perfect Cell a senzu bean where its a misguided sense of honor thing. Letting Cell reach perfect means letting Cell devour 18 and makes Goku culpable in someone else's life being taken that isn't in combat.

So, it is interesting that Goku is absolved of having to compromise his warrior spirit by not letting Cell reach his perfect form as well as giving Cell the go ahead to kill someone, simply by not being around to give his opinion on the subject.

[WittyUsername]

The characters do make an effort to try and stop Cell from achieving his Perfect Form, so there’s that. Their efforts of course end up being for nothing, because Vegeta is the one person who refuses to be pragmatic in that situation.

You know it's funny because Goku doesn't give an opinion one way or the other on Cell achieving his final form. Bulma, Krillin, and Trunks are the ones making the effort to stop Cell from reaching his perfect form.

And it actually would be interesting to see if Goku was in Vegeta's shoes in that one instance. This isn't like letting Freeza power up to 100 percent or giving Perfect Cell a senzu bean where its a misguided sense of honor thing. Letting Cell reach perfect means letting Cell devour 18 and makes Goku culpable in someone else's life being taken that isn't in combat.

So, it is interesting that Goku is absolved of having to compromise his warrior spirit by not letting Cell reach his perfect form as well as giving Cell the go ahead to kill someone, simply by not being around to give his opinion on the subject.

That does sound like it would be a unique conundrum for Goku’s character. When you put it like that, Toriyama sure did take the easy way out.

[capsulecorp]

Doesn't Frieza have a bunch of intermediate forms that he didn't show us? We can mourn for not seeing those forms.

[Lukmendes]

That kind of thing can work with gag villains, but in general it's better to let characters transform, just so we can see what's like at the very least, and it's generally in-character for characters to let the opponent transform.

About the best situation where we don't get to see someone transforming is if we already know what the transformed enemy is like, and that kind of situation is basically "We saw how Goku dealt with this, now we can see how Trunks speedruns killing them", which's how he dealt with the Cell from his timeline, and Boo by not even having to deal with him, and something like that just isn't as fun to see for long, characters being dumb fucks helps keeping the stories interesting (Though at times it can go too far).

[MasenkoHA]

Doesn't Frieza have a bunch of intermediate forms that he didn't show us? We can mourn for not seeing those forms.

No, nothing suggest he has any other forms than what we saw.

I think its fanon that King Cold is only in his second form, based purely on looking like Freeza's second form so theoretically he has two additional forms we never saw.

[Koitsukai]

Oh yes, Trunks seems to be there to fulfill the needs of people who want to take the safest way out.

Freeza? oneshot him.
King Cold? you're not transforming, even if you can't.
Future Androids? destroyed within a minute before Cell could absorb them.
Future Cell? destroyed before he could even show off his special attack.
Buu? not even awakened.

[MyVisionity]

So, it is interesting that Goku is absolved of having to compromise his warrior spirit by not letting Cell reach his perfect form as well as giving Cell the go ahead to kill someone, simply by not being around to give his opinion on the subject.

I don't think that Goku would ever allow someone to be killed or hurt just for the sake of combat. Vegeta, yes, because he's Goku's dark half. But for as reckless and irresponsible as Goku is, he would draw the line at murder I think.

[jjgp1112]

Goku letting the villain reach their final form is hardly unique to Super lmao

[JulieYBM]

The characters do make an effort to try and stop Cell from achieving his Perfect Form, so there’s that. Their efforts of course end up being for nothing, because Vegeta is the one person who refuses to be pragmatic in that situation.

You know it's funny because Goku doesn't give an opinion one way or the other on Cell achieving his final form. Bulma, Krillin, and Trunks are the ones making the effort to stop Cell from reaching his perfect form.

And it actually would be interesting to see if Goku was in Vegeta's shoes in that one instance. This isn't like letting Freeza power up to 100 percent or giving Perfect Cell a senzu bean where its a misguided sense of honor thing. Letting Cell reach perfect means letting Cell devour 18 and makes Goku culpable in someone else's life being taken that isn't in combat.

So, it is interesting that Goku is absolved of having to compromise his warrior spirit by not letting Cell reach his perfect form as well as giving Cell the go ahead to kill someone, simply by not being around to give his opinion on the subject.

I doubt that Kondou would have allowed that but Toriyama probably wouldn't have cared and would have had Gokuu allow #18 to die because Toriyama is a contrarian.

[Anonymous Friend]

The characters do make an effort to try and stop Cell from achieving his Perfect Form, so there’s that. Their efforts of course end up being for nothing, because Vegeta is the one person who refuses to be pragmatic in that situation.

You know it's funny because Goku doesn't give an opinion one way or the other on Cell achieving his final form. Bulma, Krillin, and Trunks are the ones making the effort to stop Cell from reaching his perfect form.

And it actually would be interesting to see if Goku was in Vegeta's shoes in that one instance. This isn't like letting Freeza power up to 100 percent or giving Perfect Cell a senzu bean where its a misguided sense of honor thing. Letting Cell reach perfect means letting Cell devour 18 and makes Goku culpable in someone else's life being taken that isn't in combat.

So, it is interesting that Goku is absolved of having to compromise his warrior spirit by not letting Cell reach his perfect form as well as giving Cell the go ahead to kill someone, simply by not being around to give his opinion on the subject.

That does sound like it would be a unique conundrum for Goku’s character. When you put it like that, Toriyama sure did take the easy way out.

It's not an easy way out. It's just having characters at the ready to ferform thos eroles of making/letting things happen.

Make no mistake, Goku would never let our 17 and 18 get absorbed. And he would have definitely have attempted to stop Cell for absorbing as many people as he could. Dude got mad at Vegeta for killing Ginyu members who were trying to kill them.

Now the new question is: Would Goku have stopped Trunk's 17 and 18 from being absorbed by that Cell. They were actively evil. I want to say, that at best he might have pulled a Bale-Batman.

[Lukmendes]

No, nothing suggest he has any other forms than what we saw.

I think its fanon that King Cold is only in his second form, based purely on looking like Freeza's second form so theoretically he has two additional forms we never saw.

I think that Future timeline can be a big indicator that he doesn't have any transformations, because in it, Goku is the one who killed both Freeza and Cold, and it's possible he'd let Cold transform, but on the other hand, sometimes Goku is pragmatic enough to not let someone transform...

Either way, I doubt Cold can transform, no dialogue indicates this, and it's made clear that Freeza is the stronger one between both (Even in the anime version, which inexplicably has Vegeta saying Cold's power is even stronger than Freeza, has Gohan saying later on the same episode that the power Freeza is showing right now is nothing compared to what he really has), it wouldn't make sense for Freeza to be the stronger one if Cold can still transform, and possibly be stronger than Freeza himself if he powers up as tremendously as Freeza does.

Frost does make things debatable though, considering his transformations follow the same patterns as Freeza, and we haven't seen anyone else from that species, it's possible only Freeza and Frost have the "final" form, while anyone else from Freeza's race takes their appearance after the first or second form, maybe even the third, while a mutant like Freeza and Frost get the appearance of that final form, and that's also assuming that Frost is a mutant, 'cause it's entirely possible his species evolved differently from Freeza's like U6 saiyans did compared to U7's.

Now the new question is: Would Goku have stopped Trunk's 17 and 18 from being absorbed by that Cell. They were actively evil. I want to say, that at best he might have pulled a Bale-Batman.

I don't think Goku would let that happen just because having another Perfect Cell running around is a terrible idea no matter what, even if Future 17 and 18 deserve to be punished in some way, making another villain stronger is not the way to go.

[ChronoTwigger]

The hero own the SKILL to defeat the antagonist, so you'll see a challenge of skills.
But... thee mischevious enemy have a transformation ("unholy power") that goes beyond skills!
So the hero have to find some *inner resource* to go beyond his own skill, turning the fight in a battle of wits and morality.

This is how epic duels works. And why people like it, even unconsciously. Now you can write it too, and check it any anime/RPG.

[Vijay]

I actually like Frieza's 1st, 2nd & Mecha Form, Cell's Perfect/SPC & Majin's Bootenks, Boohan & Kid forms

It takes real talent to be able to pull-off convincing & unique final form villain. In that case, you may say DBZ villains were class apart

Have watched some wannabe final form comedy piece villains frm very own dbgt, dbs, hero, or some other shounen who looked like butterfly, animal or weirdos...

Its take it or leave it concept. I personally enjoy it. Keeps thing fresh & build tension/drama/PL/world-building whatever u call it

[TheGreatness25]

From a storytelling perspective, what would be the point in telling the audience that there's another form and then not having them see it?