Is Shin stronger than Freeza? Shin vs Piccolo, Base Saiyans, etc.

[Yuji]

I'm aware we have a Strength thread but this is a big debate that has since been rekindled by Daima.

Battle of Gods implies base Saiyans are weaker than Freeza.

Daima, on the other hand, showcases that base Saiyans are stronger than Shin, at least their Mini versions.

You can also make the argument that the Boo arc presented the same scaling tier, even making the base Saiyans stronger than Piccolo. Daima certainly also seems to equate Piccolo Mini to the base Saiyans, as well, though this is less clear.

We know from the Boo arc that Piccolo is supposedly weaker than Shin, but Piccolo defeats Degesu very easily in Daima. Of course there may be no correlation between Degesu's power and Shin's, but some fans have seen the fight as an implication on Piccolo vs Shin.

On the other hand, one can make the argument that magic may play a role in shifting otherwise conventional BP scalings one way or the other.

So where does Kanzenshuu stand on Shin, Freeza, Piccolo and the base Saiyans?

[JulieYBM]

From a storytelling point of view, I think that it's just more useful and simplistic to go ahead and buy the notion that even at his best, Freeza was no match for Shin. It's simple, it's clean, and it takes the dialogue at face value—dialogue that Toriyama never went out of his way to try and contradict directly, which is precisely how Toriyama would have done so had he wanted to actually contradict himself.

[Hugo Boss]

From a storytelling point of view, I think that it's just more useful and simplistic to go ahead and buy the notion that even at his best, Freeza was no match for Shin. It's simple, it's clean, and it takes the dialogue at face value—dialogue that Toriyama never went out of his way to try and contradict directly, which is precisely how Toriyama would have done so had he wanted to actually contradict himself.

Agreed. At least in the context of the Boo arc, Toriyama never walked that back in any obvious way, so it’s likely he just intended for Shin to be above Freeza. Of course, Battle of Gods, Resurrection F and Super flipped that a bit, making Freeza relevant again and putting him above base Goku and Piccolo. Meanwhile, Daima pushes base Goku ahead of Shin.

Personally, I don’t think we’ll ever get a clean, consistent answer that spans all eras. The best you can do is look at the logic within a particular arc and not worry too much about how it stacks across the franchise as a whole.

[GreatSaiyaman123]

He has to be stronger than Freeza. That's the bare minimum for his character as a measure of power. "We Kaioshins could kill Freeza in one blow, but we were powerless against Boo".

The Piccolo stuff is really ambiguous. I like to always remind people that Goku asked Piccolo "Is he that strong?" - this doesn't necessarily mean Piccolo quit because of the power gap. Being stronger than Piccolo isn't a big deal though, he's consistently portrayed as far beneath SSJ level.

Whenever I read the Babidi chapters, I can't help but see Kaioshin as completely helpless. The only reason the Saiyans are there is because Kaioshin didn't think he could clear the gauntlet alone, and he didn't know Dabura was there. All he does is stand around and tell the other Saiyans "Come on! Go help him!".

From what I understood in Daima, magic serves the same function as Ki. Daizenshuu 7 says all of Dabura's techniques (Even his ki blasts and afterimages) are magic abilities. Magic is like a different language but using the same alphabet.

[dbgtFO]

I feel it's best to judge based on the time the arc was being written and not the 20 something years later stuff, where Toriyama decided he wanted Freeza to be relevant in any which way and so he hyped him up to a ridiculous extent.

That being said at first we get the impression that since Shin could paralyze SS2 Gohan and Piccolo said he was much stronger than himself, that he was close to SS2 Gohan, which was an ok placement narrative wise.

However then as soon as the Babidi spaceship battles start he gives off the impression that he's even weaker than base Saiyans, with such iconic lines as "I never expected them to be this strong!" upon seeing Vegeta kill off a guy, who thought 10x Earth's gravity was a big deal....

So yeah I feel like this is Toriyama wanting to have his cake and eat it too. On one hand he wanted this new guy introduced as seemingly a big deal powerwise, albeit still somewhat inferior to the Saiyans' best, but on the other hand, he also just wants there to be the typical astonished reactions to the Saiyans' power and since he killed off Kibito, Shin was the only one to fulfill that role on the good guys' side.

Then of course after Goku overwhelms Yakon with his power, Shin is even more flabbergasted and that seems like the natural point, where he should be surpassed powerwise. Unfortunately being impressed with base Vegeta's power kinda negates that, so yeah.
Not much definitive to say on him other than stronger than Freeza.. maybe lol.

As far as Piccolo and base Saiyans. Piccolo is not treated as relevant to the Saiyans' strength at all in the Buu Arc.
It seems like Toriyama kinda retired him and used him for other purposes than fighting. He killed Babidi and that's it. He didn't fight at the tournament. Didn't get to fight in Babidi's spaceship and didn't get to fight any form of Buu.
If his inclusion at the tournament and the no Super Saiyan rule was supposed to be a challenge for the Saiyans, then it's certainly not displayed that way.

However close he may have been to Super Saiyan level at the Cell Games, it certainly doesn't seem like he's any close at all by the Buu Arc, even to Trunks and Goten, who shook him with their power, while base Goku stood unfazed...

And speaking of Goten and Trunks, they are the only ones in this part of the story, who actually fight a character confirmed to be stronger than Freeza in their base forms and #18 is only presented as a challenge thanks to the suit hindering their movements.

The boys were aware that she was once stronger than their fathers, but that's it. After they turn Super Saiyan #18 wasn't presented as a threat in terms of power either and she only won due to forcing them to rip apart their stolen suit.
With all of this I find it hard to believe, that we are obviously supposed to think, that Freeza's power was relevant to the base Saiyans in this arc.
All the characters that are confirmed or claimed to be above him are not treated like a big deal at all to base Saiyans, so why would I think they were?

[Koitsukai]

Shin is without a doubt stronger than Freeza. His introduction loses weight if he was just bluffing. In no way, that was implied to not be the case later on.

The real question is how Freeza compares to those that weren't said to be stronger than him but somehow were implied to be stronger than Shin... but said to be weaker than Freeza in BoG.

Since DB is filled with contradictions and changes of heart, it could very well be that Toriyama meant Freeza to be surpassed by everybody by the end of the original run; but for the revival, he chose to backtrack that a little bit (since nothing was clearly portrayed for anyone but Shin).

It's obvious Toriyama held Freeza in high regard, his clone-ish was the enemy after he was defeated, and in the last arc he was still used as a measuring stick... and then he came back in DBS, and is still running around. So, he was always a big deal in Akira's eyes, one would assume that if the main character were to surpass him at his weakest, that would've been portrayed beyond reasonable doubt.
Of course, the revival wasn't planned, I guess he was lucky enough to never explicitly have said who else had surpassed Freeza back in the day, even though the simplest takeaway is that Freeza was no longer a threat to any form of Goku.

[theherodjl]

My guess is either that Shin being turned into a child affected his Ki more than the others, Shin's fusion getting split by Boo's "bad air" mixed up his power in particular, Daima being a different continuity where things played out a little differently, or all of the above.
It is also important to note that Toriyama altered Shin's role from confident, enigmatic deity to an inexperienced, semi-useless guy who merely inherited his divine position in the original run. Daima sorta demoted him further by making him clearly just another denizen of the Demon Realm who was fortunate enough to be offered the opportunity to do something greater.

I'd say that Toriyama wasn't invested enough in Shin being portrayed as a notably strong & accomplished fighter beyond his introduction in the 25th Tenkaichi Budokai, and he threw the Freeza line in just to give context to how much greater Boo was than the Kaioshin. That, or he simply forgot how strong Shin was supposed to be? Since Toriyama unfortunately passed away, we may never know.

[DBZ Macky]

If you take all of the statements that are actually given to us, they kinda contradict each other

1. Shin > Freeza which is outright stated in the original Manga and the Anime.
2. Freeza > Base Goku which is stated in DBS (The Movie, The Manga AND The Anime if I'm not misremembering)
3. Base Goku > Glorio without even using his magic > Shin which is stated in Daima

Either two of these can work together but not all three.
Other sources like El Manga Legendario further support Shin > Freeza so that does seem most likely.

Personally, I'd just ignore Daima because I don't think it is really really canon and doesn't add up with ANY of the other continuations of the original Manga as it clearly contradicts not just the many versions of DBS but also the DBO lore which both had input from Toriyama (Though that's an entirely separate discussion)

[JulieYBM]

The events all generally work together, there's just minute details that contradict other details because Toriyama is not all about keeping his ducks in a row like that and there's no official team that keeps Dragon Ball projects all in perfect sync in terms of continuity.

[Desassina]

Instead of questioning inanimate material, we could challenge our perception of it, and find a way to reason with these inconsistencies. Shin > Piccolo > 18 > Freeza is only a problem when we think about fixed battle powers for base Saiyans. Before transformation, they were either suppressed or at full power, broke their limits with techniques such as Kaioken, and strengthened their bodies through near death recovery, all helped by the scouter and its figures, which were abandoned after the Saiyan and Freeza arcs, since Toriyama found an iconic means to tell when the characters were stronger.

You can argue that some principles were not forgotten, such as the Earthlings' means to spike up their power when attacking to conserve energy, which Shin recognized in Goku and Co. when they were fighting in Bobbidi's ship, to avoid thinking about them as walking figures, and more like ranges. The core is still the same, it's just that drawings and animation began to take the place of numbers and exposition, although Toyotaro went back to the latter in an attempt to please the fans. The DBS manga represents a closer look to some of these open questions in the middle of a troubled production from the author's ideas and we can go one step further as fans to reconcile all these aspects.

[LightBing]

Unfortunately all this confusion is because of bad writing. Specially in the Boo Arc.
Shin and Dabra both correctly evaluate the Saiyans, only to be completely wrong the very next moment.

Shin specifically recruits Goku because he's strong, yet Pui-Pui makes him doubt them?

In my opinion Shin's statement about one punching Freeza, stands and he's definitely stronger than him.
Stronger than Piccolo, I don't think so although it doesn't really matter.

Based on the power-scaling logic of Dragon Ball and it's habitual power comparisons. A comparison between Piccolo and Shin has no purpose, however it had a purpose in regards to his hierarchy. It served to highlight it's status to the point Piccolo refuses to fight him.

I would also like to add that Piccolo is much stronger than his fight against #17, he went into the RoSaT and got a massive boost, besides whatever gains in the 7 year gap.

In regards to the Base Saiyans, I would point out to the narrative progression. At the end of Namek, Base Goku couldn't even touch Freeza with a x20 multiplier.
The following arc growth is around better Saiyan forms. Base was abandoned, zenkais were apparently depleted, massive jumps in power aren't there anymore.

While it's likely Base Goku got stronger after Namek, it still was ways off Freeza.

By the end of the Boo Arc, no Saiyan should have reached Freeza in base.

Daima doesn't really change much. Because it's writing is inconsistent and nebulous. The chibi debuff appears random and hard to ascertain. The battles suffer from Toei forcing progression giving far too much time to weaker forms, just for show. Etc...

If we take Daima at face value then, it all falls apart.

TLDR: Piccolo > Shin > Freeza > Base Saiyans.

[Lionel]

Agreed with the others. The original context is inferably established to present Shin as being stronger than Freeza. It's the minimum threshold for him to even be worth consideration here. We know that he read Vegeta's mind. It would naturally include the segments where Vegeta felt Freeza's power when he was in his original form, along with the resonance of Freeza's (waning) full power when he was resurrected prior to being teleported to Earth.

I think Shin is just one of those characters who got the short end of the stick throughout the Buu arc. Toriyama's fly by the seat of his pants writing style and this fixated concentration on the Saiyans ultimately left Shin with little he could do except act as a mouthpiece for the audience as they're witnessing the Saiyans flex their strength. The man couldn't even be permitted to expound upon the methods and lore of Kaioshin's tools and abilities beyond the Z-Sword. Elder Kaioshin was the more competent and even his utility wound up being for nought in the immediate situation since neither the Potara Earrings or the potential unlock were used in Buu's final defeat.

Piccolo is another one who faced obscurity and being used for off-stage roles. His strength doesn't have any purpose in the Buu arc. It's his 'intelligence' that's brought up when Buu singles him out. However way that's supposed to positively improve his fighting since Buu was making mistakes even after he had both Piccolo and Gohan absorbed — the attempt to use smoke to blind Vegetto when he should have been aware about ki sensing and vibrations being a case in point.