Headscratchers / Dragon Ball Abilities

• Here's what I don't get: With all the times they've seen ki attacks decimate mountain tops, create giant craters in the ground, split the ground in half, etc, why do they always panic like it's the first time they've seen it? It's like if a roach killer suddenly freeze and gasp heavily whenever he sees a huge infestation of roaches. C'mon! You've seen this before!
  • Well, partly because they aren't just seeing it, they're feeling it. They can sense the output. Said output doesn't necessarily always match the visible results, however. Vegeta's self destruct attack against Buu was presumably far more powerful than, say, Frieza's planet busters, but the visible results were far less noticeable. We may just see a crater or ruble where a mountain used to be while their reaction is meant to be the indicator that even though this did less visible damage, it's more powerful than stuff we've seen before.

• I know the dragon can't defeat villains more powerful than it against their will, but did it seriously NEVER occur to ANYONE to just wish for enough power to Curb Stomp Cell/Buu/whoever and skip the training? I mean, I could see Goku and Vegeta being against it, but you'd think somebody would have at least suggested it by now.

• How did Piccolo Jr. and Kami have a synch rate as though they were still two halves of the same being? Piccolo is Kami's other half's son, even if he was a clone he was still grown from an egg and had his own life, and had already absorbed Nail. Was it originally just because Kami was ridiculously powerful from his centuries as Patron God of Earth, and Piccolo had a young enough body and few enough restrictions to use that power, and the translation messed it up? Or was it always an issue? (On a related subject, I don't recall the original being ever being named. Was he just referred to as "the guy Kami was before he threw off the evil that became Piccolo" since it was long enough ago that Kami forgot and Piccolo Jr. never knew it?)
  • Piccolo Jr. wasn't just a son. As I recall, Piccolo Daimaoh somehow managed to reincarnate himself as his own son, forcing his soul into the son's body- resulting in a sort of ancestral memory, and the souls between Jr. and Kami still fitting together like puzzle pieces. As for the name, he himself put it best. "I am neither Piccolo nor Kami. I am a Namek that has long since forgotten his name".
    • I addressed "wasn't just a son" above, but that still doesn't explain Nail. Did he just hang around all discorporeal and asentient, increasing Piccolo's power level but not actually changing him in any meaningful way? Like a piece of power-increasing bubble gum stuck to Piccolo's puzzle piece? (Continuing the line of thought, did Piccolo ever mention whether he gained all of Kami's memories from his time in the watchtower? Or did he not say anything about it either way?)
    • Answer, "Yes." In fact one of the things Nail tells Piccolo to get him to agree to the fusion is that he, Nail, will not interfere with Piccolo in any way but will just act as a catalyst to give him stronger powers. We can tell this isn't exactly true, though, because Picco Nail knows Dende on sight.
    • You referred to him as a clone, with his own life. He doesn't have his own life, he has his father's life, with emotional and subconscious associations reset to zero.
    • All Namekians came from Guru, even Kami, so because they all have the same genetic structure (I'm assuming here), they'd be able to merge/split as they wish, as they would have the same ability. Which leads me to this question: Why the hell didn't all the warrior nameks just fuse into a Super Namek to fight Frieza?
    • Wrong. Kami did not come from Guru. Kami and Guru were the only two survivors of the Namek cataclysm.
    • Life as in the one that you live, not life as in that thing that sort of hangs around inside you all invisible and sometimes lets you Cast from Hit Points.

• Saiyans keep their hairstyle from birth. Saiyans have extremely spiky hair. Discuss.
  • Not just that. During Goku's battle with Taopaipai, part of his hair gets cut off. How does it grow back?
    • Because they keep their hairstyle at birth. Just as when Wolverine loses an arm from the base it grows back anyway just the way it was, a Saiyan's hair grows back until it is just the way it was.
    • How could Wolverine lose an arm? Doesn't he have an Adamantium skeleton?
    • His bones are indestructible. His joints, ligaments, and muscles are not (merely very tough).
    • Yes they are. Canonically, Weapon X bonded the adamantium to Wolverine's connective tissue as well. Everyone else it's been bonded to hasn't, hence why he's been able to decapitate Sabretooth in the past or cut off Daken's arm, but Wolverine's joints are just indestructible as his bones.
    • The hairs grow for their whole life but fall off when they reach certain length. Just like human body hair.
  • It may be spikey, but its just hair. Its not hard, just naturally in bizarre formations. It can be pushed down, compressed, or slicked back when pressure is applied just like our own- it simply bounces back to status quo once you remove your pressure.
  • They're like Hedgehogs? Born fluffy, get spikey a few hours after bring born?
  • Alternatively, maybe we can just toss the whole idea into Fanon Discontinuity, since it makes roughly zero stinkin' sense.
    • Because a race of alien, shape-shifting battle-psionics/mages that are compatible with humans is otherwise completely logical?

• If Saiyans get stronger by recovering from near-death, why don't Son Goku, Vegeta and the others constantly beat each other up, eat Senzu beans, rinse and repeat? Much faster than all that tedious training.
  • Senzu beans aren't that plentiful. They apparently only grow in one spot, and there's generally only a handful of them around when they're needed.
  • At least for a while they do. Go back and rewatch Goku's trip to Namek. He literally shoots kamehamehas and then takes it to the chest at 100x Earth Gravity. During the the run up to Cell and the androids Vegeta nearly kills himself at least once training. I think they do enjoy the training aspect but neither Goku or Vegeta are above beating themselves nearly to death for the power gain the only question is if they just push too hard or if being beaten half to death was part of the official plan.
    • Then what about those healing tanks Freeza has all over his bases? Surely Vegeta could tell Bulma how to build one of those, and healing from near-death to perfect health in them didn't seem to take all that long.
    • Why do we have any reason to assume Vegeta knows anything about building them at all? He's neither a technological nor a medical genius, after all. Just because he seems to know how to use it doesn't mean he knows how to make it.
    • No we don't. But Vegeta probably knows the location of at least one of Frieza's planets and given what we've seen Bulma is more than good enough that if Vegeta brought her a few that she could rebuilt one. We're talking about a woman who in one timeline/dimension built a time machine/dimension jumper.
    • They could make Dende do it.
  • Because that's the stupidest way of powering up, even if it's fast, it's very dangerous and not practical, Goku would never choose that over the regular "tedious" training he so enjoys, let alone Gohan, and Vegeta only tried it once when he had no other choices, but wouldn't do it just to get a power boost normally.
  • Simple. Goku and (slightly less so) Vegeta enjoy all the hard, tedious training to point that Goku actually mentioned this after leaving the Hyperbolic Time Chamber. Gohan, Goten and Kid Trunks didn't inherit the Masochistic Saiyan Fighting spirit that would enable them to even consider self harming themselves - and there is no way Future Gohan and Bulma would have let Future Trunks intentionally hurt himself as they were very protective of him. There was never any canon evidence that the quarter-Saiyans Pan and Bra had even inherited the abilty - much less possessing one that actually worked to the extent where you could happily survive a serious injury.
    • Bra is Trunk's younger sister, making her half-Saiyan not quarter.
    • It probably has some limitation to how well it works. Notice how it's only mentioned once and for Cell at that after the Frieza Saga. When Goku is training at one hundred times regular gravity part of it consists of blasting kamehameha's in a circle and taking them straight to the chest. When Vegeta is training in the gravity chamber while he doesn't just blast himself he does train right up to the limit of death instead of taking breaks AND he returns to the Hyperbolic Room of Space and Time Chamber and presumably trains to the very limit.
    • If there is a limit, I'd like to know it. Vegeta went from 18k on earth to 24k on Namek to 30k after Zarbon kicks his ass. Pretty consistant 6k increases using the healing tanks up till this point. Then, Vegeta gets beaten by Racoom, eats a senzu bean, and shoots up to somewhere between 200k to 500k (being able to fight evenly against Frieza's first form, which various sources list at 200k or 530k). After getting blasted by Krillin and healed by Dende, he shoots up passed 2nd form Frieza, probably equal to 3rd form but no where near equal to 1% final form. Then you have Goku, going from 180k against Ginyu to shooting up to well over a million against final form Frieza after an hour or so in the healing tank. The effect certainly isn't additive, so one assumes it's either related to how severe the injuries being healed from are or how efficient the healing method is, or a combination of those two factors.
  • Even if a limitless supply of senzu beans made something like that viable, I'm sure none of the characters in the series, Saiyan or otherwise, enjoy being near death. Being near death several times successively would hold no appeal to anyone I can imagine.
  • Exactly, the power up doesn't come from simply being beaten up, they have to recover from an injury that carries a serious risk of death. Vegeta was desperate when he did what is being suggested on Namek.
    • Goku and Vegeta are perfectly happy to use this technique. Goku literally shoots himself over and over again on the trip to Namek and he wasn't desperate, he had no idea how powerful his opponents on Namek would be. Frankly it's a good thing he accidentally set the machine to 100g and then decided to train up to that. Vegeta wasn't desperate during the lead up to the Android Saga either and he very nearly killed himself training in extra gravity. They DO use this technique.
    • That is one interpretation another is that (in Goku's case at least) it isn't deliberate. For starters when exactly did Goku learn of this ability? Because the only time he could have discovered it between learning he was a Saiyan and training on the Pod is from King Kai - and in the anime at least there is simply no evidence of this. As for attacking himself it is called endurance training; not only do real life martial artists do this all the time but he does have a good idea about the strength of his opponents. He knows Vegeta is on Namek (as in the man who nearly crippled him a few weeks beforehand) as well as the fact that King Kai rings him up and warns him that Frieza is the most powerful man in the universe.
    • Fair observation. It isn't clear when exactly Goku learns that beating yourself half to death brings you back stronger. Though it's difficult to believe he didn't figure it out during his training at 100x gravity that clearly had him consuming a senzu bean at the end of each session. Considering Naruto didn't notice he was learning from his shadow clones until Kakashi told him (I mean until the author figured it out) is a different issue however. Vegeta however clearly knew and it's if not outright stated heavily implied that he gave up during his first fight with Zarbon so he could get the boost and win easily later and he definitely had Krillin shoot him and had Bulma not saved Vegeta it's probable he would have died training at 500 times gravity and had he not gone Super when he did he would have been stranded in space after training to exhaustion.
  • The zenkai ability became obsolete once Freeza reached his final form. Vegeta got by on nothing but zenkais the whole time he was on Namek and after a while they weren't enough, while Goku was enduring a mix of zenkais and training that helped him acclimate with his power.

• So who the strongest human: Tenshinhan or Krillin? I always assumed Tien, but I've seen plenty of sites that state Krillin is the strongest, and he did receive that power-up on Namek. In fact, he's the last human character to receive a significant power-up. So, what's the verdict?
  • Krillin. He keeps training longer; the only reason Tien was better than him in the Cell Saga is because Tien's ki attacks are Cast from Hit Points- other than that, Krillin was stronger even then.
  • Tien. The Buu saga clearly showed that Tien kept training and Krillin didn't. (For all the good it ultimately did.) The question gets muddier if you ask who potentially was the strongest. I still say Tien, but the argument can be made for either side.
  • Let's look at their most important moments for a possible answer:
    • Krillin has been in 3 Tenkaichi Budokais, making it to the semi-finals twice. He fought well against Jackie Chun but lost in the end. He also held his own against Goku for a bit, but lost when he tried to capitalize on a weakness that no longer existed (and he only did that because he was losing ground), got flattened by Piccolo Jr, but also put up another good showing (convincing Piccolo that conquering the world might even be difficult), and then wiped out three of the four remaining saibamen (he missed the fourth because it was able to hide at the last moment), and was the only human survivor of the Saiyan arc.
    • Tien: Pounded Yamcha (I know. Not a big deal), mistakenly assuming he was the strongest the Kamesennin school had to offer (which is actually quite a compliment to Yamcha when you think about it. He did that well). Fought evenly with Jackie Chun, and by Jackie's own admission, would have won anyway if the latter had not decided to forfeit. Beat Goku on a technicality, but it was a hell of a fight that came down to the wire, and it might be said that Tien at that point might have been able to do it on his own without any lucky breaks. Got flattened by a a minion of Piccolo who was in turn flattened by Goku. Was toyed with by Goku in their rematch, although he matched the speed of a weighted down Goku , so it's not like he got weaker. Took down a single saibaman (he scored the first victory), and went berserk on Nappa, but accomplished nothing.
    • It's the Namek arc and beyond where things get iffy, since Krillin got that power-up, but Tien continues to train, well beyond. Plus neither of them have a serious fight afterwards, so gauging their strength fairly is difficult. Plus no power-level readings. I have to say, I'm leaning towards Tien myself, since he's fared well against opponent that have beaten Krillin with somewhat greater ease.
    • Actually, Namek onwards is where it gets clearer: Krillin is utterly outclassed by the Ginyu Force (minus Guldo, though even then he didn't actually beat him), Tien takes down two of them relatively easily, and after that there's nothing to indicate Krillin trained any harder/gained any boosts Tien didn't. So Tien is obviously the stronger from then on.
    • Actually, what you are referring to is filler, which isn't canon.
    • Also, per the guidebooks, Krillin was getting stronger and stronger from Guru's power up. At the beginning of the Freeza fight, his power level was 75,000 and it only could've risen from there. Tien fought Jeice and Burter during the middle of the main Freeza fight, so Krillin could've done the same thing.
  • I always believed the reason Krillin surpassed Tien and possibly Yamcha was due to the Namekian Guru "unlocking" his potential despite Tien showing much more skill in technique and dedication to training. I have a feeling if Tien had met the Guru as well then he would be stronger than Krillin. As it stands, Krillin is the strongest human.
    • After Namek, Krillin has a higher power level. However, Tien has substantially more skill and technique.
    • Nope. See vs. Ginyu Force.
    • Let's face it : Krilin has no nose and Tien has a third eye. So they aren't really human if you think about it. In the end, the strongest real human is Yamcha.
    • No, both of them are explicitly human.
    • As far as Word of God is concerned, it's Krillin.
    • No disrespect to the great Toriyama - but he's wrong in every way. Uub is the strongest human alive; at the 28th World Martial Arts Tournament he was capable of holding his own against regular form Goku, something Tien and Krillin haven't been able to do since the original Dragon Ball.
    • Not necessarily. When Goku saw Oob, he realized Oob wasn't going to give him much of a fight and made him angry to temporarily draw out his dormant power, the same as Gohan did as a child. If that's the case, when he's placid, he might not be stronger than Krillin yet. The manga ends before Oob can start training and realize his true power, after all.
    • Discounting #17, #18, and Oob due to the fact that the majority of their power is not human in origin, I'd argue that Chichi might be the dark horse competitor in this running. Gal is apparently strong enough to train Goten to the point where he went SSJ, and in the anime she even tanked a punch from SSJ Goten without any actual damage. Shame about the lack of flight or any shown range game.
    • Frankly, I think Chichi's case is a healthy mix of Plot Armor and Rule of Funny (just like Mr. Satan). That aside, the strongest human (not taking Ub into account) would be Tenshinhan. It's simply a matter of checking the records. He was clearly stronger than Krillin during the 2nd Tenkaichi Budokai. In the 3rd, he forced Goku to take off his heavy clothing; something even Kami commented on. During the fight against Nappa and Vegeta, Tenshinhan lost because Nappa focused exclusively on him while Krillin took more advantage of teamwork with Piccolo and Gohan; yet the second Nappa got Krillin between his eyes he went down quickly. In the Namek Arc, Krillin's performance wasn't so great, really. He spent most of the time running, got into trouble against Gurdo and one shotted against Rikum and Frieza. Again, he prevailed by virtue of wits and quick thinking. Finally, let's not forget how Tenshinhan's Kikohou raised his power high enough to push back Cell. All in all, Krillin is probably more cunning but Ten is definitely stronger.
  • Um there is absolutely no way Tien is the strongest human. I'm not saying he's weak but I'm not saying he's human, do you know any Triclopses? I didn't think so.
    • Tien's not a separate species. His Third-Eye manifested as a result of intensive meditation and training. It's a play on the whole metaphysical third-eye chakra thing that is a recurring idea in Asian mysticism. Like how the show handles most real-life martial arts concepts, it's simply exaggerated to a ridiculous extent. Otherwise, Tien's perfectly human.
  • Word of God says Tenshinhan is from a Three Eyes alien clan. The meditation part was a later added Dub Text when Word of God didn't reveal his origins.

• Something that bugs me. After Goku achieves the Super Saiyan transformation, he stops using the techniques he learned while training with King Kai. I understand not using the Spirit Bomb: the Super Saiyan transformation precludes it, due to the transformation clouding his heart. However, why does he stop using the Kaioken technique? Multiplication of strength is multiplication of strength. It would only become more useful if he used it while transformed.
  • King Kai points out that Goku has been using the Kaio-ken the entire time during the Frieza fight. He's mastered it enough that he doesn't need to turn red and shout it out each time he uses it.
  • The Kaioken is an extremely dangerous technique. King Kai was doubtful that anything above a x2 wouldn't be ripped apart by the increase in ki energy. The only reason Goku goes x20 is because he's Goku - he's just that damn good. A Super Saiyan 1 is the equivalent of a x50 boost in power, meaning a single use of the Kaioken would give a x100 increase in power, a double Kaioken would give a x200 increase in power etc... even Goku would be destroyed when presented with such power - which is why they needed to train harder and achieve the upgraded levels of Super Saiyan in the first place.
    • Ah, that makes a lot of sense. So, I was right in thinking that it would give him amazing power. The problem is that it's too much for his body to handle. I get it.
    • Indeed. In the fight against Frieza and the Ginyu force preceding his upgrade to Super Saiyan he was able to use Kaioken x2 sustained over a long duration (against Captain Ginyu) and x20 for short bursts every time he attacked (against Frieza). This indicates that his body was ready, following his high-G training, for much higher power levels than what he had... and the Super Saiyan transformation finally capitalized on that. Using Kaioken AFTER that of course would have been dangerous, and not exactly necessary for taking out Frieza.
    • However, once he minimized the strain of his super form when he mastered it, he may well have been able to use it. Seems entirely possible to me, Cell would be forced to go all out... Which leads to yet another matter: Why Cell himself didn't use it against Vegeta or Gohan! Or Piccolo. Poor, silly Kaioh, Toriyama doesn't care all that much about your techniques!
    • In the manga fight against the Ginyu force, he's gotten to the point where he can use Kaioken for just a split second, at the moment of action (attack, dodge, block, whatever), and get the same result as constant usage. It's so brief, the scouters can't even pick it up. In addition to getting stronger and more resilient in terms of power boosts, he's gotten much more efficient with his power-up techniques, which is part of why he can consistently use x10. Kaioken is Weak But Skilled: the martial arts move, and isn't intended for prolonged usage. Think about this: if anything, the only problem comes when you expect to see that red aura. However, if you're doing it right, it's too quick to see. Not sure about this, but according to my theory, Goku has been using Kaioken ever since he learned it; now, it's as natural as moving.
    • ^ Unlikely, seeing as Kaioken on top of the various Super Saiyan transformations would yield incredibly high power (a normal Kx 10 would result in x10 base power; an SSJ1 + Kx 10 would result in x500 base power), and Goku was never demonstrated as being that much stronger than the other, non-Kaioken-using SSJs. It's more likely that he didn't use it because of the now-much-greater danger of overloading his physical body with ki energy, even if it's only for a short time - a danger that would get dramatically greater if, say he tried using it later on as an SSJ3 (which is already a state that is difficult to maintain by itself). The last time he is seen using it in the anime is in the filler Otherworld Tournament, on top of his Full-Power SSJ1 transformation - which is probably possible because:
    • (A.) He's pretty much mastered the strain of maintaining the SSJ1 level by now - that's the entire point of the Full-Power stage.
    • (B.) He's dead. That removes the normal restrictions of having a physical body, which is a huge plus (and the reason he's even able to achieve the SSJ3 level later on).

• I don't know how it works in the manga, but in the anime, characters exchange long, long series of blows in every fight, shoot little elliptical lights that are always effortlessly dodged, and otherwise use attacks that are never, ever shown to do anything. Only then do they proceed to smash each other into mountains or use powerful energy beams (and proceed to be amazed that the enemy survived them, but I digress). So, * why* do they do it? I know it's padding for the fights, but what's the in-universe reason? It doesn't really work as Rule of Cool, because the attacks are unimpressive when they never even connect. Don't the characters know the attacks do nothing? Are they showing off? Again, it's not impressive compared to their ultimate attacks. Are they "testing the waters" to see what the opponent is vulnerable to? But it never seems to pay off. For that matter, when the characters are more powerful, does a physical attack (like smashing someone into the ground with incredible speed) ever do anything? We don't even see an indication that the characters are in pain. Why don't they fight just by exchanging power beams and physical attacks that can actually do some damage? Not once, in the big fights, have I seen a kick or a punch that would actually hit its target.
  • For the mini blast, that's basically just a distraction and wishful thinking. Can't really answer the rest of your headscratcher.
    • You should really try the manga. Kicks and punches frequently connect, and painfully too.
    • In addition to this fact, the derp faces the characters make when said kicks and punches connect are really funny. This troper spent a good five minutes laughing at Yamcha in the early Dragon Ball.
  • Because unless you're significantly stronger then your opponent, firing Ki will always miss or do little damage. They do the long series of punches and Kicked because you have to wear your opponent down first to a state that the ki attack will be successful.

• In Dragon Ball Ki techniques are well known all over the world, the Kamehameha is known to be the turtle schools signature attack, yet in DBZ humans will flinch at even something as simple as flying and call it a trick
  • That was only Hercule and the reporter during the Cell saga, they don't practice martial arts and as such don't know about flight or ki. If you've never even heard of muay tai, why would you know they use a technique called felling buffalo punch?
    • Actually, Hercule does practice Martial Arts, in fact, that's the reason why he's the champ. Plus, he usually wins fair and square when fighting normal humans, so barring Z-fighters, he is pretty strong.
  • The crowd in the 25th Tenka'ichi Budokai was surprised too. On the other hand, we're talking about the people who couldn't recognize Piccolo because he wore a hat. Sure, the world in Dragon Ball is full of weird people, but few of them are green, have weird musclearms, are over 2 meters tall and enjoy being called "demons"! And only three years have passed! THREE!
    • Actually, Piccolo Daimaou was more like twenty feet tall (Mai was knee high to him when he was seated and small trees and the gates to the Imperial Palace were about chin-high on him; his fist was comparable in size to Kid Goku's torso), whereas Piccolo Jr. was originally about as tall as Goku (5'0" - 5'5", tops). It wasn't until after the next timeskip that he got taller, but never to the same level as his centuries-old dad.
    • One of the few established things in Dragon Ball is that ordinary people are ignorant, ordinary people are gullible and ordinary people have very short memories.
    • Three years between the Demon Piccolo saga and the 25th Budokai ? Gohan wasn't even born at this time. In fact, they just follow the Fleeting Demographic Rule.
    • He means 3 years between Demon Piccolo and Piccolo Jr. This whole things getting all kinds of confused.
    • You know, it's not like this is all that different in the real world. How well known are Football players from before the second world war? From before nearly everyone had a radio and the TV was spreading? In Dragon Ball the 'greatest Martial Arts tournament in the world', the Tenkaichi Budokai, didn't even have a real stadium. I'm not sure but I certainly don't remember cameras or live coverage, only the announcer guy. So anyone who wasn't there only had word of mouth that there were guys that could shoot energy beams from their hands. Fast forward to the tournament Satan won: A real stadium was built and it was probably the first Budokai that was really covered on TV. Then there is the fact that, unlike previous winners, Mr Satan was an entertainer on top of a martial artist. The Ox King, King Chappa, Jackie Chun, Tenshinhan and Son Goku were all content in living in relative obscurity, so who was going to call bullshit on Satan's claims?
  • It really makes no sense for the people to forget. I mean, like just 10 years before Mr. Satan became world champion,aliens invaded and a group of people fought them, and it was filmed and shown on the news. You don't forget something like that in just 10 years.

• The series has shown that if you're not concentrating, you're as vulnerable as anyone else, as demonstrated by Goku getting hurt by a rock when sleeping, even in Super form. So why not have King Kai talk endlessly to the villains when the Z warriors fight them? His telepathy seems to be limitless. Surely both Cell and Frieza would have a harder time fighting at their best with bad jokes constantly echoing around their heads. Because KK lives in the afterlife, he needn't fear reprisals.
  • Because as amusing or even effective as that idea may be, it's stupid as hell...
    • It would only be effective briefly at best, since Kaioh is surprisingly easy to tune out.
  • Goku getting hurt by the rock as a Super Saiyan was filler.
    • No it wasn't. It was in Kai.
    • There's filler in Kai. It's just necessary filler. Wait...

• Why is it so relatively easy to kill a Namekian? Aren't they supposed to have a Healing Factor? In the Buu saga, Piccolo mentions he can regrow any part of his body, as long as his head isn't damaged. Yet in the Saiyan saga, he died despite only having a blast to his body, and several Namekians died from body blows when they go to Namek.
  • The Namekian healing factor is similar to the Regeneration of Time Lords - if you injure him too quickly or too extensively he dies. In actuality, this process is very similar to humans in that most of us can survive horrific injuries provided we have time to heal between afflictions. Also notice how a Namek's abilty to heal is a technique not a biological function and thus requires conscious thought and a fairly large level of ki that leaves him exhausted afterward. Cell is also a good example of how cumbersome and ki extensive Namekian regeneration is - it takes a long time for him to heal and he would have died many times if it wasn't for the fact he essentially has a brain in every single cell of his body.
    • The only problem with this being that Piccolo regenerates from being shattered in the Buu saga.
    • Chalk that up to being a plot hole. Look how much time and effort it took for both Piccolo and Nail to regrow even a single arm - that episode in the Buu saga nearly gave him Cell like powers of regeneration that are completely inconsistent with everything we've seen before or since.
    • Or as another option, since it's an ability that requires concentration, he simply trained himself during the 7-year time skip to do it faster. Piccolo trains almost as much as the Saiyans, so it's quite possible.
    • Or as a third, and likely option, the fusions with Nail and Kami made Piccolo far stronger than he was before. Remember that dying from a blast to the chest happened before any of these fusions. Afterwards he even survived a chest hole and a broken neck.
    • There is something here that everyone seems to be missing: Namekians aren't Wolverine. All this technique does is regrow damaged body parts - it has never been shown to heal injuries. That's why Piccolo needed to pull off his entire arm in order to fix his broken bones; something he in no way would have needed to do if it accelerated his healing. Not forgetting the fact that Piccolo has required senzu beans on numerous occasions. It also explains why Piccolo could regenerate after being split in half as a statue but couldn't regenerate after being blasted through the chest.
    • I always thought that Nemekians had vital organs, like hearts or lungs, or gluboks. All of the Nemekians I've seen properly killed had like an arm through the chest, or whatever. But then again, I haven't watched the Buu Arc.

• Why are some weapons so effective against superpowered, as opposed to others? Several times, bladed weapons, bullets, and explosions seem unable to harm the characters. Master Roshi takes a blade to the head, courtesy of Chi-Chi, and seems to consider it only a flesh wound. Child Goku is able to eliminate the entire Red Ribbon Army. Roshi is unconcerned when his opponent in the martial arts tournament pulls out a knife. An armored Nappa engages the Earth's military and complains that their toys (battleships and airplanes) are boring because they can't hurt him at all. Goku is stabbed by a bunch of arrows/spears in a hallway while in SS form, but the weapons just break on his skin and he isn't injured at all. But all this contrasts with the times when conventional weaponry is able to damage the characters. As children, Goku and Krillin have a lot of trouble handling that pirate robot. Tao Pai Pai is almost killed by a grenade. Yajirobe's sword proves able to cut Vegeta's transformed tail and his armored back, and it would have finished him off had Goku and Krillin not decided to spare him. Freezer is killed by SS Trunk with his sword, and he also appears to be able to hurt androids 17 and 18 with it (if I recall correctly, they dodge his strikes with it, implying that they expect to be injured if hit). Yet when King Cold brandishes this same sword against Trunks, SS Trunks is able to catch it with one hand and no damage. And android 16 expects a bomb built into his body to be powerful enough to take out Perfect Cell. Doesn't all this sound kind of... inconsistent?
  • Well the thing is, most of these weapons are conventional weapons made to hurt conventional human beings. As Goku and his friends rise above the limits of normal human strength, those weapons have less and less of an effect on him. Trunks weapon was made to hurt the androids, thus the sharpness. But it doesn't hurt him when Cold uses it because he knows it's coming and has prepared his finger to counter it, same with when Trunks uses it against Goku. As for Android 16 and Perfect Cell, that bomb was strong enough to destroy the planet, so it's not a stretch to imagine it would take Cell out in the process. Dr. Gero designed the bomb (and A16 and Cell, for that matter) so he knew what he was doing.
  • Just to further the previous Troper's answer - Trunk's sword was blatantly designed by Bulma to fight the Androids from his timeline, thus it has the power of a regular Super Saiyan able to kill Frieza, King Cold and the Androids from his timeline (remember they were weaker than those from the main timeline, Future Gohan was easily able to fight 1-1 whilst Vegeta was hopeless when he came to fight our Androids) but unable to fight anything Ascended Super Saiyan or higher (it broke). Yajirobe only managed to cut off Vegeta's tail because he blindsided him. Dragon Ball Z powers are dependent on focus and concentration; remember how Majin Vegeta knocked out Goku during the Buu Saga? that's also how Goku could defend with a finger a sword designed to fight those with Super Saiyan power levels (he concentrated all of his power into a single point.)
    • When was any of that established?
    • Any of what, specifically?
  • Firstly, Tao had access to tech that can allow him to be turned into a cyborg that was allegedly several times stronger than he was at that point. It's quite possible he got a grenade made from the same people that he went to for that (Dr. Gero, perhaps?). Secondly, in the manga (at least), a berserk Trunks landing a direct shot on #18's forearm with his sword only ended up with his sword getting a forearm-thick chunk of it cracked off (and, somehow, not even damaging her sleeve). As for #16's bomb being strong enough to kill Cell, remember that #16 himself (as well as #17, #18, #19, #20, and Cell himself) are all also "conventional" weapons that make Frieza look like a pansy and were all designed by the same guy.
  • Don't know about everything else, but the official story about Trunks' sword (official as in what That Other Wiki says) is that it's the same sword Tapion gives main timeline Trunks in "Wrath of the Dragon" (there's no explaination as to how Future Trunks got the sword and it's better that you don't think too much about it). As such, it's a magic sword and can't hurt it's owner. Don't blame me for the gaps in logic, I'm just parroting Wikipedia.
    • About the whole "Nappa against battleships" incident. I'm guessing your resistance to conventional weapons is based on your power levels. When Tao tried to kill Goku with a grenade, I'm guessing his power levels was somewhere in between 100-250 based on what I've heard. Goku seems to think that the grenade can kill him or cause serious injury, otherwise why would he kick it back? Also, in video games, Hercule and General Blue use bombs and rocket launchers against their enemies, that seem to work quite well (I'm not sure if Blue did that in the actual series). So, if a rocket launcher or a grenade can kill/seriously injure someone with a power level of like 170(more or less), then why cant multiple giant battleship cannon shells and heat seaking missiles even mildy sting or annoy Nappa, who's power level is confirmed to be 4,000?
    • Because there's no guarantee that the missiles have a "hurting power" of over 4,000?
  • Okay, most of the explanations I can go with, but how is Vegetas not being able to see it supposed to enable Yajirobi to cut him?
    • Remember when Goku blocked Trunk's sword with his finger by focusing chi on that finger? Yajirobe's sword is super-sharp, but if Vegeta had seen him coming he would've been able to protect his tail.
    • They flat out stated in the Frieza saga that their durability is a lot lower when their guard is down. Vegeta deliberately lowered his to let Kuririn land a near fatal blow to take advantage of his race's inconsistent power-boost ability, and in the Buu saga Majin Vegeta oneshot SSJ2 Goku with a sucker punch using a similar principle.
  • I'd say that the bulk of the characters' strength and toughness comes from ki control. If the fighters are completely relaxed, even being hit by a small rock would cause pain, as shown when Goku was relaxing in his Full-Power Super Saiyan form and Krillin threw a rock at him. If they are conscious, their training will reflexively channel their ki in order to strengthen their bodies enough to whitstand an incoming blow. Vegeta was caught off-guard by Yajirobe and Tien did not expect Mercenary Tao - a person he had such great admiration for - to use a knife, which is why Vegeta lost his tail and Tien suffered a cut on his chest, respectively. Perhaps Trunks managed to cut Frieza in half for one of two reasons, or perhaps even both: Trunks was too fast and Frieza got cut before he had the chance to channel his ki to protect himself OR Trunks can use his ki to make his blade stronger, to the point where it can bypass the defenses of incredibly powerful beings like Frieza. The latter had no effect on Android 18 because she was much more powerful than Trunks.
    • Well in Dragon Ball Online acording to the Dragon Ball wikia Trunks did start the Kikoukenjutsu Sword School which teaches how foucus ki into a blade so that seems do be the case.
  • As for Mercenary Tao, we saw him get hit by that grenade and the aftermath, but we never saw Goku getting hit by the grenade. Perhaps the grenade really was THAT powerful, and Goku would have shared a similar fate to Mercenary Tao if he had been hit by it. Mercenary Tao was the greatest assassin in the world at the time and he charged insurmountable fees for his services. He was definetly filthy rich, so he could have used some of that money to custom-order a devastatingly powerful grenade to use as a last measure.

• Does a Dragon Clan Namek have to be a Kami or whatever-Guru-was-if-that-was-his-name-and-not-a-title to make a set of Dragon Balls, or do they just have to be good enough? Is it sort of like a spirit bomb thing, only using the rightful power of the earth instead of its inhabitants? Or... what?
  • We don't know exactly how making it works, but no you don't have to be a Kami to do it, since Guru obviously wasn't, but you do have to be an immensely talented member of the Dragon clan, definitely.
    • It's entirely possible that he WAS Kami for Namek. We often forget that Kami is a title. Guru obviously held the highest "rank" on the planet. Perhaps it's functionally the same as Mr. President, King, Emperor and Prime Minister. They all functionally mean the same thing. Guy in charge. Just because Guru chose to live amongst his people and Kami chose to live above might not have any bearing.
  • I always assumed that it was also necessary to be pure of heart, which would explain why Guru, Kami, and Dende were able to create Dragon Balls, but Piccolo couldn't after re-merging with Kami in spite of having inherited all of Kami's knowledge, thus the need to bring Dende to Earth.
    • I assumed he could but the idea of linking Piccolo and the Dragon Balls takes him out of the fight and he presumably no longer wanted that burden.

• How do the Dragon Balls work on merged and linked characters? For example while linked bringing back Piccolo brought back Kami. Did that count as Kami's one life or would Kami's death and resurrection count separately? How bought after adding Nail? Or Kami? He explicitly states to Goku that he's not Kamiccolo, he's the Namek who's long sense forgotten his name. Is he, Gottenks, Vegito or Gogeta sufficiently different on whatever level Shenlong cares to count as a new being for the purposes of being brought back to life?

• How exactly does muscle mass slow down the user of Super Saiyan Grade 3? At the level Trunks and Cell were fighting at, you'd have to be carrying a mountain for any sort of weight to affect your movement.
  • First, I believe you are referring to Ascended Saiyan or whatever the Trunk's exclusive tranformation is officially called. Not SSJ3 which only Goku and Gottenks achieve and neither seem to be slowed down by it. Second I don't remember anything clearly stating that it does slow down the user. We only have Trunks to go by and (Time Travel complicates things) he's been a Super Saiyyan as long or longer (probably?) than Vegeta so it's not really clear why Vegeta instinctively realizes the folly in that form. What is clear, and Cell points out, is that Trunks isn't fast enough to keep up with Cell and that Vegeta didn't bother tranforming because if he couldn't do it at his level of SPEED extra strength wouldn't matter. If we judge by Master Roshi and later from Cell himself it seems that increasing ones raw strength is easy (and presumably increasing speed alone is also easy) but speed with out the power to back it and strength without the speed to land your blows are useless. Trunks simply failed to do both. The point being he's probably not any slower than he was before transforming since he likely would have noticed THAT.
    • "First, I believe you are referring to Ascended Saiyan or whatever the Trunk's exclusive tranformation is officially called." Actually, according to DB Wiki, "The terms "Ascended Super Saiyan" and "Ultra Super Saiyan" are actually just common fan terms to differentiate between the two bulked up forms, as they are never named in the manga or anime. However, they are named in the Daizenshuu as Types or Grades 2 and 3. "
  • The answer is fairly simple. Saiyans use ki energy intrinsically to increase their strength and speed. But as their control over their ki decreases, it becomes harder to control it properly to increase their speed in any way. And SSJ3 forgoes most of their control for power levels as high as possible (which is also why using it causes their energy to leak and thus is inefficient). Of course it can be countered with training their control over it, but for someone without such training it's nothing more than raw barely-controllable power.
  • In other words, the muscle mass is a visual stand in for how Trunks is (mis)using his power.
  • I think this is more an issue with a poor choice of words, it's not so much an issue of limiting his speed as it is limiting his dexterity. His muscle mass increases dramatically but his bones remain the same, and his skeletal structure is built to work with his normal body, so when his biceps suddenly become the size of his ribcage he loses a lot of his mobility.

• I know Dragon Ball has never been consistent about power growth, but seriously, how does Piccolo go from not even being able to touch Freeza's third form to easily overpowering Android 20, who was a threat to a weakened Super Saiyan Vegeta, after just a few years of training? Even base Vegeta surpassed him on Namek.
  • For the same reason a kid-sized, untransformed Goku could curb stomp SSJ-level Gohan AND Goten during the Baby Saga in GT: The plot said he could, so he could.
  • Simple. Piccolo did some training between the time he fought Frieza to when he met the Androids. Gero was not going to get any stronger, so it wasn't like Piccolo had to worry about Gero surpassing him. This is also how Piccolo was able to overpower 17 later on, whereas in their first fight, Piccolo was curb-stomped by the androids. He had training and the Androids not becoming any stronger on his side.
  • Piccolo's fusion with Nail may have affected more than just his current strength. It may have also amplified his metabolism, so Piccolo's strength grows twice as fast as it used to. He's also been training with Goku and Gohan, while Vegeta was on his own, so Piccolo had a more hands-on experience. Goku may also have taught him how to perfect Kaio-Ken, since he would have only figured out the very basics from his time on planet Kaio.

• Is anyone bugged by the fact that Gotenks was able to go Super Saiyan 3, but Vegeta didn't (granted Vegeta gets to turn SSJ4 in GT, but still). How come Vegeta wasn't able to turn Super Saiyan 3 in the Buu arc?
  • It's implied (not sure if specifically stated) that Super Saiyan 3 requires a special body to reach due to the obscene amount of ki it consumes (being dead or fused). When Goku tries to use the transformation in his mortal form, he could only go for a little while before tiring himself out. Meanwhile, Gotenks seems to be a good deal stronger than Vegeta even without SSJ3, as Goku is confident Super Saiyan Gotenks was powerful enough to fight Fat Buu.
  • If we take Goku at his word it might be as simple as Vegeta never directly saw it done. Yeah he apparently saw it from Otherworld but maybe that's not good enough because he can't feel the technique to properly mimic it. Gotenks (or Goten and Trunks rather) ask to see the SSJ3 form and Goku is shocked that they managed to do it after just watching it once. Perhaps SSJ3 is (like Ascended Saiyan or whatever you wish to call Trunks' bulky form that Cell claims Vegeta could do, and Goku proved he could do) some kind of technique that a SSJ2 can perform rather than an actual form in and of itself. I haven't watched GT (and most people don't really count that as cannon anyway) but I don't think Vegeta ever directly witnesses anybody transform in to SSJ3. You could ask the same about Gohan who is clearly more powerful than Goten.

• How come Goku can't lift 40 tons?
  • The weight was spread across his body, not applied to one point of pressure. He also had to do more than lift it; he had to punch and kick with it.
  • Because Toriyama never put much thought into how much those rocks he and Krillen had to move as children would realistically weight. Alternatively, the Kai Worlds have higher gravity than Earth, even the severely sized reduced one we first see has X10 gravity without an orbit so the larger KI worlds probably have and even higher multiplier.
  • There's at least two different versions of a ton (metric and imperial), so maybe Goku was training under Kaio measurements. To a race of celestial beings, a metric or imperial ton are probably no heavier than a watermelon, so they gave the name to a much more impressive weight.

• Okay, Shenron's abilities are limited by the power level of his creator, Kami. So wishing for him to kill somebody stronger than Kami (ie Vegeta and Nappa when they're approaching Earth) won't work. Even if Shenron can't take any direct action against people stronger than Kami against their will (meaning that a wish to teleport them into the sun isn't an option), what about wishing that their spacepods would vanish? Vegeta and Nappa can't survive without air, but Shenron wouldn't be directly doing anything to them.
  • Two words: Idiot Heroes
  • That might constitute doing something to them. The rules of the Dragon are well laid out but not always consistent. The best example I can think of was the wish to remove the self destruct from the two androids. At no point in the Cell Saga are the self destructs shown to be malfunctioning or dangerous (to the owner) I don't see any reason why 17 and 18 would allow that to be taken from them. It might be nice in case say another monster that absorbs beings to take their power comes along that they at least have the option to self terminate and ideally take the bastard with them. Goku also had to specify on Namek for them to leave him and Freeza. Freeza I get may have submitted but if simply rejecting the wish was an option Goku had open to him he could have taken it. It would have saved him some conversation too since nobody would have argued with leaving Feeza on the dying planet to die alone.
  • To make a point, at the time when they had the Dragon Balls collected to make a wish and wanted to use them to get rid of the Saiyans coming to Earth, Goku was dead for nearly a year. If you're dead for over a year, you can't be wished back. That was established in Dragon Ball. It's either "take care of this threat now" or "let our friend be dead forever and just get wrecked when the Androids come in several years"...which they didn't know about really. But still, Goku had to be wished back within that year of his death.
  • As for the Androids? Well, it's likely they didn't know the Androids had a change of heart. For all they knew, once the Cell threat was resolved, the Androids would resume their directive of killing Goku.
    • The detail here is that we have no reason to believe the Androids submitted to this and every reason to believe they are more powerful than the Dragonball's Creator who is currently Dende, not Piccolo. If it were Piccolo the rules as explained would suggest their consent may not be necessary. (Given the fight between 17 and Piccolo even that's not certain. That battle looked like it was going to go on until someone got lucky and both combatants were near equal.)

• A big one: why did the Z Fighters never think of using Solar Flare on powerful villains and dispatching them while they were blinded with any ki attacks like a Destructo Disk? Granted, the strategy would be worthless on foes who could regenerate. But against foes lacking regeneration like Frieza, they could have been dispatched much earlier if the Z Fighters utilized this tactic.
  • The Doylist answer is that it's OP. The Watsonian answer is perhaps that the Taiyoken and the Kienzan would consume too much ki if both are used simultaneously to be effective; additionally, Kienzans don't always work, seeing the one Kuririn threw at Perfect Cell (though that may have been filler, can't remember).
    • The Kienzan Krillin used on Perfect Cell was an anime-only addition.
  • Baddies may be blinded but many can still sense energy, so they'd know a mass of energy is moving towards them and dodge out of the way.
    • Baddies during Saiyan and Frieza sagas lacked the ability to sense ki unless they were wearing scouters. Even then, they wouldn't have been able to track the locations of incoming attacks if they were blinded by a Solar Flare.
  • On most major enemies past the Ginyu Force it might simply be a waste of energy. Cell and Buu regenerate, while 17 and 18 were actually cyborgs (humans with mechanical enhancements) as opposed to androids (robots that look human) the Z Fighters didn't know that until much later in the game. Frieza gets chopped in half by his own Kienzan, blasted by Goku and presumably was still physically on Namek when it exploded. All this after an exhausting fight and either knocked him out or put him in a coma but it didn't kill him. Decapitating Frieza may very well have simply resulted in Frieza's very pissed off head flying around shooting eye beams at you.

• How strong exactly are the Super Saiyan kids supposed to be in the Buu arc? I don't know what the official Battle Powers are, if any, but we see Trunks struggling to walk in 150x gravity before he turns Super Saiyan (although it's possible he was already training before and just tired out), when even Vegeta before the Android timeskip could manage 300x for a while. I would think this puts their base forms between the Ginyu Tokusentai and Freeza's weight classes (if we use the power of Goku after training in 100x gravity as a basis), which makes their Super Saiyan forms awfully... weak compared to the other characters.
  • Nurture beats Nature. Trunks may have mastered Super Saiyan, but he's still a pampered half-human child. He can't be expected to have the same resistance that a fully-grown Saiyan who was raised on the battlefield could manage. Vegeta's also willing to put himself through intense physical torture just to get stronger, while Trunks doesn't have his father's passion for fighting. Drive goes a long way for some people.

• OK, random question: How exactly does Tien's Kiko-ho attack, which is prepared by him forming a triangle with his hands, make a square-shaped hole in the ground? How does that even work?
  • It's more like he's making a diamond out of his hands, his thumbs are slightly angled to make the lower two sides. The diamond-shaped blast, or a tilted square, simply realigns itself when fired.

• How can someone learn a Dangerous Forbidden Technique like Mafuba? Shouldn't you, uhm, I don't know, get killed by learning it?

• Is Time Travel within the Dragon Ball-verse analogous to Back to the Future - every time you time travel, a new timeline is created, or does it run more along the lines of Timey-Wimey Ball, if we add the Time Rings into it? Also, two copies of the same individual co-existing in a timeline, like in the Dragon Ball Super "Future Trunks Arc" - how does that not create a Time Paradox? Bit confused by all this stuff. This is more about In-Universe things, not out-of-universe
  • Dragon Ball has pretty consistently operated on Multiple Worlds theory of time travel (well, when the Angels aren’t rewinding time). The timelines are independent, and ‘true’ time travel, at least with Bulma’s machine and the Time Rings, is impossible. Instead, the traveler is simply moving between very similar multiverses separated from each other by 7 years. Hence, when Trunks went back to give Goku the heart virus medicine, Future Goku didn’t spontaneously reappear, because the Goku of that timeline never received the medicine, only the main timeline’s Goku was saved. Same with Krillin and Trunk aborting Main Cell, yet the Cell they’re fighting is unchanged.

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