Manga/Dragon Ball

That after they took level in badass. Original, I mean encountered for the first time, was relatively powerful.

Pretty much everyone was much weaker than they were in canon though, none of the Saiyans had Super Saiyan Full Power and were around Piccolo's level, so Broli still doesn't seem very broken even during his introduction.

Broken enough at that point to force Goku to borrow energy from his comrades so he could defeat Brolly. But then, not impressive. Cell would beat him easily.

edited 28th Mar '12 3:31:01 PM by CaptainKatsura

The problem was Goku borrowed energy from his half dead team mates that couldn't even use Super Saiyan anymore. He shouldn't have gotten very strong from that.

And Cell would likely lose to movie 10 Broli, because they gave him a huge buff to make him stronger than SS 2 teen Gohan.

Near death plot device. I have seen theories based on manga which claim that Zenkai becomes nearly irrevelant after Super Saiyan transformation. Power increase is meager at best. Movie 10 sounds fishy to me. He could not become that strong.

Yeah the movies are pretty damn inconsistent with strength. Damn you Toei! Of course it could be possibly that Broli was always that strong and his first defeat was just a total cop out.

And the near death power ups are mentioned in the guide to have either stopped altogether, happened infrequently or just didn't give the boost that they needed (the wording is extremely ambiguous).

Is the theory that Zenkai is a kind of mechanism that develop Saiya-jin till he/she is ready for transformation plausible then?

Yeah, it's a widely accepted one. In fact, Vegeta mentions that normally Zenkais aren't so great (the first too Zenkais only gave him ~6,000 points each) but he theorizes the two huge ones he gets towards the end of the Freeza saga (going from 30,000 to 250,000 and later somewhere way over 1,000,000) are a result of the Zenkais getting increasingly larger the closer he gets to becoming a Super Saiyan. Goku becomes 33x stronger from his last Zenkai prior to becoming a Super Saiyan after all.

One of my personal theories regarding Saiyan biology is that the fanon theory which claims that kids whose fathers achieved SSJ before conceiving them have easier access to transformation is a bullshit. Buu arc's Trunks was conceived before Vegeta was SSJ but he became SSJ roughly in the same age as Goten. if there is any difference, it is not significant.

...uh, no he wasn't.

Though Goten's transformation is kinda suspicious. How he could be trained by Chi Chi to become a Super Saiya-jin? Tori put that explanation for lulz, I think.

Anyway, good night to everyone, I gotta sleep.

edited 28th Mar '12 4:09:10 PM by CaptainKatsura

Filler. Good night.

RE: Oozarus killing powerful people: I think I read somewhere that Toriyama's original intended ending for the Saiyan Saga was for Vegeta to be stepped on and killed by Oozaru Gohan, and he was certainly no slouch, so something like that isn't entirely without precedence. Unless of course this is yet another rumor...

Yet another rumour.

Also Vegeta was somewhere below 18,000 at that point and Gohan was somewhere above 10,000 as an Oozaru.

edited 28th Mar '12 5:55:38 PM by Saiga

I heard another rumor that Vegeta was spared thanks to death threats, I mean letters from fans Toriyama received.

More rumours by Vegeta bashers. He's actually one of Toriyama's favourite characters, as stated in an interview (the haters would have you believe Toriyama said Vegeta was his least favourite/most hated character).

I heard he once stated that his most favorite character is Piccolo, but I don't remember whether that was really in an interview.

The only time I've seen him say that is the same interview I'm talking about, Piccolo and Vegeta are both mentioned as some of his favourite characters. His no. 1 favourite is Goku.

So fan sites are distorting interviews again? I could expect that. The one I got this news about Piccolo being Toriyama's favorite did not mention Goku being his favorite at all,

The interview about Piccolo and Vegeta being some of his favourite characters is definitely true, but so is the one saying that Goku is his number one favourite. He may have said Piccolo is his favourite in another interview for all I know, I just havn't seen it.

There are a lot of fake interviews out there, like one where Toriyama says the anime is canon. They don't even use that term in Japan.

That Piccolo and Vegeta thing reminded of one Gintama episode called "Girls Love Vegeta And Boys Like Piccolo". As expected issues regarding Dragonball are brought up at some point

http://www.crunchyroll.com/gintama/episode-242-girls-like-vegeta-guys-like-piccolo-585316

I need to find free time and make full list of Dragonball references in Gintama, as there are so many of them. But most blatant parody is this. At some point the episodes looks like typical DBZ episode with suspiciously similar cast http://www.crunchyroll.com/gintama/episode-119-within-each-box-of-cigarettes-are-one-or-two-cigarettes-that-smell-like-horse-dung-531644

You know, the Z anime and GT in general may not exactly be great, but I do give them credit for one thing: all the Continuity Porn. In the Buu Saga especially, we get to see a lot of characters we haven't seen since the original series, like Baba's henchmen and Bora's tribe, and I, at least, am pleased with that.

Continuity Porn isn't so great when it doubles as Continuity Snarl. Like for instance, having Red and Black from the Red Ribbon Army show up in the Boo saga despite being dead. Or Pilaf in GT despite only the good people being revived after Boo killed everyone.

I don't think that was Red and Black, I think it was... Red and Black's recycled character models. But yeah, the Pilaf thing is a Plot Hole.

It was done pretty damn deliberately, though.