Manga/Dragon Ball

Trunks showing in the gravity room definitely doesn't matter, android arc Gohan struggled with only 10x Earth's gravity because he had never experienced it before and he was over 10x stronger than Goku was when Goku mastered 100x gravity. Base Trunks is also shown doing one finger push ups in the gravity chamber later, suggesting he got used to it.

Anyway, as promised, here's my take on Goten & Trunks vs Piccolo:

• They both immediately show the traits of Super Saiyan Full Power - the eyes, distinctive aura, and ability to freely control their power.
  • As seen with the Cell arc Saiyans, mastering the Super Saiyan state allows for rapid development within a very small timeframe, Goku and Gohan made massive gains within a year and Gohan didn't even have Super Saiyan to start with it. This gain is also attributed to them sparring against each other - something Goten and Trunks have been doing all along.
  • It goes without saying, but SSFP Goku and Gohan at the Cell games were a lot stronger than post-ROSAT Piccolo.
• When Goten and Gohan start sparring, Gohan is shown gritting his teeth while blocking Goten's blows and is on the defensive. Gohan even retreats into the air to avoid Goten's kick. Later they're both shown to be sweating while sparring, showing them fighting at a similar level.
  • Daizenshuu 2 backs this up by saying that Goten's power is 'not the least bit inferior to Gohan
  • How strong is Gohan? He's weaker than he was at the Cell Games, for sure. But Kaioshin describes his SS1 power as 'stupendous' and he's able to fight with a guy 'about as strong as Cell'. He also pulls out the Z Sword as a SS1, which countless Kaioshin failed to do. Stronger than East Kaioshin, who was more powerful than Piccolo (and those are both significant gaps according to the dialogue. Interestingly, Daizenshuu 2 says that his strength didn't change from the 7 year time skip, and the reason he's comparatively weaker is because he's no longer able to draw power from his anger like he did at the Cell Games. That would mean he's still much stronger than Cell Games Goku at the least.
    • Another side note is that after training for one day with the Z Sword, Gohan is handling it better than Goku attempting it. So they shouldn't be super far apart in strength, unless Gohan made huge gains in that one day.
• Trunks spars with Vegeta, and while he acknowledges that he can't beat Vegeta, his attempts to hit Vegeta have Veggie sweating and clearly struggling. Trunks is able to hit Vegeta, who lashes out unintentionally but Trunks is barely injured by it.
• After Vegeta dies, Piccolo declares that Goten and Trunks are the only remaining hope they have. This is before he is aware of fusion.
• When Goten and Trunks power up to full power at Goku's behest, Piccolo is freaked out while Goku (who is obviously much stronger) isn't phased.

That's pretty much it for the rest of the arc. There's also Piccolo saying that Goten and Trunks can't rely on his help much when the defused boys are about to fight Super Boo, but all of them are worthless compared to Boo.

Now, the evidence that people use to say that Piccolo is stronger than the boys is the fact that Gotenks-Boo reverts into wearing Piccolo's cape after Gotenks' time runs out, instead of Trunks or Goten's clothes. The issue with that viewpoint are as follows:

• It assumes that Boo's appearance is always influenced by the strongest person he absorbs - not only is this not stated, but it isn't true in all instances as Fat Boo takes more after Dai Kaioshin despite having also absorbed the stronger Dai Kaioshin.
• Even if it is true in this case, we see later what form Boo takes when he only has Piccolo absorbed, and he looks significantly different - he doesn't have the humanoid hands or face, his head tentacle is shorter, and he's wearing Piccolo's purple undershirt and pants. Goten and Trunks' influence gave him humanoid hands, face, longer tentacle and changed 2/3rds of what he was wearing. Seems like they have a pretty big influence there.
• Goten and Trunks are also in their base forms in their pods inside Boo, as they always are after defusing. It burns through all of their stamina, so they logically wouldn't be at full power for that kind of comparison anyway.

You could explain away all of these points, if you wanted to. But these issues show that that one scene isn't quite the smoking gun that many fans treat it as. And if you're starting at the conclusion that Piccolo should be stronger and find arguments to support it, you're not really arguing in good faith.

Yet the people with too much time on their hands were the Gohan Blanco ones...

You know, nothing of that matters, even within the franchise. Goten and Trunks will only be used as fighters as Gotenks, and whoever is stronger will be decided at the moment; Toriyama doesn't care, and anything else will depend on what sells.

Call me Doylist, but constructing a consistent narrative out of details in Dragon Ball is... laughable. I may have put stock onto it, again, over half a decade ago, or even a few years ago, but, the more I learn about the franchise, the least consistent it looks, and, pretending to be able to analyze it as if it was such a complex saga... yep, wasted time.

But whatever makes you happy.

Edited by Eriorguez on Dec 11th 2018 at 3:52:44 PM

Funny, I don't remember every saying that about them.

Your snide remarks are rather toothless.

edit: yes, I'm aware that there is no intention to use them in current material. What does that matter?

What does the consistency of modern material matter for the existing manga? Things are clearly not the same in modern Dragon Ball, that doesn't change the way things were in the original Dragon Ball. And for all its faults, DB's manga is much more consistent, more than a lot of people give it credit for. So I don't see the issue with wanting a better understanding of that.

Just seems like really poor form after you initially insisted Piccolo was stronger.

It wouldn't feel very appropriate to have Piccolo steadily decline from the late Cell arc to now and then suddenly climb back up again when he's not really that major a character. His arc was completed in the Android arc, and while it wouldn't be as egregious as trying to use the humans again, it would feel pretty similar in that it would be a clear reversal of the direction he was written in.

It could've been done, if Super had set it up sooner. Kamiccolo kind of touched on this already, but Super has established that he's still very far behind after a long period of training so having him catch up in a short time frame would be quite silly.

Super could have established that he got stronger in the 5 years between Boo's defeat and Super, like saying that he'd been fairly complacent between Cell - Boo but being upstaged by Kaioshin (or maybe being useless against Boo) motivated him to train much harder. I would have done the same thing with 18, with her feeling really sore about how powerful the kids were and deciding to start training seriously to surpass them. Then instead of 17 being SS3 or Blue tier, he's been training over a longer period but not as effectively, and they both wind up at about adult SS1 level with Piccolo for the TOP. Then from there they can continue to become stronger.

But like, when you've established that he'll go 12 years without major gains... it just seems too weird for him to suddenly get a major boost. And I didn't like Super Saiyan God, so I wouldn't like slapping some Namekian God power-up onto him - that would be even worse, since he's not as major a character and it'd be plain pandering.

Edited by Saiga on Dec 12th 2018 at 1:14:53 AM

It's still fascinating how much thought and attention people have to put into this series to cover up holes that the author himself doesn't really care about filling.

The Dragon Ball fandom truly is something else.

Yeah, maybe we should use Ultra Instinct and turn our brains off, eh?

To me, what's fun about Whis and Ultra Instinct is that he can still think and even get distracted by things but it has no impact on his fighting.

Like, that thing where he literally stops to smell flowers while still avoiding and blocking everything Vegeta can throw at him.

Whis can literally do his taxes mid-fight and it would have no impact on his fighting ability.

He's still 3 years younger than Goku was when he penetrated King Piccolo.

...Of course, Goku then was also, like, half as tall as Buu-Saga Gohan at the same age.

Saiyan aging for full-blooded Saiyans is one thing, the hybrids being different from each other is another.

Someone sounds salty, and like a sore loser. I mean not loser, it's not really a fight or a contest, but. I dunno.

Like, no offense, and maybe I'm projecting or going too armchair shrink, sorry, I'm not trying to be mean, but a lot of the vibes I'm getting feel very "I have an emotional investment in this thing being a certain way, and when presented with evidence of this thing not being the way I like it that makes it all dumb and inconsistent and bad, rawr" and junk.

Which. I'm not even saying that sort of emotional engagement is bad but. It's dangerous, in my opinion? Worth identifying.

Aunty unnoun suggests getting a cup of tea maybe? Relax a little.

...Not trying to be condescending, really, just. You seem, upset? And I feel bad?

Edited by unnoun on Dec 11th 2018 at 12:24:45 PM

Let's go back to talking about something less heated, like how Tien is totally stronger than Krillin (pre Tournement of Power).

Didn't Krillin get knocked out first?

Less lamely/cheaply, but still.

Tien is stronger than Krillin pre-Namek.

He's also has more techniques, and is more willing to jump into battle.

But Krillin would slap his shit post Namek. It's just that they have no reason to ever fight each other.

Krillin got cheap shotted by Frost while his guard was down, and Tien had the ground exploded under him by U2 Sniper Guy but ended up taking him with him.

Narratively the characters treated Tien's elimination less harshly than Krillin's because of this, but out of universe people have a more favorable view of Krillin's performance because he had lots of opportunities to show his stuff and Tien got chumped out repeatedly.

I mean, I never considered Dragon Ball anywhere near as deep or thought provoking as some people would have you believe, but that's fandoms for you. Some take it more seriously than others.

They were both equally thumped in the manga (which is arguably how it should have gone, but that's an entire different kettle of fish).

Honestly, I feel like Tien in the TOP was just there to make me miss Yamcha.

Power level wank is not deep or thought provoking.

...Sorta fun, sometimes, to me, I admit there's a part of me that likes playing around with numbers.

It's like an RPG, or something, I guess.

But it's not actually meaningful or. Fulfilling.

More like. Potato chips.

Edited by unnoun on Dec 11th 2018 at 12:47:07 PM

Well they needed ten people, so they just brought Tien along for the ride. They didn't expect him to accomplish anything

So it would seem.

There's also popularity to take into account, and maybe Toriyama's own preferences. We've endlessly debated the effort he goes to to exclude certain characters who should be involved.

Oh no, Buu fell asleep! seems to have become his default solution for keeping Buu from Candy-beaming their way to victory.

I'm not going to pretend I'm too good for power level wanking. I find it a pretty fun thing to do at times. What I don't like is when people treat it like a Federal Fucking Issue.

Edited by Moth13 on Dec 11th 2018 at 12:50:17 PM

YOU DON'T GET IT, THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO WAY X IS STRONGER THAN GOKU CUZ HE DID NOT TRAIN TO THE SAME EXTENT THAT GOKU HAS. FURTHERMORE, X ALSO DOES NOT HAVE THE SAME RACIAL BENEFITS THAT GOKU HAS TO REACH THE SAME LEVELS OF POWER, INCLUDING ZENKAI, SUPER SAIYAJIN AND ALL OF IT"S VARIOUS LEVELS INCLUDING SUPER SAIYAJIN 2, 3, GOD AND BLUE. THEREFORE, THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO WAY X CAN EVER REACH GOKU'S LEVEL OF POWER IN SUCH A SHORT TIME AND THE FACT THAT YOU THINK THAT MEANS YOU'RE AN IDIOT WHO CLEARLY DOES NOT UNDERSTAND DRAGON BALL TO THE LEVEL THAT I DO.

Edited by BlackYakuzu94 on Dec 11th 2018 at 12:59:20 PM

if monster carrot trained for four months he could reach a power level of 1.3 million

My power level is square root of turnip.

Someone sounds salty, and like a sore loser. I mean not loser, it's not really a fight or a contest, but. I dunno.

No, I think you hit it on the head. That sounded like a sore loser. I don't think he really "lost" anything, but those are the exact words a sore loser would say. Which is odd.

Eh, you can be exhausted by and not want to continue an argument even if it's not really convincing.

Here is probably my favorite strength chart thing (though I don't get Yakon > Frieza). The guy stopped updating it after Goku vs. Jiren round 1, sadly.

As much fun I as could have doing them, this will never not be relevant to power level discussions pertaining Dragon Ball.

PLAGUE IS JUST A CONDESCENDING ASSHOLE AND DOES NOT UNDERSTAND THE TRUE INTEGRITY ABOUT DRAGON BALL OR IT'S CONCEPTS. HE CLEARLY IS JUST PULLING THINGS OUT OF HIS ASS TO JUSTIFY HIS ARGUMENT AND DOES EVEN TRY TO UNDERSTAND THE DEEP INTRICACIES OF THIS SERIES.