Probably not, but if used properly, I bet they might have been able to get good mileage out of it.
You yourself pointed out how Cell kept alive despite being weaker than Piccolo by using every advantage he had.
That's one of the problems with the later series: It's stopped being about technique, and became more about who has the higher power, making everything else irrelevant to some extent.
Or at least that's how I felt. I may be oversimplifying it.
One Strip! One Strip!I still don't see how Kaio-ken makes any difference to it being about who has the higher power. The only thing it does is raise power level.
And Cell did well because he was smart and did what he could with what he had. The Kaio-ken won't stop the humans from having low power levels and since all it does is affect power level, it won't affect their standing.
And no, you're wrong about it stopping being about technique and being about the higher power. It was always, from chapter one, about who had the higher power. The techniques were just there to look good while Toriyama showed us who had the higher power in whatever current fight was going on.
edited 2nd Dec '13 6:32:46 AM by Saiga
What saved Buu in all of those examples was that the ones fighting him didn't finish the battle when they had the chance for one reason or another.
edited 2nd Dec '13 1:41:12 PM by HandsomeRob
One Strip! One Strip!Indeed, but he also survived as long as he did thanks to his regeneration. Considering how often he gets splattered to pieces, even excusing the fact that he can let his guard down somewhat thanks to it, it is a case of a fighter's inherent abilities giving them an edge unrelated to power level.
edited 2nd Dec '13 2:59:53 PM by Anomalocaris20
You cannot firmly grasp the true form of Squidward's technique!The Kaioken wouldn't change their role at all, but that's not the point. It would basically be a cosmetic thing; an empty trophy to wrap their higher power level in. "I Trained Under King Kai And All I Got For It Was This Shiny Red Aura."
It wouldn't change there role, but it would be some kind of payoff for them to come away with all that training with. An empty trophy is better than nothing; as it stands, training under King Kai is a complete waste of their time, because immediately after getting back from that, they go into Pre-Android training and raise their power level some more, so nothing that happened with King Kai couldn't just be attributed to that.
As it stands, there is no narrative purpose to them having trained under King Kai. They gained absolutely nothing from it. In fact, the closest thing to a benefit that their King Kai training has was allowing Piccolo to communicate with Gohan on Namek, to set up the plan that restores Earth's Dragon Balls and brings him to Namek. Piccolo is the only one that didn't walk away empty-handed, and he didn't even train with them.
tl;dr: The main benefit of giving them the Kaioken is not to change up the action that came after, but to justify this plot point even existing in the first place.
edited 2nd Dec '13 6:46:51 PM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.So someone added the following to Dragon Ball's awesome moments page:
I think it's quite telling that Yamcha's crowning moment is not immediately dying in a few seconds
edited 3rd Dec '13 8:02:26 PM by sockpuppet1
Yeah, I still think the saddest Yamcha-related fact is that his final boss fight in Raging Blast 2 is a single lone Saibaman. Even the game designers have no respect for Yamcha.
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.…
Meh. Not much to say about this. I've learned the futility of trying to defend Yamcha.
I'm shocked anyone would even try. Even when if it is sincere, as ![]()
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pointed out, it still makes him look like a loser.
Guy can't win. The fans won't let him.
Wow. That is sad. Then again, he is what Toriyama made him, so we shouldn't be surprised.
edited 3rd Dec '13 9:56:09 PM by HandsomeRob
One Strip! One Strip!That's honestly like equating one guy easily beating up an entire gang at the same time to another guy cockily challenging that same gang to a fight, then getting stomped so bad that every bone in his body breaks after mere seconds of the beating. But hey, guy two didn't die, so they're equally badass! Kind of reminds of the Lonely Island's Rocky for whatever reason.
On the subject of Yamcha, I also think I should note that two of his other "awesome moments" on that same page are his fight with Tenshinhan, where Ten effortlessly kicked his ass, and him volunteering to fight the Saibamen in Krillin's place, where he went in overconfident, declared that he could take all six of them, and showed that he couldn't even take one, becoming the only main fighter to ever get offed by a mook. And two of the others are from Filler.
edited 3rd Dec '13 10:21:18 PM by sockpuppet1
In a wrestling context: Goku and Vegeta are Hulk Hogan and Randy Savage. They're all over the place, and positioned as the most important. Gohan, Goten, and Trunks are Shawn Michaels, Bret Hart, and The Undertaker. They've got potential, and they'll get there someday. Once the old men are gone. Piccolo is Ricky Steamboat. He's all right. He's there. Tien and Krillin are Strike Force. Similar to Piccolo, they're there, but of even less consequence. Yamcha is some ham and egger that's lucky to be on WWF Prime Time. He is literally no one.
My various fanfics.
In a wrestling context, the only thing Recoome Sells is MERCHANDISE!
edited 3rd Dec '13 10:37:41 PM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Strike Force was Tito Santana and Rick Martel. I was going for an older, safer bet that I thought more people would get...>_>
My various fanfics.I just figured most of the modern wrestlers I knew would go over people's heads.
My various fanfics.
I don't think I even saw them wrestle back in the day: I only remember their break up and Rick Martel becoming….
The Model! Rick Martel!
Dun dun duuuuun!
……
Um….. about that Dragon Ball……
Ooh! I got it! Name me all the characters with techniques that they didn't learn from someone else by the time of the 23 World Martial Arts tournament.
One Strip! One Strip!

I think the reason he never tried to summon a Spirit Bomb as a Super Saiyan is just that he didn't. The Spirit Bomb is kind of a desperation thing, and isn't actually as overused as the fandom likes to say it is; the idea of him constantly using the Spirit Bomb comes from the movies more than anything else - and even then, not much.
Goku only uses the Spirit Bomb three times in the series. Once against Vegeta, once against Frieza - both of these prior to his becoming a Super Saiyan - and then the final one against Kid Buu, which is the only time the Spirit Bomb actually succeeded in killing the villain. I may be misremembering, but I thought that by the time he used the Kid Buu Spirit Bomb, he'd been beaten down by Buu and burned out all his energy with Super Saiyan 3, and no longer had the capability of transforming because of how weakened he was; even after throwing it, a wish had to be made to Shenron to restore Goku's power so that he could transform and drive the Spirit Bomb home.
So it isn't so much a matter of him not being able to use it while transformed, it's simply that he didn't because of its status as a desperation attack that is both very hard and very time-consuming to use. The Spirit Bomb sees little play because, as the Abridged team mocked on the first use of Special Beam Cannon, a five-minute startup time for an attack is pretty abysmal as far as combat usefulness goes.
I agree that the others should have gotten the Kaioken, or at least something out of their training with King Kai. All they got was a higher power level that never became relevant because, for the most part, they all became a peanut gallery after Namek, showing up to battles to gawk and comment on how amazing the Saiyans and the villain are. They didn't get anything of substance to demonstrate the fruits of their effort with King Kai.
edited 1st Dec '13 11:12:15 AM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.