Goku with years of combat, the Ultra-Divine Water and training from GOD (yes it's only a Title but it's obviously supposed to impress you) only went from 10 to 300-something. He would go on to gain hundreds of times that much power in just days.
I'm pretty sure Goku got his ass kicked in DB a few times, and a couple of them were serious. He never received a Zenkai powerup as ridiculous as the ones he and Vegeta would receive in the Freeza Saga.
Freeza's power level was so absurdly above everyone else's that it necessitated absurd jumps in power. Piccolo fusing with Nail i can kinda accept - fusions in DBZ are just incalculable and impossible to predict. (The Nameless Namek split from someone as strong or stronger than a Super Saiyan (supposedly) into two beings weaker than Raditz)
I think it makes sense for someone like Nappa and Raditz to get a few hundred levels from a really tough fight and maybe a thousand even from almost dying. Vegeta and Goku just got the massive boosts they did because of Plot.
edited 29th Mar '13 10:38:11 PM by Nikkolas
The whole problem with the system was Freeza. He is just way too huge an outlier for anything else to make sense. Goku went from training with God to training with God+ in higher gravity, and then he went to mastering God+'s teachings and took them further in even HIGHER gravity and then... Freeza was so fucking OP he needed another boost.
I mean it's justified in-universe with the boosts being tied to Super Saiyan, but Freeza is still unnecessarily high in numbers.
And I can't think of any beatings Goku got in Dragon Ball that would warrant a Zenkai except for after the 23rd Budokai maybe.
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Wait, where did you get those figures from?
edited 29th Mar '13 11:17:06 PM by Saiga
Oh, I thought his base was 180000 against Ginyu.
I was under the impression he was 8 million against Frieza, and Super Saiyan made him 160 million due to multiplication.
Even if my numbers are off it's still huge leaps of power. Vegeta isn't a slouch either, jumping from weaker than Recoome to even with Frieza's first form in a single pummeling. Unless he went up in power again some time between the Ginyu fight and the Frieza fight, but I don't see how he could have.
You cannot firmly grasp the true form of Squidward's technique!It was the Kaio-ken, since he said "Kaio-ken!" and had the aura.
I don't remember his heart not beating. But I wouldn't be surprised at neither fight giving him a Zenkai, it's "near death" not "badly beaten". His beating may look worse than others we've seen that do result in boosts, but we don't know what internal injuries occur.
And it's possible Goku was too weak, and too far from Super Saiyan to get the boosts.
edited 29th Mar '13 11:56:46 PM by Saiga
Okay I never thought about it but now it bothers me. Goku in base form is 60k. He gets beaten up by the others and then gets a zenkai. Suddenly he's fighting Frieza and he's 3 million? Um...what? How? Unless the zenkais work quadratically or something that just seems like an absurd jump. I can see why it confuses people.
edited 30th Mar '13 8:09:51 AM by Kostya
Wait is this that silly "Japan has no concept of canon" argument again? I do not know if that was settled or not but it is not true. Simply by virtue of adapting to Christianity faster than anyone else in the "far east" says otherwise about this "canonless culture". They have at least had the notion of it for four hundred and sixty four years. That is longer than they have had Shinigami and we have a trope page for it.
edited 30th Mar '13 9:32:39 AM by Cider
Modified Ura-nage, Torture RackI bring more news~
This time about the name puns of Billy and Willy. Originally thought to come from beer and whiskey (or pilsner), Watanabe debunked that claim vehemently on twitter. For a while, no pun was known, and it was later thought that it came from two brands of catfood, Hills and Whiskas, which was also debunked. Then it was apparently confirmed that both names came from "virus" just based on different pronunciations of the word (German and Latin).
But in a recent interview with Akira Toriyama, it was revealed that Watanabe came up with the name of Billy, and it was indeed based off virus. However, Toriyama mistakenly thought it came from beers just like us - and so when he named Willy, he based it off Whiskey. Shuiesha has decreed that the official sources will be based off Akira Toriyama's mistake, because screw Watanabe apparently.
So "Beers" and "Whis" are the names I'm going to go with.
So I looked it up and realized why I was confused about Goku's base being 180K.
He never once says Kaioken there. Admittedly he has the right color aura or whatever but I never put two and two together. I just thought it was a regular powering up sequence.
...god, that is painful to watch. And I used to eat up every episode.
Of course I still like the dub but Funi's early stuff is just awful. They improved infinitely over the course of the anime.
edited 30th Mar '13 9:11:52 PM by Nikkolas
There's a fine art to dub script modifications and FUNI didn't learn it until Yu Yu Hakusho and the dubbing of the original Dragon Ball anime.
One minor example that I've always loved is when Roshi is training Goku and Krillin. He gets to the schoolwork part of it and says that being a great fighter takes more than just strength. "It takes brainpower!"
Goku: Aw, but I don't have that!
Funi's script changes were a lot better by late Cell or the entire Buu Saga.
Of course it still wasn't good enough for some people...
Which brings me to a topic I'm interested in.
What names do you generally use? Like, do you call him Son Goku/Son Gokuu? Kuririn (I think that's it) or Krillin? Tien or Tenshinhan?
I generally use the dub names because it's what I know. I do occasionally use the "correct" names or whatever because I want to be accommodating to all fans of DB.
The only exceptions are names that are the same but just translated. Like, I don't call him Piccolo Daimao because I believe Daimao just means Demon King or Great Demon King. So I see nothing wrong with calling him just King Piccolo.
I also call him Future Trunks, even though this got me bitched at elsewhere. "It's Mirai Trunks." But Mirai mans Future... Bleh.
I generally just use the dub names. Destructo-disk is still stupid sounding so I tend to just use Kienzan unless I'm deliberately making fun of it.
I do feel they translated the Cell and Buu saga pretty well. Some of the lines are pretty awesome and clever.
Heck, even GT sometimes has surprisingly fluid dialogue.
You cannot firmly grasp the true form of Squidward's technique!GT is shit. End of discussion.
Also The Dragon Ball dub is just god fucking awful much of the time. The only time is when there's smack talk. When talk disregarding why that person is losing and making retarded chatter I feel like strangling a cat. The dialogue when people were stepping in helping Gohan SSJ 2 against Super Perfect Cell was awesome.
Also some japanese names for DB characters and such are okay. The way they screwed over the names of Bardock's team pisses me off some.
edited 30th Mar '13 11:34:51 PM by Couchpotato20
"I don't give a rat's ass about going to hell. I guess it's because I feel like I'm already there." -MugenFrom an English and Spanish speaker's perspective...
Like, do you call him Son Goku/Son Gokuu?
As far as I can tell, the only difference is that Gokuu adds an unnecessary u.
Kuririn (I think that's it) or Krillin?
Krillin flows off the tongue easier when saying it phonetically.
Tien or Tenshinhan?
I like the abridged series approach of having Tien be his nickname, since it's short and familiar but doesn't sound particularly respectable. See also: Leo, Dick, Mike, etc.
Tenshinhan is a pretty cool name and its three syllables actually reference Tien's three eyes and tri-beam. Huh, never realized that.
So I guess I'd use both.
I also use Demon King Piccolo (Or just King Piccolo), although Daimyo Piccolo isn't bad at all.
edited 31st Mar '13 12:18:50 AM by Scardoll
Fight. Struggle. Endure. Suffer. LIVE.

I know they have more access to advanced training methods, but I find it sorta silly that Goku and Vegeta are able to jump in power ridiculous amounts in such a short span of time (Often getting huge boosts just from getting owned) while Saiyans rarely reached around 10,000 despite years of warfare and combat. I mean, even before Super Saiyan was a thing Goku was able to jump from a power level of OVER 9000 to 180000 just in the span of a few months, and then from 180000 to 8000000 just from healing.
You cannot firmly grasp the true form of Squidward's technique!