....
<Remembers all the times Toriyama did something so that it was easier to draw, including Super Saiyan>
....that explains so much.
That's fair enough. Goku might not have been able to pull off the same thing with the Nimbus. That being said, I'd have loved a scene of Goku flying to a battle on his old Cloud buddy, and his enemy sees it coming and gets ready to attack....only for the Nimbus to fly right over their heads, leaving the villain stumped about what the muffins Goku is doing...because he hasn't realized Goku just teleported in behind him and was using the Nimbus as a decoy.
There's a lot of fun to be had if Goku hadn't learned how to fly.
Barring the massive gaps in power that mean the other guy is a much slower flier right?
If anything, it gives the villains more of an advantage than they usually have.
Edited by HandsomeRob on Dec 22nd 2019 at 7:35:55 AM
One Strip! One Strip!Those random alien children were on a planet noteworthy for its exhorbitantly high battle power. Three random Namekian mooks were nearly as powerful as Nappa, a battle-hardened elite Saiyan warrior. Their equivalent to Earth's God hangs out on a mountain where anyone can visit him if they want. Their elite warrior rivals the Ginyu Force. They invented reality-warping wish-granting dragons. They were fusing before it was cool.
Planet Namek is not some backwater podunk planet in the asscrack of space. Next to all the galactic societies we've seen in the series, the Namekians are pretty much the #1 ballers. We wouldn't even have a show premise if the Namekians hadn't up and decided to just crack the laws of physics in half one day.
Edited by TobiasDrake on Dec 22nd 2019 at 10:54:31 AM
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Man... that description actually fills me with a sense of pride. Both because it's celebrating humanity non-Saiyan allies, and because I and a lot of other people consider Piccolo to be one of our own. Thank you for that positivity!
Have we seen other species in which pretty much everyone can fly? Saiyans, Namekians, "Frieza's Race", and there's also creator gods, destroyer gods, their attendants, and Dabura's race, right? Did Super bring any others?
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Although, the new canon is that Zalama created the Super Dragon Balls as a way for people to summon himself if his wish-granted power was ever needed (presumably because he was too damn big and needed a place to nap), and the Namekians stole his design and patents to make their own Dragon Balls. The Namekians still get credit for all that other stuff, as well as having the magical ability to make Dragon Balls, they just didn't invent them.
As an aside, it was mentioned during the Kaioken discussion that the Super Saiyans' x50 multipliers make the humans totally obsolete. And that's not entirely true.
If Toriyama really wanted Tenshinhan to be powerful enough to compete, he could do the same thing he did with Piccolo: just make Tenshinhan 50x more powerful than the Saiyans because reasons. Piccolo doesn't have any transformations, so in order to keep up with the Super Saiyans, he's actually astronomically more powerful than Goku and Vegeta.
In a narrative sense, introduction of the Kaioken sort of nerfed Goku. Before, he was just the biggest guy around and, when he wasn't, he became the biggest guy around. Introducing the Kaioken didn't change this, but it did make it so that Goku has to use the x2/x3/x4/x10 power-up to be the biggest guy around.
Goku uses various boosts and power-ups throughout the early series to stack onto his already impressive power, and these let him stay at the top. When he beats Tenshinhan, Piccolo Daimao, Piccolo Jr., etc., he's able to do it because he's surpassed them in strength.
The Saiyans' arrival changes the game. When Goku fights Vegeta, he's less than half Vegeta's strength. Instead of his training making him as powerful as Vegeta, his training made him powerful enough for a strength-booster technique to compensate for his comparative weakness. Goku, from this point forward, will never be as powerful as his foes again.
At the narrative level, the Kaioken didn't make Goku stronger; with or without it as a plot point, Goku would always have been written at the same relative level of strength that he fought Vegeta with. If Toriyama hadn't given him the Kaioken, then Goku would just be that strong.
What the Kaioken instead did was give Goku a weak point. Something that could be exploited to dramatic effect. A way for his strength to abruptly abandon him when the plot needed him to get wrecked. The ability to burn out his own might.
Super Saiyan did the same thing, but now without the weakness element. As of the Cell Saga, Goku and Vegeta aren't even close to the strongest guys in the room. Piccolo and the Androids far outclass them. They just happen to have these cool multiplier forms that allow them to be as powerful as they would have been naturally had Toriyama not introduced Super Saiyans.
This might seem like splitting hairs but here's the point: in terms of a character's utility in the plot, these transformations do not make characters more powerful. The characters are exactly as powerful as the plot needs them to be with or without them. What the transformations do is they push a character's baseline backwards. It's the equivalent of raising the price on a store item so that you can put it "ON SALE" at its original price.
Tenshinhan, Krillin, and Yamcha fell behind not because of transformations but because Toriyama simply didn't want to use them anymore. The Kaioken would have changed nothing for them. Nor would it have for Piccolo; if Piccolo learned the Kaioken, then Toriyama would have just put him at a fraction of the power he's currently at to compensate. He'd be 5x as powerful as Cell Arc Goku and Vegeta or something instead of 50x.
So, from a writing perspective, it's entirely easy to make the humans or Piccolo as powerful as the Super Saiyans despite the x50 multiplier. The only thing holding Toriyama back is that he doesn't want to. And that's his choice.
Edited by TobiasDrake on Dec 22nd 2019 at 11:54:03 AM
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Eeeeeeeeeeehhh... I feel like you're sort of right, but then again, we can also view Super Saiyan 1, and possibly Blueper Saiyan, as being analogous to Frieza's transformations on Namek, especially once Goku and Gohan showed us in the Cell Saga that they could stay in Super Saiyan, it's just easier not to, and makes training more of a challenge. With Frieza, he actually is as strong as his strongest transformation, but just chose to hang out in lower forms to more easily manage the power. Same with Golden Frieza, now. Why couldn't the same be said of the Super Saiyans?
One thing I always found weird about the Kaioken is that, during Goku's fight against 50% Freeza, Yamcha is all "well, Goku can still win because he can use Kaioken x10, and that should be more than enough to beat Freeza" only for Kaio to go "no, you dumbass, he's already using Kaioken x10" and for Goku to use Kaioken x20 shortly after.
...except Goku being able to use Kaioken x10 is not something ever established before. At no point in the series prior to that point does Goku use Kaioken x10. Against Vegeta, he only goes up to x4 in a quick burst, and against Ginyu, he only uses x2. When Goku's established maximum is x4, why in the world would Yamcha just assume that he can go up to x10, and then turn out to be right? The only logical answer is that Goku, off-screen managed to push himself to x10 while training and he happened to mention it to Kaio during a check-in, but that requires both a breakthrough and information of that breakthrough to transfer between characters off-screen, which is just bad writing!
It would be like if Goku went off to stall Fat Buu after fighting Vegeta in SS2, before explaining the Super Saiyan forms to Babidi and Buu, Yamcha said "Goku should be fine, he can go up to SS3" only for Krillin to go "no, he's already been using SS3", and for Goku to jump straight to SS4 right then and there.
Edited by PushoverMediaCritic on Dec 22nd 2019 at 12:30:49 PM
I don't recall if this was filler, latam dub or something else that was non canon, but I think it was stated that due to the x100 Gravity Training, Goku could handle a Kaio Ken X10 with no problem at all.
¡PONLE QUE DIGA!:"¡HUMONGOSAURIO HASTA LA MUERTE!"You're exactly right - Goku mentions it on route to Namek, when he's finished with his training and close to landing on Namek.
It's kind of interesting because it implies one of two things to me - either the people on Kaio's planet were monitoring Goku's progress and overheard that detail, or Tenshinhan is able to estimate Goku's level of Kaio-ken affinity based off the fight. The Viz translation makes it sound like the latter, but the literal translation is a bit vague:
Tenshinhan: "There’s nothing to worry about. Goku will win this match…Aren't you forgetting about the Kaio-Ken? As he is now, Goku is able to endure a maximum of up to about 10 times his power, right?"
Kaio: "Unfortunately... That Ten-Fold Kaio-Ken is what Goku is using now..."
Edited by Saiga on Dec 23rd 2019 at 9:03:35 PM
Planet Namek is not some backwater podunk planet in the asscrack of space. Next to all the galactic societies we've seen in the series, the Namekians are pretty much the #1 ballers. We wouldn't even have a show premise if the Namekians hadn't up and decided to just crack the laws of physics in half one day.
Sure? But that doesn't invalidate what I said, that a kid casually flying without a comment pretty much invalidate the technique specialness. Like, yeah, random Namekian mooks are pretty strong, and special Nameks of special dragon blood have awesome magical powers. But Kuririn just sorta assuming a random child could fly still makes it mundane.
And that is the thing, flying became the default. It is just what people do. They even stopped calling it the bukuujutsu. Since as early as the Sayan arc people have been assuming the others could fly without so much of a comment of surprise. Goku didn't even bother to ask if Piccolo taught Gohan before letting him go in the air during the Nappa fight. It was a joke that Bulma assumed Yajirobe could fly in the Androids arc, same as Goten at the Buu saga. It became unexpected to not fly.
And that is my point. Flying is not special, it is not a technique in the same way that a random ki blast is not a technique. It is just a thing fighters do. I think Toriyama kinda realized that at the Buu arc and used Goten to remind us that being strong and flying are not linked but by then it doesn't matter anymore, everyone in the cast, sans Satan, I guess, can fly or would soon learn to fly and no relevant flightless character would be introduced. The status of flight as a default ability would remain for the remainder of the series and beyond (well, I don't care for Super, so I guess I could be wrong on that one).
PS:To make clear, I am not really criticizing this transformation from special technique to mundane ability. Like, I think there could be interesting story potential if flight was limited to certain people and Gokuu still had to rely on the Kinto-Un, but there were benefits to making it widespread. Dragon Ball was never about complex fights in the way Hunter x Hunter or even One Piece are, where part of the fun is seeing how the characters' vastly different power set will interact, so having every fighter share the same base power set doesn't hurt its fight that much. Instead, it allow for dynamic choreography and allow for a base expectation of what each character can do. That is not a bad thing. My point is just that flight became part of the "base kit", instead of a thing just a certain number of (relevant) characters can do the way everything else is.
An interesting point of comparative is the Kamehameha. That technique is shared by half of the protagonists and it is easily copied by half a dozen of characters. But when Cell used it against Piccolo it still meant something because it is still unexpected a random bug man would do it. In other words, my comments on flying is less to do with the in-world explanation and more about the narrative implication. Every Namekian mook is likely strong enough to copy the Kamehameha if they wanted, and I wouldn't be surprised if Dende could as well (what was Goku's power level on the very first arc again? 10?). But it would still be weird if they did it, even if they could, because the Kamehameha is associated with the Turtle school and Goku specifically. Flight, meanwhile, is just a thing people do, as I said, so it doesn't need explanation and instates no surprise.
Edited by Heatth on Dec 23rd 2019 at 9:48:06 AM
That is why I said "sorta". The fact that he even thought to ask is what I mean. Why would a random child be able to fly? Kuririn thought there was a chance, though. Anyway, I edited my previous post to explain myself better. It is a bit rambly, but the main point is that narrativelly flight stopped being a technique and just a default ability of all relevant fighters, not dissimilar from generic ki blasts but different from specific, named, ki blasts.
Edited by Heatth on Dec 23rd 2019 at 9:50:13 AM
In Tenshinhan's defense, it was an easy mistake to make. Goku's supposed to have a fiery red aura when he's using the Kaioken. The Namek arc kinda cheated by just not showing the red aura to preserve the surprise that he was already using it.
It's like having normal black-haired Goku losing a fight and someone's like, "He can go Super Saiyan to even the odds," and another person's like, "You fool! How did you fail to notice that he's ALREADY at Super Saiyan 3?!" Uh, because he doesn't f*cking look like it, that's how. There is a specific visual cue that is not present in this fight.
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.![]()
I think that's an issue with translating a black and white manga to color anime. In the manga, there's very little visual difference between normal aura and Kaioken, so it makes sense to confuse the two. Now, whether the Kaioken is canonically supposed to be red in the manga is another question altogether...
Edited by PushoverMediaCritic on Dec 23rd 2019 at 9:18:55 AM
What's especially odd is that the red aura comes back when Goku pushes his Kaioken to x20 in a desperate bid to surprise Frieza and obliterate him with a souped-up Kamehameha.
So, in the Frieza fight, x10 Kaioken = no aura but x20 Kaioken still = aura.
Meanwhile, in Goku's fight immediately before this (Captain Ginyu), the red aura was there for using regular x2 Kaioken. Its absence is exclusive to the Frieza fight.
Edited by TobiasDrake on Dec 23rd 2019 at 9:32:13 AM
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.That's even more confusing.
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.

It's weird to call flying a technique when...it's different from what Ten and Chaozu were able to do before, which is also flying.
Not sure if it was suppose to be different.
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