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Summary
There is perhaps no other anime series that has as substantial of an increase in its main character’s strength from the earlier parts of the series asDragon Ball. In the original series, Goku and his contemporaries were regular Martial Artists who could control their Ki to fight against powerful opponents. However, even during that time, they would slowly get strong enough to show incredible feats like blowing up the moon.
Fast-forward to the current era withDragon Ball Super, however, and things couldn’t be further from how strong the characters used to be. Through growing in terms of power andunlocking many new transformations, the main cast of Z-Fighters has now become multiversal in terms of strength and can destroy entire planets on a whim. However, the power scaling for the series is all over the place, so let’s take a look at one of the biggest reasons why this is.
What Is Power Creep?
How Does Power Creep Affect Scaling?
The easiest way to define power creep in terms ofDragon Ballcan be seen by how strong the characters have become. Basically, due tothe strength of their adversaries increasingas the series progresses, the base form of each character gets even stronger after they have faced the villain. Due to this, every character is now able to put up somewhat of a fight against each new villain that the story introduces.
By doing this, power scaling fails to remain consistent and greatly diminishes the impact of what has come before. For example, Goku in his base form at the current moment inDragon Ball Superis far stronger than even Super Vegito was at the end of the Buu Saga, despite being an amalgamation of the strengths of both Goku and Vegeta taken together. Not only does this make no sense, it’s also just bad for storytelling purposes.
Keep training and get stronger. I’ll always be one step ahead of you, though.
The reason for this has always been chalked up toreasons such as Zenkai Boostsor the introduction of Divine Ki within the body, but the fact of the matter is that the series would have been far better off if power scaling remained consistent. This means that despite existing inSuperand having Divine Ki within his body, Goku’s base form should always be weaker than his Super Saiyan transformation from the Frieza Saga, since it would give the series a greater foundation to base the strength of other characters since then.
Power creep is a very inconsistent method of storytelling because it just chalks everything that happened in the latter stages of the story as a matter of chance, since, if Beerus’s awakening or Moro’s return happened earlier on, Goku and everyone else’s full power would have been negligible to them. That is why the series should keep each transformation and character consistent in terms of strength. The fact that Android 17 and Krillin can match up somewhat to Super Saiyan Blue Goku is just one of the reasons why this is such a bad thing.
How To Fix This Issue
How Rectifying This Can Fix Power Scaling In Dragon Ball
If power creep is eliminated fromDragon Balland the power scaling remains standard across all transformations and characters, there would be far fewerdebates about whom the stronger charactersare, since everything would be far clearer. Power creep makes little sense since Android 17 and Krillin can match up so well against Goku without doing nearly close to the amount of training he does.
Every transformation in the series should be used as a metric of where the power hierarchy of the series stands at that current moment. Only another transformation on top of that or a fusion is a way of getting stronger than that stage, which would make for a far easier way to gauge the strength of characters. For example, with the way things are right now, Goku could defeat Kid Buu in his base form without any help if the villain showed up again.
This is a cheap way of dismissing all the toil and hardships the heroes went through in the past to defeat this villain if even a traditionally weak character could defeat him easily, just because they have ‘gotten stronger’. In fact, this type of power scaling is the reason behind the popular meme ofBase Cabba vs. Super Saiyan 4 Gogeta, where it says that the former would easily defeat the character who held the title of the strongestDragon Ballcharacter for around 20 years.
So, in conclusion, every transformation of the series should serve a landmark purpose and should remain at the same level of strength forever. It should never be that Goku in his base, untransformed state is far stronger than his Super Saiyan form at any point of the story.
