The "Unearned" Power-Ups of Dragon Ball

the longer dragon ball goes on the more people throw around a specific phrase unearned power up whether it be a transformation a new technique or even just a character getting stronger in a disagreeable way you'll always hear about unearned power-ups so let's go over every Power up that's supposedly unearned in the series and see if it actually is Original Dragon Ball is where we'll start but honestly if there aren't many cases of a character powering up in a way that isn't training related I think the first one you could look at is Goku fighting against giren no not jiren I mean giren Goku's opponent in the 21st tenkaichuberokai giren uses his Merry-Go-Round gum technique to entirely immobilize Goku and seemingly he can't escape that is until his tail conveniently grows back and even more convenient this lets Goku escape the gum and with a quick Display of Power jiren resigns it's obvious why people think this is an unearned power up but what if I told you it's just not a power up only the dub has Goku say he feels so much stronger with his tail the sub and especially the manga imply that his tail only gave him extra time to break out of the gum since it took a bit of effort so I'd say this isn't the case of an unearned power-up more so just a classic dubism you may think the next unearned power-up is against Tao paipai but I think the three days of training with Master Karen and the additional explanation later on of it being a zenkai boost are more than enough for it to make sense and feel earned don't worry though we'll talk about zenkai's specifically without training more later on for now the more important MasterCard and power-up to talk about is two arcs later when Goku drinks the ultra Divine water this is actually the very first potential unlock in the series and it's a power up that's a complicated one to cover due to how the story of Dragon Ball changed with the Z but the easy answer is it was earned in the anime for sure as Goku needed to go on a journey and even face a fake version of Master roshi just to drink it in the manga though the answer will be based on how you feel about the payoff you see for the longest time Goku's ozaru form was a mystery and a dangerous one at that but after drinking the ultra Divine water the great ape form changed into a representation of Goku's own hidden potential this payoff is quickly abandoned however especially after Goku being an alien and the Saiyans themselves are introduced so I think it's fair to think of this one as unearned but I can personally see it both ways after this we could skip ahead quite a bit till we reach Dragon Ball Z and that planet everyone wants to invade Dynamic this portion of the series is where everyone who is on Namek just kept getting Juiced up and honestly it doesn't surprise me that people feel like a lot of this stuff is unearned let's start with the potential unlocks Gohan Krillin and less importantly dende get their hidden power unlocked and of course it's described as power they've always had but it still doesn't feel that great that this is the way Krillin and Gohan catch up especially when they are still so far behind but that might actually be a good thing showing that potential unlocks have a limited ability to make a character catch up without anything additional this doesn't necessarily stay true later on though I can quickly go over Piccolo here as well I think merging with nail is a pretty powerful moment showing both Piccolo's growth and Nails resolve to do what he must for his people and Planet Namek so I think this power up is narratively earned and I think most people agree with that the bigger issue is actually Piccolo's power before the merge depending on the source Piccolo got five to ten times stronger from merging with nail this skyrocketed his power level to over 1 million as he was able to handle second form Frieza but that would mean in the five days he trained with King Kai he went from a power level of 3500 to a power level between 100 and 200 000. I don't care if he technically trained for it that's the other famous unearned power-ups in this Arc are ones I've already mentioned zenkai boosts when a Saiyan survives a battle from the brink of death they get stronger this happens for Goku Gohan and especially Vegeta the point of these is to show that in isolation they actually are pretty ineffective while Vegeta is able to deal with frieza's in initial underlings with zenkai boosts all it took was the Ginyu Force to show up and if it hadn't been for Goku he would have died before growing stronger than them even earlier than the guineus zarbon would have killed Vegeta if they didn't need him alive only furthering my point Gohan zenkai boosts are equally ineffective as are his rage boosts at this point so it only leaves us with Goku who specifically trained while inadvertently getting zenkai's from it this combination of training and zenkai boost earned him the power to take on the Ginyu Force in the same way I explained earlier with the Tao Pai Pai rematch he did later get a very important and massive zenkai boost that is basically one of the two reasons Frieza is defeated so if you think that one is unearned I can't really blame you because it is super convenient after all though I will say for zenkai's on the whole for an arc that's dedicated to accepting and learning about Heritage getting power ups through his genetics is thematically consistent at least which takes us to the dumb argument people have made in more recent years though usually they're not actually Dragon Ball fans Super Saiyan it's not an unearned power-up training isn't the same as earning more often than not something being thematically or narratively earned is even more important and more satisfying than if it's acquired through training this isn't the only thematically earned power up either that doesn't mean training can't be used as a good way to show that a power-up is earned though the cell Saga as a whole is a lot of power-ups earned through training actually like the Super Saiyan grades other power-ups are earned thematically like Piccolo merging with Kami and Gohan getting Super Saiyan 2 which leads us nicely to the busaga where the beginning is all power-ups earned through seven years of training Majin Vegeta is a potential unlock but it's a very character driven one rather than a random power boost to help him just catch up and the point is it's unearned by his own admission so it doesn't even matter if being unearned is actually the point as much as I don't like Super Saiyan 3 narratively it is explained well enough and Goku continuing to evolve Super Saiyan makes sense when you consider the fact that that was his main training goal in the cell Saga I think the main earn power up in the entire Arc is Gohan's ultimate form and personally I'm a bit mixed on it while I understand that Gohan is getting his own potential unlocked it does suck to have him built up to be the next protagonist only to have him slack off enough that he needs this boost that being said he did train for the Tenkaichi Budokai and even trained with the Z sword as well then considering how Goku struggled to lift the Z sword base Gohan might actually be stronger than base Goku at this point so maybe you could consider the potential unlock a reward for his hard training this is just another case where I can see it both ways then we get into modern Dragon Ball with Dragon Ball super well technically Dragon Ball Z since both Battle of Gods and Resurrection F were actually Dragon Ball Z movies first and there are actually two power-ups to talk about in Battle of Gods the first might be surprising but it's Vegeta's rage boost against beerus you see rage boosts before modern Dragon Ball were entirely left to Gohan with other characters only getting a boost from their rage via a new transformation like soup Super Saiyan this unprecedented way to get a power up for a character that isn't Gohan actually leads me to think it's fairly unearned but I'm sure that's a contentious opinion then we of course have Super Saiyan God to me the issue of foreshadowing this form is rectified by having Battle of Gods be an arc rather than just a movie but even in the context of the movie it's foreshadowed fairly well you could think it's unearned due to it being acquired via a ritual but the movie at least addresses this as Goku's main complaint with the form Honestly though Goku is the only reason the ritual can happen in the first place he's earned this power by being the person who made it possible for five other righteous Saiyans to even exist remember characters are more than the ark that's currently happening their history matters for stuff like this and for me that makes this power up work extremely well Super Saiyan blue is of course earned through training and even if you dislike the fact that golden Frieza only required four months of training does that make it unearned this is why just training for something doesn't make it clear if it's earned or unearned we don't have a line for how much training is good enough and honestly you could call it unearned and I wouldn't blame you at all which leads us to Super Saiyan rage the form trunks requires in the Dragon Ball super anime it has one of the coolest reasons to transform ever in the series trunks is basically being told it's his fault everything bad has happened and he refuses to accept that but that's about all we get there's no foreshadowing no explanation and we're meant to forget it the minute the ark ends I think you can headcan in a way for it to be earned but it's never really acknowledged in the narrative so I don't think we should either this should be obvious but I think it's unearned then we get to the contentious power-ups that happen before the tournament of power there are quite a few but some are just misunderstood like the fact that Krillin isn't as strong as blue Goku Goku was testing how Krillin would handle such a large gap in power which is exactly what Gohan and Android 18 say Goku's clearly holding back as not to kill Krillin and a God form is the best way to do that since they can't sense how strong he is not to mention the fact that Krillin was losing regardless then we have Android 17 actually being super saiyan blue Goku level and yeah that's just unearned I don't have much to say here finally Gohan also Rivals Super Saiyan blue Goku but that isn't from less than a day of training with Piccolo like most people think after Resurrection F Gohan asks to be trained by Piccolo again and we even see them training before the universe 6 tournament if you for some reason don't believe this compare Gohan and Resurrection F to Gohan in the Zen exhibition even before he trained with Piccolo for a final time Gohan is clearly in way better shape than when he faced Frieza obviously the narrative could do a better job of reminding you that Gohan has been doing some training but that doesn't mean it didn't happen so in a world where Frieza gets to God level from Namek level in four months I think Gohan training for two years to go from busaga level to God level is completely fine relative to the more egregious examples at least people then complain about the universe 6 Saiyans specifically khalifla because they don't like the way she unlocks Super Saiyan while I agree the way it was explained is pretty lame I do understand the idea that once something is discovered once it's much easier to teach others how to replicate it we skipped over this but my basic view on Khalifa is that if you don't think Super Saiyan Goten and Trunks are unearned then you shouldn't think this is either and the same is true in reverse then in the tournament itself plenty of power-ups happen Ultra Instinct was of course something Goku had been training towards with whis since Resurrection F so I think everyone understands why that works I think the one that people point to as the most unearned is actually blue Evolution while Goku trained to use Kaioken with Super Saiyan blue Vegeta unlocked this form during the tournament itself it entirely comes from Vegeta wanting to fill his promise to Kaaba but it's really Hollow there is a narrative behind it especially with his whole speech about Saiyans breaking their limits towards the end of the tournament but I think it would have been better if he got it during his fight with God of destruction toppo since he would be rewarded for rejecting toppo's philosophy either way I don't think I can call it unearned entirely there is a theme behind it but I can say it's pretty blame them then I don't think there's actually anything to cover in the Broly movie if you're really concerned about how Broly is so powerful he trained for 40 years has insane potential got stronger during the fight and had Transformations on top of it all usually we only get one of those things to explain how someone's so strong so having all of them makes it earned enough for me to briefly touch on the Dragon Ball super manga I think just about everything is earned in the moro Arc then in the granola Arc these two guys wish to be the strongest in the universe that's clearly unearned and I don't even think that's a hot take finally we have Dragon Ball super superhero the big two cases of unearned power are Piccolo and Gohan I have a whole video dedicated to how we got to Orange Piccolo but I will briefly say it's his Dragon Kami and Piccolo are one again so Shenron was originally the dragon he made this is power that comes from himself at the end of the day and it even ties into the Journey of namekian Warriors during times of great suffering that we learned about in Dragon Ball super narratively this is very different than the characters of the granola Arc whose selfish lusted for power especially when you remember Piccolo only wanted his own potential unlocked not to be the strongest person in the universe which leaves us with Beast Gohan and I'm extremely torn on this in the Dragon Ball super anime Gohan tells Goku he's going to make an ultimate form that no one has ever seen before which manifests itself as Beast Gohan that's cool and would have been great had it been earned through some other means obviously Gohan has been doing some amount of training since he taught himself the matanko sapo but he didn't unlock beasts until he got a one-to-one recreation of his Super Saiyan 2 transformation it just feels Hollow like super saiyan rage trunks did and then when you remember Gohan was just stapled onto what was supposed to be a piccolo movie I'll be brave and call the form unearned maybe the Manga version will fix it up a bit but that's all I got remember to subscribe if you haven't yet and thank you so very much for watching

Channel: Carthu's Dojo

Views: 669,839

Keywords: Dragon Ball Super, Goku, carthus dojo, dragon ball z, dragon ball what if, dragon ball z what if, dragon ball super what if, anime, manga, The Unearned Power-Ups of Dragon Ball, DBS Superhero, Orange Piccolo, Unearned Power-Ups of Dragon Ball, piccolo new form, beast gohan, ultra ego vegeta, ultra instinct goku, Broly, granolah, granolah arc, moro arc, Unearned Power-Ups, unearned powerups, Merus, Gamma 1, Gamma 2, gohan new form, entire moro arc, entire granolah arc

Id: _94Dw6ZbqbU

Length: 12min 49sec (769 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 10 2023