Dragon Ball Super and Team Universe 7: Piccolo and Buu

Team U7 includes: Goku, Vegeta, Piccolo, Majin Buu, and Monaka while Team U6 consists of (from left to right) Hit/Heat, Cabe, Frost, Botamo, and Magetta.

Hey Dragon Ball fans!  This post is a follow-up of my last post about Piccolo's role in Dragon Ball Super.  You can find that post here http://belartscorner.blogspot.com/2015/09/a-dragon-ball-fanboy-vs-akira-toriyama.html.  Anyways, continuing from there, it looks like Toriyama and the Toei crew have found some use for Piccolo in the main storyline again.  As if the image at the top wasn't enough of a spoiler, I'll preface the rest of this post my declaring there to be SPOILERS ahead.  Read at your own risk.

Now, with that out of the way, let's get started.  Those of you who've been keeping up with Dragon Ball Super's manga know that there is a multi-universal tournament about to kick off between Beerus' team of universe 7 fighters against his brother Champa's team of universe 6 fighters.  Both teams have now been shown in full.  And I'm excited to say that Piccolo has made the cut.  He is a part of team universe 7!

HYPE!

Just seeing this poster gets me hyped up and feeling like this new arc may just be something special.  It takes me back to some of my favorite arcs in DBZ when Goku, Piccolo, and Vegeta were the mainstays of the series.

The series was always at it's highest point when these three got the most screentime and development.  If Piccolo is properly utilized in this new arc then the series may find its way again. So I'm wondering what they'll do with him on the team.  Will he get to fight?  Will Buu fight?  I mean, if Goku and Vegeta are competing one would think that there will be strong fighters of their caliber on the opposing team to challenge them.  If that is the case then where does Piccolo and Buu fit into all this?  We're consistently lead to believe that Piccolo isn't much stronger than he was at the Cell games.  He's most likely still far below Buu unfortunately.  But from what we've seen with this new content, it seems that with the most intense training (like with Tagoma) that even Piccolo can potentially make some ridiculous training gains to make him a prominent fighter again.  We'll get back to this in a little bit though.

The Most Likely Scenario:

Here's what I'm afraid of. Piccolo and Buu are not really needed for the tournament.  They are simply team filler.  If we judge by previous tournaments then this is the most likely scenario.  Usually in the Dragon Ball tournaments there are about 4 top tier fighters with two of them being far above the rest, along with a handful of jobbers.  The jobbers also get some cool moments, but they are mostly there to make their opponents look powerful.  Think of Yamcha's role in the original Dragon Ball series.

In the first Tenkaichi Budokai we see in Dragon Ball the above formula applies to Goku, Krillin, and Roshi who are top tier and manage to almost effortlessly sweep through the competition.  You can add Nam as a forth there.  Goku and Roshi perform at a level far above the others here.  I've posted a photo of the tournament fighters to show who all competed, but please ignore the power levels.  These coincide with what I'm saying, but they are not official. Credit goes to kanzenshuu.com forum user Black Hawk.

Disregard the power levels here.

In the second Tenkaichi Budokai that we see the four are mostly the same with Goku, Krillin, and Roshi at the top again but they are joined by the main antagonist of the arc, Tenshinhan aka Tien.  Though the fights are portrayed as nearly even, Goku and Tien perform at a level seemingly far above the other two.  Roshi may still be at their level though, but you still see the pattern here, right?

Disregard the power levels here.

Now we go to the final Tenkaichi Budokai in Dragon Ball and we have Tien and Goku joined by newcomers Shen (Kami in a human body) and Ma Jr. (Piccolo).  Though Tien is really strong and gives Goku a great fight, he is still far outclassed by Goku, Piccolo, and most likely even Shen.  We don't really get to see too much of Kami in his fight with Piccolo so we don't exactly know how strong he is.  So we can still kind of go with Piccolo and Goku being way ahead of the rest.

Disregard the power levels here.

Now for the last tournament we pretty much have Goku and Vegeta waaaaaay ahead of everyone else and maybe Gohan and Supreme Kai or Gohan and Piccolo behind them.  Now in this new God of Destruction Tournament arc in Dragon Ball Super it's probably the same.  I would say that Goku and Vegeta are going to be quite powerful as the latest chapter of the manga has shown that they've been training for three years in the Hyperbolic Time Chamber.

The prevailing theory is that they may have gotten stronger than Beerus in that time.  Along with them you have Monaka the red alien at the rear of the U7 team.  Monaka was said to have been the fiercest warrior that Beerus has ever faced.  Monaka now looks quite old and my theory is that he/she has lost a lot of power, but who exactly knows at this point anyway.  Now that we have this new team based tournament style for the series we can change the numbers up a little bit from previous tournaments and include at least two more to the formula.  So with this tournament we'll have a total of six characters who are top tier, and four characters who are of the highest tier, with maybe two barely at the very top above the other two.

Predictions:

So I think it'll work like this for the Universe 6 vs. Universe 7 tournament arc: Piccolo and Buu are probably going to be complete jobbers (people who lose to show the strength of an opponent).  I don't think they're going to get a power boost at all, well not a major one anyway, well not one to compete with the big boys I should clarify.  Toriyama may subvert our expectations again and have a tournament that's not even completely about fighting.  If it is completely about fighting then two of the fighters on the Universe 6 team may have strength comparable to Buu and Piccolo.  My guess would be that the Botamo (the bear looking guy) and Meggeta (the robot) will be close enough to Buu and Piccolo to make those fights more even.  Whatever the case with the lower tier fighters, the higher tier fighters will follow the known Dragon Ball formula.  You can think of Goku and Vegeta as the top fighters in our universe, taking that top tier spot and either below or above them will be Monaka who was said to give Beerus some trouble in the past.  On the opposite side I believe the purple guy, Hit/Heat, will be top tier along with the small Saiyan, Cabe.  Joining them will be the Frieza looking guy, Frost.  So altogether I think there'll be six high tier fighters (Goku, Vegeta, Monaka, Hit, Cabe, and Frost).  Of those six, four will be above the rest or simply take precedence (Goku, Vegeta, Hit, Frost).  Monaka will probably have a gimmick to why he/she isn't as reliable as Goku and Vegeta.  My guess would be old age/laziness.  Hopefully it doesn't play out like this and Akira plans something far more creative for us.

Back to training...

So let's get back to Piccolo and Buu.  Goku handpicked them to be on the team.  His decision seemed like a more pragmatic one than anything.  He picked them in terms of strength and usefulness I think.  Buu, because he was next in line (hopefully under Gohan) and he's nearly invincible.  Piccolo, because (besides Gohan and Buu) he's the next strongest.  He also has the most fighting experience besides Goku, Vegeta, and possibly Tien.  He is also a very unique fighter with a diverse pool of useful techniques.  Goku and Vegeta are seen training in a unique dimension in Whis' staff during the Fukkatsu no 'F' arc of Dragon Ball Super in order to master their god forms.  Now they've been shown to train for three days in the Hyperbolic Time Chamber which you all know equals three years.  This is after they already learned Super Saiyan Blue.  So their level of strength at this point must be insane!

Buu and Piccolo 

Maybe they should combine.  That would mean they would be a combination of 5 or more people including 2 gods.

So what about Piccolo and Buu?  They only have 5 days to train.  Will they also train in some crazy new dimension?  My hope is that they do.  I hope they end up training with Whis, maybe together.  What's cool is that they have similar abilities when I think of it.  Magic, object materialization, regeneration (though Buu's is better), stretchy limbs (Buu's is better again), and sweet capes (Piccolo's is waaaaay better).  But I hope that they get more than simple basic training.  I hope they unlock something godly within themselves as well.  These two seem to have the best potential to be gods.  Buu because he literally absorbed the highest Kaioshin, Daikaioshin.  And Piccolo because he literally absorbed the Earth's god, Kami.  Maybe both can get new forms as well.  With the ridiculous powerups we've seen in Dragon Ball Super so far, I would have no qualms about Piccolo and Buu getting some crazy powerups to make them much closer to Goku and Vegeta's level.  We've seen Piccolo make some of the best training gains in the past before Frieza was reintroduced (and now Tagoma) so it's not too crazy here.

Before I hope for too much here, I'll end my speculations for now.  So far DBS hasn't lived up to my expectations so hopefully, this time around, Toriyama and crew do something cool that brings me back into the show and lets my imagination run with how cool his new story is, rather than ways that I could do it better.  They have introduced a very cool cast of characters into this tournament and even given Piccolo a role in it.  Time will tell if this proves to be as good as the hype it builds.

Thanks for the browse my glorious readers!

Check out my updated opinions with part 2: http://belartscorner.blogspot.com/2016/02/dragon-ball-super-and-team-universe-7.html

Also my dream powerups for some of my favorite characters: http://belartscorner.blogspot.com/2015/12/a-dragon-ball-fanboy-vs-akira-toriyama.html