A Dragon Ball Fanboy vs Akira Toriyama and Toei part 4: The Right Way To Power a Character Up!

 
With a new tournament arc coming for the Dragon Ball Super manga and not too far after that in the anime, the Dragon Ball community has run rampant with speculations on just what Piccolo and Buu as well as Gohan's role will be in this new God of Destruction tournament.  You can find some of my own speculations here (http://belartscorner.blogspot.com/2015/12/dragon-ball-super-and-team-universe-7.html).  Mainly, I have no hope for Toei and Toriyama at this point so I believe Piccolo and Buu will be a non-factor in the arc and only exist to provide comedy relief and to job out to the other team.  BUT...let's be more hopeful in this post, shall we!  For now I'm going to think of the best ways I can to power up some of my favorite members of the Z-Team.  I think there's some time before the whole 5 days to train thing that Piccolo and Buu have to contend with.  My frame of reference will start from the last episode of Dragon Ball Super that I watched (and that I will watch until the show's quality improves) episode 23.

Piccolo - Let's start with my favorite character.  The Namek here should already be one of the strongest characters in the show just going by the show's own rules and the fact that he's the creator's favorite.  What Piccolo suffers from the most is Toriyama's own lacking memory.  At two points in the show, Piccolo is shown to be the type of character who makes incredible gains while training.  This seemed to be somewhat dropped after his relevance in the Android arc.  Piccolo should also have an incredible technique pool if he possesses Kami's memories (which he does since he knew of Cell's evil) and should know Kami's Instantaneous Movement technique which is superior to Goku's own Instant Transmission.  With that and the fact that he possesses the former Kami of Earth inside of him, Piccolo should be able to get some training from some higher realm deities.

So my version of events goes like this (some spoilers will be ahead).  Some ideas I give credit to youtuber Mike from Laughingstock Media for (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysdtngSCkc8), specifically the keeping Piccolo in the afterlife stuff.  So after Piccolo is killed by Frieza, he lets it be known to the powers that be in the afterlife that he doesn't want to be wished back.  His body disappears from the Earth or Namek and he requests to be brought back in a year or something like that.  In the afterlife he trains.  Why?  Cuz he's the badass demonic Namekian Piccolo who mostly cares about fighting and strength.  Anyways, Piccolo visits King Kai again and completes his training with him.  King Kai informs his former Earthling students and all of them get a burning desire to fully master King Kai's training as well.

Piccolo masters King Kai's training in a mere day or two. From King Kai, he gets the Kaioken which he notes gives him an ability that allows him to rival Buu.  But it's not good enough for him and he goes on to train with some of the masters of Otherworld.  He learns some cool stuff and gets a cool new technique or two.  Finally, he meets his dad, the all powerful Katas.  From Katas Piccolo learns the true secret of his Namekian origin and what it means to be a true Super Namek.  He is able to tap into the ancient tribal power of the Dragon Clan, a power locked within himself.  It sounds a little fan-ficky but this is at least stuff that's potentially represented in the show.  Anyways, through some ancient Namekian knowledge Piccolo gets a boost of power.  I would have that boost be a Namekian centered technique, which grants the user a tremendous power boost at very little cost.  It would pretty much be a green colored Kaioken technique with healing properties.  Like an aura that constantly heals Piccolo and those around him (allies) which would make him into a high tier support character, but a badass to boot.  It's redundant to give Piccolo two types of Kaioken, but in this version this plot point would serve two purposes.  One: Hearing of Piccolo's Kaio Training and mastery of Kaioken ignites a fire in Tien and the other humans too.  And two: Piccolo's mastery of the Kaioken would get him familiar with the properties of his new Namekian based version of it.  Hell, maybe Piccolo, genius fighter that he is, develops this type of technique on his own.  Imagine that, a Kaioken that actually heals you!

Piccolo by PhazeN1 of Deviantart

After the yearlong training session, Piccolo is wished back.  At this point he surpasses resurrected Frieza's first form by a large margin.  I would say, to make things pointlessly cyclical, to put him a little over resurrected Frieza's second form/second suppressed state.  That's a respectable level for a year of hard training with these new power boosting techniques.  I wouldn't even mind putting him over Final Form resurrected Frieza, but I'm more conservative with my power level increases (I literally shuddered at Frieza's ridiculous FnF gains).  Now that he's back, the events of the DBS manga kick in and he has 5 days to train for the new tournament along with Buu who he's greatly surpassed.  Whis decides to train them both hard, seeing a godly nature in them.  Whis is also fairly impressed with Piccolo's training gains in only a year.  He finds it remarkable that someone who isn't a genius like Freiza can attain such power so quickly.

From here Piccolo can enter the tournament as is and be somewhat of a threat.  I'm fine if he stops here, but since I'm a Piccolo fanboy let's train him up some more.  He takes on Buu as a training partner and they get training from Whis himself.  They get the same training as Goku and Vegeta.  Piccolo starts at a comparable power as them and Buu is just durable as hell, so they survive the Beerus training and Whis' trials.  Buu gains a huge boost in power from this alone and Piccolo jumps up a little as well.  They are both chucked inside of Whis' staff and learn to "not let their ki leak out."  I'm still not sure what that means or what it does, but it seems to make people godly so they learn that.  Piccolo and Buu have godly potential inside of them.  Piccolo because he absorbed Kami who has been shown throughout the show to be a legit godly being.  Even Dende could sense Beerus and I don't think he's any more proficient as a Kami than Kami himself (even though his Dragon Balls are better).  Katas, Kami/Piccolo's father may even be some type of deific being.  Who knows, but that's my fast lane method for getting Piccolo up to snuff for the tournament in DBS.  Here you have character motivation for getting stronger (getting one shotted by Frieza while trying to protect Gohan), a clear route for training, some good power boosting techniques that aren't too far outside the realm of reality, and some really powerful trainers and training methods.  Piccolo could easily become a beast if some care was put into his character progression.  My hopes for decent sub character development was shattered a long time ago so I don't expect anything close to this in this new anime (yup I'm a downer).

Tien - I wouldn't get too crazy with Tien's power boost.  My first priority would be the beginning of a shift in Tien's role in the series.  You see, in Dragon Ball Online, Akira Toriyama wrote a story about the future of the Dragon Ball Universe (about 200 years later).  In the future, it is known that Tien is the founder of The New Crane School of martial arts (http://dragonball.wikia.com/wiki/New_Crane_School).  Many consider the game's story as canon material since Toriyama is said to have been heavily involved with the game's production.  Anyways, I'd like to see Tien and Krillin slowly shift to their roles as masters in the new show.  But to start, Tien always trains.  He does it non-stop and never gives up.  The logical step would be for Tien to get his potential unlocked by Moori (if he can), Elder Kai, and then fully master the Kaioken technique which all might put him on the level of a fully powered Super Saiyan or Super Saiyan 2.  But that's played out and boring at this point.  I think Tien has the potential to discover some show breaking techniques on his own anyway and not share it with the rest of the cast  Seriously, he is that gifted!

Anyways, continuing from Piccolo leaving King Kai's planet, we have the Earthlings all going there to train after hearing of Piccolo's amazing results.  I myself would have the entire earthling cast go there for training to defend Earth since most of them came face to face with Frieza.  I'd have Tien, Yamcha, and Chaozu joined by Krillin, #18, and Roshi.  I think it's a great opportunity for one master to meet another and could be rife with comedy as Roshi is forced to train alongside his former pupils and a beautiful woman.  Tien and Krillin make the biggest gains here.  It's also discovered that #18 can't learn the Kaioken thanks to her unique energy type.  King Kai notices that Tien is a natural with the technique, moreso than anyone else including Goku.  Tien reveals that it's because his Kikoho technique produces a similar effect on his body and he's mastered the technique to minimize the strain on his body.  Therefore his Kaioken usage is equally less strained and he can push himself to higher levels with it than the others.  Fighters like Roshi, Chaozu, and maybe even Yamcha still don't learn the full Kaioken...okay I'll throw Yamcha a bone and say he learns it too.  Roshi gets a power boost similar to what the boys did before when they trained during the Frieza arc. #18 and Chaozu get a slight power boost.  Every Earthling basically takes what they learned from King Kai home with them and uses it as a foundation for their new personal training, especially Tien.  He goes ham with it (no, not Oolong :-/).

So Tien tests the upward limits of the Kaioken and discovers that he can take it really far before it starts to really rip his body up.  Then he starts testing it with his other techniques like multiform and Kikiho and discovers some powerful combinations.  During one training session, he strains his body too far and discovers a new limit in himself.  Now this is where my Tien power scaling reaches a branching path.  Path 1 will be the logical path, using only methods shown so far in Dragon Ball, while Path 2 will be something more fanciful, with my own addition to the lore, but not very far from what we've seen.



Path 1:

Fan made Mystic Tien

Tien pushes himself to the brink with Kaioken and learns to use it as naturally as a Saiyan would use the original Super Saiyan form.  He continues to apply the Kaioken theory to his various techniques so that they can hit harder, even while he is at a lower power level.  He finds ways to boost his specific techniques far higher than his human body can go.  For instance, his Kikiho grows immensely in power and is able to hit with a power of Kaioken x 500 even though Tien can only raise his body to Kaioken x 50.  He can now one shot Buu saga level threats.  He also learns to use the multiform/Kaioken combo to power his clones to high levels while one stays at rest or uses a less strenuous Kaioken level so that the exhausted clones have a fresh body to return to.  He becomes more of a technique master in this regard, with powerful techniques that still make him a tricky opponent to face even for powerful threats.

Path 2:

Three eyed, four armed human?  Sounds legit.

He learns his body is not actually like a normal Earthling's.  The body straining techniques reveal this more and more.  Tien pushes himself to the brink every day and his power reaches new heights.  Suddenly his former limitations seem so far away and his ability to grow grows exponentially.  He ponders this while training with Chaozu.  King Kai, who's watching, posits a theory to Tien.  He states that there was a race of beings from long ago that were known as war gods.  They were a multi-eyed and multi-armed people (similar to Hindu gods) with extremely high battle powers and a love of combat like the Saiyans.  As a matter of fact, in the past they had often clashed with the Saiyans and were considered rivals, though the War Gods were many times stronger and only the strongest Saiyans stood a chance against them.  War Gods were one of the most durable races in the universe, but an out of control disease (or freaking Beerus) managed to take them all out.  Tien possesses a small measure of this War God blood.  It's affecting his body more and more as he reaches new limits.  The more he strains his body with Kaioken and Kikoho, the more his War God blood reacts.  Now, whenever Tien reaches his brink, his inner War God comes out and he grows four arms, dark red skin, and he can use the multiform without splitting his power.  The War Gods were possibly lower tier deities so this could open a path for Tien to gain some god ki.  I think it's a cool idea, but admit that it is over-the-top and adds lore that wasn't present before.  I don't think it's all that bad considering all the recent additions to the lore.  And Tien is one of those characters whose past is mostly blank so his history can easily be expanded upon.  This is the easiest way to make Tien into a relevant character again and even a suitable rival for Goku again.  One could only hope.

Gohan - This is definitely the easiest powerup on today's list.  Gohan has always had all the potential in the world, starting out with a power greater than all the martial artists on Earth and growing exponentially from there.  He's had his potential unlocked literally three times in the show so far and some of the latest chapters of the Dragon Ball Super manga reveal that Vegeta thinks that he has even more potential still.  The sky is the limit for this man and he will continuously surpass it and then fall waaaaaaaaay below it because Toriyama and whoever else deem it necessary for whatever reason to repeat this character regression endlessly.  All Gohan really needs is another BS powerup from the latest revealed deity, which would be Whis.  If we aren't just giving powerups away then Gohan has several paths he could consider.  Path 1 will be the standard one, path 2 will be one that's a little less obvious and much more character driven, and path 3 will be one that I'm having some fun thinking up.

Path 1:
Gohan gets Super Saiyan God and then Super Saiyan Blue.  This is standard and at this point, very boring.  I'd much rather see Gohan tread his own path to power (no pun intended).  But this is the most obvious way he could get stronger.  Since he would want to get stronger after Piccolo's death and his own humiliation at Frieza's hands, he might go to Whis for training.  Most likely he'd skip red haired Super Saiyan God form and go straight to blue (still not sure how this works).  Gohan might even just seek Goku for training and attain the form by training with him or Vegeta or both.  Very standard, very boring.  And now we'd have three blue haired characters doing the same types of moves *yawn*.

Path 2:
Okay, this is a little more interesting.  After being humiliated by Frieza and having his master killed in front of his very eyes, a useless feeling Gohan goes on his own training journey to get powerful again.  He attempts self training to get his stamina and control of his full power again.  He fully unlocks his powers again (black haired form) through vigorous self training.  Vegeta gives him tips for a good daily regiment and Bulma makes a gravity chamber modification to his house.  On his own, Gohan powers up past his Buu saga Ultimate self and seeks a method to even surpass that.  He considers the path that his father and Vegeta are taking, but the Elder Kai contacts him and tells him that there is another way.  He explains to Gohan that the ways Whis trains are suitable only for those who wish to destroy.  He then tells Gohan that there is a way for Gohan to become a more gentle god than one like Beerus.  He tells Gohan that it is possible for a god to be both strong and gentle like himself, a god that cares for all life.  He opens Gohan up to the path of the Kai's and Gohan attains a different sort of god form this way, one that is the most serene yet.  He always stays in a relaxed looking base form no matter how strong he gets, but he has power on par with Goku and Vegeta.

Path 3:
Gohan goes the route of true martial arts disciple after his humiliation at Frieza's hands.  As Gohan has never really been a fully fledged "martial artist" I figured it'd be some fun character development for him.  He can seek out training from the various Z fighters and even learn some of their techniques.  Mainly it would just be an arc about Gohan learning the virtues of fighting and learning to enjoy it as his peers and masters do.  He could learn from Roshi, Tien, Piccolo (again), Vegeta, King Kai, Whis, etc.  Then after that he could do some intense self training and with his ridiculously high potential that would probably automatically put him at Goku and Vegeta's SSB level. This path just turns Gohan into a battle freak like Goku, Piccolo, Vegeta, and Tien.  It's fun though and a major change for Gohan.  He'd still remain his pacifist self, but have a newfound love and respect for fighting.  Now, he'd always find some time to train, at least every so often.

Buu - Since this is getting so long, I'll make Mr. Buu the last one I do today.  Buu has a lot of paths open to him as well when it comes to gaining greater strength.  First and foremost, we know nothing of Buu's potential.  We don't even know all there is to know of his physiology.  He's magical in nature and for all we know could be constantly getting stronger just from breathing.  I would guess that that's not the case, but what do we know?  I think Mr. Buu does have a high potential to get much stronger.  I think with proper training that Buu could easily get to Golden Frieza and SSB level.  He already starts with an amazingly high base.  Buu was also a life form that the Kais feared so in many ways he's higher than even the gods in the universal heirarchy.  His function seemed to even be on par with what god's of destruction did.  Maybe he was once an out of control god of destruction, who knows?  Buu might even be able to surpass Beerus in only a week, anything is possible with him since we know so little.  I'll try to ground this with the two path approach, maybe more.

Buu absorbed this god eons ago, the Grand Supreme Kai

Path 1:
Buu absorbed a god (the god of gods, Daikaioshin) and thusly has god ki.  Simple, right?  Whis sees this in him and trains him to bring this power out though "without it leaking."  This is a very straightforward way of giving Buu God Ki and a shot at attaining higher levels.

Path 2:
Buu is already a godly being and can access God Ki whenever he wants to.  With simple training Whis is able to help him unlock this.


Path 3:
Buu's magical nature makes it so that his potential is insanely high and with intense basic training he is able to far surpass even Freiza.  He also gains some new abilities through magic, like splitting himself into two characters with unique personalities, Skinny Grey and Buff Pink.  Okay, I'm having a little too much fun with this one, but the point is that he gains some new magical techniques.  Buu could benefit from some Whis training, but if Whis only trains those with God Ki potential and if Buu doesn't have such potential (in this scenario) then maybe Buu finds a different trainer.  Maybe the Piccolo scenario I made above has this powered up Piccolo decide to train Buu so that they could rightfully defend Earth.  These two do have some similar abilities and Buu did take over Piccolo's spot as Dragon Ball's resident demon.  Maybe his super form would look something like Super Buu.

Path 4:
Buu absorbs someone really strong.  I think this one is highly unlikely.  It's one of those "bad guy" techniques that the good guys just don't use.  Think about Piccolo's giant form, Vegeta's Oozaru, and Tien's Four Witches.  There are just certain techniques that get dropped to make a character a good guy and the absorption will be one of them, mark my words.  Besides that, it'll just be ineffective against stronger opponents.

Created by Justice 71 of Deviantart

 
Well that wraps up this exciting episode of Dragon Ball Fanboy.  Next time we'll talk about ways to power up Goten, Trunks, Krillin, and #18.

Thanks for reading this article my glorious readers!  You all have a great week ahead!

Part 2: http://belartscorner.blogspot.com/2016/02/a-dragon-ball-fanboy-vs-akira-toriyama.html

A DBZ Fanboy vs. Akira Toriyama part 1: Spirit Ki vs Godly Ki

In my opinion, Dragon Ball Z Battle of Gods was an awesome movie because it introduced something new into the series.  Resurrection 'F' was also awesome, but this time because it added a ton of action, most of it from fan favorite sub characters.  I find Dragon Ball Super to be a mixed bag with some awesome episodes featuring new content, good animation, and fresh fight choreography while others are the complete opposite and horribly dragged out filler filled affairs.  But all of this new Dragon Ball content has a set of glaring flaws in common and they share these flaws with...gasp!  Dragon Ball GT.

So first I'll share my vision of what I thought Akira Toriyama could have done to improve a series that I thought was on a downward spiral.  These ideas are from before BoG was even a thing.  I came up with these improvements in 2010.  So this will be a list of what I thought made DBZ so great and how to get them in the show again.

1. Ensemble Cast.

So the first thing that stood out to me about DBZ, as a kid was this cool looking and strange cast of powerful characters.  Remember how exciting that 90's intro was with everyone fighting and doing signature techniques?  The new DBZ series should have gotten back to using these characters, these fan favorites.  What made the original cast of DBZ so appealing was the diversity of them all in how they fought and how different and colorful they looked.  Tien fought like a martial arts technician, Krillin flipped around like a nimble monkey, Chiaotzu did weird stuff, Goku was balanced, Gohan would snap, Piccolo was a beast and Vegeta used dirty tricks and powerful finishing blows.  Now everybody that matters is a Saiyan and they all have golden hair and fight very similarly.  We didn't even need to see the original Z fighters win to be fans of them.  The fact that they all pitched in, gave it a try, and looked cool doing it was enough.  I always thought Tien and Yamcha were really cool even though they've never actually defeated anyone in DBZ (unless you count the filler Ginyus and Otherworld guys which I often do).  The only thing Toriyama and Toei need to do for characters other than Goku and Vegeta is give them someone to fight on their own level.  Why can there only be one fight at a time in DBZ?  Even in 2010 and before I saw this simple fix.  But if Toei and Toriyama think there's no value to be found in the old characters then they can at least make some really cool new characters to take their place.  We just need more diversity than two protagonists with the same abilities and transformations.  The reason for the decay in the initial ensemble cast of Z is due to the next thing that needs to be fixed...

2. Power Level Scaling.

I'm specifically referring to power level inflation.  It was already pretty broken by the time the Buu Saga rolled around.  Though it started to get really busted in the Frieza arc when characters like Vegeta were making instant 10x jumps, Piccolo making between 10x -- 286x jump, Krillin's potential 16x -- 70x jump, etc.  At least everyone was competitive here, and I like how the anime made the humans on Kaio's planet keep up too.  It made more sense seeing as how Piccolo made such incredible gains there (or not if you choose not to believe).

I actually liked the power levels during the Cell arc when everyone was relatively near one another.  I wished we got a more extended Android arc with the levels as they were when Vegeta fought #19 and Piccolo fought #20.  I wished Toriyama had created the movie cyborgs here so the others got a chance to fight in an arc without Goku.  That would've been rad!  The power level inflation got super busted once Super Saiyan 2 entered the picture during the Cell Games, well even before that with the Mastered Super Saiyan form or rather Full Power Super Saiyan.  By the time the Buu saga rolled around, I could clearly see how badly the unbalanced power level scaling ruined the show.

Characters who once helped drive the show forward suddenly became useless because they weren't in league with the new super strong baddie or because they didn't have another transformation to grant them more power.  Even characters that had gotten new forms and power levels in the current arc became instantly useless once the villain reached a new level of power and that just kept compounding making lesser characters even more useless.  Look at all the Buu Saga powerups as an example: Majin Vegeta, Gotenks Fusion, Super Saiyan 3 Gotenks Fusion, Mystic/Ultimate/Full Potential Gohan.  All of those powered up characters were cool for about 5 minutes then instantly became useless once Buu powered up or got a new form.  All the development (especially Gohan's) thrown out the window in favor of more powering up.

Spirit Ki (my fanboy concept)

So that brings me to my first improvement for the show.  The introduction of god ki.  That's right, I thought of it waaaaay before it was revealed in BoG.  Only I called it holy ki, or spirit ki.  It's not the most original idea and I actually may have gotten the idea from Yu Yu Hakusho, the sacred ki.  Anyways Tien really inspired me with this one, cuz how broken is the Kikoho?  Answer: ridiculously broken.  No matter where you put Tien's PL, there's no way he should have been able to hold down an enemy that was exponentially stronger than a Super Saiyan.

So spirit ki was born in my head and Tien had learned a way to use it to attack through normal ki.  It allowed him to compete with the top level fighters again.  Actually, I had made a villain come into play who has this spirit ki to wreck the strongest Z warriors because spirit ki could bypass normal ki, causing more damage than normal.  In my concept, it didn't even take a lot of spirit ki to defeat an opponent of even SSJ3 Goku's level, just a concentrated dose of it.  You can think of it like Pokemon, spirit ki is "super effective" against normal ki while normal ki is "not very effective" against spirit ki.  So it was up to Tien to teach his fellow Z warriors the basics of spirit ki to defeat this new villain and now all the Z fighters are on equal footing again and we can introduce new concepts into the show to keep it fresh, like possibly infusing spirit ki with elements or something.  This also fixes the inflated power level scaling since new villains can simply be really good at this spirit ki.  Not all villains have to be gods now.  I was even toying with the idea of spirit ki originating on earth as something that allowed humans to fight devil gods from the demon realm.  Maybe Tien's alien ancestors came to earth to teach it.  Who knows, but the idea can go anywhere.  How did Tien learn the Kikiho anyway?

But...

Instead Toriyama uses a variant of this concept called god ki and it seemed to do very similar things to my own spirit ki concept.  So I was super excited to see that and it looked like Toriyama was onto something interesting.  I didn't have super high hopes since I saw a lot of things in BoG that were indicative of the show's worst traits like the simplistic (and horribly convenient) Super Saiyan God ritual (pure hearted saiyans, really!?)  But the god ki concept held strong.  Only gods could do battle with gods and godly ki is on a whole other level than normal ki.  That all worked out nicely, until...

Frieza's intergalactic training gains (aka, damn he's strong!)

Resurrection 'F' threw that whole concept out the window.  In four months of training, Frieza not only surpassed all of DBZ's major villains, who were eons ahead of him in strength.  It flies in the face of all the ridiculous gains made by all the other characters over the years.  He also surpassed the new gods of universe 7, Goku and Vegeta who are both in the same realm of strength as Beerus the god of destruction (though Beerus is considerably stronger still.)  Why Toriyama didn't have him train for a little longer than that and with some other godly being is beyond explanation.

So as it stands now, even someone with a bunch of regular ki can trounce all over someone with godly ki as Frieza did for a good portion of RoF.  So that previous theory of god ki nullifying normal ki goes out the window.  I'll tell you BoG and RoF were great movies, but they were filled with so many sloppy plot holes, errors, and missed opportunities.  I still love them though, but only when I turn my brain off.  And hey, Toriyama and Toei at least got #1 right in RoF.  The ensemble cast looked so amazing in that fight along with the newcomer Jaco who was even weaker than most of the Z fighters, but still fought admirably and stylishly.

Next time we'll go over the ways the Dragon Ball series can be improved with a simple exploration of its existing backstory, powers, and techniques.  Think Tien's true alien race, Frieza's home planet, the Namekian book of legends, the planet of the Metamorans, Dabura's demon realm, the different ways ki can boost abilities, the applications of kaioken for the rest of the cast, etc.