Becoming the world’s strongest is so important in the Dragon Ball mythos that it’s even the title of one of the movies..
If there’s one thing the Dragon Ball franchise definitely isn’t lacking, it’s mighty warriors eager to fight at the slightest provocation. But who among them is really the strongest fight of them all? Today we’re going to tackle that all important question and you might be surprised to learn that Son Goku has some competition. Of course, there’s the concept of power levels but that can only take us so far, as even series creator Akira Toriyama is well aware of. We’ll take a look at some heavy hitters including the Angel Whis and Beerus, the God of Destruction. Even though Beerus is a deity, he still hasn’t mastered the art of Ultra Instinct, which might be the single most impressive technique in the whole show. There are benevolent warriors and then there’s a whole host of insidious characters such as the wicked Demon King Piccolo, or enemy Broly who only became canon semi-recently. We’ll talk about why Goku meeting Kami was such a game changer and how it affected the progression of the series. If you’re a fan of the franchise, you might just find yourself watching those battles with a whole new appreciation for the concept of strength. There are a ton of mighty warriors to pick from, but which one of Akira Toriyama’s creations do you think is the strongest?
today we’re looking at what makes the
strongest fighter in Dragon Ball
alrighty time to gauge the strongest
fighter in the wide wide world Dragon
Ball lore it shouldn’t be too much
trouble just gotta tune up that old
power scatter we got lying around and
perfect now we just need our good old
pal Kok who do one of his patented
power-ups and and second thought it
might be better to just lose the
Scouters for now yeah as it turns out
the concept of strength in the Dragon
Ball universe is actually a bit more
complicated than just slapping an
arbitrary number value onto a fighter
and calling it a day not that plenty of
fans haven’t tried doing just that
series creator Akira Toriyama has spent
literal decades weeding the long and
complex tale of son Goku and his journey
to become the strongest dude around and
even he thinks the fans fascinations
with power levels is a bit much but I’ll
get to that later in the early days of
Dragon Ball when Goku was just a teensy
tiny Saiyan a good portion of his
enemies fought at a relatively
believable level at least when compared
to the rest of the franchise it was at
this more grounded tier that the whole
idea of power levels actually made a bit
of sense the power scaling of Dragon
Ball and the earlier years of Dragon
Ball Z was actually kind of linear it
kind of the newer bigger badder boys
would show up wow Goku and the gang with
some big display of strength and then
Goku would train his little monkey tail
off in order to overcome them however
this progression seemed to come up
against a bit of a ceiling by the time
Demon King Piccolo hit the scene piccolo
was built up to be this unstoppable
otherworldly force whose power couldn’t
entirely be understood the dude 360
noscopes Shenron for Tommy’s sake
spending all that time trapped in a rice
cooker didn’t even slow the guy down in
a narrative sense King Piccolo was the
perfect closing act to the original
Dragon Ball run he was the yang to come
yen and his defeat at the fist of Goku
was this dynamic shift in the Dragon
Ball Pantheon throughout all of Dragon
Ball Goku had been slowly climbing the
power roster higher and higher toward
the rank of godhood and by finishing off
piccolo senior he took his first real
steps into that godly realm impressed by
Goku strength and fearing the arrival of
piccolo jr. Comi took the young sand
under his tutelage for three years it
sure
for the most part Goku had always been
leagues ahead of his friends but his
leaps in strength it always seemed
somewhat attainable Krillin had always
been a Goku’s tail and he even managed
to give him one monkey of a fight at the
World Martial Arts Tournament while
Crillon didn’t quite hit the same growth
spurt that Goku did don’t forget that
he’s still an incredible fighter by
human standards it’s not his fault his
best friend’s a super-strong space alien
but it was commies training that
signified the beginning of Goku’s true
meteoric Rises and power by defeating
the demon and training with an actual
God Goku effectively transcended the
world of Dragonball mortals the drive
does transformation even further home
Toriyama finally updated Goku’s design
into the adult we all know and love
today to say that the 23rd World Martial
Arts Tournament was a doozy would be
quite the understatement it became
immediately obvious that Goku and
piccolo jr. were in an entirely
different league from the other fighters
yeah that chen guy was a wild card but
turns out and he was God all along now
that’s the kind of WWE level switcheroo
that I am here for the ancient grounds
of the World Martial Arts Tournament
were reduced to dust and Goku emerged
victorious I’ll be it bruised and
battered over the ultimate evil for most
followers of Dragonball at the time this
seemed like a pretty reasonable place to
finish off the series go co-ed
officially risen above any other fighter
the whole world had to offer and was
even offered the role of commie with
cheap declined the once vast sprawling
world of Dragon Ball had become small
and manageable
after all if Goku is stronger than the
strongest bad guy the earth had ever
seen where else could the series go yeah
turns out there are aliens now and Goku
is one of them
with the arrival of raditz and
Dragonball Z in general Akira Toriyama
and company managed to pull off the
seemingly impossible
they not only figured out a way to
prolong Goku’s adventures but also
pivoted away from Dragon Balls goofier
background towards the mature sci-fi
style Z is known for one of the issues
with expanding the universe of
Dragonball was obviously that of power
scaling if they were going to introduce
even bigger badder guys how could they
effectively demonstrate their threat
levels by the end of Dragonball piccolo
and Goku had already demonstrated their
ability to wreak considerable havoc upon
the world around them sure you could
have bad guys showing up blowing up
whole cities and continents but
eventually you’ll run out of planets to
fight on this is where Toriyama came up
with the now-famous and tube some
overplayed concept of the power level
Toriyama himself has admitted that he
came up with the idea of power levels in
order to make things a little bit easier
for readers of the manga to follow it’s
an effective trick especially when
looking at reveals like nappa and
Vegeta’s power levels early on on one
side you have this hulking brute of a
guy like nappa with a power level of
4000 absolutely stomping Earth’s
Mightiest Heroes only to find out that
his strength is dwarfed no pun intended
by these seemingly tiny Vegeta ranked at
18,000 this simple new method of quickly
establishing the fighting strength of
any character was certainly novel
it allowed readers and audiences to
quickly understand exactly the kind of
threat that their heroes were facing but
also it came with a few caveats in the
very first example of power levels in
the series were introduced to Raddatz
posting a level of 1500 the unfortunate
farmer who discovered ratted ship clocks
in at a much less impressive 5 right off
the bat we’ve got an easy-to-understand
metric an average human carries a power
level of 5 while a trained Saiyan
warrior is apparently 300 times that
amount and when Raddatz reveals Goku’s
base power level 334 were already met
with the first and most confusing flaw
of the Dragon Ball power level system
and one Toriyama had even predicted he
foresaw that power levels could become
an inconvenience for the creative team
moving forward because if audiences had
concrete numbers for strength fights
could be decided even before they could
begin
and that is why Toriyama gave the Z
fighters the ability to alter their
power levels at will thus keeping the
metrics for their actual strength much
more ambiguous right off the bat we saw
Goku’s power levels swing from a measly
334 wearing weights all the way up to
924 while firing off a kamehameha
against his brother it was only through
the combined efforts of Goku and piccolo
that Raddatz was finally defeated
leaving his ominous warning of the
approach of two even more powerful
Saiyans now before we move forward we
need to look back to the original Dragon
Ball series to start putting together a
better picture of just how unreliable
power levels really are die Zen shoes 7
an extensive encyclopedia of Dragon Ball
lore released in 1996 revealed a great
deal of information regarding power
levels in the earlier years of the
franchise let’s take a quick look at a
few of the ratings revealed in that book
according to the source Goku only had a
power level of 10 during the Emperor
pilaf saga and much more shockingly his
great ape transformation only boasted a
measly 100 fast-forward to early DBZ and
we see Gohan’s oozaru wiping the floor
with piccolo who should technically have
a power level around 400 and that guy
blew up the moon all this is to say that
power levels can get real confusing
really quick regardless of the various
inconsistencies power levels remained a
useful tool right up to the end of the
frieza saga we saw Goku’s base
suppressed power level after training
under King Kai at 5000 already beating
out nappa one interesting note from the
Saiyan saga is that apparently yeah a
ruby of all people had a power level of
970 according to knives n xu7
that’s stronger than Goku firing off a
super kamehameha during the piccolo jr.
saga I guess that’s where a diet
composed almost entirely of Senzu beans
will get you anyway by the end of the
Saiyan saga
we witnessed power levels reaching
upwards of 20,000 as Goku utilize the
kaio-ken to multiply his strength
against the hilariously surprised Vegeta
moving forward into the Namek and Frieza
sagas power levels only serve to creep
ever upwards at the lower end of the
roster we saw Crillon and Gohan with
similar levels around 1500 while
fighting freezes minions
Vegeta though hot off is matched with
Goku hit Namek with a power level
between 19,000 and 24,000 only to see
astronomical progression in a shockingly
short amount of time
Bijan puts Vegeta’s power level after
facing Roku Matt a whopping two hundred
and fifty thousand ten times the
strength he had a short time earlier and
these jumps are nothing compared to a
few other characters we see Crillon
jumping from 10,000 to 13,000 between
his fights with gold oh and Riku and
then skyrocketing to 75,000 facing off
against Frieza that is 50 times increase
in power from his arrival on Namek again
just to put things into perspective
Vegeta at 18,000 back on earth had more
than enough power to destroy an entire
planet and yeah we know tera gnarly it
might not actually be canon but the old
things confusing and weird
regardless after fighting Goku and
coming to within an inch of his life his
power level only increased a few
thousand Krillin on the other hand saw
his power increase from about one rad
it’s just under a fully powered up Goku
after training at 100 times earth
gravity
Krillin and that’s nothing compared to
the numbers Goku and Frieza start
flashing around later we see Goku fresh
out of his healing tank feeling great
around 3 million only for Frieza to jump
from five hundred and thirty thousand in
his base form to sixty million in his
final form at half power the final
matchup of the frieza saga sees a Super
Saiyan Goku rated at 150 million against
a 100% Frieza pumped up to 120 million
after all of these gargantuan leaps and
power it’s pretty clear just how broken
and convoluted a power scale really is
in the Dragon Ball universe which is
great timing because pretty soon
afterward Toriyama steered away from
that metric but the time of the androids
cell and Buu saga as everyone pretty
much agreed that power levels in the
traditional sense were completely
defunct at that point the whole reason
for Toriyama adopting them in the first
place had been upended we saw power
levels swinging wildly pretty much
landing wherever they needed to in order
to service the plot again Krillin
gaining the power of 50 Raddatz in just
a few days just does not
make sense it’s exciting to read or
watch but it’s ludicrous
and that’s okay Dragon Ball has always
been ludicrous it’s a story about grit
determination and overcoming the odds no
matter what of course our heroes were
going to make these leaps in power they
had to it didn’t have much else of a
choice
and frankly if they couldn’t pull it off
the franchise wouldn’t exactly be what
it is today so thankfully for some and
annoyingly for others Dragon Ball super
brought the franchise back to its roots
treating overall strength and the power
of fighters more is this fluid dynamic
force of will rather than some kind of
measurable fuel source Dragon Ball super
revels in its weirdness in a way when
beerus flicks the super saiyan 3 right
at a goku at King Kai’s place he’s also
kind of knocking the whole obsession DBZ
had with transformations and power-ups
all together and that’s not to say that
DBZ never acknowledged the problem with
bigger beefier transformations we
certainly aren’t forgetting the whole
ultra saiyan thing in the cell saga
supers whole direction starting with
battle of the gods seems to be focusing
a lot more on that pursuit of godliness
that we touched on back in part 1 that’s
a kind of obvious considering how
basically the whole series is about the
highest tier of gods in the franchise if
you focus on certain design choices in
Super you’ll definitely notice a trend
towards slimmer lighter form factors in
our heroes this is especially clear in
the art direction for Dragon Ball super
bro Li well in Goku and Vegeta’s case at
least
roley’s beef and going nowhere this
approach to fighting strength is far
from just being an aesthetic one though
Dragon Ball super flows a lot looser
than Z did at least in terms of
comparative power levels it seems like
any given character is able to tap into
an almost limitless well of power when
they truly need to one of the most
visible examples of this comes in the
form of Goku and krillen sparring in
preparation for the tournament of power
a lot of our examples send a circle back
to Crillon ha either way this bald
little guy managed to hold up a few
seconds of a Kamehameha showdown against
Super Saiyan blue Goku and just to be
clear we’ve seen estimates that Goku
Super Saiyan blue form
caps out somewhere around 7.5
quadrillion that’s a 7 out of 5 followed
by 14 zeroes ignoring the fact that the
entire planet would probably dissolve
under the R of that kind of power the
fact that Crillon was able to withstand
literally an instant of even low effort
kamehameha is well inconceivable and
it’s not the only time something like
this happens in this series Master
Roshi’s apparently been hitting the gym
hard and his off time because he pulls
some pretty wild maneuvers during the
tournament of power the guy takes on
Frost the universe 6 freeze a
doppelganger seemingly in his final
transformation I mean he doesn’t fare
well but he gets in a few hits which is
way more than anybody expected look at
the end of the day when looking at power
scaling and comparing the fighting
strength of Dragon Ball characters it’s
safe to say the field is pretty stacked
countless people have made countless
videos trying to quantify or measure the
might of fighters and a lot of those
people make really excellent points but
the reality of Dragon Ball is that
strength really is more of a measurement
of someone’s untapped potential and
their desire to grow and if we’re going
to use that as a metric I think we all
know pretty darn well who the title
should go to that’s right
Icarus get on up here yeah big lovable
dragon Matt come on it’s it’s Goku you
all saw it coming he might not be the
most exciting or unexpected answer but
it’s true from a certain point of view
nobody in the entire Dragon Ball
franchise has quite the same unyielding
passion to improve just for the sake of
improvement nobody else shares his
childlike sense of wonder and incredibly
dangerous habit of challenging literally
anybody to a fight time and time again
Goku has proven himself more than
capable of overcoming impossible odds
with that classic carefree grin and a
big ol thumbs up it’s just what the guy
was born to do now if you want to talk
straight-up muscle punches big boy
strong guy stuff it’s pretty safe to say
at least at this point in the Dragon
Ball canon the strongest fighter in all
of universe 7 is brawling I mean come on
the guy punched open the fabric of
reality while fighting Koji de bruit is
literally strength incarnate the team
behind Dragon Ball super burly actually
did a fantastic job depicting the best
version of burly thus far don’t
we never actually got to see the
conclusion to that fight since Broly was
whisked away to never-never land by
Shenron for all we know he could have
tapped into some other reservoir of
rocket sauce just as Gogeta was getting
ready to land the finishing blow they’ll
almost certainly be revisiting Broly at
some point but for now the upper limit
of his power is still up in the air
although I still firmly believe that
given enough time and training even
Broly would eventually fall to the
plucky little Saiyan that could Goku and
there you have it the strongest fighter
in all of Dragonball at least in our
opinion is son Goku what do you think of
our analysis on fighting strength
are there any characters you’d nominate
to be the best let us know in the
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