Dragon Ball: Is Power Scaling Inconsistent?

One of the central plot points of Dragon Ball is the fact that characters are always shown at a specific power level in their very first appearance but, as time goes on, they get far stronger, either through training or through a new transformation or technique. This has always been a staple of the franchise, for example, when Goku was famously over 9000 in his fight against Vegeta in the Saiyan Saga while now, he is many billions of times stronger than that.

While this has always been a part of the Dragon Ball franchise, it is not something that has been consistent with how it’s presented. A general rule of thumb for this series is that characters introduced later on are far stronger than those introduced early. However, the bar for strength is set at such a high level already that there isn’t really a kind of discernible difference between how much stronger current characters are, so let’s take a look.

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Why Power Scaling Is Inconsistent

Why There Should Be A Better Way of Discerning Power

Power Scaling can essentially be defined as a way of figuring out the exact strength (or power) of characters or transformations by using various statements, feats, and calculations. For example, the series states that the regular Super Saiyan form is 50 times stronger than the Saiyans’ base form and Super Saiyan 2 is twice as strong as the previous transformation.

Although Dragon Ball itself has mostly gotten rid of the need for any such kinds of calculations, such as power levels, many fans of the series still use them quite often to know where each form or character stands in relation to others. However, the problem here is that, after a certain point, it loses its meaning. Early on, the ability to blow up the Moon was considered to be the apex of strength, but as the series went on and characters got stronger, this wasn’t as impressive anymore.

One of the craziest showings of power happened early on in Dragon Ball Z, where a flashback to Vegeta’s childhood showed him with his father and a few other Saiyans being surrounded by forces on all sides. However, with just a little movement that didn’t even seem to indicate any effort, King Vegeta destroyed 3 planets like they were nothing, blowing the minds of every fan who witnessed it.

However, what this ended up doing was making the feat of being able to reduce entire worlds to rubble in the future not have as much of an impact. Even in 2013’s Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods, Beerus is presented as the strongest character that fans have ever seen when he blows up half a planet with minimal effort. However, seeing how someone like King Vegeta blew up 3 with just as little effort without even going regular Super Saiyan really did take away from Beerus’ moment, since the Destroyer God’s awesome destructive power wasn’t anything new.

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How Can This Be Fixed?

A Way To Make Incredible Power Have An Impact

The need to fix the issues with the strength of characters is imperative since they make the storytelling inconsistent as well. Currently, as of Dragon Ball Super, this trend has gone off the rails because even traditionally weak characters, such as Krillin, Tien, or even Yamcha, can destroy multiple planets with ease. This hardly makes any sense considering how weak such characters are built up to be in relation to their comrades.

This issue can be fixed by making incredible feats such as destroying planets something that only the most powerful characters can do. Having this be something that just about anyone else can pull off makes for poor and inconsistent storytelling. The best example of this is with the Gods of Destruction, whose entire task is to facilitate the growth of new life in their universe and get rid of stagnation by erasing those that slow down the universe’s development.

Such great power being in the hands of regular characters means that the God of Destruction, as a role, isn’t even needed, since so many others can carry out the same responsibility. Sure, the Destroyers need to be the strongest in their universe to make sure no disgruntled enemy can take their position, but if only someone on their level had the power to destroy planets and civilizations then it would just add much more depth to their standing.

Dragon Ball can be streamed on Crunchyroll.

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Dragon Ball Super

Release Date

July 5, 2015

Creator

Akira Toriyama

Number of Episodes

131